Macabre Easter Offer

Not sure of the efficacy of this window display in the local undertakers.

Possibly some comment on the Christian/Pagan Death/Birth dialectic.

Or just a bad idea from someone unable to imagine what this actually looks like.

Maybe they could sell urns that contain smarties?

Cat Cash

When we were kids, we lived in a household that could only afford to have the TV Times and Radio Times once a year, with my mother spending out for the Christmas editions as a seasonal treat. Even then, she would spread the cost over two weeks by buying one first with the other to follow just as the holiday got under weigh.

Inevitably, she would react vehemently to the habitual defacing of these prized listings, as my brothers and I would set about them with ballpoints, adorning Hughie Green with a fine curly moustache, or enhancing Pat Pheonix with glasses and blacked-out teeth, or just writing the word "GIT" on Reginald Bousenquet's forehead.

My mother, no fan of anyone on a TV that she never had the time to watch, still felt that there was some act of disrespect in the defacing of these hard-working professionals who had obviously made sacrifices to get where they were.

However, it was a practice that we loved, and never quite grew out of.

By the time of the first 1974 election, I'd developed the habit onto a grander scale. Armed with stolen marker pens, with my pals Chris J and Malcolm L, I helped to decorate a giant poster of Prime Minister Edward Heath, turning him into Alice Cooper (a popular singing artiste of the day).

Imagine my joy, passing our work on the bus the following day, and hearing a child cry out "Look mummy! Look at that man!" and the mothers response, a disapproving "Someone's up to no good!"

In fact, I don't have access to the psephological data from that election, but I'm convinced that it was that very poster that accounted for Heath's defeat that year!

Anyway, to my point.

I was pleased to discover this alteration to the currency recently. It is part of a dying art and is to be heartily applauded.

Hoorah!

David Lynch on iPhone

What Seems To Be The Trouble?

I was at the doctor's this evening, (none of your business, since you ask) sat in the waiting room amongst the poor of North London, when the intercom sounded and a GPs voice announce the name of the next patient.

The PA continued to buzz and click, before we heard voices being broadcast. The voices were that of the doctor and his patient, as the practitioner questioned the unwitting celebrity about his condition.

Those listening in the waiting room giggled amongst themselves as we heard about the embarrassing circumstances, and it became a little bit disconcerting as to just how much of the revelation we would become party to.

Mercifully, the conversation was interrupted by the sound of another intercom buzzing, followed by a click, the doctor's voice saying "Yes?" and the receptionist's reply of "your intercom is still on!!"

There was one further audible "clunk" and radio silence was resumed, accompanied by a roar of laughter from the assembled throng, a guffaw which was almost certainly heard by culprit and victim.

Imagine my caution, therefore, on being called in as the same doctor's next appointment.

"And what seems to be the problem?"

"Mumble, mumble" (points to anus, and raises eyebrows in a man of the world fashion)

Oh No Matron!

Smoking Latest

Thanks for to the partner for this gem from the Kent coast.

The Damned United

The Damned United is a good film, and not really about football. Most people would understand its focus upon relationships and the notion that Brian Clough was consumed by a need to outdo Don Revie. It's a story about hubris.

What stops it being a GREAT film in the mould of Frost/Nixon is the miscasting.

Timothy Spall is good, but it's a missed opportunity to present (much taller and dapper) Peter Taylor as the motor behind Clough's ambition.

The greatest crime, however, is the failure to cast anyone forceful enough to play Johnny Giles and Billy Bremner. They're portrayed as some sort of shambolic double-act, rather than the driven and single-minded individuals that subvert Clough's ambition in the book.

Basic the decision to portray all the players as a bunch of unathletic slobs in cheap wigs undermines the integrity of the film, which is all the same well recommended.

Remember Clip Art?

Well, it's still around, at least within the training material for a project management course I've been undergoing.

I'm afraid that these two examples may manifest more about the originator's troubled childhood than we need to know in a vocational programme.

Film Latest

Err? The end of bingo as we know it?

Granny Ties Buccaneers In Knots

Yes, it's the KILLER pirates that are the worst.

Anyway, they were quite civil during their questioning, and did quite well considering that they hadn't done a talk show before. They blamed themselves for the escape, and admitted that they were spending too much time being black-hearted vagabonds and not enough time keeping an eye on the elderly lady held captive. A schoolboy error.

Apparently the Pirate's ombudsman is holding an enquiry.

"Bastards! Yer All BASTARDSSS!"

On my way to a meeting this morning, I passed a comedy drunk (and as this was 11.30 am, he was clearly a pro) who, on tackling a junction, did the "steady now" trip of the inebriate whilst waving his arms behind him to maintain his balance.

What I liked was what he did next.

As he had stepped out in front of a van, he decided that this close call was the driver's fault, and so he glared into the front and began using his flailing arms to gesticulate at his newly discovered enemy.

The expression on his face as he realised that there was NO DRIVER and that the van was PARKED was a treat.

