Guardian All Ears 17th October

Gratuitous use of cock imagery ahoy!

I’d like to stop smoking but since the ban, the eavesdropping opportunities it creates are just to good to give up. Cast out into the air cold air it as though the bonds of addiction allow us to speak outside the conventions of the world indoors. Why else would a group of men taking part in some kind of reunion dinner furnish me with the details of their friend’s cardiac-genital humiliation as we stood together outside a restaurant? It’s not like I ask people to tell me this stuff. It just happens.

Man 1 “I’m surprised Alan’s not here.”

Man 2 “You know he had a heart attack?”

Man 3 (as though this were worse) “He lives in France”

Man 4(sensing he might be the only one in possession of the full facts-and determined to capitalise) “Well he (+I)did(-I) live in France, until he had the heart attack…”

Man 1 “What happened then?”

Man 3 (not to be outdone) “They had to airlift him out-in a helicopter.”

Man 2 “Jesus-I never knew that.”

Man 1 “Wow. I wonder how felt?”

Man 4 (reclaiming the high ground) “He said the worst thing was when he was lying on the stretcher and the helicopter came down and blew all the blankets off him-so he was naked…”

Man 3 “He’s lucky he wasn’t in England, someone would have filmed you over here. You’d have been on Youtube, or that Michael Buerke programme. Half dead in the down draft, naked, with your penis pixelated out…”

Man 1 “I thought he lived in Belgium?”

Man 4 “Don’t be daft.”

Guardian All Ears 10th October

...with a little nod to my favourite estate agents this week ...grrr!


(Article by Michael Holden)
It’s a sign of the times but twice in a month I’ve ended up within earshot of a man berating a woman over the phone about selling a house. While the first tirade took place in a public toilet, this one went down in the lobby of an expensive hotel. The man was small, sitting on sofa much larger than he was and spoke with a New York accent.
Man “This guy’s a doctor right? But this is phony. This is a fraudulent transaction, and there’s nothing you can do about it?
He listened to the response and pulled faces of exasperation
Man “You got all your linens in there! How you gonna show the house? You need to put all the linens into the basement…I’ll move my desk down there, I’ll see if I can get someone to help me…that desk is very, very heavy-and that’s the least of our problems… We’re not gonna move the chandelier back to your house, that’s idiotic!
Then something got said that sent him up a gear.
Man “ What? I wouldn’t count it! I would get the house on the market and market it aggressively. How aggressively? Very aggressively, go for four twenty and put a note on there saying only pre-approved buyers, people with normal mortgages or nothing, if someone comes in with cash, take less…Screw these people!”
He chewed a pen and tried to take in her response but it was all too much.
Man “Don’t use Jeremy anymore! He’s incompetent, and these morons, these idiots over there, tell ‘em they couldn’t run a convenience store…Tell them! Open up your mouth or I’ll come down and tell them. The whole thing is idiotic! Oh Jesus Christ, they’re fucking novices. You spent all this money, for what?”
He gave a giant sigh and applied himself to less vexing matters
Man “Dress very warm, it’s raining and it’s cold out…just get me a chicken sandwich, something like that.”

Guardian All Ears 3rd October

You just KNOW the guy's going to smell of Country Born hair gel, Hard Rock hair spray & Lynx! Sorry, but the mid '80s were RUBBISH...you can stuff your rosy tinted revisionism & your crappy Big Country albums where the sun don't shine...

(Article by Michael Holden)

I was hiding my face in a newspaper on a train when I heard a woman’s voice say, “I remember when you were conceived.” I looked up to see who was poised to deliver this revelation and saw a woman sat opposite her daughter who it transpired was around 25 years old.
Mother (visualizing) “ It was bloody freezing. Me and your dad had been to the cinema. He had to walk me home.”
Daughter (visualizing also-but presumably with some caution) “What film did you see?”
Mother (making claw shapes with her hand)“Oh God. That thing when his hands are like knives …”
The daughter shook her head.
Mother (annoyed with herself) “The Freddy thing…you know…”
She didn’t.
Mother (like she’d won a quiz) “Nightmare on Elm Street!”
Daughter “Never seen it.”
Mother “I hated it. Scared me. That’s why he had to take me home. Not ‘cos of the weather. I was jumpy.”
Daughter (smiling) “With good reason”
Mother (like 1984 was another era entirely) “That was why you went to the cinema back then.”
Daughter (laughing, incredulous) “To get pregnant?”
Mother “You know what I mean. We didn’t go as much when you was born. I know that.”
Daughter “Do you remember much about it?”
Mother “What do you mean?”
Daughter “Like, what you were wearing?”
Mother “I had a big coat.”
Daughter “What about dad?”
Mother “Well he would have had a coat as well.”
Daughter “That’s all you remember?”
Mother “The bloke in the film, he’s got a red and black jumper..”
Daughter (looking anxious to wrap things up) “Thanks for that.”

