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.

All Ears 27th June

(Article by Michael Holden)
There’s a stage in most relationships, usually the beginning, when you’re quite happy to listen to what the other person’s saying because your emotions have temporarily inured you to the fact that what they’re saying, is bullshit. I was unchaining my bike outside a pub when I heard two smokers going through what looked like this phase of early courtship. Either that or the woman had genuinely been waiting to hear a load of whimsical drivel about visiting France, and this was her lucky night.

Man: “I love taking the ferry over there.”

Woman: (staring up at him as though each syllable were spun gold) “I’ve never taken the boat!”

Man: “Oh, you must.”

Woman: “I will!”

Man: “You drive away, and suddenly you’re on the other side of the road. You stop off, you grab a baguette, it’s magical.”

Woman: (quasi-orgasmic) “Yes!”

Man: “The differences are small, but yet so significant. It’s the little things. And the things you can’t describe. Just the unmistakable sensation that you’re in another country. Things seem different. Somehow better.”

I visualized him at Calais, gnawing on his French stick and wondered what kind of life he was leaving behind if he believed bingeing on carbs in a vile port was some form of progress.

Man: “I think their attitude toward alcohol is so much better than ours. They let the kids have a sip with lunch-and the whole sitting down to eat thing is tremendous-and they don’t have a problem with it.”

I thought about hitting him there and then, but realized that would only have strengthened his argument.

Guardian All Ears 20th June

Re. tiny dog phenomenon...they seem to have a bit of a thing for tiny dogs in New York but they usually seem to be owned by muscley gay gym bunnies (on Canal Street at least!)

(article by Michael Rosen)
I feel the tiny dog phenomenon to be a puzzling business, but when one of these benighted freaks starts attacking things several times its size I find their mad tenacity a joy to behold. It was precisely such a display of dwarf-dog fury that led to the following exchange between a pair of staggering drunks who had made the mistake of trying to caress one of these hand-held heartbeats and come of second best.

Woman: (getting as angry as you can without spilling your drink) “The fucker bit me!”

Man: (foolishly opting for admonishment over sympathy) “You should never have touched it. They’re not right”

Woman: (detonating) “He said it were alright!”

Man: (voice thick with self-made wisdom) “You can’t trust folk with these dogs. They’ll say ‘owt.”

Woman: “It started off licking me hand. Then it went for me. You heard it.”

Man: “Ask someone what their dog’s like and they’ll tell you it’s great, even while it’s got its jaws on you, they’ll be telling you it’s trying to make friends.”

Woman: (looking for signs of injury to her hand and finding nothing that might merit litigation) “Little bastard.”

Man: (making a huge but somehow valid leap of comparative reason) “It’s like the Krays. Their mum always said they was alright. Different story when they’re breaking your fuckin’ legs with a hammer.”

Woman: “What you on about, hammers?”

Man: “Dogs!”

Woman: (staring at her hand again) “Little bastard.”

Man: “Aye.”

Guardian All Ears 14th June

(Article by Michael Holden)
As far as I’m concerned people who are up out of their aircraft seats before the seat belt sign has been turned off are a sub species that ought to be destroyed. Within that though, skulks an even uglier demographic, people who get out of their seats too quickly, and immediately begin to use the phone. If any of these people looked like they had anything urgent waiting for them outside the aircraft, other than their own demented self obsession, it wouldn’t be so bad. Likewise the vocal among them, have nothing to say. This proved itself to be true again last week when I watched a young woman get up and start bleating loudly into her mobile at the end of a long haul flight from California.

Woman: “There were a lot of history, too much history really. It were quite boring. We saw Hollywood and that…yeah…went to Vegas, stayed at the Luxor. It’s like a pyramid, a black pyramid that you go inside of.”

I prayed for her to be admonished by a steward but no one came. And so she continued.

Woman: “I got her a solar-powered key ring, it’s pretty good…and I got him some nails scissors…nail scissors that have ‘California’ written on ‘em…”

The light went off and everyone started standing up.

