...NOT THE CHAINGANG!.....WORKING ON MY BOOK ABOUT MY 3 WEEKS HOLIDAY IN JAIL,DARLING!

Through the years we've seen on films how prisoners have had to suffer in various ways in jails through history from chained in dungeons and branded with branding irons ;working on chain gangs, wearing canvas sacking uniforms with arrows on. Punished, whipped ,flogged ,slung into 'solitary' ;roasted and frozen in the 'box' ,a favourite of film makers ,where the corrugated iron box is molten hot during the day and freezing cold at night....That was in a lot of cowboy films ,infact the other day watching an old 'KUNG FU' episode KWAI CHANG CAINE and another bloke are slung into one as way of punishment. The mere mortal normal 'con' is dying between shivering his tits off and sweating his cobblers off, whilst CAINE sits serene ,calm and placid feeling neither heat nor cold. Sure enough the ignorant mere mortal wants to know "What kind o' man are you ,Caine?".....To which he gets the Caine reply whispered ..."I am just a man!".....But he explains that to survive he must make contact with his soul....?.....There y'go ,simple! Now you need never wear coat, scarve n' gloves again when its miserable and cold, or strip in the sun when its not. So easy as that the fellah crosses his legs in the lotus position like Caine and days later emerges much to the guards amazement as 'fresh as a daisy!'...All very well, but how did he manage the lotus position ,just like that ? I can get my head around surviving the temperature extremes ,but for a new boy to sitting cross legged in a box for days ,how he's not crippled for life is beyond me.

Prisoners beaten ,whipped on the chaingang, (PAPILLON ,,,COOL HAND LUKE, etc)....Then the glamour of those far off prison islands and such is replaced by our much more less dusty sunny, less glamourous, far sighted prison reforms , tiles and bars ,the pot in the corner and the smell of boiled cabbage pervading the old victorian buildings. New concrete buildings are built and prisioner numbers go up and more time in cells,prisioners must be kept happy, tellys ,phones ,gyms, etc are supposed to be the prisioners lot these days. I don't know ,but i do know i don't have any sympathy for anyone who breaks the law ,the laws the law ,okay ,you might not agree, but thats it ,you break it you get punished. The other day our next door neighbours got broken into and thescumbag sweethearts turned the whole house over, far as i'm concerned theres no excuse and 10 minutes with a baseball bat around their heads should be given to my neighbour.

I've tried to explain to my disgusted daughter ,angry at rules at school about uniforms and hair colours etc, that the rules are there and if she breaks them she'll be punished ,she's on about writing to the European Court of Human Rights about not being able to dye her hair some purpley brown colour.

The other day that slimey, lying scheming MP was released after serving a fraction of his sentance for getting his wife to take the blame for a speeding offence. Apparently the prison is in a lovely part of the world and the prisoners lock themselves in at night ,if they want ,or they can amble down to the village, apparently after this few weeks of hell he's going to write a book about his ordeal ,as is his wife ,who was in a similar 'holiday camp'.....Can't imagine a PAPPILON type novel , definitly not a STEVE McQUEEN or PAUL NEWMAN film in there!

ACHES N' PAINS N' SORE BITS AND HOW HEALTH N' FITNESS IS A PAIN IN THE ARSE!!!!!

  Years ago there was a telly programme called GLADIATORS where all these muscley false tanned ladies n' gents used to do strange physical tasks for the enjoyment of the studio and viewing audience. They all had dramatic names like WOLF and YORKSHIRE TERRIER, etc.....Not really i cant remember the others ,there might of been a PHOENIX  in there ,but generally like all fit sculpted body people they were a strange bunch. 

There was a time when people used to do excercise to get fit ,things like 'jerks' and swinging of arms like soldiers in the morning when exercise was known as PHYSICAL JERKSas shown in those old war timePUBLIC INFORMATION FILMS... and the most technical was a press up or sit up. But now nobody plays sport(goverment cutbacks and money starved property developers removing playing areas and pitches,etc,but that's for another blog!).... or does physical occupations or pastimes ,so now they jump in their car and go to the posh gym which they've spent a fortune to bust a gut and sweat their cobblers off on a variety of very weird and wonderful looking torture devices. It has always been a source of amusement to me going past a leisure centre and seeing hundreds of people running on the spot all facing out at the traffic oblivious of the world passing in front of them as they've got ear phones on or watching the telly above them as drivers and pedestrians are laughing at them and commenting to each other ,"Look at them knob'eads!"....."It's a lot cheaper running around the block!".....

I know a lot of people who 'Go to the gym' and all of them are always complaining of aches and pains i've come to the conclusion that this healthy living will kill you. Whereas in the old days people were active and did their 'physical jerks' nowadays every muscle has a huge machine bearing a vast array of weights to strain this or that particular muscle, so people can develop whatever part of their body they want,mostly for appearance sake rather than health and fitness sake. Muscles have become a fashion statement, like most fashions they come and go and are designed. Take the abdominal muscles ,or as us in the know refer to them as 'AB's', or now the SIX-PACK Every pop or movie star ,etc has the 6-pack. The 6-pack is top of everybodies fitness shopping list, but is totally unnatural. You look at all the movie stars from before BRAD PITT,etc in the 80's back, CHARLTON HESTON,etc and not one of them have the 6-PACK!

You see people walking around town in the middle of winter blizzards in tee-shirts because they have to show their gym pumped bulk, funny thing is most work on their arms and have huge barrel like chests and powerful thick arms and sad spindly neglected legs. A lot of these muscle jocks accentuate their muscle with tatooes, i can't help thinking come the day when the gym membership isn't renewed and the pleasures of laziness and bone-idleness sets in and the muscle starts to shrink, does the tatoo shrivel like a picture on a scrunched up piece of paper.

I trained in KARATYE for many a year and like most young fellahs i used muscle power convinced that ,that was the way it was done ,but to do that you had to be fit and had to be warmed up before you could even start. Now i'm a middle aged old fart i've realised that is wrong. All fighters ,etc are finished by their 30's as their body can't maintain that strain. I discovered TAI-CHI when we lived in INDIA 10 years ago and combined with KARATE i discovered this insane method of training where, instead of speed and power ,general busting a gut ,et al....The slower and more relaxed you moved the better. My KARATE developed speed and power from going in totally the opposite direction, for a lazy bastard like me ,this was proof there is a god and he's a feckin' genius! I'm currently training myself to do a Karate seminar with one of the real Karate greats SENSEI TERRY O'NEILL....As i'm not with a club i'm training myself so i don't get too badly beaten. But the secret of Karate as explained to me once by the great Japanese master HIROKAZU KANAZAWA is in breathing ,relax and breathe and the speed and power is there. The amazing thing is  i dont get stiff i dont even have to warm up, but it is advised, i'm a middle aged old fart and i can kick above my head although i've never been able to do the splits even after all these years of stretching excercises, but ah well......And i don't have a 6-pack , but i can take a punch in the gut off anybody.

JOHN WAYNE; JEFF BRIDGES.....BOTH 'TRUE GRIT ', BUT WHOSE THE GRITTIER AND TRULY THE 'TRUE GRIT'?....AND HAD ARMY TOILET PAPER NAMED AFTER THEM AS ITS 'ROUGH ,TOUGH AND WONT TAKE NO SHIT OFF ANYONE!'

