BOND IS BACK, BUT IS HE OO7, OR OO?

The other night after a few pints with a few mates in the fine city of Liverpool, now uncultured, just as we've always loved it. I returned to the bosom of my beloved, the lovely Lynne, who proved her loveliness by getting a chinese. Not a person on the couch in front of me, that would be silly, after what happened last time!..No, this time she got a take away meal for us to enjoy as we watched the DVD of 'A QUANTUM OF SOLACE'. The new James Bond film, of course. Now i am a confessed lover of everything Bond and always look foreward to the next film and rewatch the old ones again and again. I also think that Danny Craig ,the new boy is very good and thought Casino Royale was very good too. So, when i went to the pictures a few months ago, my spirits were high and there was something approaching excitment in my middleaged (slighty) protruding belly. But watching it, i thought the best word for it is, 'frenetic'. I put it down to sitting too close to the screen. But watching the DVD, it was worse. The film makers,in my considered opinion starting with the BOURNE films got increasingly 'frenetic'. They have decided 'The MTV generation' think that Frenzied and Frenetic means exciting and action-packed. Then this lousy stupid way of filming started turning up all over the place. Spiderman 3, compared to the first two was frenetic; The Dark Knight, frenetic. Now They've decided that 'Frenetic'is what we want. Whereas as far as i'm concerned these 'frenetically edited scenes are just totally baffling and confusing. I think i'll send them the bill for a new remote control, after the hammering it got watching Bond ."What happened there? Wind it back!". This went on for most of the film. So after a dissappointing meet up with my old hero, the lovely Lynne tells me "You stink of garlic!" I wasn't shaken or stirred, i was gutted. This never happens to James Bond.

CHARLES DARWIN & SON ; THE MOON MOVING AWAY FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES AND THE SHREWSBURY CARTOON FESTIVAL....

I'll tell you something those DARWIN fellahs were clever fellahs. Discovering the EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES and making biology the new physics, and, according to some nutballs ,he 'killed god??'....But ,most important without the great intellect and genius of Charles Darwin we'd never have had the PLANET OF THE APES FILMS( Five of 'em.) And the telly series....

But what isn't generally known, but i shall now reveal to you seekers of knowledge, is that, Good ol' Charlies son, GEORGE DARWIN.Not a great lover of worms plants n' monkeys. Made a lifetime study of the tides. Which must've been a little awkward in Shrewsbury. But he carried on searching high n' low (tides) for the answers to a heap of tidal questions. He clicked onto the fact that the moon had something to do with it. And also calculated that the moon is moving away from the Earth.(celestial objects ,like people just drift apart, i s'pose. But people move apart faster than 3 1/2 cms/ year.).....This Darwinian insight was confirmed much later by a certain Mr NEIL ARMSTRONG and colleagues on the APOLLO missions to our lunar companion. It's sad to think that our friendly 'man in the moon' is in the process of packing his spotted hanky on his stick to start his journey to who knows where in the universe ,boldly going where no moon has gone before, etc,etc.Or just crashing into Jupiter or something.

It is the anniversary of Charles Darwins birth and is being deservedly celebrated in his hometown of SHREWSBURY, at the annual SHREWSBURY CARTOON FESTIVAL,Which is themed on Darwin and the Natural sciences in tribute to the great man. The festival is on in april and well worth a visit(24-26th April, i think.) And also gives me an excuse to use the cartoons i submitted here. See! There's madness behind my method.

CLOTHES MAKETH THE MAN,SO WHY WEAR THOSE STUPID F***'IN WOOLY BOBBLE HATS ,'COS THEY DON'T??????......

If you are into clothes and fashion and are of a 'trendy bent', as a lot of chaps n' chapesses are these fashion concious days. In fact it seems that the buying of the' right gear' is more important than buying boring stuff like food for the family, etc. I have never been a victim of fashion, although people might agree that i'm a fashion victim . Or ,even not fashion concious, but more fashion unconcious. I can understand the urge of some people when they see some people wearin 'the next big thing', and want to get in there before everyone and those over 25 start wearing them. But what i can't understand is why people start wearing cloths in a certain way, which catches on. Like wearing jeans with the arse hanging down around their knees. And the length about 2 ft too long so all the water and shit they drag their manky unlaced 'pumps' through is soaked up by the ridiculously flared denim. The fact that some odd sorts look at that and think "cool, i want sooooo much to look like that!"...Very strange. Well, i'm too old to understand whats 'in', 'on the street.'

The other thing of equal bafflement and beffudlement to me is how these odd bods, trendy tho' they may be can look at those ridiculous brightly psychadelically coloured woollen bobble hats with the ear flaps and long bobbled straps hanging from them. Then think "wow! They're soooooo cool, i want to have one and walk around looking like a real cool dude(gobshite)." I hate them .I get this unreasonable urge to grab the wearers bobbled toggles and strangle the stupid moronic prick with them. I'd give them a kick up the arse as well, but the droopy arse look does serve as a defensive mechanism. It looks like they've had an embarrassing accident or a distended rectum, either way it looks like a place you wouldnt like to plant your boot.

REMEMBER WHEN SPORTSMEN BROKE PROPER BONES?

