Fairytale of Truro

As something of a newcomer to Truro, I thought the Wednesday night Christmas shopping extravaganza of a couple of weeks ago was a one-off.

How wrong I was.

Last week, again struggling through a throng of over-sugared school children
and tense looking parents with fixed grins on their faces, I wonder
when it was that I lost my Christmas spirit.

It could perhaps be partly to do with the fact that this year, for the first time in quite a few years, I'm not spending the run-up at home.

I feel almost traitorous spending my money somewhere other than the local shops I
know are struggling under the heavying weight of the recession back in Kent. But aren't the shops here under the same strain? No. That's not it.

Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that as I get older I'm starting to feel a bit disillusioned about the consumership of Christmas.

As we watch our old friend Woolworths buckle to it's knees, Mr J Public almost convulses with the excitement of getting a good deal.

Giving and receiving - fine. Remortgaging your house so your kids can have an xbox and a new pair of Nike Airs? Not fine.

And at times of hardship I'm a big believer in the 'it’s the thought that counts' gifts. Craft-making your way into a solvent Christmas by making someone a shell necklace. Giving your nephew that old mini-mal that hasn't even seen the sea since 1999. But are those kind of gifts really as appreciated as a Cath Kidson luggage bag, or a new Quiksilver Cypher suit?

Perhaps my scrooge-like spirit will vanish tomorrow night as the happy elves of Cornwall and Devon Media will once again let their hair down for a veritable feast of fancy dress and no-doubt drunken debauchery. I'll let you know after the weekend. If I remember any of it, of course…

Oggy, oggy, oggy

I find regional dialects all too easy to pick up.

Having come from the land of cockney rhyming slang, no turn of phrase is too preposterous for me.

I used to knock around a bit in Somerset where locals would call each other ‘babba’. It sounded so affectionate and endearing – so much softer than the London trend of calling everyone ‘love’. It stuck to the roof of my mouth like Dairylea, and wouldn’t come down.

Worse than that, it’s impossible to say "alright, my babba?" without employing a hugely exaggerated southwest twang. And use it, I do. Frequently. Now other friends have complained that they’ve picked it up from me, and I’ve vowed to cut down its usage.

It only takes a short while to overhear and adopt the idosyncrasies of regional language, but some are better known than others.

In research carried out by Travelodge, 40% of the country recognised the ‘affectionate’ Cornish name-calling of tourists as 'emmets', while only 20% knew that an 'oggy' is a pasty.
Having said that – when was the last time you actually heard someone other than your dad call it an oggy?

Just 2 hours up the road in Cheddar, some good friends of mine refer to me, an outsider, as a 'grockle'.
I think I prefer this term, as said with something of a London twang, a grockle sounds like a warm fuzzy feeling one might get after having a long hot bath – “oooh, I’m feeling a bit grockle...”.

From what I can tell, however, it means exactly the same as ‘emmet’, just applied to a different part of the Southwest - a mildly derogatory term for anyone who isn't local.

But even the locals disagree on the definitions sometimes. A colleague of mine assures me the term ‘emmet’ only applies to someone who has actually moved, and is now living somewhere they weren’t born locally.

The Urban Dictionary however (I won’t link it due to some of its over-enthusiastic characterisation of the stereotypical tourist) most definitely applies it purely to those tourists (mainly northerners) who sun themselves on the Cornish beaches between the months of July and August.

One thing is for sure – I am bound by birth to never be able to thrown my hands in the air and raise my eyes to heaven at the summer traffic jams to cry ‘bloody emmets!’. Bit of a shame really.

I will just have to start my own lingo.

Drunk dialer

I think I could do with one of these. Or rather, the people around me could do with one of these.

Step aside in-car breath tests, step up the breath test for email.

Are you sure you want to send this email? Are you really, really sure?

The Urban Dictionary defines the problem thus:

So it is with a collective sigh of relief that at long last a safeguard has been designed to stop one rattling off a message when ‘emotionally charged’ (or indeed, my personal favourite, ‘alcoholically challenged’).

