Dulltown and I have parted company: as reported in an earlier post, my employers finally noticed that I was still there, depleting their freelance budget, several weeks after my contract expired, and I was cast back into the hurly-burly of hand-to-mouth freelance existence, having once more to collect cigarette butts from the pavement and steal the cats’ food.
Leaving Dulltown left quite a gap in my life for a while: how was I to continue this series of blog posts with no dull lunchtime activities to write about? How would I cope without the creative outlet of making hurtful and exaggerated aspersions about a place that could not defend itself?
But Fate lent a hand: I was lucky enough to get booked for a series of holiday-cover days sub-editing for another magazine publisher, and to my great joy my new role is in another town that, arguably, could be described by cynics as a wee bit dull.
Dulltowns One and Two are only 12 miles apart as the crow flies, but they are very different: Dulltown One was kind of tired, in the manner of someone who’s been out on the piss for three nights in a row and just wants to curl up in a pallid, unfragrant ball on the floor and sleep it off; Dulltown Two is tired as well, but in a pleasantly somnolent way, rather like someone who’s had a large and satisfying Sunday lunch and has nodded off in a comfy armchair in front of the telly.
In fact, Dulltown Two is really rather nice. It’s a sleepy old market town where nothing much happens until market day comes round again on a Friday. The Olympic cycling road race came through Dulltown Two the other week and I don’t suppose the town had seen such excitement since the stage coaches started coming through on their way to London in the 18th century.
For my first lunchtime outing I went to seek out a cup of coffee in the sun and found myself sipping cappuccino outside a little independent coffee shop in a charming flower-bedecked courtyard, surrounded by higgledy-piggledy timbered buildings that I believe date from the 1700s. My fellow diners were of the office worker, tourist and yummy mummy variety, partaking of rocket and cherry tomato salads and home-made quiche and talking intelligently about workplace stress and where little Tarquin was going to university.
In contrast, going out for a beverage in Dulltown One involved sitting on a pavement on the main road, watching trucks hurtle past and drinking something warm out of a mug, which tasted a bit like – but not enough like – coffee, watching vacant-looking locals, who were either skinnily malnourished or could do with losing a few pounds, enjoying their kebabs and sausage sandwiches and talking about football.
Yes, Dulltown Two and I have far more of a meeting of minds than Dulltown One and I ever did, and I look forward to reporting back on how it performs in the Things to do at Lunchtime department.
Psssst… wanna buy a Fancy Dress shop? One careful lady owner, blahblahblah, compact and bijou and all that. Cherridee shops and butchers in the vicinity aplenty.
ooh, you had enough of it at last? what would you do instead – wouldn’t you miss all your lovely customers?
Oh yeh… I’d miss them alright…. except with a machine gun at twenty paces.
Still, better keep it – it pays the rent.
Theres nothing wrong with a bit of dullness now and again. Keats famously thrived on it when a dullness pained his senses.
yeah, and didn’t he find a nice beaker full of the warm South sorted it out, or am I thinking of something else. I might have a beaker myself this evening.