Old Dive would like to apologise for the brief blog hiatus.
After eleven lovely days of breathing fresh, clean country air, getting back to filthy London last Wednesday and inhaling the fœtid, dank stench of The Great Wen, plus being trapped in trains and tubes full of coughing, hacking bastards, reeking of B.O. and halitosis, led to the inevitable hybrid flu/cold/leprosy/dengue fever/udder rot combined with several diseases that would raise eyebrows at Porton Down germ warfare research labs taking up residence in my saggy old bod (you know the kind of thing; women shrug it off with a single polite cough while men collapse into bed for a week and moan like fuck).
I still feel like something freshly squeezed from Gojira's arse this morning but I can actually move my limbs without screaming, so - predictably vindictively - I've crawled back to London to spread viral revenge on the stinking capital.
I'm a one man epidemic with a twitch and a bad attitude so watch out London; it's Twelve Monkeys time!
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sick Saturday - New Kid: Episode 2
Oh, crap.
More New Kid … and it doesn't get any better.
This week: anorexia, obesity, sex, drugs and pædophilia.
Next week (mercifully the last): animals.
More New Kid … and it doesn't get any better.
This week: anorexia, obesity, sex, drugs and pædophilia.
Next week (mercifully the last): animals.
Friday, March 28, 2008
A Leg Man Writes …
Mme. Benaut has kindly reminded me in yesterday's comments box (and in doing so has made my heart leap with nostalgic joy) of my old school's attempt to enforce the ridiculous, prudish and joyless "six inch rule".
Come with me back in time, girls and boys, to the heady heyday of the mini-skirt and of the vain and misguided adult attempts to prevent schoolgirls from wearing mini-skirts with the hemlines somewhere up around the clitoris area.
The time: Uncle Dive's Schooldays.
The place: "C" corridor of an English co-ed grammar school.
Dramatis personæ:
Mrs. Gardner (Deputy Headmistress; combining Medusa's gaze with a propensity to explode with the awesome fury of Mount St.Helens several times a day);
A cold, stone flag floor;
A six inch ruler;
Any number of pretty young girls in regulation school dresses customised to be as short as humanly possible;
A smirking Dive and his unsavoury clique.
Brief aside: Just as the pitiless fiend Mrs. Gardner is used as a personal rottweiller by reclusive Old Slump, the wily headmaster (think Emperor Palpatine but without the looks or charm), Young Dive is in turn Mrs. Gardner's pet … I look like her son (who has run away to India) so she dotes on me, which allows me some considerable latitude for "unconventional" behaviour, a gift which I don't hesitate to abuse in a most disgraceful manner.
Thanks to her intervention I am excused uniform (at least when I reach the upper sixth form and Præfect-hood), allowed to play rock guitar with my disreputable chums in the school hall (to the apoplectic rage of our viciously splenetic Head of Music who won't allow guitars on the school grounds as "they are trash and have nothing to do with music"); allowed to publish a cynical, profane and frankly disturbing monthly satirical riposte to the official school magazine - the creation of myself and one Bavis … think Small Glass Planet with sick cartoons - and she turns a blind eye to my using the keys to the art department office to have copious sex with überbabe Judith Flaxman, prettiest girl in the lower sixth.
Anyhoo; back to the plot:
Mrs. Gardner stalks the school (again, think of that mechanical robot Jedi thingie in the last and crappiest Star Wars movie, put a wig on it and there you have Mrs. G), slapping a ruler against her palm and woe betide any girl who doesn't heed the warning cry of "Cavé!"
This woman rules by inducing sheer, pants-wetting terror, and any hapless girl not sharp enough to yank down her hem is brought smartly to heel by the barking of her surname and forced to kneel on the stone floor while the gorgon slaps her ruler against the poor girl's leg to ensure the hem of her dress is no more than the regulation six inches above her knees.
Ah, the glorious days of corporal punishment; any girl found transgressing the rule is hauled off double quick to the Deputy Head's office for a stern sermon followed by a good old-fashioned spanking (or for repeat offenders a splendidly noisy and stinging caning), emerging flushed and tearful and rubbing her bottom only to be forced to endure the long walk down a corridor mysteriously filled with a lot more smirking boys than it is at any other time.
And you wonder how I turned out like I did …
Those were indeed the days. Lounging in the common room, surrounded by bevies of pretty teenage girls with their dresses hitched up to flash their knickers at the world.
Sigh …
The demise of the mini-skirt is (with the possible and grudging exception of the Great War) the most truly tragic event of the twentieth century, something that scars us still today and that leaves grown men - myself included - crying themselves to sleep in hopeless despair.
Stop this madness. Bring back the mini-skirt as compulsory wear for all girls and weemen (except lard-arses; that's just gross … If you can't keep away from the fridge, stay indoors so we don't have to look at you).
This has been an appeal on behalf of world sanity.
Come with me back in time, girls and boys, to the heady heyday of the mini-skirt and of the vain and misguided adult attempts to prevent schoolgirls from wearing mini-skirts with the hemlines somewhere up around the clitoris area.
The time: Uncle Dive's Schooldays.
The place: "C" corridor of an English co-ed grammar school.
Dramatis personæ:
Mrs. Gardner (Deputy Headmistress; combining Medusa's gaze with a propensity to explode with the awesome fury of Mount St.Helens several times a day);
A cold, stone flag floor;
A six inch ruler;
Any number of pretty young girls in regulation school dresses customised to be as short as humanly possible;
A smirking Dive and his unsavoury clique.