Woman: (anxious, as though this might be an affront to her unique status) “Everyone’s standing up! Yeah, I’m still on the plane. It’s hot over there. You can get sun burned in an hour. I did…I’ve gone brown now though. Yeah, I got him an ashtray.”

As she moved out of earshot I realised that whoever said travel broadens the mind wasn’t catching many planes.

Guardian All Ears 6th June

Apologies for rather crass scouse stereotype this week - sometimes one is persuaded into slipping into visual cliché (no apologies for HP sauce though - it RULES!)

(article by Michael Holden)
I was having a cup of tea in a café at the end of the football season. Apart from a young couple talking at the table behind me, no one else was there. The young man seemed a bit agitated, the Woman was trying to keep things bright and cheerful, which only seemed to annoy him more.
Man : (reading from the sports section of the Daily Mirror) Here y'are, look at this - Liverpool only lost two games throughout the season and they STILL didn't win the title. That's how tight it is now.

Woman : (sounding like she meant it) Only lost twice? Wow!

Man : (tapping the paper emphatically in indication of something) yeah, but look - draw, draw, draw, draw. That was where it all went tits up.

Woman : Oh right. I see.

Man : (complacent) stats dont lie. Look at this - Gareth Bale, made 23 starts for Spurs - lost everyone of them. Never been on the winning side.

Woman : Why doesn't he join another team?

Man : Well it's not the team, is it? It's not the team that's the problem, is it? It's him, obviously.

Woman : Is he rubbish?

Man : Well, what do you think?

He waited, as though to allow her time to absorb the full magnitude of what he thought he was saying.

Man : It's not as simple as that, anyway.

Woman : Is football finished now then?

Man : Yeah. well, until August.

Woman : And then it all starts again?

Man (annoyed that things were not as esoteric as he might have liked) : It's a simple thing made complicated.

I sneaked a glance as I left - he'd flung the paper onto the table and she'd picked it up. He was staring out of the window, She was looking at the TV pages.

Guardian All Ears 30th May

(article by Michael Holden)
Staying in a hotel and running out of ideas, early one morning I went to the gym hoping that the place might be empty. It wasn’t. As I came to terms with the unfamiliar and antequated fitness equipment and tried to visualise a routine that wouldn’t make me appear flimsy or idiotic two other men were well into their rituals, both of them were on the phone.
Man 1 (setting his handset aside to bark at an employee who had strayed into the room) “Are they’re any more towels?”
Worker: (wihout hesitation or concern) “No.”
Man 1 (into his phone, darkly) “This place is insane.”
Man 2 “If it’s anywhere it’ll be in the drawer of my desk. The big drawer. On the right hand side.”
Man 1 “I’m on the stairmaster, that’s why I’m panting...”
Man 2 “Keep looking.”
Man 1 “I need the entire schedule, not just mine, I need everything pertaing to everyone involved.”
Man 2 (voice straining under the weight of a dumbell in his other hand) “Keep looking.”
Man 1 (on the periphery of a tantrum) “I don’t care about that. Don’t mention it. It’s irrelevent. I don’t need to think about those things. Don’t bring them to me. It’s your job to resolve them.”
Man 2 (staring with admiration at the weight he moved) “Get Geoff to look, Geoff will find it.”
Strange, I thought, how these folk come here to work out while staying so relentlessly connected to others who are doing work for them. It was 6am. I felt wearied by the notion of what they might have acheived by lunch.

Guardian All Ears 23rd May

...I know all french teenagers don't have Amelie haircuts but what's a little bit of light racial stereotyping between friends...?

(article by Michael Holden)
I was in the corner seat at the back of the upstairs of a bus that steadily filled with passengers. Initially there had been just me and another man opposite and I watched him bury his head in a free newspaper as the seats around him filled up with teenage French girls. Oblivious to his predicament he read on as the girls talked among themselves and looked through an English/French dictionary before finally presenting the traveler with a question.