Brainchild of an employee at Google, activating late at night and on weekends, the gismo asks a series of ‘short mathematical posers’ (love that phrase) which you have to answer before the email or text sends.

Now, ordinarily I’d like to think myself supreme enough to be able to answer a ‘short mathematical poser’ even after a few jars, but wise with the experience of ballsing up about a hundred late-night sudokus while on the last train home, I know different. It’s harder than you think.

Having been on the receiving end of many a drunken email and text, and admittedly sending a couple myself, this can surely only be a good thing.

My only worry – don’t make them too hard, guys. Otherwise I can imagine, even without the dealy ingredient of alcohol, struggling after about 3 o’clock every day.

Facebook group: Mobile number changed

I can’t even begin to fathom what 6.7 billion people looks like. Half the world.

Imagine that number of mobile phones going off at once. Unlikely, yes, but soon possible, as the UN's agency for information and communication technologies predict that half the world will own a mobile phone by the end of the year.

Goodness. Half the world. Half the world with the potential to hear Guns’n’Roses
Sweet Child of Mine emanate from a tiny gizmo every time someone else
is trying to speak to them. The possibilities are endless…

Ironically, this news comes on the day that after 12 years with the same mobile phone number (I was carefully presented with a brick of a Nokia at the tender age of 17 as I hurtled back and forth from London to Cornwall every weekend in my 10 year old Polo) I had to change my number due to a recent abundance of malicious texts. And that’s the problem with everything fantastic – there’s always a downside.

Which got me to thinking - do I really need to be available 24/7 to anyone who happens to have picked my number up along the way? Do I really need the constant finger-ache and ear-ache of night and day communication? I bet there is the odd person out there in the county who has still refused the technology which interrupts, costs, and keeps tabs on you. A bit like those who have managed to hold Facebook at bay - I am in awe of these people.

I’m even jealous of people who own one, but rarely use it. My mum was a great example of this when, a few years ago, she actually DID break down in her car and her trusty old pay-as-you-(don’t)-go failed to work. On closer inspection by the network provider, her SIM had actually malfunctioned because it had become dusty. Imagine.

Another friend’s parents were asked to text their daughter when they got home safely at the end of a dinner party. About an hour and a half later, she received a text simply with the word 'BACK' shouting out from the tiny screen. As we giggled through tears of amusement, we mused that it probably took them half an hour to compose.

For those of us more frequent users, it’s a double edged sword. Although we are at the cutting edge of technology, bluetooth’ing, wi-fi’ing, video calling and picture messaging all at our very finger tips, it’s also all too easy to fight on text. Too easy to say things you would never say to someone’s face. Too easy to accidentally slip a ‘xx’ on the end of a message to a new love interest and appear ‘too keen’; and too easy to accidentally blurt out inner emotions when you’ve had a few on a Friday night.

It’s a nice thought but I know I’m addicted, and I’m sure I’ll never be able to quit. The ability to stay in touch with my brother by text when he’s in Singapore is priceless, or to catch up with friends when I’m on 5 hour train journeys home blissful. Yes, I am a slave to my mobile, and soon every other person in the world will be.

In need of an Indian summer

How very English of me to blog on the weather. We’ve bitched, moaned and whinged our way through the most dreadful of Augusts in living memory. Kids have been sat indoors on their Playstations while parents despaired at their wasted summer holidays in the British Isles.

So last weekend came as nothing if not a blissful relief, as the cloudless sky which had been forecast, actually came true. Locals and tourists alike blew dust from their sunnies and blinked sun-spots from their eyes.

Never has the Wood gene been so lucky, as my brother and father rocked up from the South East for a weekend visit, only to wonder if the weather in Cornwall is always so lovely. Ha!

We were in the sea 3 times on Saturday and twice on Sunday, sampled some Cornish folk music at the Ring’o’Bells in St Issy, and as they wended their weary way home on Sunday, no sooner were they over the Tamar, it started to rain again.

Our hopes that we would be able to fill up on vitamin D before the winter sets in once again were dashed as quickly as they were raised. As a sufferer from SAD this is a big deal to me. Predictions that depression will increase become ever more real as we stare out of office windows for any break in the cloud.