    

JOHN  WAYNE......THE DUKE!......Through the years 'THE DUKE' made a couple of hundred films of varying quality it has to be said ,but he was always the good guy ,all American hero and all that and entered the realm of legend for The Good ol U.S.ofA....Living on whisky and moms apple pie.

 Apparently when the war broke out some old football injury and the fact that he was in his thirties and getting on a bit to be shot in real life excluded him from being called up for active service which 'broke his heart', personally i'd've been 'over the moon'. So he stayed with fighting and shooting people on the big screen.

 This event is thought to be the reason that he became such a staunch republican and Anti -'Pinko commie fag'!....Joseph Stalin ,apparently liked John Waynes films but ordered him to be assassinated. The Yank soldiers still loved him and named items of equipment after him, even the toilet paper , as "It was rough tough and didn't take shit off nobody!" Now that should be on a tombstone.

I liked his classics and his later middleaged elder character going towards the humour of the western. His greatest creation was JOHN WAYNE and he was the character in every western ,same guns and cloths ,the only one where a whole new character was created was TRUE GRIT as the dubiously heroic whisky guzzling one eyed hero ROOSTER COGBURN! Hired by a young girl to track the killers of her father with the help of GLENN CAMPBELL,no less. The great fight at the end with ROOSTER storming down a grassy slope on his horse with a WINCHESTER RIFLE in each hand loading and firing with one hand for each gun , yelling something along the lines of "Fill yer hands you sons of bitches!" A great film ,performance and winner of an academy award ,i think the only one the duke won.

Whereas ,even when JOHN WAYNE was young i never thought of him as young ,just had darker hair and tended to be in black n' white. Whereas JEFF BRIDGES was a wild young thing ,i always remember him being CLINT EASTWOODS wild side kick in 'THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT'. He seemed to dissappear for a while, to return , now a 'more mature' character has emerged playing the old grizzled characters like WILD BILL HICOCK  in 'WILD BILL'. a cracker of a film i saw fairly recently and loved it. When they said they were going to remake TRUE GRIT, i thought 'Well why?'....But who am i to question the money grabbing swine over there in HOLLYWOOD. 

I bought a pirate copy in a boozer in the fair city of LIVERPOOL. It wasn't too bad until towards the end along the bottom of the screen you could see people going to and from the toilets along the rows of seats as people stood up and down to allow the pain in the arse cinema boozers to get to the bogs....And then to top it off some inconsiderate swine spoiled my enjoyment of my pirate DVD by allowing their mobile phone to ring ,just no consideration some people!

But i did watch the proper version and liked the more grizzled realistic settings and ROOSTER COGBURN, basically the same story and sequence of events, but did JEFF BRIDGES get rolls of cheap military bog paper named after him?I think not,he's an actor, not an American icon  I think J.B. is great ,and J.W. is great....J.B is a wonderful actor and great at the tough grizzled character at this time in his career....Whereas J.W. was the great JOHN WAYNE playing the hero of whatever film he was starring in. 

Two versions of the same film and i loved them both, JEFF BRIDGES ,'TRUE GRIT' would've been a classic without the shadow of JOHN WAYNE hovering over it, but JOHN WAYNES 'original ' has been a classic for years now after all this time it has competition.

ROCKY MARCIANO: THE ROCK :SUZIE-Q AND LOTS OF BUSTED NOSES !!!!!!!1!

ROCY MARCIANO.....THE ROCK....THE ROCK FROM BROXTON.......THE BROXTON BLOCKBUSTER......And a variety of names to do with 'rocks' and blocks' will give you a rough idea of the sort of fighter ROCKY MARCIANO was!

He was MURDER!....A short arsed little bit of murder with limited reach ,but i have to admit  i don't think i'd like to have shared that tiny little roped in square ring. He wanted to be a baseball player, but didn't make the grade for reasons Americans'd understand, but us Brits who couldn't imagine ROCKY MARCIANO playing that English of all schoolgirls games couldn't..ROUNDERS!....(Now that really pisses off our cuzn's from across the pond). Rocky joined the army and started boxing to avoid having to work in the kitchens. The Welsh'll be glad to know he was stationed in.....SWANSEA..?...Loading stuff for Normandy.

When our hero returned home he started as an amateur and later turned proffessional. His first 16 fights were KO's before the 5th round and 9 before the end of the 1st. Thats not bad for somebody considered too short ,light and lacking in reach. He was also described as 'crude,wild, swinging, awkward and missing heavily...Nat Fleicher once editot of 'THE RING' said  2/3 of the 50-odd punches he swung against ARCHIE MOORE against the ropes missed! His right hand became infamous as 'SUZIE-Q!' and took down some mean opposition.ARCHIE MOORE ; EZZARD CHARLES ; JERSEY JOE WALCOTT and a slightly aging but great JOE LOUIS, whom Rocky beat and cried in LOUIS'S changing room after the fight as JOE LOUIS was always his great hero , (they say never meet your hero...Never mind knock 'em out of the ring!), .....The rock was a softee! The SUZIE -Q Rocky's right hand bomb was tested and that right punch had the equivalent force of an armour piercing bullet , or the force required to spot lift 1000lbs, that would spoil your day i'd imagine. It helped him win every fight 49 wins ,43 KO's and none of those losses or draws. He's the only fighter to never be defeated and retired at 31 and stayed retired. 

'They', those people that do strange things like that did that!...That being ...Arranging a computer simulation of MUHAMMAD ALI v ROCKY MARCIANO...

They took sparring footage of both and joined them together ,apparently ALI won. MARCIANO said in a line worthy of ALI when asked about the result.."I'd be conceited if i said i'd won, but i'd be lying if i said i'd lost!"

A great fighter , the public always loved the scrappers, sluggers whatever you want to call them, but hard as he was everyone loved 'THE ROCK!'

DOMINIQUE VALERA: THE KING/THE CAT....ONE FRENCH FIGHTER YOU WOULDN'T WANT A PUNCH OR A KICK DANS LA GOB FROM !!!!!

When i were 'nobbut a lad' and discovered the martial arts ,originally through a few cheap photocopied sheets stapled together on even cheaper paper, i still thought it was great stuff. Then the great man himself came along...SENSEI TERRY O'NEILL....With his bible for all martial artists FIGHTING ARTS MAGAZINE(For the serious martial artist!....Not me , but i read it)...In the early days of the 70's when the legends of Karate were fighting for the national squad and mainly from LIVERPOOL..;THE RED TRIANGLE; KIRKDALE,etc,etc. Glory days indeed. They lasted for years ,but the greats ;O'neill, Sherry, Higgins ,Brennan, and on are still remembered with awe. I'd've loved to train at THE RED TRIANGLE, but never built up the courage to go and have the shit kicked outta me by the experts. I came close and had some great years training with the boss hisself TERRY O'NEILL....He worked the doors around the fair city of LIVERPOOL for donkeys years and was a legend. People say "Aw you cant do all that BRUCE LEE spinning back kick shit in a real fight!", But Terry could and did. The A merican magazine BLACK BELT named him the deadliest fighter in the world or something along those fairly impressive lines ,remember this is the yanks talking about a limey!.... Look out for a book called 'WORKING WITH WARRIORS' written by a good buddy of O'NEILLS, DENNIS MARTIN. That's got some good stories . TERRY O'NEILL was a stupendous competiiton fighter as well, inovative and spectacular and still talked about years after injury put an end to his competition side.