I'm not a great sport fan, i used to watch Liverpool many years ago and had a season ticket for a few years once upon a lifetime ago. I do enjoy watching old games and old boxing on the 'box' from time to time. There's a channel called ESPN on the SKY network and they show old sporting events. I've just been watching a heap of old Liverpool games from the 70's and early 80's. And a series of documentaries on various old time boxers. Things just seemed more real and exciting, as well as 'harder.' There was a documentary about 'Football..The wonderful game'..All about the 70's . It was great all these teams with shocking haircuts;Droopy mustaches; Shorts that were so tight they seperated the blood in the legs from the blood in the rest of the body. Thats probably why the players were always boozing n' shagging all those models, etc...As soon as they took those shorts off and the blood from above and below re-connected in the 'middle-nether reigons'..Well, i'd rather not think about it, it makes you wonder about the team bath. The pitches started the season green and pristine. A few showers of rain and a few games and the bowling green became a bog. This was also the days when tackling was allowed. Players, who wouldn't be allowed in the ground, these days, even if they were allowed out of the solitary padded cell in the psychiatric hospital they were sentanced to spend their life in. In those days they were encouraged, cheered and praised for attempted murder every Saturday afternoon. God bless Tommy Smith! The players used to suffer from proper medical conditions....None of your damaged meta-tarsels, ligament or tendon damage...... It was stuff like "He's done his leg in.... Busted his foot .....Done his knee....Or had his nose busted!!!" All this was cured by the cold wet sponge that had spent the game festering in stagnant water in an old club rusty bucket before being slapped, not placed, but slapped onto the 'sore bit'. 9 times out of 10, the player saw the bucket and sponge coming , muttered 'Sod that!', suddenly found the inner strength to ignore the pain and get back into the battle, it wasn't a game. As the immortal BILL SHANKLEY once said about football being a matter of life or death.."No, son , it's far more important than that".

THE GOOD OLD BRITISH PUB IS DYING, BUT THE GOOD OLD BRITISH HANGOVER IS FIT AND WELL !

I found this cartoon the other day, done a few years ago for an independant Liverpool brewery called Cains. Sadly the, once small, but highly successful brewery, i think has had to close up a while ago now. Which was/is sad, as it needn't have happened it was all down to some red tape involving the gobshites in Brussels;Westminister and Liverpool city council. Some might say that my idea of an ad campaign, focusing on the concept of the hangover wouldn't be something that would help the sales of beer. I would dispute this feverently, as in my considered opinion the hangover is what made the British great. As i have had many experiences of hangovers throughout my formative years, or what i can remember of them. I feel i can speak with some authority on the Great British Hangover. I, of course include my kith n' kin over in Ireland in this. Partly due to the boozy geography aspect, but also , because its 'The black stuff and an Irish wee one, as a chaser' which has been the main cause of my suffering , and as a result personal development through the years.

When Johnny Foreigner hits the bottle, it normally is ,a bottle. Whereas we Brits go all out on quantity rather than quality, after a few pints. There is something inherantly strange about drinking beer. The more you drink the faster it goes down and the more you can drink. You would find it totally impossible to drink 15 pints of ;water, milk, lemonade, etc....But 15 pint of black sludgey Guiness and it doesn't touch the sides. Nobody drinks like as we do. So, that is why our hangovers are like no others. Other countries get hangovers, of course they do, but our hangovers are truly British hangovers.

It is said when people, die on an operating theatre, they see a golden light, etc, etc. The hungover, virtual corpse, sees nothing but impeneterable blackness as they lie in 'their pit' like a dead jellyfish on the beach. Eventually as the 'body' becomes aware that, unfortunatly they are still alive and have to wake and face the pain and suffering that is waiting on the other side of those tightly closed eyelids. The hangover incorporates every symptom of every disease virus, bug, injury or bang on the head that you could catch, be infected by, be hit by or inflict upon yourself. It has ;headaches, blindness; Nasal and sinus problems and blockages; Furry tongues; Inflamed throats; Flemmy lungs; Incredibly upset and volatile stomach, gastric and intestinnal problems; Bowel disorders; Nervous disorders causing damage to co-ordination. Even the most simple and natural of tasks become virtually impossible. The body temperature veers madly between raging almost fever like high temperatures to shivering chills.......And we do this to ourselves, for fun and pay (increasingly) large amounts of money to do it . But there is a cure, but it takes a cast iron stomach and courage beyond belief to attempt the cure........... A GOOD GREASY FRY-UP...(As frowned upon by good doctors everywhere.)....Followed by a stumble down the road to the local boozer, if it hasn't closed down, yet for A COUPLE OF PINTS!!!!...(As frowned upon by good politicians everywhere).. It's a case of if it doesn't kill you, it'll cure you. There, y'see, If we can survive and joke about this level of suffering we are indeed a hardy breed, possibly not the most sensible of hardy breeds, but pretty hardy.

RUGBY, A THUGS GAME PLAYED BY GENTLEMEN AND ADVERTISERS...

The other day as i watched the English rugby squad; smash ,slaughter and destroy the French......Excuse me a moment ......"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!........Right, where wuz i?"........ "Oh yep i remember...HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!...Oh sorry about that i shall make an effort to get to the point starting in the very next paragraph...Honest !....(snigger, chortle , cackle...)

In the middle of the pitch was this huge advert for some bank, but its painted in such a way that it's in perspective to the television cameras over in the stands alongside the pitch. Which i find a little disconcerting it makes the pitch look as if its been tipped up on one side, and the pitch is on a 60 degree slope and the ball and the players should be bouncing and rolling down to the nearside touchline. The only way to reach the far side touchline would be with climbing boots; knotted ropes and crampons. And then theres the crowd around and behind the advert. They would see it at very different angles to the pristine bank advert we television armchair supporters see.( after all it is us that matter.) It would be viewed as a variety of distorted shapes, depending where in the ground you are seated. Also, on occassions the paint comes off the company logo, onto the players .Instead of ,grass,mud and blood colours, as one would expect. There is quite often ;Pinks, blues, oranges and a whole spectrum of corporate logo colours plastered over our Butch boys.

