Cultural phenomena (or what I hate more than I hate Christmas)

Do you know much about British Carnival Season? I certainly don't¹. But I know enough to let rip, so here goes.

I hate 'carnival' week almost as much as I hate Christmas, and I hate Christmas A LOT. You haven't experienced me on Christmas yet. You've got me on novel writing before then so be patient.

In the mean time there's carnival week. This lame town has tried several other things in a half arsed way in a pathetic attempt to inject some life. Sensible Brits have always responded by staying away in droves. The town is on a downward spiral to dormitory town status - housing, a supermarket, some pubs plus an adequate sufficiency of hairdressers and life's absolute essential - the tanning salon.

The Beer Festival is a dirty little secret that is over before a beer drinker like me knows its happening and music week was cancelled this year for lack of support.

That leaves fucking carnival; a series of random events that don't add up to a coherent celebration of anything². Our main playing field is taken over by a bunch of in-bred peasants trailing cheap and nasty 'rides' and side-show alley rip-off ventures. For several nights running our town becomes something bearing a passing resemblence to a war zone and almost a no-go area; we're over-run by foul mouthed youths, drunk, stoned and dragging half dressed banshee-like females about. More brawling, verbal and physical violence, vandalism, petty theft, underage drinking and drug taking happens in the space of this week than happens in the rest of the year.

For some reason people feel compelled to drag their young children out into the chilly late-September nights to witness this tawdry spectacle; perhaps they're just squaring up to the reality of what prospects this country's lamentable education system, tax and welfare arrangements and economic infrastructure leave these children.

Look son, one day all this will be yours.

I hate carnival.

A baby show is staged and the prize almost inevitably falls to the fat ugly grandchild of someone who if caught would be found to have their hands clutching a few strings. Something similar used to go for the trainee slut declared Carnival Queen, who for her trouble gets to travel up the high street wreathed in something like an early draft of Lady Diana Spencer's wedding dress while having money flung at her. Again, possibly valuable training for the life that awaits her. She's usually attended by a couple of girls who form her court - often chewing gum, sometimes asleep and once brazenly picking her nose as the procession passed us.

These days it is more a matter of 'you want to be it? The job's yours!' such is the level of interest among girls who know that, should they be chosen, it will be the case that while they spend the evening looking like a dickhead their mates are all off getting drunk and picking up one or other STD in the shadows beind the Twister or what ever ride provides the most ample cover.

For the duration the town is over-run with pallid, scrawny examples of the very worst sort of intellectually and physically undernourished underclass who can't put a sentence together without using the word FUCK at least once and habitually address people they dislike as CUNT. Clever, eh? They come in on the trains and then at the end of the week, thankfully, they go back to beneath whatever rock it was they crawled out from under.

The culmination of the week's 'festivities' is a 'torch lit' procession. This is lots of stupid but enthusiastic locals dressed up not quite as well as they'd like to think, yomping up the High Street rattling collection tins at those inhabitants not stupid enough to participate directly, but too stupid to get right out of the way of the whole sorry business.

The floats are interspersed with 'bands' (brass and pipe favoured, but not actually together thankfully) and 'marching bands' of fat girls in lots of lycra and porn-reject boots.

The procession, which is actually lit by a combination of bog-standard street lighting and a plethora of those nasty little multi-coloured glowing wands so beloved by children of all ages, ends with a fireworks display that annually terrorises cats, dogs and - as it takes place on land adjacent to the wild life reserve - lots of protected species .

Then, happily, the whole sorry business is all over.

The following day the in-bred mob on the playing fields pack up and leave, mercifully early, and within a couple of days the place is once again not too unpleasant a place to live. Roll on tomorrow then.

1. The origins typically lie in the late Victorian or Edwardian era when carnivals were staged periodically as a way of raising much needed funds for local hospitals and charities. The widespread phenomenon of the annual street carnival and procession rigamarole is much more recent, dating typically to the post-war years.

2. In theory the organising committee agrees a Theme and a set of worthy causes to benefit from a proportion of the monies raised, supposedly after Consultation and . In practice anything goes (except the whole damned idea) and I haven't the faintest idea what happened to the money.