Another name from them faroff days of FIGHTING ARTS was a contoversial french bloke by the name of DOMINIQUE VALERA. He is a French fighter and through the late 60's and 70's he cut a swathe through anybody daft enough to stand against him. He was nicknamed 'THE CAT' or 'THE KING'...His movements and style were apparently very smooth and distinctive. The American BLACK BELT MAGAZINE named him top fighter on numerous occassions. VALERA'S  moment of infamy came during the World Championships in Long Beach, California. During a fight VALERA felt a decision was unfair and smacked one of the judges and was banned from competing in international KARATE tournaments ,ever again!....VALERA stayed in AMERICA for a while and met and eventually befriended a U.S. FULL-CONTACT/KICKBOXER, by the name of BILL(Superfoot) WALLACE. He is a living legend and has never been beaten for most of his career, which is suprising as he only uses one foot and mainly one hand. His right leg was turned to mush in a judo fall and, i think he wears a brace on it, but he trained his left leg and  it tops speeds people just can't imagine, if you find him on YOU-TUBE you'll see this leg and foot lashing out like a bullwhip or a snake strike it is astounding. Other fighters know exactly what they're going to get, but can't do anything about it. Valera trained with WALLACE and joined the ranks of the proffessional AMERICAN KICKBOXING or one of various names it was known by ,but it had a huge following. Apparently our French hero did quite well before returning home to promote full contact training around France, look him up on the internet as he combines the loose fighting style with traditional Karate self defence.

I'm still working on a TERRY O'NEILL caricature so i'll bung it on here whenever i manage to complete it , i'm not going to upset any of these guys for you lot!

GARDENING , THE CURSE OF MAN....GETTING OFF HIS ARSE TO MAKE OLD MOTHER NATURE LOOK GOOD!

Whenever the rain and thunderstorms ease off slightly ; The snow and frost melt and you can see your hand ahead of you in the blizzard.......When theres a 15 foot gap in the bulbous grey, grotty  cloud drifting menacingly 10 feet above the roof of your house, a gap able to allow a few cosmic rays and about half a dozen photons of sunlight through to reach the sodden ground below, this illicites an amazing response from the ladies of the houses.....It's summer and its time to do the gardening!!!!!.......We are dragged kicking and screaming out towards the garage door and thrown into the musty darkness to dig around for shovels, lawnmowers, strimmers and other items of gardenning paraphenalia that you had almost forgotten existed and wished to god would cease to exist yet again. Its time to make your little garden of Eden beautiful again(?) ,do your best for your little lump of OLD MOTHER NATURES  wonderfulness that occupies a little square in front and back of the house, its only a little bit, but why can't MOTHER NATURE  keep it looking good, why do i get dragged out to make her look good? 

THE NEW LAD HE'S NOT FROM ROUND HERE IS HE?...


To a fellah the summer is sitting outside a traditional 'Ye olde English' boozer slurping his 8 or 9 th  'ye olde foaming pint of ale', watching the cricket on the green or morris dancing at the local village fete watching scantily clad sun loving ladies wander by. Even though theres nothing like that in Warrington ,we can still dream.

But, as ever real life and the ladies 'It's summer! reflex' is always around to screw everything up. The LOVELY LYNNE starts to poke and prod plants and 'weed', her having 'green fingers', whereas i have stubbly splinter and muck riddled fingers from my stint on the wrong end of a shovel , i know my place.I come from an Irish farming family and shovelling and shifting muck and shit is in my genes as well as all over my jeans. THE LOVELY LYNNE has always appreciated my skills and talents and is happy for me to work to my strengths. One of these 'strengths' in her considered opinion is my ability to remove fresh and fossillised dog turds from within the long grass. Wrapping my hands in 20-odd layers of plastic 'poo-bags' i set to the stomach churning ,teeth grinding ,,back breaking task of clearing up after the dog...Man's best friend?...Do me a favour!!!!......The scruffy little tyke has a TARDIS stomach , he's a lot bigger inside than out ,his capacity for 'crap' is totally awe-inspiring. When this oderous task is completed at some point i must mow the lawn.

"SHE USED TO BE A STRIPPER BEFORE SHE BECAME A STRIMMER!


                      When you mow the lawn the smell of freshly cut grass is a very  fresh healthy smell, that is until the blade hits a missed fossillised doggie 'do' the blade hits the stoney outer layer exposing the inner soft core releasing an age old smell of 'dog'!...The knees wobble ;The stomach does a back flip attempt to leave your body  and the eyes cross as far as the opposite ears. In addittion to this joyful event ,as the grass is long and soggy it congeals under the mower outside the spin area of the mower blade, but you have to scoop the grass and 'extras' within with your hands ,aside from the all-consuming thoughts of 'doggie 'do's'contained within the mush is the possibility of the starter button getting knocked and the blade removing your fingers. Then is the raking of grass, muck, leaves etc and trying to force it all into the garden bin(The green one)....This takes some doing as tamping down forcefully with a heavy shovel is required to get all MOTHER NATURES(And the dog's) waste in there as the council, or whoever only empty the bins roughly whenever HALLEYS' COMET is seen in the west.

My knowledge of the seasons is fairly limited , i know the winter is cold and wet ,and so is the summer. Even i know various plants, bushes and blooms bloom forth , but i know its summer when all of a sudden i'll sit outside in the sun to relax and have a read when the air is filled with lawnmower engines and buzzing strimmers, but worse is the horrendous mass sounds of rusty metal springs twanging and boinging as every kid within 15 miles starts bouncing on trampolines in the bottom of the garden so their snotty little heads keep popping up and down behind the rattling panel fence. My snarling expression slowly turns to a smile at the thought of the 'little bastards' landing on the trampoline at the wrong angle sending them flying onto the rockery or rocketing over the fence into somebodies porch......Ah if only!

                                                                                  People often say the best garden is a concrete one which has a major drawback, whereas in the natural habitat of grass and soil ants will happily live at the far end of the garden or prefferably next door, but if you have a patio chances are the ants are under those concrete flags and have easy access to your house to go on holidays during the summer ,oh we're having so much fun with those clever little devils.

POPE GOES THE WEASEL !!!!!

                 As a good , god fearing schoolboy i was brought up sampling the daily wrath of the catholic brothers at school, Jeez! They were evil, nasty bastards and you kept your head down and did what you were told ,or else!......It's ironic how christian brothers ,catholics ,etc are portrayed as lovely genorous blokes an beloved by their bretren. The sneakiest place on Earth ,even dodgier than the Kremlin and the White house is the Vatican ,the home of the pope and his crucifix weilding mafia. Through the years the popes and Cardinals have been even meaner swines than the brothers at my old school. I s'pose in the Vatican library is volumes on torture  and various ways of using and mastring branding irons n' stuff, all good stuff.

