10 December 2009 (Thursday) - Spam and Sussex

My gob isn’t quite as sore as it was last night, even though it has swollen quite impressively. Should any of my loyal readers see me over the next few days, please resist the urge to tell me I’ve got chocolate smeared around the right side of my mouth. It might look like the remains of Cadbury’s best, but it’s not. It’s bruising. I’m reliably informed that the swelling will subside, and it will all be worth it in the end. Right now, I’m not so sure. Neither, it would seem, is expert opinion. Whilst extraction of wisdom teeth is the norm in the US, over here in the UK it would seem that the best advice is only to extract them when they become particularly troublesome. Well, it was painful, but not as painful as when it’s not there any more.

Today the dentist’s phoned up to ask how I was. That was nice of them. I’ve got to go back to have the stitches taken out, so they’ve booked me an appointment for two week’s time.

I’ve noticed that for the last week or so I haven’t been receiving anywhere near the amount of spam emails that I normally get. From having several hundred emails a day of which I only want half a dozen, I’ve gone to only having three or four emails per day. I’ve also noticed that I haven’t been receiving emails I would expect to get (for example ones from the kite club).

So I logged into my Orange account. For some reason known only to themselves, they have decided to bin anything that their filters think is spam. Which is very helpful of them, but I would rather have the emails in my mailwasher and decide for myself which are spam and which are not. So I’ve reset the settings.

Over the last ten days the email server has decided to label over eight thousand emails as spam. I started to wade through them this morning, but after half an hour I gave up and pressed the “delete” button. I suspect I’ve chucked out some emails I might actually have wanted that were in with that lot. If any of my loyal readers feel I haven’t replied to one of their emails recently, that’s probably the reason. Sorry…

Several of my relatives have joined the Facebook group: “If you're from Sussex, you're just better than everyone else”. Whilst I can’t speak for the entire county, whilst reading the thing, it struck a chord. It wasn’t until I moved away from Sussex to another county that I realised that during my time in Hastings I’d developed a serious “little Englander” mentality. Whilst not everyone from my home town is “Royston Vasey”, there is certainly something very introspective and maybe even xenophobic about so many native-born Hastonians of my acquaintance.

Take the story in the newspapers last May when Shepherd Neame dared to brew an ale for the Jack in the Green day. The locals were up in arms. There was serious resentment. What were a Kent brewer doing daring to get involved? Surely everyone would want to drink good old Harvey’s Sussex ale!! Odd how none of them realise that there are precious few pubs in their town that aren’t owned by a Kentish brewer.

Or the traditional Hastings sea front of which the town is so proud. From my time in the restaurant trade, I know that there are very few businesses there which are not owned by Italian or Greek immigrants.

And why is it that so many of my friends and relatives in Eastern East Sussex think nothing of driving to Brighton, but baulk at the thought of coming to visit me. A shorter distance, an easier drive, but because it’s in another county, they see it as being on the far side of the moon.

Or when I’m in Hastings and meet family or old friends, they always ask me where I’m staying. When I say that I’m only there for the day, so many of them look at me as though I would be mad to make that journey in a day.

I have blogged in the past about how we should be looking to do away with national barriers. Some parts of the world (and parts so close to home) are still so far away from that ideal. (I realise that I have several loyal readers who hail from the county I’m dissing - perhaps they might like to comment…)

Meanwhile “Gervais” would seem to have found another friend. This one is also into uniforms, and sports a nice satchel. He also has a beard, and seeing how most people shaved their beards off ten days ago, he must be a “proper beardie”. Perhaps he likes real ale?