Around the pitch where once the advertising hoardings were in front of the crowd. These days there are a number of parrallel hoardings as they are now digital. And now a whole range of clever animated adverts are displayed,then break up into digital dots to advertise something new then change again, or go back to the beginning. During the England game there was a pork pie advert and part of this consisted of a pork pie travelling the length of the pitch. This caused a fantastically surreal vision of an England winger racing down the wing being overtaken by a digital pork pie zipping along the advertising hoarding.......!

The change of ads ,the break up of the digital dots n' stuff , is according to my sister and wife, who suffer from migraine, the oncoming of an attack is not dissimilar to the effects on the screens. I noticed during a recent trip to London, that a lot of Ads , mainly on the tube are digital /video/liveaction/ whatever?.....20 adverts of the same adonis-like man with his 6,7,or 8pack stomach(bastard) having a shave .This is a very boring image and i find it very irritating, especially as the gorgeous gobshite is smiling at his reflection in the mirror....Nobody smiles when they are shaving!..Shaving is a pain in the arse, even as your shaving the chin and if you do smile, the advertised - crappy8 blade dispossable Zoom blade, or whatever it's called will cut chunks out of your face....The pain is then compounded by throwing the stuff in the advert that is fresh and full of Zing, much like the throwing of concenterated sulphuric acid over the mass of open sore that was once your face. Thats the difference between advertising and real life....Real life is pain...Advertising is just a pain.

THE SAMURAI SPIRIT OR JUST BAD LOSERS ?

THE BAD LOSER

I was watching a programme on the telly the other night all about a very odd bunch of chaps indeed. The Samurai warriors of Japan. They would train all their life with the most fantastic weapons ever made, (before atom bombs ,polaris, trident, of course ),but the samurai sword. perfectly balanced and razor sharp. Which, unfortunatly couldnt be said for the weilder of this perfect blade /sword. These noble brave warriors devoted their life to learning to fight and devoted their lives to their emperor , overlord ,or whatever they called the 'bosses in those bygone feudal days. They would march into battle cutting and slashing their opponents ,then if they won, all was well and good and celebrations abound . But, if they lost their fight they would commit a very silly thing indeed. Ritual suicide, or Hari-Kiri..... A very strange way to get over a defeat. Clutching a smaller samurai sword, specially designed for the purpose they would kneel down; Ram the dagger into the lower belly; Pull the blade across to the other side then pull up???..Then as their guts spill out over the deck, their 'second' would take a swipe at their neck with a full sword and decapitate the disembowelled warrior, or ex-warrior. This was the only honorable way to go. One Samurai commited Hari-Kiri and his assistant had to take 3 or 4 swipes at his neck to decapitate him..Just not his day, some days it's not worth a Samurai getting out of bed.

Thankfully the Samurai spirit doesn't abound around here. All sports fixtures would be a blood bath.At the football, after full time as the beaten 11 at the 'match' disembowel themselves in the shower.(bloodbath in the shower, eh?) But on the bright side, the season would be a lot shorter and they'd have to be a lot more flexible with the transfer window, ; The snooker player ruining the green baize with his innards; The defeated darts champion trying to hack his way through his hugh beer belly with his tiny Samurai dart; In golf the 18th hole would be a mess ,all that blood, the green wouldnt be green for long . In my case dissappointment and defeat is something i'm quite used to. But pain, funnily enough is something i never got the hang of. So, i've decided i'm going to be honourbound to stay dishonourable. The only Samurai spirit in the Leatherbarrow's is a bottle of after shave in a cupboard in the bathroom.......Gawd it stinks, too!

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 !!!!!

TERRY WOGAN AND KEN BRUCE NEEDN'T BE PUT OUT TO GRASS WHEN THEY CAN GROW THEIR OWN IN THE STUDIOS OF RADIO 2

Whilst keeping in touch with whats going on ,and whats cool n' groovin' out there on the streets by tuning into Sir Terry Wogan and Laird Kenneth MacBruce on Radio 2 the other morning. It struck me as a little odd that during the news there was an item relating to how the number of successful police cannabis raids had increased. The item always started with the line,"The B.B.C. has recently become aware of an increase in successful police seizeures of cannabis". Then listening to the wild celtic ramblings of the aforementioned aged hippies, it struck me. SIR TERRY WOGAN and KEN BRUCE(untitled).. ARE GROWING THEIR OWN CANNABIS!!!.... I can see it now the once respectable studios of once respectable radio 2 are hidden in a fog of high quality unrespectable 'wacky 'baccy'.... Thats why the two once respected broadcasters are always making mistakes ,they're blind and stoned. Just listen to Terry Wogan reading one of the 'Janet and John'stories from time to time...I rest my case. The Beeb have become aware of the increase in police raids and seizeures as it it is broadcasting house that the boys in blue and black bullet-proof kevlar are storming through on their almost daily drug raids. C'mon kids get with it, tune into Sir Tel and The Brucemeister.








And in the spirit of grooviness and 'with it ness'. These drug raids on the Beeb are helping the envoironment by keeping the metropolitan polices 'carbon footprint' to a minimum . New Scotland yard is only 'up the road from the Beeb. So exhaust gas emissions are kept down , drug and sea levels are kept down. Thank you Sir Tel ,and Ken for saving the world......

FREE SPEECH CAN COST YOU AND YOU CAN BE CHARGED FOR SPEAKING FREELY !!