Some of the smiley eyed popes have had 'dodgy' histories ,wasn't there talk of the recently resigned Pontiff having dodgy dealings in his home country of Germany in those less than glory days of the Nazi regime. But i'm not applying for the job as The Lovely Lynne doesn't want to take the young 'un out of school to live in Rome. And neither of us are too keen at having to go to church on Sundays again.

But there is a cool ,loving ,god fearing man , who has a lot in common with god n' stuff. and would enjoy travelling the world being beloved by everybody....Only the would be President of Europe and the Middle East ,TONY BLAIR!....He'd be damn near President of the world, but might have to wear a dress. It would really piss GEORGE BUSH off as i think he'd like to be Pope, but can popes start wars these days ,in th old days the could get a crusade up, but who knows. TONY BLAIR  is a slimey weasel and with a dodgy background ,....I deal for when the Cardinals pump out the white smoke! 

(M.M.A.) MIXED MARTIAL ARTS AND THE CURE FOR SNORING !!!!

                                                                             
                                                                             One night recently i was sitting alone as per usual killing the night hours flicking through the 10 million channels trying to find one with something on which wont make me react with the usual ,"Oh bollocks to this i'm going to bed!"....Not an easy task. I found a documentary about the old heavyweight boxers through the years, JACK JOHNSON,JACK DEMPSEY ,JOE LOUIS, ROCKY MARCIANO,and various hardcases of that ilk, and facinating stuff it was too. After was a slightly updated form of smashing peoples faces in ...The Cage Fighting MIXED MARTIAL ART(mma). All these somewhat excessively tattooed ,shaven headed fellahs meet in the cage throw a few kicks and punches, progress onto knees and elbows ,then try to ground each other and just try and break arms and legs or pummell the faces of their opponent,all very entertaining blood splattered stuff for all the family. After watching some quite good battles i went to my bed .

                                                                            The Lovely Lynne has always hated my ability to close my eyes and ,well just totally'flake out', fast asleep, no matter what is happening ,or what noises may disturb anyone else. I put this ability down to my healthy disposition and pure clear consience. In my dreams i felt i was in 'The Cage' in a fight. My opponent had just whacked me in the gut with a front thrust kick; followed by a fist around the head ;An elbow in the gut; A knee in the thigh ;Aleg lock :an arm bar with the other leg and arm,whilst with the other fist my goodlooking facial features were being pummelled by her hammerfist. This quiet graphic dream caused me to wake to find that the Lovely Lynne was practising these very MMA techniques upon me to stop my snoring....I think she wants a cage around the bed, not for kinky sex games ,sadly, but i think she just likes knocking seven lumps out of me.

                                                                            She's probably better than the pro MMA fighters, they fight 3x 5 minute rounds to knock the other guy out....The Lovely Lynne has to beat the flat out me awake and then knock me out again....Without the snoring, of course!

THE TERRIBLE REVENGE OF FRED FUMANCHU !!!!!

 .



 

                              Good hello to one and all ! This is an attempt by a poor penniless cartoonist ,and if the GOON SHOW PRESERVATION SOCIETY have anything to do with it will continue to remain a poor penilless cartoonist....Tthey begged and pleaded with me to try and visualise the insane twisted ,distorted vision of the world that the twisted,distorted mind of a certain chap called SPIKE MILLIGAN possessed never more obviosly than when he wrote a certain radio series for 'AUNTIE BEEB'...What else, but 'THE GOON SHOW'!  A whole universe of total imaginary ,well ,insanity!!..The secret of the Goons was ,and is, quite simply, Milligan aimed at the listeners imagination, no explanations were given for anything ,no matter how incredible or insane it may be (theres that insane word again,i apologise ,but it just is the most apt word to describe the insanity of the Goon show, see what i mean?)....My job ,quite simply without the aid of a safety net ,CGI, or anything is to convert this imaginary world into ink,see no bother! Shouldn't take too much effort or pain??????

I dove in with the TERRIBLE REVENGE OF FRED FUMANCHU !!!.....And away we go!!!!....Be gentle with me.
We are back in the good old days of 1895 at the year of the great exhibition at Crystal Palace. It is the highlight of the whole event ....Only the concluding round of THE WORLDS INTERNATIONAL HEAVYWEIGHT SAXOPHONE CONTEST.  This was a true 'Clash of the Titans'.....

From the eastern orient....
FRED FUMANCHU
And his
BAMBOO SAXOPHONE

Versus

With kilt, Shamrock,Leeks,thistle and union jack turban

English all over
MAJOR DENNIS BLOODNOK

As the competition begins FRED FUMANCHU'S symphony for a bamboo saxophone is soundly beaten by a lone'TOOT!' from a british saxophone and a rousing chorus of the not at all partisan red, white n' blue crowd of "THERE'LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND,ETC,ET,".....
Not too pleased with this state of affairs our oriental friend is no longer our friend and swears(bleep!) 'Levenge on Blitish White man.
He returns to his bubbling cauldron in his rabolatory in Outer Mongolia to concoct a hellish brew, that once dlunk by stoopid white man,a single dlop will cause anything he points at to explode.

Disguised as a bottle of whiskey the hellish brew is taken to the BLOODNOK ancestral home in Hyde Park ,one of the oldest dustbins in the whole of Hyde Park. BLOODNOK recognised the oriental with bamboo saxbut wantin to be sue he was an inscrutable eastern oriental  and asked had he heard of 'THE boxer rising?' ..."Only after a count of ten!", Satisfied with this answer and obvious proof that the oriental is oriental with this knowledge of all things oriental ,BLOODNOKdrinks the bottle of whisky and excuses himself for some rather alarming gastric emissions. Fred thenm offers BLOODNOK five shillings if he'll do him a favour.

....For money BLOODNOK is enslaved and complies pointng his finger at a policeman who suddenly explodes....Fred has Bloodnok in his power and under the influence of money  Bloodnok blows 27,000 metal saxophones to bits ,while Birmingham put four past Arsenal....This tradgedy appalls NEDDIE SEAGOON...aka...NED OF THE (Back) YARD....As Arsenal missed a penaltyand he blames th referee, but he is onto the saxophone case and offers a 1,000 pounds reward for any help. Funnily enough our favourite fans of all things MONEY arrive cunningly disguised as EIFFEL TOWERS, but wearing anti exploding saxophone vests, no idiots are GRYTPYPE - THYNNE and his much side punched and side kicked side kick MORIARTY. After accepting an oil painting of a 300 pound cheque and getting it cashed at the ROYAL ACADEMY our heroes after discussions about qualities of refereeing at the Birmingham game are off on the trail.

Sharp as ever Ned points out that two Eiffel towers might look suspicious GRYTPYPE - THYNNE suggests Ned disguises himself as Nelson atop his portable NELSON'S COLUMN(on wheels)rendered inconspicuous by being wrapped in a cardboard replica of CHARING CROSS STATION..See what i mean about the difficulties of drawing this stuff?  Cashing a further 50 pound water colour cheque at  the Royal institute of water colour painters our heroes find FRED disguised as JIM..."No chinaman would have a name like Jim!"Fred/Jim is appearing  at the Adelphi,Our heroes cunningly surround the building from the front and the back,thus FRED escapes from  the side! They shoot and wound him as can be seen by the trail of fresh noodles and preserved ginger as Fred races for Dewsbury home to the last metal saxophone player in England.