My advice? Take lots of photos on the sunny days and look at them frequently; listen to Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime on repeat; buy a sturdy winter coat, and when the sunshine comes again next May and June, lets not marvel at ‘what a nice spring we’re having’. Book 4 weeks off work then and there and enjoy your summer 2009.

It's a fair cop

It’s not been a good week for me and my car. After 11 years of safe and careful driving (see blog below), a minor slip saw me morph into a common criminal. Cluedo style, it was the girl in the red Peugeot, on the deserted A30, with a mobile phone. Or not as deserted as I’d
thought, as the unmarked Officer Dibble behind me - the only other car in sight - took no time in giving me the flashers and pulling me over, moments after I’d managed to tell my mum
that I couldn’t talk – I was driving.

Now, dear reader, before you scoff at my carelessness, I fully understand the dangers of driving whilst distracted. A long conversation down winding local roads at school kick-out time is obviously a problem. I explained very politely that I’d ended the conversation before I even knew that it was a Police Officer driving behind me.
That I had only been on the phone moments. That I have an automatic – no changing of gears required, even if I needed to break suddenly. I even breathed in my stomach and batted my eyelids a bit. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. He was not to be moved. Crime was apparently a bit low that day and quotas are quotas.

Officer Dibble carefully explained to me that ‘tests show that driving whilst on your mobile are proved to be more distracting than driving whilst under the influence of alcohol’. It took all my willpower to suppress an aghast ‘you cannot be serious’ laugh. Was he kidding? I’d pressed a button, put a phone to my ear, said two quick sentences and pressed another button. I’m not even sure my eyes left the road. More dangerous if I’d had a bottle of vodka? Well, a miss is as good as a mile – I almost regretted not having that glass of wine at lunch time.

Defeated, I took the ticket, the fine, the points (more difficult than it sounds as the sister part of my driving license had to be sent down from East Sussex and produced within a week – a close call when my mother accidentally forgot to put a stamp on the envelope). As the tight-lipped Policewoman at the station tutted and sighed her way through the paperwork a few days later I got to wondering. How about all those times I rummaged around for a CD to play? How about when I change radio stations or laugh or joke with my friend in the car?

Distracting? Absolutely. But not illegal? No siree. Perhaps there needs to be some kind of distraction richter scale.

It’s a fair cop, guvn’r. I did, after all, break the law. But after 11 years of driving in and around the Big Smoke, never even to be pulled over, it was a bit of a slap in the face. Lesson learned, I’ve now got hands-free for my mobile. Which is even more fiddly and distracting than putting a phone to my ear, but apparently, that’s legal.

Engine trouble stops play

Friday: Day 9 in SouthWest.

I’m always nervous about taking my car into the garage. There’s a fine line between getting overcharged because you’re a bolshie pompous guy who purports to know intimately the inner workings of the engine, or getting overcharged because you’re a clueless 20-something who knows more about the delicacy of the Middle East peace process than she does about what’s happening under her hood.

So it was with trepidation that I took my car in for its yearly MOT yesterday. They said they’d look at it in the morning and call me if it needed any work done, so by 3pm I thought I was home dry - enough to boast to a colleague about how my little L-reg had obviously sailed through its yearly medical, clearly down to careful ownership and model driving.

At 3.10pm and the call came. “Miss Wood? It’s about your car”. My faithful companion. How bad was it? I felt I should probably be sitting for the news. In the moments that followed I felt a good portion of blood rush to somewhere near my little toe. Something about a new exhaust. Something about a new headlight. And a further twist of the knife as apparently my number plates are too battered to be read according to legal standards (are you sure?). The damage? More than I’d budgeted for by a few hundred pounds.

It does make me wonder. If I had fallen somewhere in between bolshie know-it-all, and clueless-I-know-my-car’s-red-and-that’s-about-it, would I have needed so much ‘essential’ tinkering? Essential it is, however, as having no car in Cornwall is probably on a par with having no date for prom. You just don’t get very far.