There are billions of people on this planet of ours and we are told that everyone is different. There are different ;Races, creeds, colours of skin, shapes of faces;preferences of footy teams ;Eastenders, Emmerdale or Corrie; Political leanings, etc, etc .So it is almost impossible to say something about anybody without offending somebody somewhere somehow or way. This has rendered the noble concept of Free speech, totally unworkable. In many places people who speak out are quite simply shot. In our enlightened side of the world people write to the BBC, to complain or specialist goverment departments who are highly trained to spot the various 'ist',or 'ism' remarks and constantly invent new ones; Racism, sexism were once the old favourites, once there was only a few ,but with advances in abusive technology we have ,ageism ,sizeism,spotism ,stupidism,stinkism,and on it goes. Once it was;"Sticks and stones may break my bones(which seems reasonable enough)..But names will never hurt me..(But they'll crucify you!)"..Theres no escape, they'll have you wherever n' whenever you open your mouth. And because we are so decent and understanding and liberal in our noble beliefs,or is it so quick and eager to take offence, quite often it isn't the people being referred to that are offended .They may take a comment in the possible well meant spirit in which its delivered, but its other people who take offense on their behalf...



The wonderful Jezza Clarkson was caught over the other side of the world in the wilds of Australia during a Top Gear stage show..(I wonder how 'The Stig' roadtests the latest Ferrarri on a stage in a theatre/)...Jezza, the pot-bellied ,frizzy- haired idiot ,i'm sure wouldn't accuse me of being; Pot-belly'ist ; Frizzy-hairist, or idiot ist, as he is

(1) Pot bellied......................................... CHECK !



(2) Frizzy- haired (albeit a little less frizzier, but greyer, these days)..........CHECK !



(3) Idiotic (In a funny way, of course)..............................CHECK !



So that seems reasonable description of our favourite motoring celebrity. But when he tried to give an inciteful geneological,physical and psychological profile of our beloved prime minister to these ignorant Aussies who know as much about Gordon Brown as we do about their glorious leader. He described as :A one-eyed, Scottish idiot.He was in trouble. The reasons for this description:



(1) One-eyed..................................... CHECK !

(2) Scottish......................................Ohh, och aye CHECK the noo!

(3) A total f**'in' idiot......................CHECK n' double CHECK !



But from the far side of the world Jezza was adjudged to have been found guilty of being;



(1) Mono-visualist'ist...............................GUILTY !

(2) Racist...................................................GUILTY !(Sasenach swine !)

(3) Idiotistical'ist.....................................GILTEE !!



It sounds like a perfect description of the P.M. to me ,but i can say what i like as talk is cheap as long as its not free.

AN EXPERT IS SOMEBODY VERY CLEVER WHO WARNS AND ADVISES US ABOUT THINGS THAT WE'VE KNOWN ABOUT FOR AGES !

Everything is run by bosses and experts ,the experts tell the bosses whats happenin' on the streets and markets in their considered opinion. Bosses need to know these things as being big bosses , unlike the rest of us who work 8 hours a day with an hour for lunch, they have an hour for work and the rest for lunches and dinners. They just aren't able to involve themselves with the 'nuts and bolts 'and people involved in the business that pays their incredible incomes and mind boggling bonuses. Ironically the less you do the more you can 'rake in.'


When an aircraft is about to crash ,you don't need to be an expert in aerodynamics or aviation to understand what is going on. Everything that isn't strapped down slides down to the front of the airplane ;The ground seems to be getting nearer, as can be divined by the houses and cars getting bigger by the second; The attendants want you to ram your head between your legs???...I'm sure it's not ,as has been hinted at , to kiss your arse goodbye.But it would be a more enjoyable last few minutes if you could stick your head between somebody elses legs and kiss their arse goodbye, but i'll move on thats for another blog and 'The Lovely Lynne may read this.. In the cockpit ( this is nothing to do with heads between legs , this is where the pilot sits you twisted swines..). The pilot will realise that the day isn't going to be one of his better ones as the screaming of the jets; The spinning dials and altimeters spinning in all directions rather than hovering over where they should be. This all points to passengers and crew that the plane is in deep shit. Whereas the head of the airline authority on his extended lunch will have no knowledge of whats happening and would probably deny it was and insist that flying was still safer than crossing the road.


When fighting on the front line in a war the soldiers know when things aren't going their way. Bullets whistling past their heads ;Artillery shells exploding ;Arms ,legs, heads, guts flying everywhere. The mate you where shouting to suddenly his face and head dissapears and his helmet falls to the empty space between his collar bones. All these subtle signs would be a dead giveaway to the 'Tommies in the trenches'that they were in deep shit. But again way, way, back in a beautifully maintained country house the bosses or the 'brass' were pouring over maps and pouring the port from the well stocked cellar. oblivious to the slaughter, messages arrive from the front eventually, but the 'brass' would never go to the business end of their schemes and plans. Miss dinner and muddy their riding boots.



Like the beaten armies and crashing aircraft , all those in businesses and banks across the land knew that a hugh glob of S*H*1*T* was about to hit the fan. All except our glorious leaders the bosses holding out for the bonusses or is that bonii ? Ignore anything long enough and it will go away, so when a chap called a whistleblower ,whistles an unhappy tune of troubles ahead if we carry on down this bumpy track,which interupts the blissful ignorance of the blissfully ignorant, they must be sacked and got rid of. ...So the army gets battered and slaughterd ;The aircraft falls from the sky, Destruction ,mayhem and confussion reign......So, our heroes apologise, almost jokingly ,pick up their payoff and claim their bonus and live happily ever after ......I apologise , i take my hat off to these experts they are brilliant ,how do they get away with it?

WITH JUST ONE FLUTTERING FLECK OF SNOW THE GREAT BRITISH WORK 'EFF-IC' BECOMES THE GREAT BRITISH 'EFF-IT' TO WORK !

