All Ears 25th July

Faintly uninspiring colour scheme this week - sorry!
(BTW for further ruminations on rural unpleasantness check out the genius 'Hard Life in the Country' by the Fall - wonderful stuff!)

(Article by Michael Holden)
Spend most of your life in the city it’s easy to drum up the notion that out there in the countryside everyone’s more laid back. Go there though, and the truth reveals itself soon enough. People in the country are as demented as anyone else, it’s just that you have to go there to find them. The problem is species wide. Our malice knows no postcodes, I thought, as I watched people unravel in the reception Portakabin of a campsite in the middle of nowhere.

Site Manager (addressing three women) “You ain’t staying here. You’re a group.”

Woman 1(the eldest) “We ain’t a group. We’re a family.”

Woman 2 “She’s my auntie.”

Woman 1 “We just want to put her tent next to ours.”

Site Manager (enjoying himself) “Then you’re a group.”

Woman 1 “She’s got a baby-get the baby!”

Woman 2 motioned to a young man who had been loitering in the car park who then entered the office holding up a baby.

Woman 1 “See!”

Site Manager “I says you’re a group, and we can’t have no groups. Baby or no, that’s the end of it.”

Woman 1 “You’re out of order!”

Site Manager “Yeah, well listen to this. They ain’t staying here, and you can pack up and leave and all.”

Woman 1 “You can’t do that!”

Site Manager “Get out of the office, get off the site.”

Woman 1 “I ain’t standing for this.”

She marched out past me yelling at the other as they walked.

Woman 1 “Get Alan on the phone and call Dean. Get ‘em the fuck down here!”

I thought it best to leave before Alan and Dean turned up and kicked the life out what was left my esteem for humanity.

The Natural World pt 1

A lion being menaced by a wooden chair - the lion's only natural predator
(hence the Lion Tamer's tool of choice)

Crappy Excursions Pt 4

The Feeble T-Shirt Slogan Museum

Crappy Excursions Pt 3

As a child I always swore I would never willingly go for pointless 'walks'

(as an adult I feel slightly guilty about betraying my 6 year old self - sell out or what?)

Crappy Excursions Pt 2

Museum of Facial Hair

Crappy Excursions

Museum of Discredited Scientific Theories

Guardian All Ears 19th July

(Article by Michael Holden)
I was early for an appointment on what felt like a busy morning and so I ducked into a pub. A pub that, was selling beer for less than two pounds a pint and had thus become a haven for those more thirsty than employed, in this case two old chaps who were asking the barman what plans he had to avoid spending the rest of his life where they had elected to spend theirs.

Barman “I’m going to Paraguay.”

Man 1 “Paraguay?”

Barman “There’s no beaches or anything. It’s landlocked.”

Man 1 “Jesus.”

Man 2 “Are you coming back?”

Barman “Maybe.”

Man 2 “You’ve to finish your studies?”

Barman “Yeah.”

Man 2 “Good lad.”

The barman walked away, doubtless thrilled with his commendation and the two men talked amongst themselves.

Man 1 “You know I’m on the disability now? Sixty pound a week.”

Man 2 “Is it your feet?”

Man 1 “Aye. They’ve turned against me.”

Man 2 “I woke up with one shoe on and one shoe off the other day. I might give up drinking.”

Man 1 “You’d be missed.”

Man 2 “How?”

Man 1 “Well, you’re the town drunk.”

Man 2 “Am I?”

Man 1 “Yeah. Like Lee Marvin, in that film.”

Man 2 “What film?”

Man 1 “The one where he’s fucking drunk!”

All ears...rough version

This is the slightly cruder version (was described as a bit too 'gratuitous' so i removed the grope & hoisted the pants up!) - to be fair it's very rare I have to change anything for this job, & am probably secretly pleased at being censored (slightly)

see previous post

Guardian All Ears 16th July

NB this illustration has been toned down for public consumption because the original was thought to be a bit rude for a Saturday morning - I'll maybe stick the rough version up if you're all very good boys & girls... x

(Article by Michael Holden)
On a boiling afternoon I tried to catch the breeze coming through the open door of a bar where outside drinking is forbidden. Other drinkers huddled into the microclimate, among them an expectant father and his friend.

Man 1 “I got there for the last two hours of the pre-natal thing.”

Man 2 “Christ, how long are they?”

Man 1 “All day. There was no way I could handle that, so I came late. I’d only been there five minutes when I called one of the others a prick.”

Man 2 “How did that happen?”

Man 1 “They were talking about epidurals and painkillers when this bloke pipes up and says, ‘Why are we giving them so many drugs in childbirth? We’re breeding junkies!’ The woman in charge tries to tell him that’s not how it is but then he starts saying, ‘What happens in Africa, where they don’t have all these drugs?’ I said, ‘they die, you prick!’”

Man 2 “How did that do down?”

Man 1 “I think most people agreed with me. There’s a lot of thick people out there, having kids though. Another bloke, in his 40’s asks, ‘when you say they wake up every three to four hours, is that at night too?’”

Man 2 “Shame you can’t give ‘em the lessons before they have sex, might put ‘em off. It’s all well and good, these classes, but by the time these people have knocked each other up, the damage is done.”

And then the master race got back to their cider.

ps

All Ears 4th July

I enjoyed channelling the 'grim polyester clothes' this week - I also seem to pick up a regular fag smoke motif in these pictures (see last week too)
- bad for health but nice graphic device (maybe they could use that as the warning on the packet...just a thought)

(Article by Michael Holden)

In a newsagent’s one lunch time I watched two men-colleagues presumably-already buckling under the conflict between the hot weather and their grim polyester clothes strain yet further as the conversation turned towards the fact that one of them was soon to be wed.

Man 1: (about to leave the shop but stopping his tracks) I need cigarettes!

Man 2: I thought you’d stopped smoking?

Man 1: (rejoining the queue) I did but I started again, the stress of the wedding and all that.

Man 2: (forlorn) The wedding that I’m not invited to…

Man 1: (patient but angry) We’re only inviting sixty people, it’s not a big do.

Man 2: Yeah, but still…

Man 1: We’ve been through this. I’m under enough stress. I don’t need you, now, giving me a hard time. I know you’re not coming. It wasn’t my decision, I feel bad about it, I feel bad about the whole fucking thing. So right now, if there’s one thing you can do to make me feel better, you could stop mentioning the fact that you’re not going. I wish I wasn’t going. Think yourself lucky. In a roundabout way I’m doing you a huge favor.

Man 2: (pathetic) I could help you organize stuff perhaps, lighten the load.

Man 1: (apologetic) It’s mostly her family

Man 2: I’d like to help.

Man 1: Yeah, and I do appreciate that. Twenty Marlboro Lights, please.”

Man 2: Where are you going on honeymoon?

Man 1: Spain.

Man 2: (in a weird way) Where exactly?

Man 1 (moving quickly to the door) Just…Spain.