                               To the strangled strains of "There's a yellow rose in Texas"MINNIE BANNISTER shrieks and howls as HENRY CRUN heats up a cauldrum trying to immunize the last saxophone with green steam .....                   

                                          Ned elicits the aid of a strange son of the regiment BLUEBOTTLE, ever ready to do good with his faithful 'thing' ECCLES. Ned hands a stick of dynamite to 'Bottle' who gives it to ECCLES To light and count upon inquiring how many to counttoo, the helpful reply is?"..."Just  count  how long it takes then you'll know,wont you?"....ECCLES Does just getting stuck at 7 ,so asks his friend BLUEBOTTLE what comes after 7 and much to 'Bottles' disgust the two are blown to smithereens. BLUEBOTTLE demands that ECCLES "you rotten swine!" wipes his custard like remains off the wall and take him home.
After a ridiculous exchange between NED ,MINNIE and HENRY about whose at the door which i wont even attempt to illustrate, they are attacked by BLOODNOK defending his friend FUMANCHU and trying to get the metal saxaphone for him, but his loyalty is changed when NED offers more money. NED and GRYTPYPE attempt to get under FRED'S kimono to drill holes into his bamboo saxophone ,but he hears NED typing his plan and blows NED and GRYPTPYPE up as well as BLOODNOK for betlaying him.
The show finishes with WALLACE GREENSLADE selling tickets for a lecital by "FRED FUMANCHU THE WORLDS ONLY BAMBOO SAXOPHONIST....I thank you!"

That was bloody hard work, only about 300 more shows to go!!!!!!!1                            

THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY STATES HOW TIME WITH RELATIVES DISTORTS SPACE AND SLOWS TIME!!!!!!!

At last this damn ,dashed ,durned flamin' computer has for some unexplained reason suddenly recovered from the sudden unexplained problems which stopped me flooding the internet with my wit n' wisdom and general bullshit. At last i can put my picture of old ALBERT EINSTEIN  up. He was a clever ol' devil putting foreward theories about space ,time ,spacetime ,light and the speed of those little PHOTONS etc, etc......Actually old Albert didn't intend ,in the beginning to delve into all those physics type stuff ....What he discovered was the effect that visiting or being visited by family and relatives has upon time and space within your universe.

All life is relatively normal that is until CHRISTMAS comes around, esspecially. Your home or the home you go to takes you out of your zone of relative normality to a place where space becomes distorted and shrinks.  Whereas,normally expanding your personal space you sprawl on the floor or couch in your own normal universe,but you are forced to sit upright on a settee sharing wih other uncomfortable unmoving figures. The lack of space multiplied by the lack of access to the television remote (squared) causes time to stretch as space contracts. This can cause 3 days to feel like it has become a fortnight as can be felt by the stiff hips and aching back as the body is affected by this relativistically distorted universe.

E=%$***£&C(SQUARED)........THE THEORY OF RELATIVES

I'M A PROGRESSIVE REGRESSIVE !

I haven't always liked music ,when i was a kid i didn't particully like THE BEATLES for instance ,there were bands on the telly ,but mainly your Sandy Shaws ,Dusty Springfield, and , of course CILLA, who i'm ashamed to admit i fancied as a snotty 5 year old, but that passed as the teenage juices were formed and fermented to screw me up forever ,as far as i can tell.....52 and still seriously screwed up and proud. The telly was also flooded with your ANDY WILLIAMS,MAX BYGRAVES ,THE BATCHELORS,etc, etc ,enough to drive anyone to get out of watching music shows on the telly, and then i started listening to some records ,dont ask me why, but the first record i bought was 'MORNING HAS BROKEN, by CAT STEVENS. Followed by 'SCHOOLS OUT' by ALICE COOPER. By then i liked the 'FAB FOUR', although i hadn't got any records yet ,but time passed and i remedied this lapse in musical taste. Dad came home one night with an 8-Track player with two tapes ,can't remember one, but the other was THE WHOand although i only heard it a few times there was a couple of "Ay ,Dad put that one on again!" tracks.....It was a few years later when they released 'WHO ARE YOU' that i watched the video of them recording it in the studio and that was it !I was hooked!

As the years've ground by i've listened to most stuff . I am not particually knowledgable on music matters, but "I know what i like!"....Over the last ew years i've always likedrock guitar- based music and hated synthesisers and Moog thingies n' stuff and the keyboard pop bands, but i have developed a liking for a lot of the 60's-70's progressive rock ,mainly the main ones ,GENESIS,PINK FLOYD, YES,etc although THE LOVELY LYNNE cant stand YES' JON ANDERSON 'S singing ,admittedly it can be an aquired taste, but i must've aquired it. I love the musical half hour long tracks, i love instrument solos, but still like a good tune.

Although i like nicetunes i still like nasty stuff ,some of the PUNK ,although it was the music of the kids and all that shit  you have to admit there was an awful lot of shit out there....SID VICIOUS, etc as an example ,i loved THE SEX PISTOLS, but he was ,well!!!..

Recently i've developed a liking for the old BLUES stuff, LYNNE hates that as well. I like folk and even some COUNTRY(eeeek!!), y'awl !

I've had to develop a liking for SKA as LYNNE is in a Ska Band and i get to hear a lot ,the other day we went to see MADNESS ,and very enjoyable they was too. And ,apparently we're going to see THE SPECIALS sometime soon. 

I like a proper orchestra too after going to a few performances with lynne ,and love film music ,the soundtracks by people like JOHN BARRY, JOHN WILLIAMS, etc.

Having said i'm not a keyboard fan ,we went to see RICK WAKEMAN a while back and he was great to watch and listen to his banter between songs ,a clever fellah he is ,indeed his son is carrying the family torch as e also saw him perform with his son....on the keyboards!...

Now any day now i'll get into boy and girl bands ,HIP HOP and various music of 'DA STREETZ??' and all that fuzzy,dance DJ SHITE!......I DONT THINK! ......But for now THE WHO are the boys ,well maybe not boys, but definitly 'the dogs bollocks' ,just listen to 'MY GENERATION' from 'LIVE AT LEEDS'....I rest my case, m'lud! 

HEAVEN WONT BE RINGING TO THE SOUND OF CELESTIAL HARPS ,BUT THE LATE PATRICK MOORES XYLOPHONE!

If you walk outside into the freezing frosty night and look up at that clear star studded sky, thats why its so 'effin' freezing 'cos that bloody clear star studded sky.....That cold ,but nice 'Sky at night ' looks as it should, but if you removed the MOON it ,very suddenly wouldn't look quite so normal and 'right!'.....Likewise if you took the longest running telly series in the world, 'THE SKY AT NIGHT' and removed SIR PATRICK MOORE it would have a similar effect as removing the MOON from the heavens. But as the MOON is drifting away from us into space, in a few millions of years the moon'll be gone and the sky at night will be weird ,empty and just quite simply not right. A similar thing, but over a much shorter time period has happened and SIR PATRICK MOORE has drifted away to who knows where leaving his eternally long running 'THE SKY AT NIGHT' a very empty and weird place.