French Girl 1“Excuse me?”

Man (dropping his paper and looking out suspiciously at his interrogators) “Yes?”

French Girl 1 (slowly and carefully) “Do you know, which are the good parks, for feeding squirrels?”

French Girl 2 (for added emphasis) “Yes, the squirrels.”

The man looked seriously at them now, as though wondering whether this were some sort of joke, sensing this, one of the girls began to mime eating a nut, in the manner of a squirrel, but with a look of complete sincerity.

Man (unsure) “You can find…I mean, they’re pretty common. They’re, everywhere, you know?”

French Girl 1 (handing him a pen and paper) “List the parks.”
Man (unsettled further by the sustained gravity of the matter Well, like I say they’re all pretty good, for squirrels, I mean, hmmm.”
He made a list of four large parks in the city, good choices I thought, and then handed back the pad. The girls looked at the list approvingly. He went back to his paper, but you could tell things weren’t quite the same.

Guardian All Ears 16th May

Hmmm - men of a certain inclination & demographic... it's a fair cop!
In mitigation I'd like to point out I never wore white gloves, bandanas or bought Vick's Vaporub - as for Smiley t-shirts - wasn't it only undercover cops & Daily Mail journalists uncovering 'this evil Acid cult' that wore them anyway?

'you...think it's cool to wear a Smiley!' © Julian H Cope - well said sir!

(article by Michael Holden)

By inclination and demographic I am drawn to the concerns of men who can’t quite believe that they are now, irrefutably, adults. I was fortunate then to find myself sharing a bus with two such characters, probably in their early 40’s, one of whom had an urgent confession.

Man 1 “I hadn’t heard this tune in 15, 20 years. But I was obsessed with it like, back in the day. So I’m finishing my lunch and this bloke in the bar, setting up for the evening, sticks it on..”

Man 2 “Mental.”

Man 1 “Innit? I tell you mate a fucking chill went down my spine. I thought I was dreaming, then I’ve gone up and I’ve told him how I used to love this song but I never knew what it was and all of that.”

Man 2 “And what’s he said?”

Man 1 “Well he’s loving it. He’s one of us of course, went to all the same do’s. So I got on the fucking Internet, and this is the thing, you can buy it, just like that. Three days later the things come through the door except it hasn’t. The postman’s left it next door, they’ve given it to the wife so when I get in she’s got the envelope and wants to know what’s what.”

Man 2 “What’d you say.”

Man “Well I’ve told her, but there’s no way I’m sticking it on while she’s in ‘cos she’ll say something, start taking the piss. So I’ve waited till she’s gone out and wallop, I’ve cranked it up.”

Man 2 “How was that?

Man 1 “It was fucking awesome mate, like time travel. It made me wanna get right on it.”

Man 2 “So what you gonna do?”

Man 1 “I’m gonna wait till I’m on my own and do it again.”

Guardian All Ears 9th May

Big up for Greggs the bakers & sorry Darryl Hall, I think I've stolen your hair this week - but WHAT HAIR!!!!

(Article by Michael Holden)

Outside a pub I watched two men slouch across a picnic table. The first man was sober, his posture a consequence of fatigue perhaps. The second, through well dressed and affluent was on the cusp of being completely plastered, a stare of affairs that clearly caused his companion some concern.

Man 1 “How long did you stay off the drink for.”

Man 2 “Three days, more or less. Well we had some Rose on the third day. It was the kid’s birthday, that didn’t really count. Then I had a meeting this morning, had a drink after that, sat outside. Bumped into Chris, had some lunch. Popped over the road and now here we are.

Man 1 (looking at his own drink as though reckoning his own worthiness to pass judgement) “Well, best make this the last one then, for today.”

Man 2 (laughing) “Fuck off.”

Both men laughed a little, then settled down. Next, a man with a preposterously developed torso and open necked shirt strutted past. He looked ridiculous, an antiquated stereotype reborn. Other people at the pub laughed discreetly at him, the drunk man laughed loud enough for them all.