Brief aside: Just as the pitiless fiend Mrs. Gardner is used as a personal rottweiller by reclusive Old Slump, the wily headmaster (think Emperor Palpatine but without the looks or charm), Young Dive is in turn Mrs. Gardner's pet … I look like her son (who has run away to India) so she dotes on me, which allows me some considerable latitude for "unconventional" behaviour, a gift which I don't hesitate to abuse in a most disgraceful manner.
Thanks to her intervention I am excused uniform (at least when I reach the upper sixth form and Præfect-hood), allowed to play rock guitar with my disreputable chums in the school hall (to the apoplectic rage of our viciously splenetic Head of Music who won't allow guitars on the school grounds as "they are trash and have nothing to do with music"); allowed to publish a cynical, profane and frankly disturbing monthly satirical riposte to the official school magazine - the creation of myself and one Bavis … think Small Glass Planet with sick cartoons - and she turns a blind eye to my using the keys to the art department office to have copious sex with überbabe Judith Flaxman, prettiest girl in the lower sixth.
Anyhoo; back to the plot:
Mrs. Gardner stalks the school (again, think of that mechanical robot Jedi thingie in the last and crappiest Star Wars movie, put a wig on it and there you have Mrs. G), slapping a ruler against her palm and woe betide any girl who doesn't heed the warning cry of "Cavé!"
This woman rules by inducing sheer, pants-wetting terror, and any hapless girl not sharp enough to yank down her hem is brought smartly to heel by the barking of her surname and forced to kneel on the stone floor while the gorgon slaps her ruler against the poor girl's leg to ensure the hem of her dress is no more than the regulation six inches above her knees.
Ah, the glorious days of corporal punishment; any girl found transgressing the rule is hauled off double quick to the Deputy Head's office for a stern sermon followed by a good old-fashioned spanking (or for repeat offenders a splendidly noisy and stinging caning), emerging flushed and tearful and rubbing her bottom only to be forced to endure the long walk down a corridor mysteriously filled with a lot more smirking boys than it is at any other time.
And you wonder how I turned out like I did …
Those were indeed the days. Lounging in the common room, surrounded by bevies of pretty teenage girls with their dresses hitched up to flash their knickers at the world.
Sigh …
The demise of the mini-skirt is (with the possible and grudging exception of the Great War) the most truly tragic event of the twentieth century, something that scars us still today and that leaves grown men - myself included - crying themselves to sleep in hopeless despair.
Stop this madness. Bring back the mini-skirt as compulsory wear for all girls and weemen (except lard-arses; that's just gross … If you can't keep away from the fridge, stay indoors so we don't have to look at you).
This has been an appeal on behalf of world sanity.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Talking 'bout My Generation
… and moaning about the next one.
Maria's post about her experience with a house full of twenty-somethings woke up a bugbear of Old Dive's …
Designing schools for a living as I do, I get to hang around kids a lot, and over the years I have noticed something rather dispiriting: The Young are fast becoming what the Old were when I was young (if you follow me).
Though the flipside of that, however, is that my generation have become irrevocably and indisputably cool (which we knew all along).
Grab a coffee and let me explain …
I'm going to hit fifty this year, yet I feel younger, cooler, more culturally aware and way more of a rebel than most of the dull, grey kids and twenties I see these days.
Kids - and I use my usual definition of "kid" here: anyone under the age of thirty-seven (or indeed over that age but "a bit too excitable") … kids seem to me now as boring, conventional, dull and lacking in any department that could possibly be connected with "cool" as my grandparents appeared to me back when I was a kid.
Youth is indeed wasted on the young.
As the admirable J.M.Barrie observed in the equally Admirable Crichton: "I'm not young enough to know everything", which was kinda mean, coming from the guy who wrote Peter Pan, but also true. At seventeen, kids know everything; then again at twenty-seven. It's only when they hit thirty-seven that they realise they know fuck all and start to learn stuff for real.
Even though the young people of today are generally opinionated, self-obsessed and a bit too full of themselves they are - rather tragically - totally unable to comprehend that they know "nothin' 'bout nothin'", and that they have created or achieved nothing of any value that has not been created or achieved before; usually (much to their chagrin) by their own parents.
The teenagers I go to college with on Thursdays bizarrely think I'm "cool" for my musical tastes and for having done all the crap I've done (and because I really am cool) and they are forever "borrowing" stuff off my iPod and asking my advice on bands, clothes (! … this is inexplicable to me, but the kids at college buy the same shoes as me and dress much the same - Louisa even sent off to Kyoto for the same 浴衣 as I wear), movies, drugs, relationships, all sorts of crap.
It's genuinely weird when I'm sitting in the refectory, reminiscing with Lin, the only other forty-something still in college and a bunch of seventeen-year-olds are hanging on our every word, mouths agape with amazement (and not just amazement that people can live this long and still be sentient).
When I was a kid, people as old as I am now were dead to the world (and smelled of wee). At seventeen I would never have dreamed of asking a fifty-year-old about new and cool music (they'd have just said "I don't understand all of that rock and roll rubbish; it's just noise."), or where I could get shoes like theirs, let alone the finer points of "how to give a good blowie" (thanks for asking that one, Louisa; it's just a shame that you insisted on using our thumbs for the demonstration … hey ho; at least it made Lin laugh stuff out of her nose).
