bedfordshire « Pete Hindle

November 5, 2010

The Mystery of the Five Coffee Shops

I should be writing my NaNoWriMo novel right now, but I’m finding it hard. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you about my scribblings; the reason I’m finding it hard is because it was a year ago that I went into hospital. That was the start of the trail of events that led me back to my hometown, Biggleswade, where I am forced to visit the five coffee shops.

That hospital trip a year ago saved my life, and I am eternally grateful to certain individuals who bundled me into a taxi and made me go to hospital. However, the illness itself was so severe that I have only now just come off the medications I was put on, and it will still be a long time until I am well enough to work. Because of this illness, I now live 250 miles away from nearly all of my friends.

Like I said, it’s been a year now. That year has been a long time for anybody in Newcastle; they’ve all been busy, and where I’ve been watching Star Trek: Enterprise re-runs in my pyjamas, they’ve been working hard. I have had literally nothing to fill my time this year, and anything I have done has tended to make me exhausted… leading to more time on the couch in my jimmy-jams.

Let’s just say I have high hopes of completing NaNoWriMo this year.

One of the pieces of advice that NaNoWriMo headman Chris Baty recommends working in a coffee shop, where you can pick up interesting stories about characters. This is completely not the case in Biggleswade, where there are an amazing five coffee shops within two minutes walk of each other. It’s like a vortex of coffee, but not in a good way!

The mystery of the five coffee shops is that none of them are particularly good. I cringe when I write this, because I expect my favourite shop – the one on the corner, that used to be an off-license where I used to work – to find this humble blogpost and beat me round the ear next time I pop in. However, I would like to assure them that they are much better than the rest, especially the small one on the other side of the town square, who made me a coffee so bad that I almost couldn’t finish it.

I miss my old life in Heaton when I think about this. I miss being able to bump into people I knew and liked in local coffee shops. I miss being able to have conversations with people about the things we liked, such as art. And coffee. I’ve tried to get to events ’round here, but they are too few and far between and to hard to get to – there just isn’t much to do without resorting to going into London, which is extremely tiring and quite alienating.

I’ve worked out it’s going to take me at least another year or two here before I can leave. I’ll need to work, and save up a war-chest, in a town which doesn’t value any of my skills apart from “could lift heavy boxes” (the Bedfordshire region does not need any trained gallery assistants). Maybe by the time I can leave this mangled idea of a town, I’ll have managed to solve the mystery of the five coffee shops.

June 8, 2010

Prime Interregnum

In a recent article for the Guardian, Charlie Brooker wrote this about the 13-year interregnum between Tory governments:

“…an entire generation grew up regarding the Tory government as something like rain, or wasps, or stomach flu: an unavoidable, undying source of dismay.

Until 1997, when they were eradicated overnight. It was as if scientists had suddenly discovered a cure for the common cold. A permanent millstone – gone! The initial glow of jubilation never completely faded. For years afterwards, simply knowing the Conservatives weren’t in power left me mildly delighted on a daily basis.”

I felt the same way about waking up somewhere that wasn’t Bedfordshire, and being back here again is no thrill. To give you a taste of what you are probably missing, Bedfordshire’s most sophisticated town is Luton, home to the ultra-right EDL, and the quickest way to start a fight in Biggeswade’s town centre is to call somebody gay. Or to say that they called you gay.

I’m pretty sure that “Mate, I’m cisgender” isn’t going to cut it as a retort, and anyway, these days I find it difficult to deal with more than a thimbleful of wine. So I’ve been avoiding the town centre, and occasionally voyaging out into the countryside on my bike. Such as it is.

Apart from the occasional glass of ginger wine, the lack of a social life, and the ever-present internet, this is pretty much the same lifestyle I had 13 years ago. Everything I worked for in the interim period has landed me back here, and like Brooker’s millstone of a Conservative government, I’m finding the weight something that drags me down.

Next: something that’s a little bit ‘up’, in this series of essays. Or a filler where I post a funny picture. One of the two.

June 7, 2010

Magic Butt-Money

Wondering how it’s going with my health and general welfare? Here’s the important news in a nutshell:

I will not be given any money from the benefits agency and I will have to pay to go back to university.

I got these two pieces of news today, when I seem to be suffering from one of the worst bouts of fatigue in a long time. Funny thing about fatigue: it sort of sneaks up on you. You can think you’re fine, until you try and make sense of the wardrobe options in B&Q, and then you realise that you’re too tired to move properly and end up in a Cafe Nero in St Neots, licking chocolate tortina from off the wrapper because it’s half term and the manager is at home looking after the kids so some sixth-formers who work there forgot to put anything in the chiller.

Unless I suddenly start to be able to pull money out of my butt, it looks like I’ll be staying in Bedfordshire for a little while longer. Actually, pulling money out of my butt sounds like an updating of fairy gold (or, possibly, a term used in the porn industry). I think we can all guess what magic butt-money turns into at sunrise.

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Pete Hindle