Palpitations

Suffered them last night, or this morning. I had a highly disturbed night's sleep overall but that was the scary bit. It was while I was lying in a lather of sweat, trying to work out what had set the anxiety attack off that I realised it I had been used to dream about being trapped in airport departure lounges with no way out but no longer do so. And I thought it so sad, since it probably reflects an acceptance of my grim fate and loss of hope for the future. Then I wake up to all that Alexander Downer nonsense and that other idiot Howard-lite creature and this doesn't seem like quite such a negative state of affairs. If only I could be happy and financially secure and living here from a position of strength rather than weakness.

Big Smoke

Yesterday's journey to town included a bone shaking journey across country along 'B' roads, though how much contact there was at any given moment in time between all four wheels and the road surface is a matter of conjecture, but something perhaps not best contemplated by someone likely to have to repeat the experience at some time in the future.

We're broke again (or still) so we won't be escaping the public transport bind for a while.

I had an anxiety attack during the week. That was another thing. A year after the last round of serious money worries we're no further forward. And I looked on the home office web site. I have two visa options but one of them, holding it would make it far easier to get a better paid job, will cost me the best part of £1,000 while the other will cost just over £300. It just isn't going to be possible to make the investment in the 'better' visa. I also need a car if I'm going to get to and fro that better job. How the fuck am I supposed to get myself out of this cesspit he dug for me?

The upside of the bus journey was that it took less time than it should have, and we were ahead of ourselves. Also the trains were running right into London rather than stopping outside and dumping us onto the underground. We had bucket loads of time to kill and he suggested popping into the Museum of London; this was fine by me as it meant we didn't actually have to talk. The museum has come on strongly since I first visited it almost 15 years ago. This time we didn't get past the pre-history gallery of case upon case of flint, old bone, pottery shards and the occasional piece of ornamentation. This is all while major work is going on to revive the lower galleries, but I was perfectly to pass half an hour there.

Then legging it across to the west to the coach station, travelling by the No.11 which used to be such a cool experience and is now in many ways just another bus journey, albeit one that takes the passenger from the heart of the city, via St Paul's (where we picked it up) down Ludgate Hill to the point where what was once the Fleet is crossed. From there on up Fleet Street and the Strand, towards Trafalgar Square then onwards to the Abbey and in to Victoria.

At some point we picked up a couple of old dears very much off their patch (Knightsbridge to go by the accent) and one was moved to remark to the other - but quite loudly enough that the entire assembled company heard her over the engine, that "London is rather full of tourists these days!" which made me and the few other people on the bus with enough English to understand smile. She and her friend tottered off somewhere down Victoria Street, still a long way from home. Perhaps they were a couple of well-heeled crusty recusants off to the Cathedral to bother God.

We were on time, the coach was late. The board said "Delayed, no information available". The information desk was equally informative. The coach turned up about forty minutes late. She looked tired. We said our farewells to the friend she'd made last year and kept in touch with. She insisted she'd had a good time but she wasn't bounding the way I'd expect. We dragged her luggage to a cheap restaurant and fed our faces, then went up to Covent Garden to spend money (but note the opening to this post). Apparently it had to be done. We bought booze, but Vic Bitter and Coopers Ale have lost their appeal. They just aren't as good as I once thought they were. But we had to buy some and some food.

So now we were dragging luggage and shopping through London's crowded streets with an exhausted child in tow. We got a little more about her week from her. The coach was late getting in because the driver took the wrong route and put them that much behind schedule. I hope the two German kids they'd had on the camp and who they dumped at Heathrow to get a plane home didn't miss their flight. Before she went away we'd talked about going to the good Indian restaurant in town for a nosh-up, but by the time we got back we were all too tired to go out again.

The cat has perked up no end with the Little One's return and the second coming of the Pink Palace.

The Palace, meanwhile, has lost some of its lustre apparently. Although she slept in it last night she came up in the morning and crawled under the covers of her 'little old bed'. We haven't had a summer and the jumpers which I never did get around to packing properly are now being worn again. The days are shortening and she'll be back to school. I have the school shoes and most of the rest of it can give us a bit more wear. Thankfully.

Next year it is spy camp we've been told, whether or not her friend from last year is going too. Here's hoping that the paternal grandmother can stump up the readies, 'cos I can't see us affording it unless one of his scratch cards turns out to be a big payer.

Next thing is to shake off yet another bug. Another novel, a bit derivative but what isn't, has started to take shape and the only way to get rid of it will be to write it down.