Anyhoo; Maria was bemoaning feeling old among the twenty-something kids …
But listen up, my fellow baby boomers:
We are the lucky generation.
The cool generation.
The best generation.
We grew up when it was all NEW!
We did it first and we fucking loved it.
We were the first Beatles fans; the first punks; the first metal-heads; we saw Dylan and Bowie The Clash when THEY were young!
Por exemplo, from the potted history of Old Dive:
I'm a fifties kid; born with rock and roll; from the post-war generation, whose dad came home from messing about with nuclear bombers in the air force carrying boxes of Black American music; Fats and Chuck and John Lee (we're talking real R&B … not the derivative crap "product" the marketing morons call R&B these days) and of course Elvis.
Boy did we hit the sixties swinging …
Along came The Beatles and I got my first guitar. I went to school surrounded by mini-skirted dolly-birds, the pill and the space race and the very first colour TV (back when they had programmes worth watching).
We didn't have wimpy fucking al Qaeda to piss about with, we had full-on nuclear armageddon, to the accompaniment of dope and psychedelia and CND and Vietnam and presidents getting shot or impeached, and it was cool and it was fun, waiting for some twat to press the big red button.
I was eighteen when Punk happened and it was brilliant (when kids call themselves "punks" these days it is so pathetically sad), playing in bands and having a fucking glorious time.
I dropped out of college and played lead guitar in rock bands back when it was the cool thing to do.
As my generation has got older, "cool" has moved along with us.
And conservative, reactionary, responsible boredom has moved the other way until the kids these days think and act just like my grandparents did.
Look at your kids …
Unless you're Chavs, they don't smoke or drink and they disapprove of recreational drugs.
They're conscientious and responsible.
The closest they come to rebellion is wearing a Nirvana hoody (for fuck's sake, how long has Cobain been dead, you cretins?) or acting sullen (yeah, that's new).
They "borrow" cool from our generation (the Nirvana hoody, the Ché teeshirt, Converse All Stars, anything "punk") because they have neither the wit nor the imagination to do or to create anything remotely cool themselves.
Shit, even the teen pregnancy rates have stalled; daughters no longer come home at five in the morning, tattooed and pregnant (again, Chavs are fighting a brave but lonely rearguard action here).
They listen to dull, derivative muzak product; anything remotely new and exciting is too "weird" for them (it's all noise, like rock and roll was to my grandparents). Shit, even today's most "exciting" indie and dance bands are just pale and insipid re-hashes of seventies and eighties music. We've heard it all so many times before. Come up with something new, you fucking morons!
They watch the cookery channel and they go to the gym instead of hot-rodding old cars and cruising for girls (Phil was so totally awesome at customising cars, and he's mercifully never grown up) with a back seat full of beer and the music up FUCKING LOUD ("Fucking Loud" copyright Bob Dylan; Manchester Free Trade Hall, 1966, kids; listen and learn).
They manage their money and SAVE (fucking hell) instead of blowing their student loans on guitars and riotous living and sleeping in a squat and stealing milk off doorsteps and food from the backs of supermarkets.
They talk about mortgages and insurance!
They wouldn't know how (or why) to kick against the pricks, they're such dumb, TV-addled crap-corporate-consuming retards.
The fucking idiots believe what they're told!
They don't make bombs and blow shit up like we used to (okay, so maybe that was just me).
They are "sensible". They have "careers advice" instead of just saying "Fuck the future; I'm gonna play in a band, take drugs and screw around." (Hey, it worked for me)!
They don't sit in a dingy room with a bag of grass, a couple of pipes, some pretty guitars and some very pretty girls and not worry that the only food in the house is half an onion and a sausage (maaaaan, those were good times).
They don't go on protest marches and photograph the secret service men who are photographing them (that was always so much fun).
They don't drive around the city following a police car, tokin' on a monster Camberwell Carrot and waving it at the nice coppers.
They have fucking pension plans (kill me now).
They don't try to bring down multinational corporations; they apply for fucking JOBS in them!
They cut their hair! Sweet Cheeses of Nazareth, what is the world coming to?
And THEIR PARENTS EMBARRASS THEM!
As Douglas Adams put it: they're so un-hip, it's a wonder their bums don't fall off.
The sad conclusion I have reached is that The Young Are The New Old.
Our children have squandered their glorious inheritance … all of our hard work of rebellion, sexual freedom, irresponsibility and FUN has been subsumed by the unimaginative, the responsible and the tedious.
One can only hope that the next generation rebels against this pathetic lot of uninspiring sad-sacks and kicks their sorry arses hard!
They so richly deserve it.
Townshend was almost right in "My Generation" when he said "hope I die before I get old"; what he should have written was "hope I die before I get to see my kid grow up to be a fucking accountant."
Kids; we're not angry, we are just very, very disappointed.
Maria's post about her experience with a house full of twenty-somethings woke up a bugbear of Old Dive's …
Designing schools for a living as I do, I get to hang around kids a lot, and over the years I have noticed something rather dispiriting: The Young are fast becoming what the Old were when I was young (if you follow me).
Though the flipside of that, however, is that my generation have become irrevocably and indisputably cool (which we knew all along).
Grab a coffee and let me explain …
I'm going to hit fifty this year, yet I feel younger, cooler, more culturally aware and way more of a rebel than most of the dull, grey kids and twenties I see these days.
