>>>>>Killing Time<<<<<

On the move...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:21:00 +0000

I've finally gawn and done it. This blog has moved to...

http://davewindass.singlespan.com/

Please update your links and blogrolls and feedreaders and all that gubbins. See you on the other side. And thanks, blogger, for being there when webcrimson went out of business.

Best foot forward...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 21:10:00 +0000

Radio reports this morning announced that two severed feet that had been found on the southbank of the Humber had finally been identified. Neither foot had anything to do with the other. The first foot - found, on August 11 on Cleethorpes beach - was a right foot. The second, a left foot, was washed up near Barton-on-Humber on September 4. But they were not a pair. Not sure how normal it is to find random severed feet. Although I did raise an eyebrow when the newsreader told me that "Humberside Police said there were no suspicious circumstances." Isn't this just a little bit suspicious?

Read the BBC News Humberside Forensic tests on feet found near estuary identify men story.

Penalty charge notice...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:11:00 +0000

I don't think I stand a cat in hell's chance of succeeding with this appeal but I thought it was an issue worth highlighting...

Dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to appeal this PCN on the grounds that the class of vehicle designated on signage and in this area – Queen Street and Humber Street - is no longer applicable and, therefore, does not conform with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD) 2002.

The buildings in the streets in this area are now being used for entertainment and leisure activities. Therefore, on-street parking is a requirement in the area. Like many other patrons of Fruit, Kingston Art Gallery, Eleven and the Museum of Club Culture, I considered the signposting to be an historic legacy of the area's previous use (that of a fruit market). As you will be aware, no goods lorries are actively using any of the marked bays and it is a common assumption that parking is now allowed.

Likewise, the time of the contravention (21:17) indicates that the bay would not even be utilised were lorries still to operate in this area (which, as I point out above, they do not). This lends me to believe that this PCN is the result of over-zealous parking officials intent on driving away custom from the aforementioned venues.

Hence I trust the PCN will be cancelled.

If you do wish to pursue the PCN then please enclose with your response a copy of the relevant Traffic Order and consider this a request under the freedom of information act.

Yours faithfully,

David E Windass

Delusions of grandeur...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:54:00 +0000

Followed the Larkin-themed night at the theatre with a drink in one of his old haunts (and subject of a poem) - Hull's Royal Station Hotel. I really like the place. Mainly because it has ridiculous delusions of grandeur and is frequented by shabby, equally deluded, clientele. A great place to people watch.

Much of today I was in a daze. Which was great given that I was lecturing and young people were staring at me waiting for 'the answer'. The crash has left me in pain and thoroughly exhausted. At lunch I headed across town to lunch with M. Although, when I got there, she was in a meeting so we were unable to sit together (I'm rude but not that rude). A sandwich arrived at M's table which she had ordered for me. M indicated I should take it, which I did and then, bearing in mind that I needed to dash back across town, quickly cleared the plate. It was only at the end of the day that I was informed that only half of the sandwich was mine to eat. Oops.

This be the chairs...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:30:00 +0000

Tonight I went to the theatre. The seating comprised hard plastic seats and I sat next to a man who was so large he occupied half of my seat too. Which, as if my current injuries aren't bad enough on their own, was hideously uncomfortable. I tried to move the chairs apart at the interval only to discover that they were bound together. The man smiled at me but didn't move. He suggested the bondage-style seating arrangement was, in some way, Larkinesque (the play, Something Hidden, is about Philip Larkin and the women in the poet's life). Which, of course, it wasn't. They f*k you up, those seat hogging audience members.

I'm on a diet...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:50:00 +0000

Today I was mostly in pain of the whiplash variey. People telling me how many thousands of pounds I can claim for the injuries I've suffered is getting quite boring. As are the endless monologues about other people's car crashes. On advice, I'm on a diet of Ibruprofen and Paracetamol, although feel something stronger might be in order.

Tonight, Thinspiration returned for another one-off performance in the studio at Hull Truck. All went well. Lots of interest in our post-show Q&A. Mother didn't come to the show. Her excuse: "I've seen it before."

Crash, bang, wallop...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 23:18:00 +0000

Today was a write off. Well, actually my car was a write off. At about 10.20am. Which was the moment in time when, as I sat in my car waiting at a red light, a DAF lorry belonging to Kwik Fit decided to plough into the back of my vehicle. Ironically, the side of the lorry contained an advert that asked: "Does your car need an MOT?" Sadly, it needs slightly more than that.

Having refused a journey in an ambulance to casualty just after the crash, I was persuaded to make the trip later in the day. I spent four hours mulling around accident and emergency drinking really horrible vending machine coffee. Was kept amused for a short time by a builder who sat opposite, who had fired a six inch nail from a Hilti gun through his thumb. It looked like the kind of visual gag you'd buy from a joke shop. After he'd been sat there for five minutes a 12-year-old in a tracksuit wandered over and asked the highly intelligent question, "does that hurt?". I got the all-clear from a nurse after 40 minutes but then had to wait for the same from a doctor. I embarrassed myself when I misheard a name that was announced. For a few brief seconds I was, in the eyes of the waiting room's varied clientele, who watched me jump to my feet and dash towards the nurse, Jane Winters.

