EUROVISION 2009..THE U.K. WERE O.K, BUT WERE K.O'D BY A SMACK IN THE MOUTH FROM THE VIOLINIST !

Last Saturday night it was that time of the year ,again. That night of the year when i always seem to have nothing else to do and nowhere to go and do it and i have no escape or excuse to avoid the EUROVISION SONG CONTEST.....The Lovely Lynne won't allow me to put a single SUPERCAR dvd on, so i have to watch it with her. As it went on i read a book on Jack the Ripper, which has been solved by an ex-detective, apparently 'Jack' was a German sailor caught and executed for murder in the U.S. But the horrors inflicted by Jack paled when compared to some of the acts on the Eurovision, i thought. But, i always think that. Fair enough there was some good warbling and some tasty lasses doing the warbling. But whenever the fellahs came on, i felt like smacking them, esspecially that young Norwegian that won. I thought the song that was written by Ronan Keating was great, the fellah should work as a Ronan Keating impersonator. He's lucky, unlike the Elvis impersonators, they don't have the real man to coach them, whereas he's got ol' Ronan to hone the Ronan clone to perfection.

Then we had the UNITED KINGDOM(nil pwoint).....Whereas every other country fielded their biggest stars, we Brits in the true spirit of Eurovision got our amateur from a reality game show hosted by a certain A.Lloyd Webber(songs, stageshows for all the family, for any occassion). On she comes our prospective little starlet warbling on about "This is her night". Drifting across to one of the violinist hacking away at his violin with the horse hair bow who promptly belts her in the microphone, which hits her in the mouth. It was at this point i fell off the chair laughing, so i think i missed her getting a nudge from the second violinist she wandered/stumbled across to. The last violinist must've seen what had transpired and turned his waving fist,elbow and bow away from our battered and beaten but still warbling heroine bouncing pin-ball-like around the stage. I thought she sang with a bit of a lisp, but it was probably where a chipped tooth pierced her lip. I tell you its dangerous work this singing in Eurovision song contests. I included this second violin cartoon not only to show how wonderful i am, but to show that real life isn't that far from the 'silly' world of cartoons... I don't know which is sillier the cartoons or Eurovision.

I'll also bet that the politicians, gawd bless 'em breathed a sigh of relief when 'our girl ' didn't win. If she had, we would've had to stump up for the Eurovision song contest, next year. We can't afford Eurovision song contests and politicians expences, as well.

THE LONDON UNDERGROUND; SHAKIN' RATTLIN', N' ROLLIN' AND WOMEN PUTTING THEIR MAKE-UP ON ...

Last week i curled up in my missus's suitcase and was smuggled onto a train for a few day in London. Our beloved capital ,where the streets are paved with gold ,or i assume so under the burger wrappers and plastic coffee cups. I do like London and as The Lovely Lynne was about her business ,saving the financial systems of the planet . I had more important things to do . I had a cartoonist meeting to go to. I met my ol buddy and caricaturist(extraordinary or extraordinaire ,i'm not too sure.)..The one ,the only, GUY CARTER, we met in a pub,( funnily enough). As i was following Guys instructions, i had a tour of all the boozers around the area of Liverpool st station. But, eventually we met up and started to drink. After a 'good few' in various hostleries on the way to the CARTOONIST PUB. The Cartoonist pub is near to what was once the cartoonist dream street , where all the newspapers were printed. FLEET ST, and the hundreds of bars where the reporters used to spend their days boozing and swopping 'scoops' at the bar with each other. According to a lot of the barstaff ,some very famous news people renowned for their daredevil news reporting ,never left the pubs of Fleet street...








Ace reporter A would meet ace reporter B at the bar and one would say to the other for a large brandy. "Did you hear some war has started, or somebodies been assassinated?"...."Yer joking !.....Here's your drink...Have you got 10p for the phone ?", and with that our ace reporter would phone in his scoop. Aaahh those were the days. Cartoonists would drag their portfolios from one newspaper ,next door to the next ,maybe stopping for a 'quick one', in a boozer in between. Aaah those were the days....








The ace exuberant SIMON ELLINAS is planning to arrange a cartoon exhibition in London sometime. So that was the main reason that there was a congealing of cartoonists at the pub, as if there ever has to be a reason for cartoonists to congeal at a pub. Some very ugly faces were there, but sentimental ol' sod i am, i was glad to see 'em all. As ever cartoonists are always grumbling n' moaning and i wonder if a collective noun for a group of cartoonists should be a WHINGE OF CARTOONISTS,...or something. But eventually, braced with a few dozen pints of Guinness; A bottle of wine with big hairy ugly SIMON CASSINNI, and the not so big ,just as hairy, but definitly not as ugly SHEBA CASSINNI...(Ohh be still my beating heart.) ; A greasy cheesburger, then getting pissed on in the pouring rain,( i thought it never rained in the cissy south). I eventually arrived in the arms of my beloved as she shoved me over to my side of the bed in a very nice hotel room over by the old east end docks. nowadays all exhibition centres ;hotels; Luxury appartments, etc, etc, now .Non of your boats ,docks ,Jack the Rippers n' stuff there now ,y'know. Very smart n' posh.... I think i preferred it the old way.











