Scarborough Belles

I had no idea just how much of my life is only available to me if I am on-line. Quite a scary thought, even worse when it became my reality. The names, dates, numbers I always had to hand via my little black book… yeah, I did have one of those, well mine was red, and not really that little, you get the drift though? I reached for this trusty book, upgraded over the years to lime green at the moment, and lo and behold…. nowt, sweet FA, empty, somewhere over the rainbow… no updated info. Wham! That’ll teach me to rely on computers and technology won’t it? So several long, long days later, the Internet was back up and running and my mo-jo has pissed off and taken the list of things I ‘woulda if I coulda’ posted, with it. So I think I will go random….
I’ve been a bit of a busy bee this week, appointments here and there, one of which was in the beautiful sea-side town of Scarborough. It took me a while to get there, and the damned appointment had been cancelled, so I had some free time and very easy access to good old M+S, way down there at the bottom of the main high street, only after managing to sneak by the rampant rabbit shop first though.... and I was in PUrane (Per Una) heaven…. I slowly drifted through their entire range, unable to keep my hands off the beautiful textures, feasting my eyes on the myriad of muted tones and colours, indulged, shivered and went upstairs to the department of panta-lunes…. Hehehe, nuff said. Red and hot pink seem to be ‘the colour of ladies UK undergarments’ this month though… leaving M+S and it’s warm comfortableness of nostalgia I turned left and wandered up the hill backwards, meeting supercreeps and some lesser scary monsters. Scarborough hides it’s lesser scary monsters out in the open, so if you aren’t careful you fall in to the spell of deleting them from your sight, they are there though, Zombie’s in the background, often wearing furry slippers having casually slung their Sunday slobbing clothes over themselves and actually leaving their homes with it not occurring to them that 1) it isn’t Sunday and 2) those clothes shouldn’t been seen outside a Sunday or for that matter, their homes. Ever. For the first time I actually saw the statue in the centre of the high street, of course she was only placed there quite recently in April 2008, so if she was there the last time I visited Scarborough, I wasn’t paying much attention… this time I was, for two good reasons, I had my camera on me and I had some time to spare, I also deviously thought, I wonder if I stand here taking photo’s as the people walk past, none of them paying ‘Our Belle’ any attention, will they stop and try and look at what I am seeing, or see what it is I am looking at, you know like the Candid Camera show where the bloke just stops in the street and looks up? How many will stop next to him and look up? All I can say is, it worked a treat, you want an important phone call to come through? Just get in the bath, you want to try and catch the sweet disposition on that dog’s face, setting up the shot, and, just as you press ‘click’, the bastard moves? Here it was, a perfect photo opportunity, a fairly tall statue, with no people around it, just asking to be photographed in private, willing to show just that extra little detail, or a hint of an angle that so many may have missed, or dismissed…

I dared to remove my camera from my bag, took it’s protective eye cover off, opened it’s back to show the screen, pretended to fiddle with the dial (it looks good) I just make sure it’s on ‘auto’ and left my ciggie dangling from my mouth, ensuring all those who did not require leprosy would stay well back, of course that didn’t work either, as someone who also already had leprosy was not put off, *obviously didn’t think that one through* and interrupted me actively taking photo’s to ask ‘You got a light?’ ‘Of course’, I said, and handed her my lighter, with a lovely Ally McBeal moment going on in my head, Ally reached over, picked her up and turned the woman towards ‘down the hill’ and gently shoved her off, saying, ‘don’t interrupt the grown-ups now dear and fuck off…. And was back to taking my photo’s. I took 37 in total.

The Bathing Belle is made of galvanised steel by artist and blacksmith Craig Knowles, who also made the Diving Belle.

This is my favourite.

These are 'nearlies'. Enjoy.