The Scandinavian side

Last week, I went to Morecambe. This week, I went to the other coast. Scarborough is not only the final resting place of Anne Bronte. It is also the final resting place of my uncle, who died last week. It’s a beautiful town that clings to steep, steadily eroding cliffs below a dramatic ruined castle, and this week, an even more brooding, gothic atmosphere was bestowed by the thick fog that rolled in every evening, shrouding the grand Victorian buildings that line the cliffs in swirling fingers of mist.

At the funeral, the Yorkshire half of the family talked about the “sea fret”, while the Scottish half nodded sorrowfully, conceding, “Aye, it’s a right cold haar”. I don’t know the origins of fret, but haar comes from Old Norse. The Scandinavian theme continued – one cousin had been researching her family tree and had uncovered a Danish great grandmother, another had a Norwegian grandfather, and Uncle John had spent the night before at a local pub where he stumbled upon a troupe of Norwegian teenagers doing karaoke.

I've started so I'll finish

I've been getting into British telly, which does not bode well for the future of my research, but some is just too good to miss. Take Mastermind for example, a quiz show in which members of the public are quizzed on such subjects as “Cremation practices in medieval Shropshire”. The contestants are, often as not, fabulously nerdy gardeners or retired civil servants. The show has no fancy sets or flashy presenters, and the winner gets nothing other than the chance to proceed to the next round. Should they be sagacious enough to win the entire series they get….a glass bowl. Superb.

Seaside

The sun has been shining again here in the grim north, so I packed my bucket and spade and trotted off to the coast. The English seaside is the domain of the elderly: polyester slacks abound, the food is old-fashioned and the pace of life is glacial. Clouds hung motionless over the ocean like spacecraft watching and waiting. A solitary crab claw lay marooned on the shingle, its owner somewhere out there, searching for the lost limb. A milky jellyfish bobbed, ghostly and diaphanous in the waves, and a pale creature sat on the sand slowly licking stem ginger ice cream and listening to the soft whir of mobility scooters. 

Olde worlde

I’m one of those irritating people who thinks that everything used to be better, so you can imagine my delight when I found this coffee shop. It’s occupied the same premises since 1901. Drunk on the aromas of arabica, I purchased not only a cappuccino and a slice of teacake, but this little beauty.

Do not go gentle...

I came home via the doctor’s surgery, where I picked up the forms I needed to register as a patient. There were the usual questions about family history, which set me thinking about the state of my genes: my father’s side have a habit of dropping dead in their fifties. Then I called my mother. We talked about my uncle who is in a hospital in Scarborough, dying of cancer. My mother had just called another relative from that side of the family whom she doesn’t talk to often, and discovered that all the brothers are now dead, even though the youngest would only have been in their early forties. Then I checked my email to find news that a friend in Prague had died. 

With a sigh, I went to bed with the ipod on, thinking it would help me fall asleep. It took just one ballad to get to get me staring, saucer-eyed into the darkness, maggoty fear gripping my heart: what if Timorous Beast dies away over there in Japan?

The smell of shit in the morning

I came out of the cinema the other night to find the air smelling not of shit, but of grass. Cold, fresh and grassy, with a hint of the sea on the breeze. It's in the morning that it smells of shit; cow shit, or sheep shit, or quite possibly rabbit shit - I did see a rabbit twitching its little snout on the university grounds the other day. I love the smell of cow/sheep/rabbit shit in the morning. 

Stimulation

In an effort to stimulate the economy, the Japanese government decided back in April to give everyone in the country 12,000 yen. Mine arrived in my bank account a week after I'd left, so Timorous Beast is sending it to me in England, whose economy shall be duly stimulated. How many Thornton's choccies will 12,000 yen buy?