|
|
 |
|
 |
|
   Ratty's Rathole! |
|
|
|
|
| Home Page | HELLTOWN NOTES ARCHIVE 1 December 15th, 2002 While researching information for my imminent return to Helltown, I chanced upon a story from the Observer. Someone living in the run down rather seedy western extremes of the place lamented that she didn’t know a single person that was married or in a stable relationship. If a society is anything, then its cornerstones must surely be its relationships. Without them we are adrift, flitting like fireflies from one brief encounter to the next. We spread our seed and step away from commitment or permanent settings. Far be it for me however to pontificate or preach the gospel of lifelong fidelity. Folk change and stray, couples grow apart. Divorces are sometimes far kinder than decades of masochistic domestic misery. If the limb is rotten, then sever it cleanly and make do with a stump. There are no prizes for chaining two people together who have grown to detest the air that the other has breathed. But on the other side of the equation, let’s not throw in the towel so easily at the first little spat. Mrs. Rat and I have had our anxious moments, our mini-dramas and such, but we’ve learned to accept that we can simultaneously be wrong and right as well. To accept that opinion is not always reality is a giant leap for a relationship to succeed. Our
manic grinding society with its compulsion to consume and
the machinations of marketing has much to answer for. But
even so, we will endure. Others will be less fortunate. September 22nd, 2002 Dear Stirrer, I read about the twin petitions circulating around Helltown each protesting the idiocy still in the planning stages of erecting a Ferris wheel in the Old Town. Simultaneously, there is another outcry over the slug-in-chain-mail as someone dubbed the architectural obscenity that these selfsame arbiters or abattoir managers of bad taste would inflict on the seafront near an area of unrivalled historical importance. The promise of adding a mammoth fish and chip shop did nothing to mollify the enraged masses of Helltown. Indeed, It’s looking increasingly hopeful that both will be consigned to the refuse heap (speaking of which, the residents around that eyesore have been restive lately as well, even forcing the local MP to assure them that something will be done.) But why does anyone care? Surely there are bigger problems out there chipping away at our freedoms and personal spaces? Why indeed. Activism, like charity, begins at home. These outrages, small as they are on a global, even a national scale are just one more means to cheapen and vulgarise what is the last truly charming and attractive part of our town. It seems at every level, they want to obliterate any sense of beauty or aesthetic in the relentless pursuit of raking in the seaside punters. So we should take on the world maybe, but don’t forget the unwanted and uncalled for stupidities right on our doorsteps. So what if it’s small potatoes? Today we’ll tackle the appetizer, tomorrow the main course maybe. What do you think? Anyway, must go, see you in December, from Ratty. July 26th, 2002Things have irked me greatly in recent months. Financial woes for one, and considerable disappointments they proved to be. In any case, it’s barely seven months ‘till I get out of this forlorn existence and back to the welcoming embrace of Helltown. There it awaits me, complete with its mutant offspring, seagull dive bombers and teeming hordes of holiday making slabs of reddening meat hanging over belt buckles licking their lollies as they contemplate a dip in the slopping tepid seawater or a flutter on the fruit machines. Some of you may wonder whether or not I will be able to cope with the sleepy seaside pace after the hectic relentless nature of my life these past few years. The thought crosses my mind now and again of course but to be brutally frank I sincerely doubt that anything could really be much more thankless and destructive than the lifestyle I endure presently. When the religion peddlers come hawking their crack-brained version of whichever collection of the sayings of dead men inspire them, they invariably remind me that I will go to hell. “Already been there, done it,” I inform them without a trace of humour and send the fools off with a flea in their ears to sniff out more compliant victims. June 12th, 2002 Was it Cousin Whiterat who asked me once how I came full circle in my relationship with Helltown? maybe and maybe not, but in any case, this is a tale worth telling while it is fresh in my mind. Helltown to me resembles nothing else but an old flame rekindled. We became acquainted when I was around sixteen summers old. We lived together in an increasingly fractious relationship then parted company after much soul searching by myself, on the assumption that the separation was to be final. Thus I commenced down the path of a lonely standoff with