Man 1 “Quit, he’ll hear you.”

Man 2 “Who?”

Man 1 “That bloke.”

Man 2 “I’m not laughing at any bloke.”

Man 1 “So what are you laughing at?”

Man 2 “That bag.”

He pointed at a paper sack that was blowing down the street while his mate looked at him in some despair, seeing that his friend had attained the mindset of a veteran street drinker, even if he still had decent clothes.

Guardian All Ears 3rd May

(article by Michael Holden)
As warm weather breeds inertia so that inertia breeds an increased reliance on takeaway food, at least in my world. I was just inside the door of my local Chinese when the two women ahead of me continued a dialogue that was so off putting you could have written it down and sold it as a diet.

Woman 1 (Staring out the window, considering what would follow) “I won’t have any of the meat. I’ll just have the juice off of it.”

Woman 2 (Somehow blind to the disturbing nature of the suggested image) “Right.”

Woman 1 “I don’t like nothing too dry neither.”

Woman 2 (agreeing) “No.”

Woman 1 (apparently philosophical) “What we doing here anyway?”

Woman 2 (suspicious) “Eh?”

Woman 1 “How come we’ve come in here, instead of ordering it on the phone?”

Woman 2 (reassured) “It’s an extra pound.”

Woman 1 “What is?”

Woman 2 “If you want it delivered, it’s an extra pound, if the order’s less than fifteen quid.”

Woman 1 “You ever use the one in Mile End? They do the delivery.”

Woman 2 “No.”

Woman 1 “It turns up stone cold.”

Woman 2 (unaffected by these revelations) “Right.”

Their food was ready and they accepted it in great steaming bags while the woman behind the counter read out their order in confirmation.

Woman 1 (anxious to head off any misunderstanding) “Like I said, you have the meat, I’ll have the juice that it sits in.”

Woman 2 “Right.”

They left and I tried to place my order, but the menu seemed to have lost its appeal.

Guardian All Ears 28th March

Ok Ok - I've been in Africa for a month so this is very late...

(Article by Michael Holden)

I was in a large public building eating a sandwich at a group of tables occupied only by myself and the maintenance crew of the place who were enjoying a moment of collective leisure and discussing the covert self abuse techniques of someone they all new.
Bloke 1 (as though what followed were a scheme of great ingenuity)“She goes to bed and he says, ‘I’m staying downstairs to watch a programme,’ then he slips the DVD on. If he hears the stairs creak and she comes in, he flicks over to a documentary.”

Bloke 2 “Have you seen Dom though? He’s open about it. He’ll buy ‘em with her in the pub, I’ve seen it. The DVD bird’s come in and he says, ‘got any porn?’ She says, ‘ain’t you got enough at home?’ He asks her which one she fancies and she says ‘I don’t watch ‘em, I don’t care!’”
Bloke 3 (allowing the laughter to subside) “Who’s on Tuesday-Wednesday?”
Bloke 4 “When does Alan swap with Ursula?”
Bloke 1 “Tonight.”
Bloke 4 “The night shift bores me to tears.”
Bloke 1 “He loves ‘em. I’d rather do Saturday.”
Bloke 4 “Now, is he a shy person who prefers his own company, or is he a bit weird?”
Bloke 1 “He’s a bit weird.”
Bloke 2 (as though this might explain something) “I heard his dad was Lithuanian.”
Bloke 3 “He ignored me, and Tottenham won yesterday. When we were struggling he would talk to me more.”
Bloke 4 “He has put on a bit of weight.”
Bloke 3 “Yeah, but that’s no reason not to talk to someone.”
There was a lot of quiet nodding about that. Evidently Alan had better loosen up if wanted to get along.