Kids - and I use my usual definition of "kid" here: anyone under the age of thirty-seven (or indeed over that age but "a bit too excitable") … kids seem to me now as boring, conventional, dull and lacking in any department that could possibly be connected with "cool" as my grandparents appeared to me back when I was a kid.
Youth is indeed wasted on the young.
As the admirable J.M.Barrie observed in the equally Admirable Crichton: "I'm not young enough to know everything", which was kinda mean, coming from the guy who wrote Peter Pan, but also true. At seventeen, kids know everything; then again at twenty-seven. It's only when they hit thirty-seven that they realise they know fuck all and start to learn stuff for real.
Even though the young people of today are generally opinionated, self-obsessed and a bit too full of themselves they are - rather tragically - totally unable to comprehend that they know "nothin' 'bout nothin'", and that they have created or achieved nothing of any value that has not been created or achieved before; usually (much to their chagrin) by their own parents.
The teenagers I go to college with on Thursdays bizarrely think I'm "cool" for my musical tastes and for having done all the crap I've done (and because I really am cool) and they are forever "borrowing" stuff off my iPod and asking my advice on bands, clothes (! … this is inexplicable to me, but the kids at college buy the same shoes as me and dress much the same - Louisa even sent off to Kyoto for the same 浴衣 as I wear), movies, drugs, relationships, all sorts of crap.
It's genuinely weird when I'm sitting in the refectory, reminiscing with Lin, the only other forty-something still in college and a bunch of seventeen-year-olds are hanging on our every word, mouths agape with amazement (and not just amazement that people can live this long and still be sentient).
When I was a kid, people as old as I am now were dead to the world (and smelled of wee). At seventeen I would never have dreamed of asking a fifty-year-old about new and cool music (they'd have just said "I don't understand all of that rock and roll rubbish; it's just noise."), or where I could get shoes like theirs, let alone the finer points of "how to give a good blowie" (thanks for asking that one, Louisa; it's just a shame that you insisted on using our thumbs for the demonstration … hey ho; at least it made Lin laugh stuff out of her nose).
Anyhoo; Maria was bemoaning feeling old among the twenty-something kids …
But listen up, my fellow baby boomers:
We are the lucky generation.
The cool generation.
The best generation.
We grew up when it was all NEW!
We did it first and we fucking loved it.
We were the first Beatles fans; the first punks; the first metal-heads; we saw Dylan and Bowie The Clash when THEY were young!
Por exemplo, from the potted history of Old Dive:
I'm a fifties kid; born with rock and roll; from the post-war generation, whose dad came home from messing about with nuclear bombers in the air force carrying boxes of Black American music; Fats and Chuck and John Lee (we're talking real R&B … not the derivative crap "product" the marketing morons call R&B these days) and of course Elvis.
Boy did we hit the sixties swinging …
Along came The Beatles and I got my first guitar. I went to school surrounded by mini-skirted dolly-birds, the pill and the space race and the very first colour TV (back when they had programmes worth watching).
We didn't have wimpy fucking al Qaeda to piss about with, we had full-on nuclear armageddon, to the accompaniment of dope and psychedelia and CND and Vietnam and presidents getting shot or impeached, and it was cool and it was fun, waiting for some twat to press the big red button.
I was eighteen when Punk happened and it was brilliant (when kids call themselves "punks" these days it is so pathetically sad), playing in bands and having a fucking glorious time.
I dropped out of college and played lead guitar in rock bands back when it was the cool thing to do.
As my generation has got older, "cool" has moved along with us.
And conservative, reactionary, responsible boredom has moved the other way until the kids these days think and act just like my grandparents did.
Look at your kids …
Unless you're Chavs, they don't smoke or drink and they disapprove of recreational drugs.
They're conscientious and responsible.
The closest they come to rebellion is wearing a Nirvana hoody (for fuck's sake, how long has Cobain been dead, you cretins?) or acting sullen (yeah, that's new).
They "borrow" cool from our generation (the Nirvana hoody, the Ché teeshirt, Converse All Stars, anything "punk") because they have neither the wit nor the imagination to do or to create anything remotely cool themselves.
Shit, even the teen pregnancy rates have stalled; daughters no longer come home at five in the morning, tattooed and pregnant (again, Chavs are fighting a brave but lonely rearguard action here).
They listen to dull, derivative muzak product; anything remotely new and exciting is too "weird" for them (it's all noise, like rock and roll was to my grandparents). Shit, even today's most "exciting" indie and dance bands are just pale and insipid re-hashes of seventies and eighties music. We've heard it all so many times before. Come up with something new, you fucking morons!
They watch the cookery channel and they go to the gym instead of hot-rodding old cars and cruising for girls (Phil was so totally awesome at customising cars, and he's mercifully never grown up) with a back seat full of beer and the music up FUCKING LOUD ("Fucking Loud" copyright Bob Dylan; Manchester Free Trade Hall, 1966, kids; listen and learn).
They manage their money and SAVE (fucking hell) instead of blowing their student loans on guitars and riotous living and sleeping in a squat and stealing milk off doorsteps and food from the backs of supermarkets.
They talk about mortgages and insurance!
They wouldn't know how (or why) to kick against the pricks, they're such dumb, TV-addled crap-corporate-consuming retards.
The fucking idiots believe what they're told!
They don't make bombs and blow shit up like we used to (okay, so maybe that was just me).
They are "sensible". They have "careers advice" instead of just saying "Fuck the future; I'm gonna play in a band, take drugs and screw around." (Hey, it worked for me)!
