Guardian All Ears 4th October

As a kid I always thought the shops in Museums & other places of interest were the best bits - where you could buy dinosaur pencil cases or Tudor fudge etc. Anyway - didn't think this weeks copy was that great but I quite like the picture what I done...

I had gone to hear a lecture at a museum-quite a sedate affair you might think-but as I took my place in the auditorium I had no idea that an insane and wholly unnecessary micro-drama would soon be unfolding in front of me. It was only when one of the curators stepped up to the podium that the truth about the evening began to unfold.

Curator: (stern look on his face suggesting antiquities in peril) “After the talk there will be a ten minute comfort break, during which refreshments will not be available. But I must ask those of you here with children to keep them under control. Two children have already been found loose in the museum shop this evening, and that is unacceptable.”

There was a pause while people tried to gauge how serious he was.

Curator: (looking the entire room in the eye) “Theft is theft.”

Some people started laughing at this point.

Curator: (somewhere between pity and disdain) “You might think this is funny, but I can assure it isn’t. This isn’t funny. We have CCTV and if anything else happens then I can promise you that appropriate action will be taken.”

During the “comfort break” I made a point of seeking out the curator, who was being confronted by the accused kid’s father.

Dad: “Do you think this an appropriate way to react. Is this what’s in your training?”

Curator: “What about your training as a parent, what about that?”

The dad just stood there, open-mouthed while the curator stared at him with a look that suggested that he would stab anyone else who came near the shop to death with a souvenir pencil.

Article by Micheal Holden

New animations in Fight Face by Sophie Woolley

Sample of animated projections I designed for Fight Face by Sophie Woolley & directed by Gemma Fairlie - it's running at the Lyric Hammersmith until October 4th - it's a great show

See Guardian review here...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2008/sep/26/theatre.captions.fight.face

Guardian All Ears 27th September

Monks, cheese, stupid little Paris Hilton dogs, generously proportioned women & '90s 'Gregorian chants 'n'beats' act Enigma - what more can one want?

There's nothing like a crisis for bringing folk together and the recent closure of the Channel Tunnel forced a collision of characters that saw me sharing a waiting room with some American travelers swapping stories about where they'd been.

Woman 1: "We went to a monastery-beautiful-you could sense the spirituality of the place."

Man 1: "It was tangible, like you could I actually feel it."

Woman 1: " I mean I haven't been to church since my mother passed but I, I don't know what but I went in and I lit a candle and I got down on my knees and I prayed."

There was much nodding at this, but greater revelations were to follow.

Woman 1: "But (+i)then(-i) the monks came into the chapel and started praying, it was like nothing you have ever heard…"

Man 2: "Gregorian?"

Man 1 "I'm not sure if they were strictly Gregorian but…"

Woman 1: "The most beautiful sound, I went up and said you have to have this on CD, but they had no idea. Other than this cheese they make they have no commercial sense whatever, they are on a completely spiritual plane, but I just had to have this music, this was such a special time for me

Woman 2: "Oh, completely. I mean I completely understand, without having been there…"

Woman 1: "We bought some of the cheese instead. You have to go there."

Woman 2: "How was the cheese?"

Woman 1: "Kind of dry, actually. We threw most of it away."

Article by Michael Holden

Guardian All Ears 20th September

Aah! That's better - at least I got a correct credit this week - might even get a free sub...perhaps not! Bah!

I was eating lunch outside a sandwich shop when a woman walking passed and exchanged saccharine greetings with the woman opposite me who was working her way through a sandwich half the size of her head.

Woman 1: "Alright treacle?"

Woman 2 : "Alright Sugar?"

Woman 1: "That looks like quite a big lunch."

Woman 2: (proudly) "It is. I need it. I'm gonna have a drink tonight, drink some alcohol, a bit more than usual."

Woman 1: (somehow impressed) "That sounds like a plan!"

Woman 2 :"You better believe it."

Woman 1 "Where you goin', round here?"

Woman 2 "Yeah, round the corner."

Woman 1 "Happy hour?"

Woman 2 "More like happy ever after, you know what I mean?"

Woman 1 (not looking like she'd understood at all) "Yeah. "

Woman 2 "You should come."

