Sinister: Only the sea makes sense

[u07lec at xxx.uk]

hello sinister!
I returned home from a field trip to find you all waiting for me in my inbox, 
and I was glad, because I'd spent a whole week sliding around on rocks, and 
losing my feet in rock pools. It was nice to be warm and dry and reading all 
your posts. I especially liked kirsten's posts, as always, and I loved the 
thought of the graffiti that gina mentioned. I think I might adopt "ah good, the 
sea" as my own phrase. It sounds so happy and relaxed, like you expect the sea 
to be there anyway, but it's still a warm, quiet, lovely surprise when you see 
it there in front of you.
I love the sea too, although my devotion has been severely tested this past 
week. Everyone I know can recall me talking at great length about the sea; 
conspicuously, I haven't felt the urge to talk about it this week, after 
spending eight days on various beaches in the north of scotland, getting up 
close and personal with the North Sea and the surrounding geology. brrr. The 
best part was going to Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of the British 
mainland, one evening, just as the sun was starting to set, and standing on the 
edge of a cliff (behind a stone wall, of course...I may be stupid, but I'm not 
brave...). I don't think I've ever stood somewhere like that before, where you 
can look straight ahead, out to sea, and there's just nothing. All around, just 
a uniform grey sky, punctuated to the west by a low smear of pink, to the east 
by the vague form of the islands, smudged and vague behind the fog and the wind 
and the grey. I could have stayed there for the whole week; instead I gave 
myself a cracking cut/bruise at Portskerra (on a big nasty piece of gneiss - 
"that's why they call it hard-rock geology" apparently. hohum), smashed bits of 
shale open in the vain hope of finding some fossil fish (it turned out to be not 
such a vain hope after all!) at Achanarras, and erm, trampled through a lot of 
bracken at Helmsdale. All in all, it was a good week, although I would recommend 
any visitors to Helmsdale not to buy their sandwiches in the Spar there. It is 
inevitable that whatever you ask for in your roll,you will be given what is 
essentially a mayonnaise roll with  small inclusions of whatever you actually 
asked for. And it's not very nice. 

Things have been all exciting around this way recently. University has started 
again, and I have to say, there has been an increase in the number of B&S 
t-shirts around campus. I have seen two this week already, that's a 100% 
increase since last year, which, mathematically speaking, is pretty damn good. 
So if either of those two Aberdeen university B&S t-shirt wearing folk are on 
sinister, show your faces now. 
Speaking of Aberdeen: I have noticed there are a few sinisterites currently in 
Aberdeen, I have spoken to one already, and I know of at least one more. Myself 
and Sunset are having preparatory talks on the subject of a Grampian Region 
get-together (picnic??? It's never picnic weather here!!), either in Dundee or 
Aberdeen, so if anyone is interested, I'll volunteer to be 'picnic' mummy 
(eek!). If nobody else is interested, I suppose the two of us will just have to 
meet up in the pub and get drunk instead. A pub-nic, I suppose. Without the 
-nic. 

************B&S content***************
My brother has just started university in dundee, and a friend of mine was kind 
enough to drive me there to do my big-sisterly thing, and make sure he did all 
the things he was meant to, like eat, and drink water and find his timetable. On 
the way, we listened to B&S in the car, and my friend was quite happy with this, 
until LLPJ came on, at which point he said "this is that one I hate!!!", and 
switched the stereo off. Even though I think it's a cracking song, his reasoning 
for hating it was actually quite well-justified. He lived in a lot of british 
holiday resorts as a child, you know the sort, Ladbrokes and Pontins and 
suchlike, because of his dad's job, and consequently he saw an AWFUL lot of 
..well, AWFUL cabaret acts. He said he likes the song, apart from the part 
where Monica Queen is singing, because it reminds him of a particular brand of 
dodgy cabaret he saw a lot of. You know the sort of thing: a short, middle-aged 
man, with a receding hairline, wearing a polyester suit with dandruff on the 
shoulders, crooning away with his face all twisted and full of "passion", 
pointing at the ladies in the audience while he sings. Then there's the 
middle-aged woman, with green sequinned cocktail dress, shoulder pads, blue 
eyeshadow, fuschia lipstick, lots of blue eyeliner, sequinned stilettos, 
starting to wail into the microphone about "the greatest love of all" or 
something along those lines. Then the little old man at the back gets his turn, 
on the organ, (this is usually the best part - and he would probably be wearing 
an old dinner suit and a polka dot bow tie, have no teeth, and sit grinning 
maniacally behind his organ) and all the old dears at the front get up and 
slow-dance at the front of the stage, before the stage has to be quickly cleared 
for the presentation of the prize for the children's fancy dress competition. 
This image has made me giggle every time I hear monica queen hitting the higher 
notes, thinking about that green sequinned dress and probably some american tan 
tights to boot.

And on that note....


Hasta luego sinister
lyns
xx

ps: If anyone is interested in the above-mentioned get-together, email me 
offlist and we can assess interest levels. 






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