They don't sit in a dingy room with a bag of grass, a couple of pipes, some pretty guitars and some very pretty girls and not worry that the only food in the house is half an onion and a sausage (maaaaan, those were good times).
They don't go on protest marches and photograph the secret service men who are photographing them (that was always so much fun).
They don't drive around the city following a police car, tokin' on a monster Camberwell Carrot and waving it at the nice coppers.
They have fucking pension plans (kill me now).
They don't try to bring down multinational corporations; they apply for fucking JOBS in them!
They cut their hair! Sweet Cheeses of Nazareth, what is the world coming to?
And THEIR PARENTS EMBARRASS THEM!
As Douglas Adams put it: they're so un-hip, it's a wonder their bums don't fall off.
The sad conclusion I have reached is that The Young Are The New Old.
Our children have squandered their glorious inheritance … all of our hard work of rebellion, sexual freedom, irresponsibility and FUN has been subsumed by the unimaginative, the responsible and the tedious.
One can only hope that the next generation rebels against this pathetic lot of uninspiring sad-sacks and kicks their sorry arses hard!
They so richly deserve it.
Townshend was almost right in "My Generation" when he said "hope I die before I get old"; what he should have written was "hope I die before I get to see my kid grow up to be a fucking accountant."
Kids; we're not angry, we are just very, very disappointed.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
What I Did On My Holidays
Much as I love my job I hate coming back to work after a nice break.
I took last week off to do the gardens and luckily for me the weather sucked such huge arse that I could do no more than oil the lawnmower.
So I spent the whole week doing fat all.
Wonderful!
The alarms didn't go off at 4:40AM!
I lay in bed every morning, watching the news until six o'clock!
I ate breakfasts!
I took long, lazy soaks in the bath instead of snatched 5AM showers.
I read books.
I watched crappy old movies.
I watched NASA TV on the computer and saw the guys doing their spacewalks.
I cooked real meals instead of grabbing sushi on my usual dash for the train.
I wore out my old PS2 (the PS3 is coming at the weekend).
I ate the Easter Bunny.
And an octopus.
I made a great, fat, Dive shaped depression in my sofa.
I walked around the countryside, cycled and made clattering noises in my gym.
I bought way too many books.
I pounded the fuck out of the local kids at snowballs.
All in all I had a splendid time.
I can thoroughly recommend spending a week doing bugger all.
The only thing is, I forgot what a bloody awful thing my commute is …
I just suffered my usual three-and-a-half hour journey to work this morning; driving through snow to get to Norwich; enduring a crawling, uncomfortable two-and-a-quarter hour train journey accompanied by screaming kids (school holidays) and shouting chav parents on their way to the airport for a week's binge-drinking brawl on some benighted Mediterranean isle (these people were chugging back cans of Stella at six in the morning); cramming onto a stinking tube train full of halitosis and B.O. and finally walking through the rain to the office to discover I'd forgotten my security access widget …
It takes a good week of this crap to become immune to the stink of London, to re-acclimatise myself to getting home all sticky and filthy, binning my clothes and leaping into the shower.
Gack!
Repeat: I love my job, I love my job, I love my job …
I took last week off to do the gardens and luckily for me the weather sucked such huge arse that I could do no more than oil the lawnmower.
So I spent the whole week doing fat all.
Wonderful!
The alarms didn't go off at 4:40AM!
I lay in bed every morning, watching the news until six o'clock!
I ate breakfasts!
I took long, lazy soaks in the bath instead of snatched 5AM showers.
I read books.
I watched crappy old movies.
I watched NASA TV on the computer and saw the guys doing their spacewalks.
I cooked real meals instead of grabbing sushi on my usual dash for the train.
I wore out my old PS2 (the PS3 is coming at the weekend).
I ate the Easter Bunny.
And an octopus.
I made a great, fat, Dive shaped depression in my sofa.
I walked around the countryside, cycled and made clattering noises in my gym.
I bought way too many books.
I pounded the fuck out of the local kids at snowballs.
All in all I had a splendid time.
I can thoroughly recommend spending a week doing bugger all.
The only thing is, I forgot what a bloody awful thing my commute is …
I just suffered my usual three-and-a-half hour journey to work this morning; driving through snow to get to Norwich; enduring a crawling, uncomfortable two-and-a-quarter hour train journey accompanied by screaming kids (school holidays) and shouting chav parents on their way to the airport for a week's binge-drinking brawl on some benighted Mediterranean isle (these people were chugging back cans of Stella at six in the morning); cramming onto a stinking tube train full of halitosis and B.O. and finally walking through the rain to the office to discover I'd forgotten my security access widget …
It takes a good week of this crap to become immune to the stink of London, to re-acclimatise myself to getting home all sticky and filthy, binning my clothes and leaping into the shower.
Gack!
Repeat: I love my job, I love my job, I love my job …
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Advertising Feature
It's fucking snowing yet again today. At five this morning I couldn't even find the road so I told the office I'm taking a snow day and went back to bed.
As I really don't have the heart to take any more fucking snow photos, here are a bunch of my favourite Natalie Dee drawings (if anyone isn't already a fan, you can find her here … she rules):
mmmmmmmmmmmm …
Boxes For Dummies
I don't know why this is funny but it just is.
Peahen, why does this remind me of you?
Hoorah for sweary girls who can't cook for shit
'merica … 'nuff said
Ooooooh!
