Oh dear. I think I have a motivational problem…I’m never in the mood to write in this at times when I actually can write in this. I have actually thought about it, and wanted to do it quite a few times since I last actually did, but they have all been times when I have not been able to, then when I get back to my computer and actually can do it, I don’t feel in the mood. Its not good. Anyway, I’m here now, and I’m not going to make any more excuses! I don’t even actually remember when I last did write here, but I will try to not miss anything out I haven’t written about before!
I miss Natalie so much. We are kind of going thought a rough patch because we are too far away – I miss her like crazy, but I never seem able to make her believe me about it. I don’t want to talk about it here really – I don’t want to look back and remember the bad things which happened, I want to remember all the good thing because they far outweigh the bad…but it happened, so I suppose it deserves a mention. We argued a bit in the last few days about things we shouldn’t argue about, things we never used to argue about. I miss her so much, and its hard…I don’t want to argue. We had such a nice time the weekends we were together both here and at her college – when we were here together we sat out on the fields under the stars and lay together *sigh*, and when we were at her college we went out on one of the ghost walks around the city which was fun and then just lay together snuggled in her bed. Its hard to arrange to see each other at the moment and that’s partly what is causing arguments…I know she thinks that when I say I can’t see her for whatever reason she thinks I’m just trying to make excuses not to see her when that’s not true at all. I can’t wait until the holidays when I can be with her for all day every day. I want to be with my Natalie.
Hmm, so other things. I went with Geraint and the people from his block to the Carlton nightclub in Morecambe one day a few weeks back. Its not a great club, but its a bit of fun – they have a student night where they put on buses from the university to the club and back again – they play cheesy pop and music from the 80s and 90s (what with us all being children of the 80s, is what we grew up with!), its kind of strange when everyone in the place knows the words to songs which no one has heard for years, and wouldn’t admit to knowing! Anyway, that night was strange for me. When I got off the bus I saw the building one of the first things I noticed was that it has a fly loft clearly on the top – it used to be a theatre. OK, I know there isn’t anything really exciting about that, but the building is big and the building would, once, have been really impressive. It stands on the sea front looking out across Morecambe bay. Geraint and I got an earlier bus than the rest of the people we know who were going, and so had a walk around the building. Around the back its a real mess – windows out, closed shops, boarded over doors – it was strange, it made me feel really sad. It’s reminiscent of a time when the town was a busy seaside resort, when there was money in the area to build such nice buildings, and when theatres like that actually made money. That night I decided to come back one day with my cameras and take some pictures.
Actually, before I tell you about when I went back, I want to talk about that night. It was really quite odd – I went though all sorts of different feelings. When we first got there and I looked around the building I felt sad about it, but then we went into a small bar just on one of the side streets (with the Hockey team who two of Geraint’s floor play for, and who arrived before the rest of the people we were going to the Carlton with) called Maggie’s Bar. Its really small, but it made me kind of feel…I don’t really know how to descrbe…kind of emotional. Its just like you have stepped back in time and into a disco of the 80s. The lighting and the sound system were just like you would have seen in mobile discos when you were a kid. Maybe thats why then – it reminded me of the discos I used to go to at primary school. Either way, it really made me smile…it wasn’t very good in terms of entertainment, but it really made me smile. The rest of the night was pretty much just a normal night out. It was alright, enjoyable enough.
Wednesday this week, in the afternoon, I caught a bus from the university underpass to Morecambe equipped with my cameras and spent the whole afternoon taking pictures. I got some really good ones, but again it hit me that everything about the town is from an era when people actually went there as a tourist place, as a resort to have holidays in…now it seems to be just a retirement home and place for the DSS to house people on benefits. The old hotels are closed (there is this fantastic hotel on the sea front which is abandoned and half derelict, you can still see curtains hanging in some of the rooms, blowing out of the broken windows), where there once was a theme park there are a few relics of rides amongst over grown trees, on the site of the seasonal fair there are a few bits of wood from signs advertising the many events which used to happen each summer which are now used by the kids playing on skateboards, and the two grand theatres (the Winter Gardens and the Alambra) no longer play host to live entertainments. Actually, in some ways, the building which the Carlton is in has done better than the Winter Gardens – its slightly heartening to see that it is still used for entertainment (the thing it was built for), even though its been totally changed inside. The Winter Gardens building just lies empty with a few signs and pictures of its heyday put up by the ‘friends of the Winter Gardens’ in what seems to be a vain attempt to restore the building. There have been attempts by the council to restore the area – the promenade has been re-landscaped and can look quite nice…but everything smacks of somewhere well past its best, somewhere that people would have had so much fun, spent so many happy holidays, but is of a time well past and now just a distant memory *sigh*. It makes me feel odd. I can’t explain what it makes me feel, or why it makes me feel that, but…it just does. Its odd.
Hmm, I went on about that too long. I know I’ve not really said anything about what I have been up to, but I think that’s probably because there hasn’t been much. I was thinking recently: a long time ago, when I hadn’t been doing this diary for long, I did a thing where I posted every day for a week to give a snapshot of my life as it is every day, and not just on the special notable occasions…and I think I want to do that again. Things have changed so much since then, it would just make sense to do it again just to have a view of what its like from one day to the next. Maybe I will try to do it this week, starting Sunday. I think I will try that.
Anyway, enough, I should sleep.
1 comment
I think eventually all our diaries end up as disjointed snapshots of our lives. We are never able to capture everything in words, even if we try to. There will still be aspects of our lives words do not describe.
I know what you mean about the disco too.
Take care.