Who'd've thought this scruffy, oddly shaped totally nutty , eternally old aged ,even in his youth, man would be one of the most beloved of British characters with his burning enthusiasm for everything outside the thin blue line that covers the PLANET EARTH. His '15 INCH REFLECTOR' became almost a national catchphrase. His mapping of the MOON through that '15 inch reflector in his back garden and his scribblings with a soft leaded pencil in notebooks formed the maps that NASA would use for the APOLLO space programme that landed man on the moon......Thats pretty impressive when you think about it.

Everybody thouht he was a miserable ol' git. He was so seriously wrapped up in his subject and addressed his viewers as fellow 'nerds' who shared his obsession, which ,if you think about it was a compliment when we're surrounded by various telly smartarses speaking down to us. The nation was stunned when this seriously miserable ol' get turned up in sketches on the 'MORECOMBE AND WISE SHOW' and he was shown to be a musician and playing his beloved XYLOPHONE...."Holy Galaxies, Batman!....PATRICK MOORE has a sense of humour and he's a musician !!!."

If ,God forbid, or God allowing anybody, does find themselves up there in paradise. ,If Heaven rings to the BING ,BONGS,of xylophones, instead of the DRIIIINNNG! of celestial harps, SIR PATRICK MOORE might just have something to do with it.

MAD WHO FAN GUY CARTER IS PEEING HIMSELF WITH EXCITMENT ABOUT NOW AT THE PROSPECT OF HIS MIDDLE FRONT ROW SEAT AT THE WHO'S CHICAGO GIG....This world is suddenly getting much too weird for me!

Guy carter isn't really an old fart ,but you could easily mistake him for one. He is balding grey and ussually got pockets full of notebooks and books of poetry and Shakespeares sonnets. Up until recently he never watched a telly ,not owning one ,but now with his beloved laptop has been known to enjoy mainline and not so mainline entertainment courtesy of the internet!!!.....As far as i know this strange freak of nature hasn't much if any interest in music ,but due to a lady friend over the'pond' our hero is going to sit in the middle of the front row at the WHO'S gig in Chicago. I can see him walking the streets of Walthemstow with his target mod tee shirts ,deerstalker hat ,or trilby with a feather. But maybe not....The only equivalent i can think of is the effect the SEX PISTOLS  would've had on the QUEEN MOTHER in 1942. But we shall see ,as i am already being woken up in the night by text phone messages starting the process of rubbing my face in it.....He'll be rubbing my face in it because he's going ,but i can rub his face in it because he is going!

apparently he's even going to the soundcheck rehearsal ,he's informed us that he's going to bring a book to read while these 'MOODY BLUES WANNA -BE'S' are on???/......I told you he was an oddball!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAA*********************@S!!!!!

As i go out into the dense freezing mist to take the dog for a walk i pass a smashed bus stop with a bunch of scallie lads clad in track suits even in this freezing weather and to compound the fitness theme of their attire are lounging about scratching themselves and puffing on an endless supply of ciggies....Their girlfriends are off to the side keeping quiet and not interfering in their mans talk or 'the 'effin' n' blindin' that passes for manly conversation. The girls are texting away to who knows who ,possibly the girlfriend of one of the other lads whose standing in her place to the side or behind her man only yards away .I wonder looking at the relationship between these boy n' girl scallies wether they are converts to Islam ,or something.

 

I hate the scalliffication of the world, it is on the increase and i hate it!.....I hate the way it has affected peoples accents ,instead of the reigional mild accents ,as in Liverpool from years by ,now its mutated into this terrible gutteral street talk, as has accents all over the land , the language of the streets, my arse ,making you cringe when scallies of all ages spout their uninformed crap about whats wrong with the world and why they've just burnt the town centre don ,etc. all with their hoodie uniforms and scallie vicious dogs ,etc

 

I hate how 'a look' becomes popular and everybody on the planet has to copy it, cloths ,facial hair ,whatever ....I hate the celebrities ,talentless shitheads who are famous for being famous , at the moment i hold a special place in my spleen for that pain ,Cheryl Cole. Every day theres something about her being wonderful and a national treasure???.....I hate the deluge of stand up comedians all with razor sharp observations on the world  on every night and in between on those endless panel shows.

 

I hate people at concerts who have to stand and dance ,ok we have to sit at concerts these days ,its a fact of life then one knobhead will stand and 400 people behind him have to then.....I hate those stupid bitches who have to sit on their boyfriends shoulders blocking everything of to all the people for 200 yards behind them. I hate everybody compounding it all having to film with telephones ,which was a nuisance ,but is worse as people hold up bloody I_Pads....

 

I hate people who have to wear sunglasses on their head all the time...I hate those jeans with the crotch by the knees and those hats which are furry ,but with the long dangly bits at the side. Ah theres plenty more, but i've vented my spleen to an extent and am going to put the kettle on......We're out of milk ,Gawd i hate that!

TAKING THE PISCINE OUT OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL INSURANCE SYSTEM AND AVOIDING PAYING IT BY PRETENDING TO BE A FISH !!!!!

When we were over in the good ol' U.S.of A. the other week ,in FLORIDA we had to go to SEA WORLD and while there i got dragged kicking and screaming to see the Killer Whales jumping and splashing about, very impressive they are ,but very mercenary. They wont even stick their snout above the water unless they get a bucket of fish to swallow from the team of swim suit clad smiling typical American girls called Becky and who say "Hi!" a lot.

As we sat there waiting for the show to start ,a big screen started to show a Disney type "If we all band together we can save our wonderful ,beautiful world!" cute ecological film......They showed their fish medical department which has, apparently some of the most advanced equipment there is. It was commented how the hospital was as good as a human hospital. The only difference i could see was that if your human you have to pay through the nose to be treated and cured, if your medical insurance policy isnt paid up to date ,tough shit ,you could find yourself in a hole ,or, as the gangsters used to say"Swimming with the fishes!".....Who thanks to the sea world and such places are a lot healthier. than the folks of that great nation. I think to avoid any medical bills dress up as a dolphin ,as everybody loves the dolphins and go to the fish doctor with your malady ,dont tell him what the problem is,but with dolphins being dead clever you might be able to indicate whats up, the piscine doctors and nurses wont be suspicious they'll just be amazed how wonderful nature is and how cute dolphins are.

I STILL DONT KNOW WHO SHOT J.R. BUT HE'S GONE TO MEET HIS MAKER ANYHOW...THE ONE WITH THE HORNS ,TAIL N' FORK !!!!

 

If you look on SKY TV they are showing the original DALLAS  series which is the ultimate SOAP OPERA.... Even more dramatic then CORONATION ST and HOLLYOAKS together. The stories of  the distgustingly oil rich EWWINGS family.....But the main character spawned was the nastiest ,evilest, greediest ,slimiest, money grabbing character of them all J.R. with his alcoholic wife SUE ELLEN...But money and oil and doing terrible bad things to get more oil and money was J.R.'s stock in trade. J.R. was so famous that when the actor who played him LARRY HAGMAN realised his worth and wanted a payrise, the producers decided to 'kill him off'!....Hagman didn't back down and went on holiday with his family and his character was shot!.....Even today people who weren't even born when DALLAS was on ,or have quite simply never watched it at all really used ,possibly one of the most famous phrases ,ever!..."WHO SHOT J.R.?".....Actually i've forgotten who shot him.

