Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

smells like snow

… Except i’m not sure i can remember what snow smells like. Aviemore. There’s a chill in the air and its got the right mix of cloudy and clear to drop the temperature for snow. Will it happen? Doubt it. And if it does it won’t be serious, just enough of a dusting to make everything pretty for a couple of hours.

Today i went to the hollow mountain where, after a ride like slartibartfasts, they allowed us to look down upon Dr Evils underground lair from the safety of a plexiglass viewing chamber. One day i want to own one of these places, but i suspect they haven’t started decommissioning them yet.

Then i stopped briefly at Fort William, a grim coastal town without any apparent means of support, except for being the only town for miles. There is something quite, i don’t know how to explain it, i feel at home in places like this, the people are real, they’re not trying to pretend, like everyone in london is, that they’re richer than everyone else, or more well travelled, or more cultured, or less cultured, or whatever is this weeks fashion in the gossip rags. Here, its cold so everyone wears warm clothes and doesn’t much care about anything else.


6 comments

  1. i don’t know how to explain it, i feel at home in places like this, the people are real, they’re not trying to pretend

    M and me thought this about Whitby. I like places that feel real in that way, I always have; it’s one reason I’d never live in London. Cambridge, well, people up here are just bats, not pretentious/ambitious/grasping/fakers.

    • Somehow I never quite felt at home with the nutty-ness of Cambridge people, at one level its kind of nice because its quite difficult to be the weirdest person around so nobody pays you much attention (which is good), but at another level because everyone is quite so dysfunctional I found it quite distant.

      And I guess I’m quite used to the anonymity you get from living in large cities now, I’m not sure how I’d cope dropping into village (or small town) life.

      • Yeah; I’ve found a very few people in Cam who are exactly the right kind of nutty for me, but I do get very sick of all the ones who are just that bit too far gone. Ultimately I think there are actually far fewer people really keeping me here than I’d previously thought, and if they went I wouldn’t be too upset at all to move away; although the bellydancers may yet prove to have a card or two up their sleeve.

  2. My friend who lives on the Isle of Skye told me that Fort William has the highest number of alcoholics anywhere as its so depressing. Where you heading next?

  3. Maybe another time – the point was really to see the bits that were *scotland like*, given that I’ve never (knowingly [0]) been there before.

    [0] I once saw a sign that said ‘welcome to England’, so I accidentally went there once

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