As I really don't have the heart to take any more fucking snow photos, here are a bunch of my favourite Natalie Dee drawings (if anyone isn't already a fan, you can find her here … she rules):
mmmmmmmmmmmm …
Boxes For Dummies
I don't know why this is funny but it just is.
Peahen, why does this remind me of you?
Hoorah for sweary girls who can't cook for shit
'merica … 'nuff said
Ooooooh!
This is your children, blog-moms.
So … another crap filler post, but at least this one makes me giggle.
So … another crap filler post, but at least this one makes me giggle.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Buggrit!
Fuck!
I mean, what the fuck is this?
Did I order "I'm Dreaming Of A White Easter", with Bing Crosby as a fucking singing bunny on skis?
No, I did not.
I know we English folk are famous for complaining about the weather, but I WANT SPRING AND I WANT IT NOW!
Say "Hi" to my forsythia.
And my car roof (I've put the poor thing away in the warm garage now).
And the first snowman to be seen in the village in years.
Mum's had her fair share in Suffolk, too.
I mean, what the fuck is this?
Did I order "I'm Dreaming Of A White Easter", with Bing Crosby as a fucking singing bunny on skis?
No, I did not.
I know we English folk are famous for complaining about the weather, but I WANT SPRING AND I WANT IT NOW!
Say "Hi" to my forsythia.
And my car roof (I've put the poor thing away in the warm garage now).
And the first snowman to be seen in the village in years.Mum's had her fair share in Suffolk, too.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Two Seasons In One Day
Well … So much for the snow.
This was the view of some of my pesky trees seen from my kitchen door a couple of minutes ago.
All of a sudden the sun came out and the snow is almost all gone.
Weird …
This was the view of some of my pesky trees seen from my kitchen door a couple of minutes ago.
All of a sudden the sun came out and the snow is almost all gone.
Weird …
Later That Same Easter Sunday Morning …
The Church is somewhere back there."Eostre": the Saxon festival to celebrate the coming of spring (borrowed by the Christians as it kinda coincides with Passover from time to time).
Yeah, right.
I'm glad I ate the Easter Bunny.
Easter Snow
Srivens!
Six-thirty on Easter Sunday morning and time to take a brisk (and somewhat fresh) walk on Dive Street.
Snow!
Looking across the fields from Dive Street toward the next village.
The little green at the end of Dive Street.
Six-thirty on Easter Sunday morning and time to take a brisk (and somewhat fresh) walk on Dive Street.
Snow!Looking across the fields from Dive Street toward the next village.
The little green at the end of Dive Street.I don't know if you can make it out but the foreground is full of primroses and daffodils and in the background that little brown smudge is the Easter Bunny sitting in the snow.
Brrr … So much for spring.
Happy Easter, one and all!
Brrr … So much for spring.
Happy Easter, one and all!
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Sick Saturday - New Kid: Episode 1
It's Saturday.
This morning I went into the city and had breakfast as usual, then hit the shops and the French market; bumped into an old pal and unloaded a shedload of French cheeses on her (the gift that stinks) and came back home to hit the housework.
All of which makes for a boring, same-old-same-old blog post.
So fuck that. Let's get messy …
While I was digging around in my old crap pile of folios and college work to find those pictures of nice naked people I posted earlier this week I came across some ancient cartoons from when Old Dive was Young Dive.
Mikey and I had been trying to come up with the crappest superhero possible for a comic strip he was intending to write (among his other talents, Mike is a brilliant comic book artist).
There were inevitably many unsuccessful applicants, such Dysentery Boy and Chip-like Child and the plastic genetic freak Michael Jacksonson (this dates it to the year Michael Jackson announced his intention to make a child) and Mike's porno Scooby-Doo, some of which I have copies of and may well inflict on you at some point.
During the sessions (mostly involving sketching something terminally silly and rolling around on the floor laughing) I somehow gave birth to the deliberately crap New Kid and his catchphrase "Want to play a game with me?" which would inevitably lead to catastrophe and mayhem …
We were young, we were sick and New Kid (which mercifully only ran to three episodes) followed suit with a vengeance.
So here to launch a very short series of Sick Saturday is the first (and the least sick) New Kid episode.
Nice people look away now; sickos, click on the strips to enlarge them.
You may not want to tune in next Saturday …
This morning I went into the city and had breakfast as usual, then hit the shops and the French market; bumped into an old pal and unloaded a shedload of French cheeses on her (the gift that stinks) and came back home to hit the housework.
All of which makes for a boring, same-old-same-old blog post.
So fuck that. Let's get messy …
While I was digging around in my old crap pile of folios and college work to find those pictures of nice naked people I posted earlier this week I came across some ancient cartoons from when Old Dive was Young Dive.
Mikey and I had been trying to come up with the crappest superhero possible for a comic strip he was intending to write (among his other talents, Mike is a brilliant comic book artist).
There were inevitably many unsuccessful applicants, such Dysentery Boy and Chip-like Child and the plastic genetic freak Michael Jacksonson (this dates it to the year Michael Jackson announced his intention to make a child) and Mike's porno Scooby-Doo, some of which I have copies of and may well inflict on you at some point.
During the sessions (mostly involving sketching something terminally silly and rolling around on the floor laughing) I somehow gave birth to the deliberately crap New Kid and his catchphrase "Want to play a game with me?" which would inevitably lead to catastrophe and mayhem …
We were young, we were sick and New Kid (which mercifully only ran to three episodes) followed suit with a vengeance.