Guardian All Ears 21st March

Funnily enough I'd just spent a small fortune on Deet & Mosquito nets for my upcoming trip to Africa when I got the copy for this week's article - very prescient! My wallet is now smarting from paying for 4 week's worth of Malarone anti-malarial tablets so the little f***ers better leave me the hell alone -
I swear I've actually seen mosquitos donning napkins & holding knives & forks when they see me coming - nice to be popular with someone I suppose (even if it's pesky insect filth)
This will probably be my last post for a few weeks due to my aforementioned trip to Africa (never sure if anyone reads / looks at these things anyway so might just be talking to myself!)


(article by Michael Holden)

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times but I’m hearing a lot of conversations lately where people are trying to outdo one another by some abstract measure. I sat on the bus the other day and found two teenagers at the back debating who had the least hospitable ancestral connections.

Teen 1 (emphatic) “The mosquitoes back home are out of hand.

Teen 2 (quietly confident) “They’re big where we’re from.”

Teen 1 (after some consideration) “I’ve been bitten enough times. I think I’ve had malaria.”

Teen 2 “You’d know if you had malaria. It kills folk.”

Teen 1 (unhindered by fact) “Where I’m from the mosquitoes come out in the day.”

Teen 2 (like this was a good thing) “It’s worse at home because of the sewage.”

Teen 1 “When did you last go home?”

Teen 2 “When I was four.”

Teen 1 (emboldened by his friends lack of recent first hand information) “I tell you, where I’m from you can’t walk anywhere without water. You’ll dry up. You will die.

Teen 2 (sagacious, dismissive) “I’d never go home at this time of year. I’m not kidding it is literally like walking on fire.”

There was silence for while then, no comeback proved forthcoming. Teen one then got up to leave.

Teen 2 “Did you do that maths homework?”

Teen 1 “No.”

You could see from his face that he understood that no amount of competitive nostalgia was going to change the fact that he was going home with a sports bag full of problems still unsolved.

Guardian All Ears 14th March

Steamy...!

(article by Michael Holden)

Steam baths are an odd arena for conversation at the best of times but lately a malfunction at my local facility has forced everyone to make use of an area half the size of what’s normally available and people seem to have begun talking to one another now simply because they are in such close proximity to one another it seems rude not to. I was sulking in the mist at one end of the chamber when a bloke at the other end started chatting away to the man nearest him as a couple in the opposite corner looked on.

Man 1 (unprompted) “Good weekend? Feeling it yeah?”

Man 2 (surprisingly forthcoming)“I went to a party”

Man 1 “Yeah?”

Man 2 “It was a bit weird. There was a bar but you could only buy bottles of vodka, seven quid, that was all you could drink.”

Man 1 “Sounds like my kind of party. Bottle of vodka, straw, bit of lemon. Away you go.”

Man 2 (unconvinced) “Maybe.”

Man 1 (undeterred) “Vodka’s my drink, I drink quite a bit of it. I used to drink southern comfort but they made it weaker. I stick with my vodka now.”

The man he had been talking to smiled and left, the other man then coughed loudly.

Man 3 “Sorry. Just given up.”

Man 1 (immediately) “Me an ‘all. My girlfriend asked me to give up, I said why? She said you smoke too much and I couldn’t argue with that. So I packed it in but I get fat. That’s why I’m here.”

He patted his stomach for emphasis.

Woman “You don’t look too bad.”

Man 1 “Cheers.”

Man 3 “You smoke 20 a day, the chemicals, it all adds up.”

Man 1 (instantly) ”I’d smoke 60, no problem. Though you give some away.”

I left then, before he could start overstating his consumption of whatever came up next. Air probably.

Guardian All Ears 7th March

MDMA & good looking girls? Not when I was 15!


(article by Michael Holden)

Partaking in the spasm of outdoor activity afforded by the first sunny weekend of the year I was sitting outside a café when I saw two women stop a man they recognised and prize forth the following nugget of modern woe.

Woman: (having discussed the weather and other matters) “How’s your sister’s kid?”

Man: (face falling slightly) “Oh that’s all got a bit on top, he’s moved out.”