The next day i wandered around town and ended up in the Imperial war museum .I'd always meant to go there one day . I'm glad i did , some,sad, amazing, inspiring, and plain impressive and exciting stuff there. A reminder of horrific times, but celebrating the human spirit of those fighting ;Caught up in the fighting ;Left at home; All victims ,in general. But then you come out into today! Again!.... Everybody, absolutly, everybody pushing past each other. Going either from A to B or B to A, for some no doubt, vitally important reason. with bloody mobile phones clamped firmly to their ears having, no doubt, very important world shattering conversations with very important people. If they weren't attached to a mobile phone, they were plugged into MP3's, totally disconnected from the world. I have a MP3, but i couldn't use it 'out and about. I hate not being aware of whats happening around me...Is it my primevil survival instinct ,or just i'm a nosey bastard?








The tube ,ahh the 'tube'. I amble along, getting knocked and battered by people rushing for trains in case they miss one and have to wait three minutes for the next. It is a point of fascination to me, coming from a part of the world where the gap between trains can, quite often be measured in hours, not minutes. Now, thats a good reason to rush. But as the train shakes, rattles, clatters and bounces along, everybody being slung from side to side much like the crew in the T.V. classic ;VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. Getting slung from side to side as the submarine SEAVIEW took a hammering for some totally mad reason.... But even though the passengers hang on for dear life, lots wearing wooly hats so their MP3 ear phones wont fall out during the bodily shaking. But amazingly, seemingly unaffected by the shaking and bouncing about are the young girls who sit there applying make up to their face, using the lipstick with the precision of an electron microscope writing words on a human hair, but on a London tube train !!!!!

NEITHER MAN NOR MARTIAN CAN FIGHT AGAINST RED TAPE

Theres a lot to be said about being a lazy bone idle get, and being a dedicated, proud 'arlarse' of many years standing(on occassions), i've heard most of them. Everybody needs to have a rest from their everyday activities(or lack, thereof), so, when i'm not slobbing about, i relax by forging my body in the white hot furnace of my will, into a steel hard finely honed fighting/killing machine by doing a bit of Karate. A few parents of kids who go to my daughters school asked if i'd run a little basic afterschool class for them. I thought any opportunity to belt a few snotty kids around the 'lug'oles', is an opportunity not to be sneered at, so i said ok, go'ed(an old ancient Liverpool expression of assent). The school seemed happy enough to have me drag myself off the slightly sticky cover of my couch once a week to go down and reveal the secrets of the Orient ,Zen and the art of smashing somebodies face in. Then the fun starts.

To do ANYTHING, now requires filling in of endless forms detailing everything, place, whom, what, where, why for every ten minutes over the last 20 years. For someone who has an uncontrollable hatred of forms and the people who give them to me ;And the people i've got to send them back too. To await their bloody reply/decision, or whatever, so, i dumped it on my Lovely Lynne ,faithful wife n' form filler-upperer. So this 'effin' form was sent to the police criminal records people, or something to see if i was Jack the Ripper or Gary Glitter, or someone. Apparently, i'm not, so i'm in the clear. I was a little dissappointed to see only a few speeding fines mentioned. I was hoping to be on an old 10 most wanted, somewhere in the world. I'm getting on, i s'pose my wild days're behind me,(sigh, it comes to us all!). Well, with all that sorted, i thought,' well off we jolly well go', but no, that would be too simple.

Now, through the years i've been called a liability on many occassions,( often by many ,if not most of you reading this, ya bastards!)....A public liability , and even a private liability, but we'll draw a heavily stained blanket over the private stuff, as it doesn't really concern us now, as i don't need insurance for that. But i've just been told i've got to pay and be accepted for public liability insurance. All this just to do the local school a favour for half an hour a week. I trained for years and got me black belt ,(yeah ,now!ya boo n' sucks to you!), but i've fought many people ,even won a couple, but i concede defeat to bloody red tape.....RED TAPE HAS BEATEN ME!!!!......There is a company ,THROTTLE, STRANGLE and ENTWINE Ltd and they make red tape for all the goverment departments whose sole purpose is to make the simple complicated and everything baffling and befuddling and not worth doing. Theres health n safety ,those must be strange people .Their job is to find danger, everywhere! Then come up with ridiculous ways of earning their wages by illimnating the ,danger, risk, peril.or whatever that nobody noticed in the first place ,then install 'safety features' that nobody wants or likes or uses . Then, there's probably a very creative busy department that designs forms, for everything..AAh we live in wonderful times.Some of the departments in that big old building with the clock in London must have departments that make the Ministry of Funny Walks quite resonable.

In the wonderful Jeff Wayne's 'WAR OF THE WORLDS', who can forget Richard Burton speaking about the 'RED WEED' that spread across the world strangling the life out of the existing vegetation all over the planet Earth. That was why Mars was red. Because of the Red Weed. That 'Rip-off merchant H.G. WELLS' said the same in his 'War of the worlds'. Now its slightly different our blue/green Earth is being strangled by Red Tape. The martians'll be wondering why parts of the Earth is looking Martian red. I s'pose, one good thing will come out of it, tho'. Well, if we can't walk without stumbling over Red Tape ,what chance do the martians have stomping around in those big,huge tri-pods? They'd be antennae over tentacle before you knew it. So they wont be invading yet. Not 'till they get the forms through, anyhow.