So here to launch a very short series of Sick Saturday is the first (and the least sick) New Kid episode.
Nice people look away now; sickos, click on the strips to enlarge them.
You may not want to tune in next Saturday …
Friday, March 21, 2008
Oh, Crap. He's Off Again …
And so the Atheist sallies forth to Saint Larry's to check out the Good Friday morning service.
Don't laugh. I was brought up a good Christian; it was only when my brain had developed sufficiently to form the word "Huh?" that I kinda fell off the God-wagon.
And Easter is, after all, a cracking story.
You don't need to believe in the resurrection to enjoy it.
For a heathen like me it's like any other good story; f'rinstance I don't believe everything that nice Mister Clemens tells me ol' Huck Finn got up to but I still love reading about it.
The Good Book is a good book. Even for an Atheist …
Especially for an Atheist!
Sheesh! You should see some of the stuff in there! I was reading Ezekiel the other day and that bloke was off his trolley! You remember the bizarre, ranty prophet in Life of Brian? Worse … Much worse! And funnier.
So anyhoo; your correspondent got well wrapped up and walked into the village through the teeth of an arctic gale (snow heralded for tomorrow) and sat in the back pew (reserved for the village's token anarcho-syndicalist) to enjoy the show.
And enjoy it I did, even though most of the hymns were of the happy-clappy-crappy modern variety, except for Walton's wonderful setting of Fletcher's "A Litany" ("Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet …").
Linnet (yes, it's what his parents called him) read from John 19 and gave a goodish sermon but he somehow got all entangled with the war in Iraq, bless him.
I even - in that strange way that we feel it is somehow right to endure a bit of suffering on Good Friday - rather enjoyed the sensation of sitting on a hard wooden pew in a thirteenth century stone building equipped with a very few Victorian heating pipes (to describe the efficacy of which the phrase "wholly inadequate" is … er … wholly inadequate), on a freezing cold morning; my poor old legs will take days to recover from the bone-chilling ordeal.
But here we come to the part that set my teeth on edge and kinda spoiled things for me (as I knew it would; it always does) … The appalling desecration that is the "Good News Bible"; like flares and tank tops in fetching shades of brown, this abomination encapsulates all that is shameful about the 1970s, and its introduction has driven multitudes of Christians away from their churches.
Listen up:
I'm old.
I was brought up with the King James Version, that paragon of linguistic and poetic beauty that has given our language more wonderful phrases than Shakespeare.
I agree that - for those whose Latin and Greek are even more rusty than mine - we need a version of the Bible that ordinary folk can read and understand, but to me the KJV is "it".
Don't mess with perfection.
A bit of background:
Poor old John Wycliffe was the first to have a real go at the job, translating the Vulgate into English in 1380, but he was promptly throttled into unconsciousness and then burned for his trouble.
William Tyndale had a crack at it, eventually coming up with the translation used by Henry VIII (and look at the trouble he caused with it), only for this and all other English translations to be burned when Mary and the Catholics got back in power.
Next up came the "Geneva" Bible - Elizabeth's Bible - the translation used by Shakespeare and John Bunyan, the pilgrim fathers and good old Ollie Cromwell.
But these were simple and literal transliterations of the Latin translation of Saint Jerome. The theological conference of 1604 called for a new translation, "as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek", but written specifically to be read aloud, in the glorious "high" English of the day.
This became the KJV and to this old and bitter pedant, as beautiful and unsurpassed a work of literature as anything Shakespeare and Chaucer produced, using the same rich cadences and powerful poetic majesty of the English language at its zenith.
In this vulgar modern world where grunting chavs binge-drink in front of the telly rather than read books, a rift is developing in the English language between the spoken and the written word and every few decades some misguided idiot decides that the Bible needs a new translation to enable an increasingly illiterate and ignorant population to understand it.
The "thing" currently being used in my lovely little village church can most generously be described as a paraphrasing of the events in the Bible. Much like a bloke down the pub describing what he saw on telly last night. The beauty and the poetry and the power have been lost from the language and replaced with the dull and plodding descriptive prose of a TV guide.
And it's not just the Bible; Chaucer has suffered a similar fate.
Dryden first tried "updating" him, to appalling effect, but I'll use Wright's rather better Oxford University Press verse translation to demonstrate what I'm trying to get across here:
When an unsuspecting member of the public buys Chaucer's Canterbury Tales these days, here's what they get (from the description of the Knight in the prologue):
There was a KNIGHT, a reputable man,
Who, from the moment that he first began
Campaigning, had cherished the profession
Of arms, he also prized trustworthiness,
Liberality, fame and courteousness.
So far, so hoopy …
But compare that to what Chaucer actually wrote:
A KNYGHT ther was & that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouth and honour, fredom and curtesie.
Wow!
Chaucer doesn't need translation.
He is perfectly readable in Early English.
And his language is wonderfully rich and expressive.
Contrast those two passages again (read them aloud) and you'll see just how much the modern reader loses out. And it is the same with the KJV.
Fortunately Shakespeare has not (yet) suffered this treatment, otherwise we might be seeing poor Hamlet soliloquize:
To live or to die.
That's the question.
Whether it's best to put up with all the shit that happens
Or to just say "Fuck it." and top meself …
It can't be long …
I'm glad I'll be dead soon.