The Great British work ethic is famous ,copied and admired the world over. A small rough island race, never afraid to roll up our sleeves to get our hands dirty and dig the earth and till the soil, thriving on pain, sweat and low wages and fight and win World Wars at the same time. This is part of what made us great and gave us one of the greatest empires ,ever. Nothing ,except for goverment benefits, daytime sattelite t.v and extended pub opening hours could douse that fire and indomitable spirit of the British worker.
Every body has heard of that famous equation E=MC2...Basically it means Energy equals mass ,as mass equals energy. Energy is the ability to do work. A negative energy would be the ability to stop work. It could be understood how an Asteroid weighing thousands of tons streaking through interstellar space at speeds going into fractions of millions of miles per hour would strike the Earth with such speed and mass causing such a release of energy that would explode around the planet wiping out the dinosaurs and most of the neighbours. Now negative energy from such an event would cause an amount of disruption to work, transport and the running of the country ,in general. But, thankfully we aren't going to be walloped by the incredible E and M of an asteroid impact ,not with Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood around to save us, anyhow. But we do have something with that equivalent amount of negative energy, able to bring the whole country to a dead stop within seconds .It defies the laws of physics, because although it has all this incredible energy ,it has almost NO MASS WHATSOEVER ! This wonder is the simple flake of snow !... It flutters down on the breeze from low thick clouds and as soon as itgently touches down on a main line rail with an almighty KLANG, which reverbarates throughout the rail network ,cancellations abound Nobodies going nowhere. The arrival of this snow drop is reported by Radio " and all across the land the hardy indomitable spirit of the never say die brit says "EFF-IT ! I'm not going in today" and turns over to go back to sleep.

AFTER ALL HER NON-STOP TRAINING THE LOVELY LYNNE HAS A MUSCLE.....JUST ONE !

Over the years, from time to time the Lovely Lynne has decided she has to loose some weight , just like every woman since time began. Maybe Adam n' Eve were the only people who never worried about it, and that was only because they never had glossy magazines and 'Goodmorning' with Phillip Schofield and Fern (stomach clamps) Cotton. And because of this and they were the only people in creation they didn't know what a fat person was. Maybe they got a little concerned when their fig leaves started pinching and feeling a bit tight around the sensitive areas they covered for some reason that Adam n' Eve had never been able to figure out. Maybe the human race started when the fig leaves were removed and suddenly stirrings stirred within the souls and lower down of our original couple. But the modern day Eve is convinced that they're fat and from time to time will order from the shopping channel some kind of torture device which goes under the title of excercise machine .These devices are tortourous for the male, as he has to hump the bloody thing about and put it together with the enclosed Alan keys and screws made from the softest most malleable metal that they could find. This makes it impossible to tighten screws fully without destroying the Alan key and the screw. It's not so bad for the woman ,as ,after a 'try out', they never go near it ever again. The Lovely Lynne bought a metal framework thing which was for stomach excercises. Much to the great amusement of other women, friends,family, etc who through the giggling asked me if Lynne'd started hanging her washing on it. "Of course not" i nobly replied."She will!", as they all had. I never mentioned that the washing had been dripping dry from the excercise machine for about a fortnight in the utility room.


In a moment of total madness and insanity we paid an totally insane amount of money to join, as a family(ahhh!) a local gymn. The last time i joined a gymn, was in Liverpool back street ,with rusty dumbells(and that was just the customers) ;No glass in the windows and beaten ,battered and busted punchbags (and that was just the customers). Whereas this one had machines that i ,for the life of me couldn't figure out. People walking ,peddaling, stepping whilst listening to Mp3's, or watching sub-titled coronation street on a telly ,right in front of their face . The sub-titles were there as the sound wouldn't have been heard over the Rap-type music that boomed about the gymn. Lynne, to be fair has piled in there and is powering away on the various machines. The other hiccup, for me is that all the machines have computer type thingey's to do with heart rates , types of excercises ,anaerobic, aerobic ,etc, etc,.....You need a degree in medicine or computer science to kill yourself. Whereas i joined a Karate class and had the shit beaten out of me. Lynne has trained away and is ever so proud to announce to the world that she is now the proud owner of a muscle...Just one, but it's a muscle, a right calf muscle, in fact.

KARATE :THE KNOWLEDGE OF HOW MANY PARTS OF THE BODY CAN REALLY HURT....

Whenever you read a book about Karate, Kung Fu or the martial arts in general you will quite often see those badly drawn deformed looking outline drawings of the human body covered in dots showing, 'Points of ATEMI'.These are the bits if you give them a whack, or a kick, will hurt the unlucky recipient. As anybody who has had a go at Karate knows, you don't have to be in a combat situation to hit or be hit in these officially recognised 'pain points'. All you have to be is a new member in a new club in which unbeknownst to you is filled with WORLD CLASS' fighters and competitors. Now over the years, a little while back now it has to be said 'yours truly' gave and recieved a few smacks in competitions on a much smaller stage than the world stage these guys were used to. I attacked and was blocked hard, then whacked with a counter blow. Then roles were reversed and for some reason i still came off worse. I was reminded where my own personal points of Atemi where. The knowledge along with the pain stayed with me for a few days. Knees ,elbows, neck, and the sternum , which got a good punch and hurt like hell, but only when i breathed in, or out. I also smashed the fingers of my left hand somehow. This uncomfortable condition was exacerbated by The Lovely Lynne, who rolled over in her sleep in bed. Right over my hand! The screams must have been heard far and wide, breaking windows and causing several police murder squads to go on full alert. My sympathetic beloved when she'd come down off the ceiling, yawned, told me i shouldn't've been on her side of the bed, turned away and proceeded to carry on snoring, grunting and farting with a clear conscience,god bless 'er. It's nearly a week and i can just about clutch a pen...I tell you ,Grasshopper, if they start lobbing spears, i'm off !

HOW MANY CARICATURES ARE THERE ON THE WALL OF THE BOG IN No10 D0WNING ST ???

