Out!

...and STAY OUT!

Anti-Chill

If there's too much of this wishy washy emphasis on relaxation & chilling out in your life - why not buy a car & specifically only attempt to drive it up & down Brick Lane on a Sunday - job done!

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.

Finders keepers...?

...purely for the sake that I like octopi & space...

new aliens...

Just finished this for 'Communicators in Business' magazine - commissioned by the lovely Amelia who always seems to manage to pull out fun jobs - any excuse for monsters!

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.