One foot in the grave...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:09:00 +0000

So, the service comes to an end. We head outside where the ashes are re-interred. Not exactly a sombre occasion but certainly respectful. With the ashes back where they belong - in a hole in the church grounds - the vicar says a few final words. And smiles at us. We smile at him and say thank you. He smiles again. Then he steps backwards. Into the hole and right on top of me dear old dad. My, how we laughed.

Strange days indeed...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:05:00 +0000

Happy Birthday to EJW today. Ted. My old man.

We celebrated his birthday by re-interring his ashes in a better place. Not too somber an occasion. A quite fantastic theatrical pratfall to close. Although I won't share that just yet. Happy birthday dad.

Two shorts...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 08:45:00 +0000

Learning the art of succinctness

I'm trying
To write

Shorter
Poems

"..."

Dramatic...
...
...pause

These arrived at 5am...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:22:00 +0000

In the early hours of not sleeping, these two bits of nonsense arrived:

MxB
If you were to multiply
The number of cats
Lost in Murakami novels
By the amount of women
Bukowski shags in his
The sum total
Would equal
The mistakes made
In my life

Literary Ambition
I have no literary ambitions
Beyond finishing
This Dan Fante novel
And heading to the pub
For some lager
Carling Black Label, probably
My friend for nigh-on 30 years
Although, back then
When you ordered
You used the suffix
Shared with Johnnie Walker
Whereas now
Four times the price it was back then
It's simply Carling.

Wobbly wallaby...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:07:00 +0000

In the park round the corner from our house the other day with Finn. We ended up looking at the paltry collection of animals (four goats and a wallaby). The wallaby was a rather fantastic footballer - picking up a leather match ball with his front paws, jumping in the air and striking the ball against the fence. Real Bend It Like Beckham stuff. Finn was recounting the experience today for M's benefit. I was baffled for a while as there was no mention of the wallaby. Instead, Finn talked of the giant rabbit with the ball. We pointed out his error but, armed with his new knowledge, he insisted on calling the wallaby a "wobbly". He did a great little performance, recreating the antics of the footballing macropod, paws and all. Looking at his face, however, he looked like a bit too much like a giant rabbit.

Gospel dancing...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 23:30:00 +0000

Enjoyed watching this guy getting down to the music at Freedom in Hull today. No alcohol apparently required - this was at noon and he was dancing to the spiritual warblings of the Hot Gospel choir.

Off the face...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:39:00 +0000

Where have I been for over a week? What have I been doing? Did I really just disappear off the face of the planet as a result of drinking a couple of beers after seeing Ensemble 52's As We Forgive Them at Fruit? Will I return and say something substantial at some point? Does anyone know of my whereabouts? Is it worth phoning Crime Stoppers? Is this me at all or someone covering their tracks?

Found: a piece of England...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:50:00 +0000

I wondered, as soon as I saw it laid in front of me as I walked down a leafy avenue in Hull, what the significance of this object was. It felt as if a point was being made. A copy of Billy Bragg and The Blokes' England, Half English discarded. Spent. Left to rot.

But it didn't stop me from picking it up, checking to see if the CD was intact (it was) and passing it to M to pop in her bag for safekeeping. "No," she said, "I'm not. That'd be like stealing it." Which it wouldn't. The CD had been well-handled and had been tossed aside, unloved. But the fact that I'm picking up someone else's rubbish....that's very 21st century Englishness, isn't it? Begging, stealing, borrowing. It's on the CD player now. After one play, I shall drop it in the street and let this copy of England, Half English continue its journey.

Worth noting that, on the inner sleeve, there's a George Orwell quote:

"Englishness is continuous. It stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantlepiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person."

George Orwell, England, Your England from The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Spunking money...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:28:00 +0000

“We keep testing things in dribs and drabs. The fad for commissioning pilots is a waste of money. I don’t think a pilot will ever demonstrate the power of what a series can be - it’s a bit like spunking money as far as I can tell."

Paul Abbott on the state of television drama. Reported in The Stage.

A surplus of meat...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:44:00 +0000

More weird stuff encountered. I was intrigued, shall we say, when I drove past a small refrigerated lorry that was emblazoned with 'Royal Meat'. Is this meat that is for consumption only by those with royal blood - surely not, that would be too niche a market - or is it meat carved from royals? Or, most likely, just some skanky processed meat company with delusions of grandeur. I so wish I'd had a device with me that would have allowed me to provide photographic evidence. A quick Google throws up several companies with the same name. There's obviously a surplus of royal meat about.

Then, there was the most peculiar puppet show we witnessed at the Pearson Park 150th birthday celebrations. Now that I did take a photograph of. While the show itself was somewhat, well, unusual and a consummate lesson in audience alienation (the children above were all sneering at the puppeteer), I'm utterly baffled by the creepy looking man that appears to the left of the image, who I didn't notice at the time. What is he doing? Why does he squat so? Does he have CRB clearance?