Guardian - All Ears 26th September

Exploring the art of rodent contraception this week...


(Article by Michael Holden)
I was having dinner in my local Chinese when a couple sat down. They seemed cheerful but uncommonly convivial and eager to please. I pinned them as a first date till the man said, “you’ve seen the floorboards in my bedroom?” and the woman clearly had. Oh well.
Man “There are big spaces between them. I think this is where the mice get in. Sometimes I’m lying there at night and I can hear, like, mouse sounds, getting louder. And then they stop and I think, well perhaps they’ve gone. But then it starts again.”
Woman “Don’t put your heating on. They’ll go next door, where it’s warmer. They don’t care.”
Man (reassessing his fellow diner in light of this new nonsense) “Actually, they are quite selective about…”
Woman (not listening) “I put down traps. ‘The Little Nipper,’ one was called. It breaks their spines.”
Man : “I find all that a bit…”
Woman: “ In the end it’s less mice and rats on the planet and that’s what it’s all about. That’s the objective.”
Man (losing it somewhat) “It’s not though, is it? Mice are highly organized. They’re just seeking food and shelter. If you were a farmer-storing grain then you might have a point. Anyway, you’ve got a cat, that’s why cats are domesticated. We fed them to kill mice. So without the mouse there is no cat. Rodents are real survivors, we should admire them. Spontaneous ovulation, short gestation, large litters. We can’t manage any of that.”
She looked at him with clear contempt now. In a world where opinion is valued over knowledge he had just talked himself and his seed out of the evolutionary process, at least with this woman. She wouldn’t be looking at the hole in his floorboards again, that much was clear.

Guardian All Ears 19th September

Possibly the fastest All Ears I've ever done - completed in record time while desperately attempting to make the 14.30 to Portsmouth Harbour en route to the Isle of Wight - talk about skin of the teeth - you can almost seee the sweat!

(article by Michael Holden)
Not for the first time I was stuck in a queue marvelling at how the preparation of a mild stimulant-coffee-takes far more time than one could possibly hope to save through the sensation it eventually delivers. If you’re not even buying coffee and you’re stuck behind people who are then a further irony is that the frustration you feel is like taking some some kind of cheap hit in its own right. The women in front of me, one of whom was pregnant-the other with a child of about 4,-were hesitating over what type of coffee they might eventually buy when the little girl interrupted them
Girl “Can I have an orange juice?”
Mother “No, because they’re very expensive here. You can only get the big ones.”
Girl “Oh.”
Woman (finally deciding) “I’d like a decaff latte please. I’ll get her an orange juice.”
Mother “Oh no.”
Woman “I don’t mind.”
Mother “Really?”
Woman “Yes, unless she’s not allowed.”
Mother “No, it’s fine.”
Woman “What are you having?”
Mother “Latte. But I’ll pay for that seperately”
Woman (seizing a snack) “I might have one of these.”
Mother (prenatally alarmed) “You’re eating peanuts?”
Woman “I read some new research. It says they’re ok.”
Mother (offering change) “Let me get the orange juice…”
Woman “No. Because then that wouldn’t be a present from me, and want it to be a present.”
And so it went on, as they tied themselves ever deeper into an aimless knot of protocol, wound at my expense.

Sure plays a mean pinball

New bit of work destined for this year's artbook with an affectionate nod to trash movies, pinball & Camden goths

Jiggy McCue covers

Cover illustration for the 'Jiggy McCue' series by Michael Lawrence for Orchard books has allowed me to commune with my inner 9 year old i.e. books about pants, toilets & snot. I had to endure some very pitying looks from fellow tube travellers while I was skim reading these. They've got some nice little flick books inside too - should be out very soon - will post a link so you can buy them & stroke the embossed covers over your eager little faces you lucky people!