Month: December 2014

Different Shores – Christmas 2014

Allright I admit it. I was totally seduced by St Ives (where I’ve just spent Christmas) and have been a complete tourist there. Having said that, the project is about being a tourist, so here’s a Cornish contact sheet taken over the week.

Normal service will be resumed after new years day, but in the meantime, here’s a transcript of one of the conversations I had there, illustrating one of the pitfalls of travelling to somewhere with a very different kind of beach to the one you’re used to:

“Excuse me? The man in the cafe downstairs said it might be possible to use your toilet?”
“Are you Sandy?”
“Um no, my name is Chris. Did he phone up to let you know I was popping up?”
“Actually there’s a public toilet just up the road but as he said you could come up its fine but I wanted to know if you were Sandy?”
“Like I said, my name is Chris, maybe you got me confused with someone else? What’s your name?”
“I’m Margaret. It’s lovely to meet you but I’ve just done the floors see and you can’t come in if you’re sandy because I don’t want to have to do them all again.”
“No, no, I told you, my name is Chris and, oh, I see what you mean. No, really, I’m not sandy at all. Can I come in?”

12 tips for Christmas – Weds 17th Dec

With Christmas only a few days away now, I have been giving some thought to one of the pitfalls we can be presented with on the morning itself; that of the exchange of gifts. Sometimes the overwhelming joy of receiving these tokens of love can leave us, quite literally, speechless with delight, and this silence can be misinterpreted as a lack of enthusiasm. To help you avoid this happening I’ve prepared twelve useful phrases to memorise and use upon unwrapping your gifts:

  1. Gosh it must have taken you ages to find something like that!
  2. How original!
  3. You’re so clever!
  4. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it!
  5. What an unusual colour!
  6. Does it do something?
  7. How thoughtful, I had an identical one a few years ago but it fell apart after a couple of hours!
  8. Is this bit supposed to move?
  9. Is it part of a pair?
  10. I remember when these first came out!
  11. Oh darling you know I like these, I gave you one exactly like it last year!
  12. That’s lovely dear.

Finally, if you simply can’t find the right words, a prolonged glassy smile while gazing directly into the eyes of the giver usually works a treat.

Hopefully that should cover most gift-opening situations. If you do use any of the above, please let me know how you got on. I am always happy to receive messages of gratitude. And if you find anyone saying some of these things to you, just reply: ‘What a useful website Umbrellage is! It’s such a shame Chris is away now till 28th December’.

Good Luck!

Glossary – Tues 16th Dec

When I think of the word ‘pebble’ the words that come to mind are: shiny, smooth, polished, round, wet… But the word ‘stone’ conjures much more. In addition to the preceding, I might also think of: rough, lumpen, angular, pitted, sharp… and then there are also stones so important we have added names to them: hearth stone, lode-stone, philosophers stone, millstone, whet stone, altar stone, headstone… Some even have their own gods.

All pebbles are stones, not all stones are pebbles.

Finding treasure – Sun 14th Dec

Over the last few weeks I’ve been on the beach most days looking for interesting stones. I’ve found quite a few now, enough to realise that, to my surprise, I’ve come across all the best ones close to the path next to the beach, or around cafés. According to probability they should be spread pretty evenly across the shore, so this observation has given me pause for thought. There could be several reasons for this happening:

  1. I’m too lazy to go more than a few feet from the nearest cafe or pathway. Actually, that hypothesis is easily dismissed; I have looked all over the beach. Otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed the tendency. I merely note it to show i’ve considered the possibility.
  2. Small children, known for their creativity, openness and inquisitive nature find it impossible to resist collecting interesting examples on their visits to the seashore. However, later when it’s time to go home, their parents, dismayed at the piles of accumulated treasure being lugged up the beach would tell their offspring to leave them behind as they are ‘only stones’ or ‘oh darling we haven’t got room for any more of them’ or ‘what do you want those things for?’ This particular moment of parting would, most likely, happen near the path or, possibly, as a result of the tears caused by this particular separation trauma, near a café, directly as a result of having to console their tender charges with distractions of ice cream.
  3. Brighton is full of poets. Like children they are well known to have extraordinary powers of sensitivity and imagination, and would have no problem spotting these jewels. However everyone also knows that poets are easily distracted, tend to lose things and their pockets are always full of holes (which is why they never have any money). This would cause a higher concentration nearer any pathway. Furthermore, poets spend a lot of time in cafés.
  4. The above could also be true of Jazz musicians.
  5. The stones themselves really are magic. Over millions of years, the most powerful have evolved to be more attractive to humans and, during these same aeons, have slowly worked themselves up the beach to areas where people are more likely to pass by. In short, they want to be found.
  6. Every night, mermaids come out of the sea to look for interesting stones. However, because they have tails instead of legs they can only make it a few yards inland before having to return to the water. This means that the stones nearest the path escape their notice. It is also widely known that mermaids hate coffee – it isn’t salty enough for their liking.

I think this last reason is the most likely as it also explains the cuttlefish mystery (see entry for Mon 10th Nov) and why it is harder to find interesting stones after it’s been raining, or when there has been a high tide.

Logic (Part 2) – Thurs 11th Dec

A good friend of mine was kind enough to respond to my post of 8th December informing me that the ‘Mrs Brown’ piece was originally written by Aristotle to demonstrate the failure of deductive knowledge.

This is remarkable. I mean the last time I saw her I thought she looked a bit tired but I had no idea Mrs Brown was over 3000 years old. Way to go girl! You’re looking great!

It can’t be the same fur coat can it?

Flock – Weds 10th Dec

When I was a student I had a summer job at the Butlins holiday camp in Minehead. I hasten to add I was not a redcoat. Redcoats were not popular with other members of the workforce. While maintaining a superior air to everyone else, nevertheless they had to smile all the time at the campers. This seemed to the rest of us to be too high a price for the privilege of wearing a polyester blazer. I sold ice creams.

Shortly after I started the job an army of decorators arrived at the camp, along with several men carrying a piece of optical equipment on a tripod. The men would set up the tripod in a particular place, look through the optical device, then confer with the works foreman who would, in turn, go and talk to the decorators. After a few days I began to see they weren’t redecorating everything, just the parts that were visible from these standpoints. I was told this was because they were preparing for the company who were going to take the photographs for the new brochure.

On the big day when the company arrived, there was a buzz in the air. Certain parts of the centre of the camp were roped off: the pool, the funfair, the monorail… I stationed myself as near to the pool area as I could get. Inside the enclosure, lots of important looking people milled around. Make up artists attended one of the most beautiful and yet normal families I have ever seen, while technicians adjusted huge lighting arrays and positioned reflectors. There were also two redcoats I didn’t recognise wearing suits that could have been fresh from the box and fitted perfectly. The rest of the world stood outside the perimeter. Crowds of campers looked on with excitement while various officials kept them from pressing forward into shot. Several redcoats (our redcoats) tried to engage the production team in conversation, but they too remained outside the barrier. As the lights were switched on it was as if the sun had come out. Then, after only a few minutes, the dismantling process began and our normal day resumed.

Stones of the day – collected

I’ve now been doing this blog for a while. As a result, I’ve gathered quite a few stones together. They are becoming a representation of a somewhat longer journey, so, for the first time, I’ve put them all together. Here’s one sheet. If you click on the 3 little lines icon at the top of the page (which takes you to the ‘about’ pages) and then go to the ‘Stone of the Day’ page, you’ll find two more.