Woman: “Moved out? How old is he?”

Man: (laughing) “Fifteen.”

Woman: (less amused)“Is that even legal.”

Man: “Well, moved out in the sense that he’s gone to his dad’s. Not like moved out and got his own place.”

Woman: “Right.”

Man: “He has gone off the rails a bit though, but I keep an eye on him, via Facebook.”

Woman 2: (with disdain) “Oh, Facebook!”

Woman: (ignoring her) “What’s he up to on there?”

Man: “Him and his mates have got a page, they talk to each other in like a secret code, but I’ve cracked it. From what I can tell they do a fair bit of MDMA and they go to a lot of parties and they take pictures of a lot of good looking girls.”

Woman: “What do you make of that then?”

Man: (looking into the middle distance-doubtless at a vision of his own youth receding) “Well, I’m envious really, as much as anything else. I wish I was 15.”

Woman: “I meant what are you gonna do about it?”

Man: “I dunno. I haven’t figured that out yet.”

Guardian All Ears 28th February

I too have never seen Top Gun but I ain't getting too angsty about it...

(article by Michael Holden)

I was in a decent restaurant waiting for someone to arrive and when the waiter handed me a menu I hid my face inside it as though this might make my listening less conspicuous to the men on the next table.

Man 1(sniffing some freshly poured wine but mentally elsewhere) “Have you seen Top Gun?”

Man 2 “Of course.”

Man1 “I never saw it when it was out, it was sort of everything I hated at the time. Anyway the kids were watching it the other night so I thought might as well see what all the fuss was about.”

Man 2 “What did you reckon?”

Man 1 “Well it’s balls, isn’t it? I have to try and keep quiet when the kids are watching a movie I hate, not that they care what I think particularly, but you can get wound up when they’re enjoying something that you think is awful.”

Man 2 “So what did you think?”

Man1 “Well I could cope with all the flying around…”

Man 2 “The aeronautics…”

Man 1 “Yeah, I could live with the fact they were flying upside down at Mach whatever taking Polaroid photos, and I could cope with the fact that he’s having an affair with Kelly Mcgillis who’s supposed to be an authority figure, I mean it’s all ridiculous, but then Tom Cruise is playing volleyball, he keeps leaping up and slamming the ball down, and he’s a midget, isn’t he? That wound me up, I had to say something.”

Man 2 “What did you say?”

Man 1 “I said to the kids I said either he’s on a trampoline or that’s not a real Volleyball net. They didn’t even react but, you know, I’m right.”

Man 2 “Why did it annoy you so much?”

Man 1 (starring into his soul) “I…don’t know.”

Man 2 (trying to help) “Because you’re tall?”

Man 1 (having exploredl the possibilities and formed a conclusion) “No, because it’s bullshit!”

Guardian All Ears 22nd February

Madagascar flavoured bedding - luvverly!


(Article by Michael Holden)

On the back of a bus in Humberside two women in their early twenties were discussing their respective boyfriends. The first had little to report except her chosen consort’s perceived unpleasantness, but when the second got going things took on a more remarkable complexion.
Woman 1 “Everyone said he were a bastard, he used to say if that’s what they reckoned best not disappoint ‘em.”

Woman 2: “That’s like when I moved in with Liam, everyone disowned me, I had to move to the other side of Hull.”
Woman 1: “Well when you love someone I don’t matter what anyone else thinks. You just gotta get on with it.”
Woman 2: (fondly) “He sends me a lot of texts, texts me all the time. I do that sleep texting thing though…”
Woman 1: “Eh?”
Woman 2: “If I text him while I’m in bed and he texts me back I send him another text but in my sleep, I don’t know I’ve sent it.”
Woman 1: “What like?”
Woman 2: “Some right old bollocks, he used to ring me up to ask me what I were on about but that would wake me up, so now he knows not to.”
Woman 1 (eager to assess the strength of her friend’s relationship via a more orthodox phenomenon) “He taken you out anywhere nice?”
Woman 2 “He took us to see that Madagascar 2.”
Woman 1 “How were it?”
Woman 2 “It were alright. I say this for him though he’s dead clever. When it finished I was ready to leave and he said hang on, he knew there were extra bit at the end, over the credits, where all the animals like sing and dance about and that.”
Woman 1 “Worth staying on for?”
Woman 2 “Not really. No.”