 

When the film arrived in the UK it was kept under maximum security in case the answer got out. Apparently, the cast in the States had to film a heap of different scripts and scenarios ,so none of them knew who did the dasterdly deed ,even if it was them!Hagman got his ridiculously large pay rise and returned.

They couldnt afford to pay him ,but they couldnt afford not to either.

 

I temember a young freshfaced LARRY HAGMAN when i were no'but a lad! He played an astronaut who found a very tasty genie in a lamp in a series called 'I DREAM OF JEANNIE!'....This was a slight wacky series as was Larry ,who was very fond of the 'WACKY 'BACCY!'....Liked to drink and was fond of LSD...with musicians and actors like JACK NICHOLSON...So he was a bit of a 'lad' an,although ,apparently a nice guy ,an inveterate practical joker. I saw him on various shows and he seemed to enjoy sending himself up .

 

But the most famous bad guy in telly history has gone to meet his maker...Not the nice fellah with the beard n' halo ,no the other one with the horns,wings ,tail and fork

ZEN AND THE ART OF SHAVING YOUR HEAD ,TATTOOEING YOURSELF ALL OVER GOING IN A CAGE AND PUNCHING THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER!!

                                                                              I do enjoy watching the various sports channels and watch a bit of KICKBOXING,or the increasingly popular MMA, MIXED MARTIAL ARTS  mayhem which is becoming increasingly popular. The two cartoons which i have put up for your delectation were done a while ago and the more eagle eyed and pedantic nit picking pains in the arse amongst you will recognise as being used before ,although i prefer to look at it as artistic recycling of a sort. The top one was when our beloved P.M. DAVID CAMEROON  was fighting our cause for something or other with our oldest friends across the channel. I thought they should let them slug it out in a cage fight. Likewise when the elections were taking place and we had to sit through the three way telly debate ,i thought they should have slugged it out in the cage, the winner would've gained a lot more respect for their fighting prowess and courage than the party policy bullshit which was the political 'SUZY Q' knockout punch that CAMEROON won it with.

 

The reason for the cage fight theme was quite simply because a MARTIAL ARTIST lady friend of me and the family and teacher of my nephews was fighting in a title KICK BOXING fight in the holiday town of CONWAYin North Wales.....Lovely it was too....As we walked through high winds and pissing down storms to the glamour of Conway Leisure Centre. All the competitors and their club mates were there,various MMA club hoodies ,all with stubbly unshaven chins ,but totally shaved heads and ,if you looked carefully you might see a bit of flesh coloured skin between the tatooes.

 

As we sat there guzzling from bottled lager with 'dance music' booming out ,from the speakers that we found ourselves right in front of .....I'm sure i've got tinnittus now.  One by one after the young ,but still puppy-fatted long legged would be model ring girls had done their circuit of the ring with the round number the spilling of the blood n' snot began. Dont get me wrong ,some good stuff took place ,but basically it was a brawling slugfest ,on the whole . KICK BOXING is ,basically fists and feet, but the MMA is no holds barred ,kicks,punches, knees and most amazingly aside from JUJITSU locks and holds on the deck is how its ok to hammer the face of your opponent with your fist as they lie on the deck. I dont think any of the MMA fights went the distance . Possibly the best two fights of the night were the womens ,two momentous scraps ,unfortunatly our friend ANN lost to her opponent ,only just ,but she is a slim lady and her opponent who held the title wouldnt fight if she was above a certain weight ,so Ann had to lose over 2 stone, so she went from not much in the first place to virtually nothing in as many weeks, which cant do you much good.

 

 

Call me a MARTIAL ART SNOB,if you will ,but i remember watching the great fighters at KARATE championships through the years in a lot more traditional vein, although it was semi-contact ,a lot more control and skill was displayed ,sadly ,as sport KARATE is becoming more and more important in the burgeoning number of new schools and styles popping up all over the place ,the traditional techniques and principles of MARTIAL ARTS  and the BODY MECHANICS that make KARATE a life time study have all but dissappeared, but the sport fighting like boxing is hard and fast ,but as in traditional boxing and most sport the body wont take it after the thirties on the whole. The traditional KARATEKA would power in ,but would protect themselves ,but the cage figthers went in swinging and leading with their faces ,there was hardly a guard up all night, very strange.....

 

 

Nobody likes getting hit: Then you get used to it...: Then you dont mind it too much: Then you dont mind it at all : Then you start to enjoy it and then you look foreward to a smack and cant wait to fight and enjoy ,getting a smack ,but never quite as much as dealing them out.....If you do ,then i think maybe its time you looked for something else to pass your time.

 

 

One thing that i didn't miss about the cage fighting night was ,i blame the bottled lager ,but the smell of  farts pervaded the hall....The fighters didnt stink ,but some of the audience did!....Some knockout stuff there ,it actually made me wish i wa up in the cage sometimes.



ORIGINAL SIN OR ORIGINAL DIET ???.....IF EVE HAD STAYED ON THE ATKINS DIET WOULD WE STILL BE IN PARADISE ???...

                                  Long ago a couple of days after the world was very kindly created in a week long rush job by the supreme being known as GOD  to his mates, the single occupant of this paradise ,well it was starting to look like that once all the rubble ,diggers and skips had been moved....Well the lone resident was a fellah called ADAM. I imagine he was quite pleased even if he didn't have a clue what in gods name was going on,he probably didn't know who god was until he stood by him humming and muttering pessimistically, rubbing his beard over wether he could squeeze a mountain range before the horizon ,or wether a verdant forest could be inserted over here ,or over there, etc. Lets face it builders are builders wether they be supreme beings or not!

The garden of EDEN as it was called was very nice and everything ADAM could want for was there ,if he had any idea what he wanted for. Adam ,to be honest ,although he didn't know it was lonely and bored, he was the only person in the world ,so there wasn't even anything to watch on the telly, there was plenty of nature around him, but nobody to make the nature programmes ,i mean this is a long time ago ,even before DAVID ATTENBOROUGH¬

GOD had an idea .ADAM went to sleep one night and woke up in the morning and came out with the first mouthful of expletives ,since the dawn of creation ...The reason for this outburst of swearwords was because as he sat up a pain shot through his side due to the nocturnal removal of a couple of his ribs by GOD?....Now having busted a couple of ribs in my time i can appreciate how ADAM felt. Once he'd calmed down and stopped swearing GOD revealed his grand design....

It was what would become known as  woman in biological terms, but for now she was called EVE. ADAM was a little flabbergasted....She had a lumpy hairless chest and absolutly NO DANGLY BIT?????.....But funnily enough it wasn't unpleasant to look at and ADAMS dangly bit seemed to lose a bit of its 'dangle' for some reason. They both weren't too attracted to each other, but felt awkward and went about covering bits of themselves up. When this had taken place a funny thing happened the more they covered themselves up ,the more they wanted to rip the others covering off???.....GOD sat them both down and 'HAD A TALK' about things n' mummies n' daddies ,etc,etc. He also 'SPAKE UNTO THEM!', as thats what gods do rather than 'TALK TOO!' about living in paradise and populating the planet.

