Morden

There are some bright spots in Morden and Sutton if you look out for them. But you do have to keep your eyes and ears open. These past three days I have ran from where Sal and I are staying, Ruth's flat in Carshalton, to dad's place in Morden. Today was a little different to the first couple of days. There was a sunrise today whereas on Sunday and Monday the day merely got lighter. The sunrise was because of last night's clear skies, the side effect of which was a proper cold morning. It's been a while since I've lost feeling in my fingers. As I ran I warmed and snapped a couple of sunrise shots outside of St Helier hospital. For anyone who knows the area - and few will - you'll know it's not a pretty place to be. Quite the opposite. Rose Hill is an especially ordinary suburb and I was surprised to find any subjects.

Less surprisingly, I'd found some nice grim winter shots to take in Morden Park the day before. I like the grimness and the bleakness. I don't like the litter and the seatless bench frames and the crumbling swimming pool that needs to be ripped down and started again. I don't like the fact that the changing rooms on the edge of unused sports fields are now derelict, and although I take pictures of the graf I'd rather see goalposts and pitches and evidence of use, not evidence of neglect. On the plus side, the park is now recognised as an area of native and "exotic" woodland. It does have a small area of very pretty woodland, home to lots of squirrels, robins, crows, parakeets (yes, loads in SW London), seagulls, pigeons and all manner of other birds I don't recognise. I ran a couple of laps of the park and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not by any means a remote wilderness, you could almost believe you were out in the country. On lap one I managed to go ankle deep in a hidden muddy puddle, fully christening and trashing me sparkling new trainers. The authorities will probably burn them at the airport when I try to get back into Aus...

If you aren't from a place like Morden or Sutton you'd not know they exist. They are places where people live but not places people visit. Morden has litter strewn streets, a variety of pubs you'd not want to have a drink in, discount stores and not much else. There are no chain coffee stores and no McDonalds, a sure sign that big business doesn't rate Morden as a place to do business. There is a new Fair Trade coffee store, so times may be a changing. As prices of property along the southern end of the Nothern Line continue to rise young buyers will get pushed further and further out, so it stands to reasn that Morden will, one day, come up in the world. It'll be a while though.

Sutton is a bit better. A bit. Sutton has a Starbucks and a cinema. But, on a Tuesday at noon it also has a teenage girl, pregnant, fag in hand, outside of the pub she has been drinking in. So it is hardly a desirable place to be. It's one of those places that makes you think that Little Britain might be a documentary and not a comedy. In fact Sutton is not really a whole lot better, it is differently grim.

Am I being a tad arrogant? I don't know, but I don't think so. My old home town, Morden, is a poor area;always has been. The St Helier Estate is big and sprawling and at best ordinary, at worst pretty horrible. Not horrible in the way that some high rise estates are horrible, but...well...just plain horrible. The estate even gets a mention in wikipedia that I would link to were I not typing on a mac that seems to not have the required link button in blogger. ho hum. Anyway, mum and dad were always poor - we got by on dad's war pension - and neither me or my bro grew up to be chavvy scroats, so what happened to everyone else?

Right a few whistle-stop notes. First one is an observation on dad's plight. Outside of his house there was once a disabled parking spce that he used. Now the lines of that space have been scrubbed away as dad no longer has a car. And as he is now housebound it is almost as if his world is shrinking away, almost as if he is shrinking away until there will be nothing left. Too lyrical?

Dad's PC shit itself (fan) just before I arrived so first business was to replace it with a new one. Windows Vista. Now it seems OK, but when I first set the bloody thing up the words "configuring updates" and "not responding" nearly sent me mad. Right now it seems little different to XP, other than it asks endless questions whenever any files get anywhere near it. But it's OK and two days later the virus scans still come back clean.

Sal and I are staying at Ruth's flat, Ruth being Darren's squeeze and her flat being a 20ish minute run from Dad's. As well as Ruth the flat is home to one landlady, two female cats and two female dogs, all of whom appear to be bonkers but relatively harmless. Just before bed last night I went to the loo and felt the distant approach of a poo. I tried to ignore the gentle movement south of my centre of gravity as it is just plan rude, in my humble opinion, to take a dump before bedtime when there are three other users to follow you to the loo before bed. But, as I lay down in bed I felt the approach of a poo and had to return, apologising to the others as I did.

Home alone tonight I watched Jason X, the tenth movie in the Jason horror franchise. Watchable - just - but shit. Favourite line "it's OK, he just wants his machette back!" Decent body count of people you couldn't give a shit about.

Right, this post has gone on for far too long.