As i sat with my gallon mug of tea ;Two boiled eggs and very heavily buttered toasted crumpets watching what the rest of the world was up to at this ungodly hour of the morning. I find being shoved out of my nice warm bed by my beloved lovely lady Lynne isn't something i enjoy. I've never been a morning person. Come to that, i've never been an afternoon , evening or night person either. There must be a ten minute period of the day where i'm at my peak.....But it's definitly not the morning ,or this early morning. I'm the only one not going out, but its me getting up to bring them tea n' coffee in bed, if i had the 'bottle' it'd be over the bed ! But, ironically the one thing that eases my misery and foul early morning temper is seeing how bad and miserable the rest of the world is. In maths and physics two negatives make a positive. A positive and a negative form a negative ,so i stay away from cheery programmes and cheerful man and woman double acts on the newsroom settee in the ITV and BBC newsroom until i'm ready and my depression and misery has hit ground zero and bounced back upwards to a level which could be called relatively un-miserable. It was at this point , this morning when i turned the BEEB morning news programme on and they had the wonderful MARTIN ROWSON on talking about being told off for making our beloved leader, Gordon Brown look fat. Martin came out with the best description of our glorious leader when he described his jaw movements as, "Like swallowing a sheep". Nice one Mr Rowson, sir.


It has alway amused me when i watch the politicians, esspecially, look a caricatures of themselves. I don't think i've ever seen one that hasn't grinned broadly with an open mouthed laugh to follow, to show how they can take and appreciate the joke. But this animated appreciation is accompanied by a steely cold glint in their scheming dead fish politicians eyes. Through the years i've caricatured politicians and celebrities, the celebrities are a many and varied lot, but the politicians are a more homogenous lot. They'll tell me how great it is and how i've made them look a little overweight; Use my first name and for a moment or two i think i'm going to be invited to dinner and be friends for life. But that passes, very quickly, and eyecontact which was so intense for a second or two is broken, never to be re-established again.


Even today i meet people who have caricatures i did of them years ago. And, it is true that many of them actually do hang them up on the toilet wall. Now i don't know why, maybe it's a form of artistic criticism, its the place to put it if it's shit. Or, its the opposite , as people spend a lot of time in the 'bog' ,they can sit and shit and admire your mastery of the inky line and almost mystical understanding of the structure and composition of the human face and through this talent and knowledge reveal the true spirit and character that a big head,massive nose ,sticky out ears and smaller, but bloated body can reveal. If the toilet in number 10 has them on the wall. The smallest room would have to be, by far the biggest room. The caricatures would have to be computerised on a wall screen, and while the leader of men is sitting about his buisness the caricature would be of a thumbnail gallery , as on computer websites. Now theres a horrifying thought. Will there ever be a time when people will stop reading books ,papers ,comics and magazines on the 'bog' and sit there with their laptop...Who says technology is a wonerful thing?

IF IT WASN'T FOR THE DOCTORS WE WOULDN'T BE SICK.....

There wa a time in the not too distant past when diseases were things you caught in places like Africa and India. Us British used to get colds, flu, mumps and measles and various genital infestations. But times they have changed and the places with the crosses painted on the front door are the NHS hospitals, riddled with not just bugs ,but SUPERBUGS! You not only have to survive the disease that you've contracted through your own efforts and endeavours ,but also the home grown diseases that the hospital has to give you. All in all your probably safer having your operation in the carpark than the operating theatre.

Any nurse or doctor will tell you that those lovely politicians who know all about health and curing of those sick voters they have decided that outdated concepts like dedicated qualified staff ,cleanliness and care over periods longer than one day in a hospital bed for the sick and injured. The answer is to bring ergonomically designed bright airey offices for the incredibally paid 'suits', who now run the place. Mostly the places seem to be run badly, but the good thing is that, the 'suits ', who don't know the difference between a lung and a laptop, are trained to concenterate on the all-important 'spin' and so everything can be made to sound okay. And blame is ,of course transfferred elsewhere, nurses and sick people are exspensive and could do with being reduced or got rid of altogether, so theres a good place to start. health is a buiness, and like all buisnesses in these hard times, there must be cut backs.

The goverment, gawd bless 'em, have stepped in to save the sick n' needy voter with.......A CHECKLIST !..This checklist, if followed will lead to the health and salvation of many sick n' dying voters, lives and votes will be saved. The doctors are killing the voters ,so the politicians have to adress the problem and show the doctors what they are doing wrong. Everybody knows all doctors do is walk around telling everybody to take tablets;Drive off in their sports cars to the golf course and refuse to call at sick peoples houses at ungodly hours of the morning. If they knew as much about medicine as they do about golf and bridge we wouldnt need the goverment to save us with a checklist.
The checklist has such medical groundbreaking, inciteful things like ;Name and sex;Occupation; Medical problem; Confirm operation; Enough fluids? Any allergies? Check no equipments left inside; Check the same amount of bloods in there at the end as there was at the beginning; Make sure the patient isn't dead. The death of a patient while of course being tragic, would also constitute a waste of time and money which could be put towards a new pot-plant for the 'suits' office. And so it goes on. I can see it now the NHS rising again like a phoenix from the ashes to save us ,cure us and keep us well until the next change in goverment NHS policy.

GOD BLESS THE OLD RED, WHITE N' BALLY HOO !

As i mentioned a lifetime, or so it seems ago during that interminable debacle the Americans call the Presidential elections. I mentioned that i'd rather sit and hack my leg off than sit and watch the various primaries on the telly as it would be less painful. I was watching a little of the inaugeration ceremony last night and the same urge to hack a limb off overcame me. The ,"God bless America and the rest of the Red ,white n' Blue,bally hoo n' bullshit sort of ooozed from the screen. My leg was only saved at the last moment by a change of channel to the relative sanity of The Simpsons.