Guardian All Ears 7th February

(Article by Michael Holden)

Just when you think you’ve sniffed outall the premier eavesdropping locations, a new one presents itself. This time it was Argos-one of an elite group of environments where it’s almost impossible not to have a pen. I was leafing through the catalogue when I became conscious of a young couple opposite who perusing the goods on offer with a whimsical air that made me wonder whether they were actually shopping or had just come in to get out of the rain.

Woman: (turning what she saw into a demented low level chant) “Lava lamp, lava lamp, love it, love it, love it!”

Man: (oblivious, reading a catalogue of his own) “Where would I put I mirror?”

Woman: “ You know the shower head in your bathroom? I don’t like it.”

Man: (looking up) “Well you don’t have to have it spraying like that, you can change the settings.”

Woman (already moving on) “Shoe tree!”

Man: (flatly) “Get one.”

Woman (pointing at something I couldn’t see) “We so need that.”

Man: (looking across, smiling) “Mick has got one of those in room, it so made me laugh.”

Woman: “I might get this hook that goes on the back of the door.”

Man: (without looking) “Get it.”

Woman (pressing on into the catalogue’s outer limits) “We could get a cooler, for when summer comes.”

Man: (absorbing without rancour what seemed to me to be an absurd proposal) “I guess so. It’ll be so warm.”

Woman: (pressing on) “We need a bedside light, I hate getting up to turn it off and on.”

Man: “Yeah. It’s horrible.”

Woman: “I wish our bed had drawers underneath.”

Man: “It does.”

Woman: “But you have to lift the mattress up to get in them!”

Man: (without hesitation) “Yeah, but that’s much better for dust.”

Woman: “God you’re gay, gay in a good way.”

Man: (as though struck by a vision of the promised land) “Let’s go to Ikea.”

Guardian All Ears 31st January

Drawing this brought back memories of 'The Tin Drum' by Günther Grass where the mother, traumatised by a fishing incident involving a horses head & numerous eels, gorges herself on fish for two weeks & dies.
As a bit of a fish-phobic this has always struck me as a distinctly unpleasant mode of death - I'm hoping to be crushed & killed instantly by a falling piano (which I have failed to observe because it's 6 in the morning, I'm 90 years old & emerging from a really stunning party...


(Article by Michael Holden)

I was having breakfast in a café next to a couple of men who were eating together but reading quietly from separate newspapers until one of them begun unprompted to assess the pitfalls of cohabitation.

Man 1 (putting down his paper and looking at his food - a kipper) “You can argue about anything if you’re not careful.”

Man 2 (thinking he’d missed something) “Eh?”

Man 1 “At home, it’s a minefield, right?. The other day I saw a programme about the Elizabethans, it said the used to eat more fish than we do. So I said to the wife about this and she says, “Well I eat plenty of fish,” as though it was sort of an accusation, something she had to defend herself from-eating less fish than an Elzabethan.”

Man 2 “Yeah, well. Women can be like that.”

Man 1 (continuing the aquatic theme) “Yeah but I took that bait though. I’ve started having a go.”

Man 2 (confused) “About what?”

Man 1 “About who eats more fish. I said look I’ll have a kipper, like I am now, or I’ll have a roll mop, we might have fish and chips for tea.”

Man 2 “I don’t like a roll mop.”