Piscine Promenading

I was ambling back to work via the canal towpath this lunchtime, when I was passed by a chap carrying a fishing rod, fully deployed, but dragging the line beside him as he walked along the waterway.

I have never seen this form of angling before, and as I assumed that it would be an unsuccessful approach to catching anything, I speculated as to the chap's purpose.

Was he, I contemplated, taking his pet fish for a walk?

I looked as he passed me, but the end of the line appeared bereft of any such companion.

Nice idea though.

(To be perfectly honest with you; I think he was probably a bit mad, but you're not allowed to say things like that these days are you?)

Home

There was a time when my home town had notoriety for its motorcycle gangs, and this place was a raucous monkey hut: How times have changed!

On the way down there the train was nearing my station when I donned my coat, my backpack, my toolkit in one hand and my plastering accoutrements in the other (this purpose of my visit was a kitchen replacement errand), and I waited patiently in the aisle as the guy behind me gathered his things.

He didn't look like the kind of person who lived locally, but then; do I? Anyway, I waited patiently, as I say, as he may as well get to the door before me. My attitude changed when he began to fold his jumper in the style of a boutique assistant, and actually started PICKING AT BITS OF LINT!

I gave him the big "excuse me!" and he peremptorily sat back down. He wasn't even getting off!

A good job too, 'cause he may of found himself on the end of a 'lint-picking' under the bypass with some choice grouting utensils, I can tell you!

Galileo Exhumed And Burnt

Well, if the current Pope has his way, I'm sure that's overdue.

Unable to come to terms with the enlightenment and its bastard child modernism, Pope Ratso has remarked that the AIDS epidemic in Africa:

"cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem"

Yes, he actually said that.

No evidence to back up his claims, because he knows that the world is flat and that empiricism is mere necromancy, and he's the one in the big hat so let's all stand by and let the poor die.

Thankyou Rome.

A Fit Of The Vapours

Old Bill in West End Smash!

Apparently, the fun starts when Detective Inspector Wilberforce Bigot of Scotland Yard inadvertantly raids the vicarage of Reverend Simon Hardpiece, under the misapprehension that the preacher is Colombian drug-lord Ramon Chorizo.

Meanwhile upstairs, it transpires that the vicar's wife Ursula is having an affair with her tennis instructor Butch Stringfellow who on hearing the raid below has hidden naked in her wardrobe.

Unbeknownst to all, the vicar's daughter, Scarlet has hidden her stash of cocaine in the very same wardrobe.

The action gets going as, faced with the barking of the sniffer dogs, Butch emerges from the wardrobe dragged up as Bunty Cash, Ursula's long lost sister from Australia.

"Sir Ian Blair is fantastic as Det. Insp Bigot" the Metro

"Laugh? I nearly shat!" Sunday Sport

"£3 for a small bottle of beer?" Man with complimentary tickets.

The Good Old Days

As a historian, one is trained not to pass judgement on the mores of the past, but on visiting the London Transport Museum and witnessing the advertising attached to a ninety twenties' tram, one wonders what our grandparents were up to!

Anybody would think that it was modern-day Thailand!

Yes, London Transport's initiative of introducing piped music onto stations was always a question of taste, and who knew it would be a Kate Bush retrospective which pushed the envelope too far?

As LT press officer Peter Chutney explained:

"It was Wuthering Heights that did it; it was bedlam down there; it was like Edvard Munch meets Bruegel! Then some blind blokes' guide dog went mental and we had to evacuate the station!"

"Unfortunately, the guide dog had already evacuated itself so the procedure proved to be tragically comedic due to the slippage factor"

LT are to review its playlist, and is to recommend a steady diet of Victor Silvester for the time being.

That Equine Sinking Feeling

Yes, the people of the New Forest have been concerned about the safety of a pony which appears to have sunk into the mud.

The relevant authorities have been receiving calls requesting a rescue for what, on closer inspection, transpires to be an animal with very short legs.

Considering the past history of this horse, shouldn't someone paint "I'm not Sinking!" on the side of the stumpy steed, or even a plimsoll line!

Or cover every possibility and issue the little fellow with a snorkel, just in case!

Young People These Days!

The worst thing about being a failed songwriter is the constant what could have been.

This is compounded in my case by the fact that the only stuff anyone heard was the throw away tunes that I knocked out for a mate one summer in 1981. He went on to record them on an album that sold moderately in Belgium.

When I moved to London, I met a complete stranger who sang one of these pieces in its entirety to me in Soho, such was his excitement at meeting its composer.

On another occasion, I turned up in the print room of a City firm as a temp for a one-off night shift. In the early hours, the DJ (now a TV regular) played one of these tracks, much to my astonishment. I turned to my new (wary) colleague and, pointing to the radio, proclaimed "I wrote this!" Not surprisingly, he looked at me as though I had declared myself to be The King Of Brazil!

And here we are in 2009 and I discover that a bunch of kids in West Sonoma County, California, who weren't born when I was performing, are belting out some sort of version of a song that I completed within half an hour twenty eight years ago.

No, honestly.