The new boy in the most powerful padded seat in the world is Barrack O'Barnpot, the first Afro-American, and ,apparently Irish president of the U.S of A. Celebrations exploded all over the place as people overjoyed at this, apparently world changing event took place. I've nothing against the fellah. He is just another American politician whose bullshitted his way into the 'Big Job' like politicians everywhere. The difference is the American politicians have more self interest and a lot of power to help their interests and schemes along and boost that power up even more. In fact they make our bunch of scheming fiddling arseholes look like innocent schoolboys who haven't a clue.

I thought it a little odd that on his first day ,he cancelled a pile of terrorist trials for crimes including 9/11. The finances of the country ,etc are turning to shit and he helps a few terrorists out, but i'm not a politician so what do i know.

When Good ol' George Dubya,was inaugerated into the job there was no celebrations and parties to celebrate the first naturally stupid fuckin' idiot to become president. I can't remember celebrations for the first senile movie star to become president when Reagan became president. I'll celebrate when Homer Simpson becomes the first yellow president. And i admire his policies, they don't make any sense ,but like all politicians policies and promises they'll be somehow forgotten and bunged to the bottom of the pile when they get their foot through the door . It doesn't matter about race colour creed, they're all tossers and gobshites...They are politicians !

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO'ER'S!!!!!!!!

My beloved Lovely lady Lynne filled a questionnaire on the facebook thingey on the computer for me the other day. One of the questions was about favourite telly programmes and she tapped out basically everything a certain Mr GERRY ANDERSON has put out over the years...Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO. She asked me to deny my love for these fonts of nostalgia for all us middle aged oldish farts, and i couldn't. What my beloved doesn't understand is that all human life is there, with strings! In the beginning it was simple. Supercar was in a garage in the desert with Proffessor Beaker, Mike Mercury and Supercar, never any women to cloud and confuse the issues addressed in the drama of SUPERCAR.

But, this was to change when the puppet sculptors managed to work out how to do women. So, in FIREBALL XL5 ,Our dashing hero STEVE ZODIAC had a thing going with the lovely VENUS. It was all very innocent, except Venus seemed to spend a lot of time with a monkey like alien ZOONY! But, Steve spent an unhealthy amount of time with a robot who always wanted to be "Going home!"


Next came STINGRAY. Now things started to get a little spicey Gerry and Sylvia Anderson introduced a 'menage et trois' situation into the breath-taking underwater adventures. The hero of the(half) hour was the James Garner look-a-like, TROY TEMPEST, beloved by the lovely ATLANTA. She was voiced by LOIS MAXWELL the lady who became beloved of JAMES BOND, as MONEYPENNY. The problem arose when Troy and his co-pilot in the supersub, STINGRAY, PHONES, Where out fighting Aquanaut baddies who spoke like they were gargling mouthwash. They met an underwater beautiful woman called MARINA.Marina couldn't speak, god, i love her already! Poor ol' Phones never got a look in all the women seemed to have only eyes for that two-timing bastard Troy Tempest.



Then things got really complicated with THUNDERBIRDS. There was a much bigger cast in this one hour extravaganza and as a result things happened which caused eyebrows to raise even without the aid of strings. The whole of INTERNATIONAL RESCUE lived on an island in the middle of the ocean unknown to the rest of the world who depended so strongly on the hi-tech equipment built by a strange character with speech and visual impediments, called BRAINS. He had no sex life as he wa in his lab building thing and mixing chemicals. GEOFF TRACEY, was the daddy of the family and somehow with his bespectacled stuttering friend built a house on top of a series of rocket pads and silo's. I think health n' safety would have had something to say about it all, so i suppose thats one good reason for keeping it all very quiet. Geoff was very friendly with an English Lady, the lovely LADY PENELOPE.She ,with her machine gunning, rocket fireing,flying, sailing bright pink Rolls Royce, driven by her faithful sidekick PARKER, were International Rescue's British agents. Now, the fine ladyP', i could never figure out if she was up to something with Geoff, or The eldest son SCOTT. ALAN(Thunderbird3-spaceship),the youngest fancied his chances. But he was having a fling wih a girl who lived on the island ,TIN TIN.Now, was she being seen too by Alan or being 'gangbanged' by the the Tracey brothers with all this time on their hands between missions?

One of the brothers JOHN, was in a satellite listening to the radio all the time picking up people in trouble. He must've been a sad lonely fellah, what did he do to pass the time? The poor fellah didn't seem to have a chair to sit on, even. The rest back down on Earth, on the paradise that is Tracey island, sat around drinkink, painting and swimming. Normally it was THUNDERBIRDS 1+2 that went on the jobs. Scott(T1) would land and tell VIRGIL(T2) what to do. It was poor ol' Virge who got his hands dirty and his arse scorched while Scott(T1) sat drinking coffee telling him what to do, and once he's doing it, hurry it up.

T1 blasted off out of the swimming pool which could put you off your breaststroke. T3 blasted off through a gap in the cicular living room, their window cleaning bills for scraping the equivalent of 3 SATURN 5 rockets blasting off every weeks carbon deposits off the living room window must've been suitably astronomical. And just be careful if you want to climb some palm tree's when T2 is readying to launch.,

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT 'THE KIDS',BUT THE THE 'ORRIBLE 'OO! ARE MORE THAN ALRIGHT !