my former home, refusing even to visit. I thought I had found a new love, but over the years that too grew stale and cold. Then the desire to be reunited with an old school friend, Brown Chris of course drew me back on winter’s day around my thirtieth year. As reunions go, it was a roaring success, and I was left with a sense that the old animosity had largely drained away from me. Helltown and I were again on speaking terms as it were. Throughout the 90s, I returned at intervals, generally under the pretext of linking up with Chris for yet another unfinished session with the vinyl bag full of beer cans that we somehow never concluded before intoxication or the arms of Morpheus took us off for the night. Slowly I began once more to fall in love with the gloomy gothic Old Town, and the grey slopping seas crashing against the eternal breakwaters. I realised too that my disquiet of old had been borne of an inner turmoil, one that was only incidentally connected to the locale. I had projected my own self-loathing on the place, and blamed it for my shortcomings. That wouldn’t be the first time in human history by a very long chalk. Hardly original really, but then what is new under the sun? It was the summer of ’99 that really sealed my fate. Only the second time that one of my visits had not been during the Christmas period. I sat in the bay window of the FILO pub. I had a large jug of ale, my hand ran along the smooth blackened wood of the circular table, my spine safely pressed against the firm backing afforded by the pew like seat. Shafts of sunlight caught my attention. I was transfixed as I watched my cigar smoke, and the dust motes creating patterns of light and shade, a sparkling sideshow where for an instant at least time ceased to have any real meaning and I just savoured the moment. I knew then what I had buried for too long. This was my home where I needed to be. My life of wandering came full circle. Now my return is less than eight months hence. We have both changed a fair bit Helltown and me. I’m significantly older in human terms, not that our brief spans mean a whole lot held up against the stars and worlds above our heads that outlive most of us as they turn slowly enough to reinforce just how mayfly-brief and momentary our time here really is. I’m older, fractionally wiser perhaps. Helltown is brighter, spruced up and cheerily awaiting the return of its somewhat less than prodigal son. What will we make of each other this time round? I know one thing; I won’t squander any more of my time wondering once I get back. June 10th, 2002 I was reading more on the crackpot concept of erecting a Ferris wheel in the Oldtown, and then considering the idea proposed somewhere or other to destroy the Channel Tunnel. To those who recommend such extreme solutions to prevent illegal immigrants sneaking in by flooding the Chunnel, you are all being foolish in the extreme! Wrecking this wonderful monument to human dis-ingenuity and waste, I mean who in their right mind would want to collapse it? That would do a lot of harm to the seabed and think of all those poor crabs and crustaceans without a home anymore. The Channel Tunnel is a great idea on paper, but in practice, it allows all manner of undocumented and uninvited characters to enter the country illegally and as such should be put to better use. The Rat Tunnel solution is to convert it into a place for the storage of low level nuclear waste. It is a secure and sound deep underground space, in a non-earthquake zone. Where better to keep the hazardous material safely away from the water table and food chain? The French could enter from their end and we the other and meet in the middle with all those difficult to dispose of drums with their skull and crossbones motifs. Leave the bastard things there. Nobody in their right mind would dare try sneaking in with all that crap clogging up the place. The authorities might welcome this too. It would render illegal aliens easier to identify since if they survived the tunnel they would probably be glowing in the dark and could be rounded up with nothing more than a Geiger counter. On the other hand, we could fill it with UV strip-lights, and grow industrial amounts of cannabis, and magic mushrooms, thus bringing the price so low as to freeze the dealers out. I would rather have businessmen than gangsters selling me the stuff, and look what happened to the quality of liquor during prohibition in the USA. Why do you think there were all those blind blues players? Wood alcohol destroys eyesight and all manner of muck was being hawked during those days. If you think I am waxing frivolous, then think again. The proposed Ferris wheel right on top of Helltown Oldtown is the most preposterous misuse of brain matter ever dreamed up by those who surely must be kidding. The only difference is that some who should know better are actually taking the idea seriously. |
|