...a rabbit called Steve?

was slightly disturbed to see a kid's TV programme yesterday with a rabbit called Steve...call me old fashioned but 'Steve' is not a good animal name

Bus (slight return)

Note to self; when alluding to details of illustrations it helps if they're visible to the human eye (see 'Guardian All Ears 8th August' post)

PS I still despise Queen

Guardian All Ears 8th August

Couldn't resist the 'We Will Rock You' bus because of recently being obliged to walk past the hideous gold Freddy Mercury statue on Tottenham Court road & thinking that I'd rather have my teeth pulled or get gang raped by badgers rather that sit through that dross...*shudder*

(Article by Michael Holden)
Some people become so disposed to talk about themselves that even when they are discussing something else, what they’re really saying is about them. The mobile phone though has elevated self-referential drivel to a higher plane. Nowadays you hear people giving blow by blow commentary on the stupefying minutiae of their existence while-and this is the truly staggering part-someone on the other end of the phone pays attention. I was at a bus stop with a crowd of people the other day when a teenage girl started yelling into her phone while endeavouring to stare down the rest of the queue by sporting a look of complete hostility that suggested looking back at her might be a fatal mistake.

Girl “It’s the same argument. I go into the room and say something and she says something to me and then I walk out and then she calls after me and then I go back in there and tell her what I think and then she tells me to fuck off.”

She circled the bus stop like a foul-mouthed, polyester planet and when she passed me again she had moved on to the subject of exactly what was happening to her.

Girl “I’m at the bus stop. Waiting for the bus. I can feel the air on my face, the wind like, I don’t mind it. It ain’t too hot. I can’t see the bus. Oh God, I’m just waiting for the bus now, how long can it take for the bus to come? ”

She made another orbit and, as she returned, succeeded finally in catching someone’s eye.

Girl “Oh my God there’s a man looking at me, he’s fucking looking at me!”

This led to other people looking at her, a fact she effortlessly absorbed into her self-obsessed yodelling.

Girl “Now they’re all looking at me! What the fuck is wrong with people? Where’s the bus. The bus is coming! I’m gonna get on it. The bus is coming now!”

It came and she went upstairs. I stayed on the lower deck and felt old.

All Ears 1st August

I kind of wish there was a magazine called 'Ooh Err!'...our newsagent seems to specialize in 'delights' like '50 Plus' etc. shudder!

(article by Michael Holden)

Over the years I’ve noticed that if people outnumber you
sufficiently in a lift they’ll carry on talking as though you
weren’t there, regardless of what they’re talking about. In fact,
though this could be entirely my imagination, the more discomfiting
the subject to an outsider-the more lift talkers appear to enjoy
inflicting it upon them. It was a thesis that proved itself again as
I ascended slowly through the levels of a public building with three
men who weren’t about to stop talking about pornography just because
they’d got in an elevator.

Man 1 “Why would you have magazines though?”

Man 2 “Do you not have the Internet?”
Man 3 “It’s not that. I’ve had ‘em for years. I can’t get rid of
them. It’s a worry with Debbie coming over. We’re getting quite
friendly. She stays over a lot.”
Man 1 “Where are they?”
Man “I think they’re under the bed.”
Man 2 “What do you mean you “think.” You’re 40 years old and you’re
telling me you don’t know what’s under your bed?”
Man 3 “They could be there. They are there.”
Man 2 “Just sling ‘em out.”
Man 3 “I can’t. I try, but then I look at them, and then that’s it.
I’m involved.”
Man 1 “You wanna get a grip of yourself”
Man 2 “That’s the problem.”
Man 1 “Get a welder’s mask-something like that-so you can get hold
of ‘em without getting a proper look.”
I got out here-it was my floor. The men were all laughing, and
rightly so. As I walked away I heard the confessor make a final
admission.
Man 3 “I don’t think there’s anything I can do. They’re just, too
powerful.”

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