Woman 1 "Who's going."

Woman 2 "Everyone from work and the office. It's a leaving do. That's how come I can get away with getting hammered."

Woman 1 "Who has a leaving do on a Monday?"

Woman 2" I dunno."

Woman 1 "You don't the person?"

Woman 2 "No I know the person but I don't know why they're leaving on a Monday."

Woman 1 "Why are they leaving?"

Woman 2 "They sacked her really, she is thick innit."

Woman 1 (as though the lowering of the intellectual stakes had made everything seem more appealing) "Maybe I will come. "

Woman 2 "Text me. "

Woman 1 "Nice."

Article by Michael Holden

Guardian All Ears 13th September

Despite the blessed sub editors at the Grauniad crediting this to somebody else FOR THE SECOND WEEK RUNNING(!) I enjoyed the chance to draw bears, alcohol, facetious t-shirt slogans & very low slung trousers whilst simultaneously indicating my general disdain at camping in general...article follows...

One of the meagre perks of eavesdropping is that it can clue you in to worlds you might otherwise know nothing about. In this case modern festival culture, where it seems everyone gets a lift home from their parents. Years ago it would be several days before you could have faced (+I)anyone’s(-I) parents, especially your own. Still, listening to the man across from me on the train it was apparent that some aspects of generational division are alive and well.

Man 1 “My daughter went down to the Reading Festival, so I had to drive down there to pick her up.”

Man 2 “She had a good time?”

Man 1 “So she said.”

Man 2 “Did she have ‘bare alcohol?’”

Man1 “What’s ‘bear alcohol’?”

Man 2 “No, it’s ‘(+I)bare(-I) alcohol,’ it’s what they say instead of ‘a lot’.

Man 1 “I’d bought her a tent.”

Man 2 “Did she set it on fire? I hear that’s the thing to do these days, burn your tent.”

Man 1” No, well from what I gather she didn’t use it, she certainly didn’t bring it back with her.”

Man 2 Well they ask you to hand them in now, if you don’t want them. They recycle them, send them off to the Sudan, or one of those places.”

Man 1 “Well she said she didn’t use it. I suppose she must have stayed in someone else’s.”

Man 2 “Last time I went to one of those things someone kicked me out of a tent in the middle of the night, I was sure it was mine.”

Man 1 “Well, like I say, she must have stayed in someone else’s. She certainly made a lot of friends, she had three lads with her, I ended up giving them a lift too.”

Now are you being naïve or am I being cynical about what might have happened there, I wondered. I guess the truth, like her tent, is out there somewhere.

Article by Michael Holden

Bat tiff!

Guardian All Ears 6th September

Bloody paper credited this to someone else this week - sandle wearing bastards!


Midsummer, midweek, mid-afternoon and bad weather proved no obstacles to the group of women with whom I shared a smoking area outside a pub on the edge of a park in Humberside. Their alfresco healthcare debate was evidently not a forum that could be curtailed by drizzle, commitments and ignorance, or any combination thereof.

Woman 1: (righteous, animated, slightly outraged) “She asked me to save her half of my cig, I said ‘I ain’t doing that, you’re on medication.’ She says, ‘Not anymore!’ I said well what were them tablets I see you taking?”

Woman 2: (anxious for an outcome, partly because she seemed desperate to say something judgemental) “So what did she say?”

Woman 1: “ She said, ‘don’t worry about those, them’s me medication ‘cos I am a nymphomaniac!’”

Women 2 & 3: (In unison) “No!”

Woman: 1 “I swear.”

Woman 2: “What’s she on about, nymphomania tablets?”

Woman 3: “She’ll be making all that up. You don’t wanna believe a word out of her. She wants truth drugs, never mind bloody sex pills.”

Woman 1 “Yeah but she had them tablets, those tablets that they give you when they’re not real tablets, what are they called?”

Woman 3 (definitely not joking) “Gazebos?”

Woman 1 “That’s them!”

Woman 2 “I don’t care what you call it, it’s just an excuse for being a slag.”

And having reached a verdict they crushed out their cigarettes beneath their feet and went back inside.

Article by Michael Holden