T'was the Sunday before christmas,or two! and all was still, especially on the motorway network, or what laughingly passes for it on the way from the 'grotty norf' to the' sunny sarf', and our beloved capital of London,what with all this travelling and possibly...No,without doubt the worst couple of cups of coffee i've ever tasted in my whole adventurous life. I used to be a connoussieur of fine n' awful coffee's n' teas in paper n' plastic cups from service stations, greasy spoons and station platforms from my days of travelling when i was on the caricaturing circuit(ahh those were the days, i can tell you!). But the stuff i was slurping at ,not for refreshment, but just to postpone going back out to the car again for a few more hours of the dark frosty journey, was without doubt on a level of disgustednous that cannot be imagined. In my time away and off 'the road',the whole driving experience, the roads, the driving ,the whole sheebang ,now including the coffee has turned to complete and utter shite!..I always used to stop for a jam dougnut at Keele services, i can only hope that the jam doughnuts haven't been swept down in this general shitedness that has swept the land. But it's a long time since i've travelled those highways n'byeways, so, maybe i'll never know, maybe it'll be a good thing living in jam doughnut ignorance. Keeping my jam doughnut dreams alive...

You may well be wondering as to why we went on this voyage of discovery and bad coffee.....And don't get me staeted on the Watford Gap Kentucky fried chicken!......Somebodies lost Colonel Saunders secret recipe, believe me!....But the reason we put ourselves through all this was because we were on a pilgramage. THE WHO! ..were back in town! My two favourite pensioners in the whole world were back home. Namely, a certain Mr Roger Daltrey and a Mr Peter Townshend, of the parish. I remember years ago working at what was laughingly Tony Blair's ,(whatever happened to him?) crowning achievment ,tthat bloody tent that made us the laughing stock of the world, The Millenium dome. Famous because JAMES BOND(Pierce Brosnan,really!) dropped out of a balloon onto it in the 'World is not enough.' And of course the bridge that was fine as long as people didn't walk on it together in step,they had to stop marching as pedestrians in the city do all the time.They had to break step or the bridge'd start swinging. Doctor Who should think on that next time the Cybermen are chasing him through the big city. But what was the dome is now something called the indigO2 arena, or something. Do you remember the days when places were given names and not named after advertising logo's?...Proper names like ,Empire,Lycium,Palace ,etc,etc....Liverpool , for instance has the Echo Arena, i wonder where they got that name from!

But the IndigO2 is to be fair quite impressive and on the night i didn't realise until the end that next door to us a little band called COLDPLAY had been banging out a few tunes to a few fans. Theres not much chance of coldplay being heard over theWHO, but i'd like to think that the Cold play crowd were banging on the walls trying to get their noisey neighbours in THE WHO to hold it down a bit. The 'ORRIBLE 'OO' were wonderful, Townshend was wild and even at his advanced state of immortality full of adrenaline,power,aggression and just immpossible not to watch. Daltrey was still able to keep up and the screams ,etc, were all there and his power is still there. They enjoyed themselves and the banter from the stage was genuinley funny. The only problem was, we were up on a balconey quite a way back and some fuckin' prick, apparently from Leeds as he started singing about it, as if he was at the match.This, in between shouting witty Yorkshire reposts to a distant Townshend on the stage. I lost it and went for him, the 'Leatherbarrow finger' was pointing at him as i made my feelings known. I mean to say we'd travelled all bloody day ,spent a packet on tickets, suffered the motorway coffee n' Kentucky's just to listen to this knob'ead yelling down my 'lug'oles'?...No, i think not!

Afterwards my adrenaline was up and i was hyper n' tinglig all over looking for a quite corner where i could go and practise my Pete Townshend air guitar moves. The following day coming down from the high of the previous night into the morass of mundanities of an everyday Monday, i did a 'Pete' leap and windmill to 5.15, off QUADRAPHENIA (a little technical info, for the fans!), and pulled my bloody shoulder, the damn things still not right. And the pain wasn't helped by haven't to freeze my knackers off at a carol concert in the little 'un's school playground that night. Ah, the rock n' roll lifestyle, eh ?

A MERRY THINGEY N' A HAPPY NEW WOTSIT,YOU GET OVER THE BLOODY FLU N' YOU'VE GOT TO SUFFER BLOODY CHRISTMAS!!!

Yup! Here we go again, now we've gotten over having the missus blown up and the deccies're up and the tree's thistles are all over the bloody floor and its not even bloody christmas yet and the bloody trees fallin' apart. I haven't seen the Lovely Lynne in days as shes behind a heap of presents wrapping, wrapping ,endlessly wrapping...I can't see her, but i can hear her through the rustling of forest loads of wrapping paper, the snotty sneezing and full flemmed coughing and spluttering of my beloved and her 'real snorter 'of a cold. The little 'un Elara, thankfully is at my ma 'in law's ,she's got the full dose of a real dose of flu. So ,hopefully Father Christmas'll bring heaps of antibiotics, oh and some presents......(That bloody WII, that everyone is going on about....It looks like people pretending to box,play tennis or ski on a set of bathroom scales when i see the ads on the telly.)

We had a slight embarressment today. Being the wonderful neighbour i am ,i delivered a card to the nice lady next door.(Kath, if your reading this, yer lovely!)...The dog was sniffing around behind her leg as she was speaking to me, then to my horror and then gut busting laughter the bloody stupid creature, cocked his leg and pee'd down the back of her jeans. I thought i'd better make my excuses and so in the spirit of good neighbouriliness(?) i 'legged it.' I told the Lovely Lynne over the phone, so the outcome a box of After Eights originally meant for a cousin was given to Kath next door as a peace offering.

Anyhow you lot have a 'good un and if you survive the festive excess's i'll be back to bore the arse off you in the new year. I've decided that i'll be back to being a productive cartoonist/blogger next year, i can resist Sky +, I can ,i tell you!......That was another 'balls up', with the bloody Sky broadband thats why we've been off line and my wonderous ramblings have been denied you for so long. Blame them shitheads at Sky broadband ,we had some real fights with the ,laughingly called customer support people......Anyhow i'm off. A heap of reindeer shit just landed in the back garden, its nearly time for all good boys n' girls to go to bed, the rest of you ,just hit the bottle.......(hic...Buuuuurrrrpppp!!!)