It’s staying lighter later, and today for the first time I managed to be on my way home before it actually got dark.
This is just off of Plungie, again, and the houses are typical northern terraces, all stuck together. It’s been clear and cold, and the sky is full of jet trails – I suspect from planes heading over the pole to North America: several years ago, flying from London to Vancouver we flew over this part of the world, never suspecting we’d end up living here.
Plungington Road (known as Plungie, with a classic northern long ‘u’), is one of the main north-south strips in Preston, running from the university campus up the hill to Blackpool road, which used to be the northern limit of the town. Plungie is not a great neighbourhood, consisting mainly of charity shops, convenience stores, takeaways, discount booze and pubs. The original houses are classic northern terraces, with front doors right on the street and dense back alleys. Now, being so close to campus, there are loads of students as well as the original inhabitants.
This is the Plunginton Tavern, a truly handsome building, but unfortunately for rent. People seem to prefer the discount booze mart two blocks up, and judging from the broken glass, just do their drinking in the street.
We get a lot of jet trails here, I’m not sure why. They show up during crisp clear winter days, especially.
This was early this morning: I went out while the kettle was boiling, and there was a plump little magpie sitting in the tree. By the time I went upstairs and fetched my camera, he had flown away, but the jet trail had showed up, so I took that instead. A woman leaving the house two doors down glared at me as I went back inside with my camera, mistrusting my motives.
I have a large collection of shawls, throws, wraps and scarves, acquired all over the world. They’re my last concession to my hippy lefty roots: I dress pretty boringly otherwise, so I the wraps are sometimes the only colour on display.
This shawl is probably the largest I own, it’s almost too large to be useful. I bought it in Guangzhou, and it wasn’t cheap. I was recently cornered by someone at a conference who insisted it was made in Pakistan, that she imported shawls from Pakistan and she knew it was Pakistani. She was deeply offended that I had bought it in China, and I felt bad for having done so, but there was little I could do about it.
These are Oliver’s front paws. Oliver is our other cat, and a cat less like Giles you could not imagine. Aside from his colour, which is a magnificent ginger, with a white muzzle, he is confident, cocky, assertive and pushy. He is the very definition of top cat.
We adopted him in Dubai, after the vet assistant said to me: you look like you could use another cat. In other words, she knew one when she saw one. Oliver was still a young-un then, about six months, skinny and scrawny, but he thrust himself up against the bars of the cage and insisted on all my attention. He had a rough kittenhood, I think this was the third time he’d been returned to the vet’s, and on one occasion he had been shaken by a dog, leading to the one thing he’s actually scared of: dogs.
He has a lot of names, Oliver, Tipsy McStagger (he’s got some hip and back issues because of the dog), Captain Stripeypants, Mr Pyjamas, and most often, Thruddle. Martin coined that last, it’s a portmanteau of ‘thrust’ and ‘cuddle’ and describes exactly what it’s like when he runs up to you and leans his whole body against you, purring madly.
I’m not completely sure where I got this, but it was almost certainly a street vendor in Johannesburg. These little toys made of old tin cans are common in Africa, sold as souvenirs. This one reminds me of my very first car, an orange Volkswagen beetle, which I called the pumpkin. I bought the car before I had a driver’s license, and drove it for at least a year, illegally. We moved to Canada and I sold it to my friend Silla, who I believe had it resprayed and gave it to her sons to drive.
It wasn’t a great car, and it got me into several unpleasant situations, including two separate occasions when I pressed the brake pedal flat and nothing happened, and a trip to the Drakensberg in which it died, leaving us to spend the night in it, on a deserted mountain road. Still, it was my first car, and that counts for something, I suppose.
I’ve had an exhausting week, and am what can only be decribed as shattered. I wanted to experiment with depth of field and photograph a necklace, but I am too tired, and the clasp of the necklace broke and will need mending first, so I took this picture.
I bought her in Simla, and I’m not sure who she is. She’s about 15cm tall, and made of copper plated with silver. She hangs on the wall above my desk. This is a tight close-up, and it’s incandescent light that makes her look so burnished. She’s normally just silver.
I like her, although she’s really just a cheap souvenir, I know.
It’s a foggy day. I like fog, it is possibly my favourite weather of all possible weathers.
Preston is pretty foggy, and damp overall, which is why it has all the cotton mills. Cotton’s explosive, so you really want to spin and weave it in as damp a climate as possible. Preston is not only damp, it’s apparently damper than all other places in the region, so even though it’s a bit of a schlep from Liverpool (up the coast to the Ribble Mouth, then up the river to the city and the docks), it made sense to build the cotton mills here. The cotton that was spun here was grown in the Americas, shipped here for spinning and weaving, the completed cloth was taken by ship to West Africa, traded for slaves, who were taken to the Americas and traded for raw cotton, which was brought here for spinning and weaving, and so on. Globalisation is not an entirely new phenomenon.
There’s a lot of drinking in Preston. Well, in the UK in general, but also in Preston, and in my neighbourhood. The Lancaster canal seems to be a favourite hangout for [presumably underage] drinkers. It’s pretty secluded, aside from the dogwalkers and people like me walking to work, it has a nice wide towpath, with various benches to sit on, and it provides the inestimable joy of throwing your empties into the water and watching them not bob away, but stay right there, mocking you. Actually, probably not mocking you, unfortunately. I wish they did.
The fact is, the canal would be a much nicer place if it weren’t so filthy, so littered with bottles and cans and cigarette packets and takeaway boxes and used condoms and dog shit. There are no rubbish bins along the canal, for some reason, but there are bins for dog shit, which provide helpful plastic bags as well for walkers. I do see people pick up their dog’s shit, but I can’t help thinking that they must only do it when someone’s watching, how else to explain all the rest of it.
Oh, bottle in English slang is courage, or nerve. Losing one’s bottle is chickening out. I don’t know why the title, I just like the expression.