Man 1 (ignoring him) “The point is I (+I)definitely(-I) eat more fish than her. No question. But then she says, ‘Oh I have a bit of tuna for lunch sometimes, when you’re out.’ I said ‘when am I out? I’m in all fucking day!’ Which to be fair is part of the problem-but anyway, I said, ‘are you telling me you’re putting away tuna on the sly?’ And she’s taken that the wrong way, so then it’s all about her and her weight!”

Man 2 (looking at his empty plate) “Oh dear.”

Man 1 “So then it was a proper issue, and, this I think is what you might say was ironic, I ended up taking her out for dinner.”

Man 2 “Ridiculous innit?”

Man 1 (Unrepentant) Yeah, well. She started it.

Guardian All Ears 24th January

(Article by Michael Holden)

I was sitting in hospital, early for the earliest appointment of the day, when a couple came in-an elderly looking woman and younger man-who had taken the audacious move of turning up exactly on time and then paused for a moment to take in the queue of sickly swots that had already assembled. I’ve seen people flip out before at this but their credit they did nothing more than frown and check that they were indeed on schedule.

Woman (presumably the patient) “What’s the time?”

Man (possibly her son) “Nine. Bang on.”

He helped the woman to a seat where she sat panting, seemingly exhausted by the act of sitting down.

Man: “You want anything?”

Woman: (staring into space) “No.”

Man: “Want tea?”

Woman: “No.”

Man: (evidently pursuing the protocols of a familiar routine) “Coffee?”

Woman: “No.”

Man: “No hot drink?”

Woman: “No.”

Man: “Want a cold drink?”

Woman: “ No.”

Man: “Orange?”

Woman: “No.”

Man: “Plain water.”

Woman: “Yeah.”

Man: “Want something to eat?”

Woman: “No.”

Man: “A roll?”

Woman: No:

Man: “Crisps?”

Woman: (wildly affirmative) “Crisps! Plain!”

As he walked away she belched louder than anyone I’ve ever heard at which he turned back and smiled at her as if to say, “that’s my girl.”

Guardian All Ears 17th January

This drawing is based very strongly on sketches I made of a guy who I saw kicked out of the Blue Note club in New York a couple of weeks back which was probably worthy of an All Ears column of it's own!
Amidst a very hushed & reverent audience this one man was making a lot of noise & when (very politely) told to be quiet started repeating very loudly 'why are you talking to me from the next table? Why are you talking to me from the next table?
Don't tell me to shut up; just because you heard some guitar playing!'
When challenged further he began ranting -
'I know what the fucking Blue Note's all about. It's about fucking self expression!'
until they eventually threw him out.

Anyway...not sure if the line background characters work too well in this one but colouring them seemed to overpower the main character - hmmmm...



Article by Michael Holden

Once the world was a stage but, now, demented by technology, we are turning into an office-or possibly the set of The Office-either way it’s not good news. We may be in recession but public transport still echoes to the sound of people fending off the errands that follow them like dogs through the limitless wastes of contemporary tedium. There was a perfect example on the bus the other day, playing solitaire on a laptop while depressing his colleagues via mobile phone.
(as though he loathed having explain himself but enjoyed the sound of doing so) “I am requesting CCTV because our till was left unattended for five minutes and we think a member of the public might have been in there…”
He paused and moved cards about while the other person responded.
“ All the 20 pound notes were gone, there were only two left in there, that’s not right...”
He made affirmative humming sounds for a while before unleashing a new and presumably terrifying possibility.
“Listen, all I’m saying is, Rodney’s not gonna like it…if anybody thinks that’s gonna come out of my wages for the next month, that’s not gonna happen, I can’t let that happen. You can forget that.”
Sounds of consternation followed.
(placatory) “Well I’m telling you so that you know… you know the numbers on the door and the numbers in the till and it doesn’t add up.”
There was more squealing down the phone.
“He’s not gonna be happy…”
Then the voice on phone fell silent at the implied threat of Rodney.
“I’m not passing the blame, I’m just, giving you the head’s up. Anyway, it’s my stop, I gotta go.”
But he stayed where he was and dealt himself a fresh hand.