Peculiar encounters...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:39:00 +0000

Out early. Which might account for a couple of strange people I avoided fully engaging with this morning. Walking past the cemetery gates I eyed a gent in full cowboy regalia; the illusion that this might be an actual cowboy shattered by his frenetic mobile phone keypad punching. Then there was a chap on a main arterial road waving a copy of a book titled No Mercy from the Japanese in my face. I think I've seen the latter before - several months ago and a little bit further up the road, that time brandishing a weighty tome about the Somme, which he held up and displayed to passing traffic. As much as I love this city and its people, it does throw up some peculiar encounters.

Disparate strands...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:38:00 +0000

My hair is currently a ridiculous mop of disparate strands atop my head. It is wayward. It is unruly. It has a life of its own (in my most paranoid moments I'm convinced it is having more fun than me). It is a mess. It is mostly grey. It is everything that a chap's hair should not be. Yet there are so many more things I need to do with my money right now (such as, say, purchase food) that I fear that I may not be getting the barnet cut and restyled any time soon. What does history tell me? Samson's strength was, of course, the result of the Nazirite never having his hair cut. Yet the thought of killing a lion with my bare hands or killing 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey doesn't really appeal. Should I self-cut? Now there's an option that could end in tears.

Getting sentences to work...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:07:00 +0000

"I got halfway down the first page and realised to my astonishment that this was a story for young people. And I felt liberated. It was an area where I could renew myself. There were moments when I was spellbound by what I was writing. I thought, if I can just gather it, control it, then maybe the spell will go out to the reader too...

"People say to me, you're so prolific, and I think, now I am! It's the payoff for all the time I spent getting sentences to work properly. Like anything, you develop a skill through hard work."

David Almond - interview in The Guardian Review

Oh buoy...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:46:00 +0000

Accompanied daughter to Hull History Centre. She was doing some research into the Grade II listed Trinity House Buoy Shed which, well, used to be a store for buoys when Trinity House was responsible for such matters (according to a Heritage and Development Management document "the former buoy shed is a rare surviving example of a largely unaltered building characteristic of port or harbour installation"). The History Centre is a relatively new facility and it's great, nay fantastic, that there's a 'one stop shop', as brainless marketing turds would have it, for the city's archives. It was also almost guaranteed to attract a herd of strange, eccentric and wayward folk. There was no shortage today, including one chap who appeared to be photocopying almost every historical map the centre holds. Then there were the others, whose sole purpose appears to be not to look at any archive material at all but just to announce, very loudly, what they already know of Hull's history. The staff take all this in good spirits. I was especially impressed with the understanding shown to one chap who turned up at the counter with the strange request "I need you to tell me what my father's real surname was" and another who had arrived with a dusty map that he insisted must be loaned to the archive because "folk will be interested in it." No doubt they all thought we were lacking in something too, as we digitally captured some vaguely relevant documents. Hanging about, while daughter did her thing, I learned some new stuff. Oh, and I laughed at P. Larkin's polka dot bow tie. Anyway, here's Hull, 1852:

Party in the park...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:30:00 +0000

Went to the free West Fest "arts and sports community festival" in Hull's West Park today. We went early. It was a bit quiet. More security than anyone else. Ground underfoot was a bit soggy after last night's rain, so I'll let the city's residents off for their tardiness. I'm sure when it firmed up everyone headed out and by the time Rolling Stones cover band Stikky Fingers took to the 'Party Stage' the park was bursting at the seams with punters. Walked past then had a quick look in the acoustic tent. Felt a bit sorry for the lad on stage (Martin Wainwright I think - although do feel free to correct me) who was putting a lot of effort in. As I say, it was a bit quiet.

Tryptich...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

I was going to perform a poem about graf writers and star-crossed lovers at the Adelphi the other night. But it was a bit long. Unable to bore an audience with it there and then I unveil it here and now, just for you.

Everything is loss...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:05:00 +0000

"Can you make laughter and seriousness so close that they are the same thing? There's nothing more wonderful than when the comedy's got horror in it, got blood in it. And the seriousness is at all times aware of its own preposterousness. What's it for, this seriousness? Everything is loss, is nothing, in the end."

Howard Jacobson - interview in The Guardian Review

No photographic evidence...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave W) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 11:12:00 +0000

Omid Djalili's Q&A in The Guardian's Weekend mag today amused me and also reminded me of a pointless incident in my misspent youth. Djalili's favourite read, he tells us, is "Asterix and Obelix books". Mine too back in the early 1970s. I was so enamoured by Obelix's permanent super strength that I wrote a letter to the publishers Hodder & Stoughton. "I would like you to send me a photograph of Obelix when he fell into the vat of magic potion and got his strength. If you have one of him sitting in the vat I would like that one." I got a short response soon afterwards informing me that "no such photographic evidence existed". I do believe that this is the moment in time when I became a cynic.