Eve was a woman and the only thing she was worrying about populating the world was losing her figure! As every woman has and will no doubt continue to do so ,she investigated various diets. God told them to leave an apple on a tree alone, but EVE who'd just had a few months on a meat only diet THE ATKINS DIET ,i think its called, decided with the help of the DEVIL disguised as a serpent whispering in her ear to start a fruit diet and started with a chunk out of a certain off limits apple, whereas if she'd stuck with the ATKINS diet she may well have bitten a chunk out of the serpent, i believe snake meat is very tasty. If she'd done that we'd all be living in paradise.

When THE LOVELY LYNNE goes out in the morning with her packet of fruit ,bananas,apples ,etc, i imagine her with her lunch of chopped serpant ,if things'd been different once long ago.

OF COURSE BOND IS BACK !...HIS HOBBY IS REINCARNATION, MAYBE HE COULD TEACH 'M' A FEW TRICKS!

During my blog layoff ,unable to put images on the computer i attempted a couple of purely painted images ,no pre sketches or computer imaging just some very battered paint brush, long past their chuck in the bin by-date and slapped on the acrylic paint to attempt yet another DANIEL CRAIG as we'd been   to see the latest ,much anticipated JAMES BOND  film, SKYFALL ,a few days before.

Yes i know its not like the old SEAN CONNERY style ,etc,etc, but the changes have to be made and let it evolve and i could see our mean rough tough DANNY BOY turning into an early wry smoothie OO agent, as it becomes clear the character and stories ,although they are set in the modern day are from the beginning of JAMES BOND and how he became what he did. Whether we'll have SPECTRE,SMERSH,BLOFELDT, the white pussy cat and shark tanks,etc, who knows, but i enjoyed SKYFALL and love DANIEL CRAIG ,in a manly butch way ,of course .....He's a hard bastard! But the film was interesting with plenty of twists and turns . People complained about being set in London and Scotland, but i enjoyed that, it made a refreshing change from exotic beaches, etc, apparently it was mainly financial reasons rather than artistic reasons, but it worked for me and, quite frankly thats all i'm worried about. 

The other main relief was the action scenes ,they werent the mad frenetic ,badly edited way ,as in QUANTUM OF SOLACE,esspecially. In fact they were quite good and able to be followed by us conneisseurs of extreme violence. The LOVELY LYNNE drooled over MR CRAIG for totally different reasons and even said she'd like to go back and see it again.....Praise indeed!

A few days ago i got dragged all the way to SKEGNESS as THE LOVELY LYNNE  and her band THE MANCHESTER SKA FOUNDATION were playing a 'gig' at a scooter rally. I had two C.D.'s of BOND soundtracks ,,One was GOLDFINGER and t'other was THUNDERBALL. when i used to drive around our green n' pleasant land i used to play them loud , it was great flying along the highways and byways overtaking everybody while the BOND theme boomed in you ears , i have to admit to the odd wry smile and cocked eyebrow, it was even better when i was going to a job and i was in a dinner suit....I was LEATHERBARROW!....TIM LEATHERBARROW!  So i gave THE LOVELY LYNNE  the best of JOHN BARRY,admittedly it wasn't what she'd've chosen if asked,but i didn't, so on went the Bonds! But when she heard all the Brass ,esspecially the TROMBONES she was happy. Whether the modern BONDS will ever match the old ones musically is ,sadly doubtful, but you never know...

It just ,so happened the following day Lynne had a 'gig' in Manchester ,so i stayed home and watched THUNDERBALL following the music as i still had the soundtrack in my head,  it was great, i've always lked THUNDERBALL,in fact i think its the first Bond i remember seeing on the pictures. I always remembered THE VULCAN BOMBER under the sea , a beautiful craft .Then a few weeks later bursting with excitment on seeing "the bond plane!" and excitedly informing my dad at Speke airshow as a kid as this gorgeous Delta-Winged vision roared over our heads, absolutly wonderful, its still the JAMES BOND PLANE!

JAMES BOND WILL BE BACK

(I do hope so!) 

'ORRIBLE HARRY POTTER N' THE UN 'ORRIBLE 'OO!!!!

                                                                           WHAY HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.................Its a grotty wet cold Warrington morning, not that theres any other kind ,so i'm fairly used to it ,but what makes this grotty morning different from all the other grotty mornings is that for some reason i've managed to get an image on the fuckin' blog ,at long last!......Forgive the colourful language, but i've been totally screwed for weeks and ,although i haven't a clue what i've done .....I've done it!.....I did a couple of pure painted caricatures the other day ,not using pencil sketches or anything ,just slapping on the jolly old acrylic paint. The reason you have been exposed to yet another WHO image is twofold.....If you are sitting comfortably ...I shall explain.

The other week we were across the'pond' in the good ol' U.S.of A. We had a trip to Florida no less. The weather was nice and there wasn't that many people there so the 'parks' weren't full so 'yours truly' could go on the rides 'again n' again....I admit it ,i'm a middle aged ol' fart and i love 'the rides ,even the simulated ones ,like SPIDERMAN and THE SIMPSONS at UNIVERSAL....But the main reason for the park trip was because my daughter ELARA is an out n' out HARRY POTTER nut!.....Her mum THE LOVELY LYNNE is quite fond as well it should be said and has read the books a heap of times. The two of them have the ability to 'fly' through books ,Lynne can read an 8 inch thick tome in a day...It's a gift i'd love to have, but alas! Elara takes after her mam ,thankfully and zooms through books retaining the information ,yet another gift i don't possess. But anyhow the two of them were reading HARRY POTTERin the Florida sun and going on the HARRY POTTER RIDE again and again and yet a few more agains and again, but its all very clever and impressive and they loved it.

But HARRY POTTER was a big part of the trip ,but not all .....There was something else ,far more important due to take place!

THE WHO were playing in down town ORLANDO!!!!.....And we were going to see the boys. Anight or two before we went to see them ,they played their first QUADROPHENIA gig and after when they were ploughing through the hits when my best mate PETE TOWNSHEND with his much publicised hearing difficulties muttered something about the sound levels and walked off....Nothings ever simple when the 'ORRIBLE 'OO go on stage. Our tickets were for Petes side of the stage and we had visions of bare stage with tumbleweeds blowing across. But the boys were there on the night in fine fettle and let rip !!!!.Townshend leaping about like a madman, wonderful! And Daltrey sounding stunningly powerful after surgery on his throat a while back....Even ELARA conceeded "THEY WERE AWESOME!"......Praise indeed!

Across the road was a boozer where we met a few English lads who'd lived in the states for years, one had a proper Union Jack jacket as TOWNSHEND  and MOON used to wear i got a photo of me wearing it ,if i can work out the advanced technology in putting a photo on the blog i'll treat you . Lynne now knows what she can gether stylish hubbie, me for xmas, wether she'd let me out in it is another matter, although she'd not be above nicking it for one of her SKA GIGS ,as she's done to her daughters DOC MARTENS boots( what would the bank say?...) And you lot thought she was nice and respectable, well !Let me tell you!...............

The other reason for the WHO picture was purely because it was on the scanner from last week so PETE n' ROGER were my scanner guinea pigs..............