Church congregations have plummeted in England since the seventies.
And for me and millions like me the main reason for this has been the introduction of the Bible in modern colloquial English.
It has lost its poetry, its beauty, its power.
It is no substitute for the real thing.
Sorry, Linnet, but other than on special occasions like today when I'll pop along for a sing-song and a sermon, I'll read my KJV at home.
And don't get me started on modern hymns!
Don't laugh. I was brought up a good Christian; it was only when my brain had developed sufficiently to form the word "Huh?" that I kinda fell off the God-wagon.
And Easter is, after all, a cracking story.
You don't need to believe in the resurrection to enjoy it.
For a heathen like me it's like any other good story; f'rinstance I don't believe everything that nice Mister Clemens tells me ol' Huck Finn got up to but I still love reading about it.
The Good Book is a good book. Even for an Atheist …
Especially for an Atheist!
Sheesh! You should see some of the stuff in there! I was reading Ezekiel the other day and that bloke was off his trolley! You remember the bizarre, ranty prophet in Life of Brian? Worse … Much worse! And funnier.
So anyhoo; your correspondent got well wrapped up and walked into the village through the teeth of an arctic gale (snow heralded for tomorrow) and sat in the back pew (reserved for the village's token anarcho-syndicalist) to enjoy the show.
And enjoy it I did, even though most of the hymns were of the happy-clappy-crappy modern variety, except for Walton's wonderful setting of Fletcher's "A Litany" ("Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet …").
Linnet (yes, it's what his parents called him) read from John 19 and gave a goodish sermon but he somehow got all entangled with the war in Iraq, bless him.
I even - in that strange way that we feel it is somehow right to endure a bit of suffering on Good Friday - rather enjoyed the sensation of sitting on a hard wooden pew in a thirteenth century stone building equipped with a very few Victorian heating pipes (to describe the efficacy of which the phrase "wholly inadequate" is … er … wholly inadequate), on a freezing cold morning; my poor old legs will take days to recover from the bone-chilling ordeal.
But here we come to the part that set my teeth on edge and kinda spoiled things for me (as I knew it would; it always does) … The appalling desecration that is the "Good News Bible"; like flares and tank tops in fetching shades of brown, this abomination encapsulates all that is shameful about the 1970s, and its introduction has driven multitudes of Christians away from their churches.
Listen up:
I'm old.
I was brought up with the King James Version, that paragon of linguistic and poetic beauty that has given our language more wonderful phrases than Shakespeare.
I agree that - for those whose Latin and Greek are even more rusty than mine - we need a version of the Bible that ordinary folk can read and understand, but to me the KJV is "it".
Don't mess with perfection.
A bit of background:
Poor old John Wycliffe was the first to have a real go at the job, translating the Vulgate into English in 1380, but he was promptly throttled into unconsciousness and then burned for his trouble.
William Tyndale had a crack at it, eventually coming up with the translation used by Henry VIII (and look at the trouble he caused with it), only for this and all other English translations to be burned when Mary and the Catholics got back in power.
Next up came the "Geneva" Bible - Elizabeth's Bible - the translation used by Shakespeare and John Bunyan, the pilgrim fathers and good old Ollie Cromwell.
But these were simple and literal transliterations of the Latin translation of Saint Jerome. The theological conference of 1604 called for a new translation, "as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek", but written specifically to be read aloud, in the glorious "high" English of the day.
This became the KJV and to this old and bitter pedant, as beautiful and unsurpassed a work of literature as anything Shakespeare and Chaucer produced, using the same rich cadences and powerful poetic majesty of the English language at its zenith.
In this vulgar modern world where grunting chavs binge-drink in front of the telly rather than read books, a rift is developing in the English language between the spoken and the written word and every few decades some misguided idiot decides that the Bible needs a new translation to enable an increasingly illiterate and ignorant population to understand it.
The "thing" currently being used in my lovely little village church can most generously be described as a paraphrasing of the events in the Bible. Much like a bloke down the pub describing what he saw on telly last night. The beauty and the poetry and the power have been lost from the language and replaced with the dull and plodding descriptive prose of a TV guide.
And it's not just the Bible; Chaucer has suffered a similar fate.
Dryden first tried "updating" him, to appalling effect, but I'll use Wright's rather better Oxford University Press verse translation to demonstrate what I'm trying to get across here:
When an unsuspecting member of the public buys Chaucer's Canterbury Tales these days, here's what they get (from the description of the Knight in the prologue):
There was a KNIGHT, a reputable man,
Who, from the moment that he first began
Campaigning, had cherished the profession
Of arms, he also prized trustworthiness,
Liberality, fame and courteousness.
So far, so hoopy …
But compare that to what Chaucer actually wrote:
A KNYGHT ther was & that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouth and honour, fredom and curtesie.
Wow!
Chaucer doesn't need translation.
He is perfectly readable in Early English.
And his language is wonderfully rich and expressive.
Contrast those two passages again (read them aloud) and you'll see just how much the modern reader loses out. And it is the same with the KJV.
Fortunately Shakespeare has not (yet) suffered this treatment, otherwise we might be seeing poor Hamlet soliloquize:
To live or to die.
That's the question.
Whether it's best to put up with all the shit that happens
Or to just say "Fuck it." and top meself …
It can't be long …
I'm glad I'll be dead soon.
Church congregations have plummeted in England since the seventies.
And for me and millions like me the main reason for this has been the introduction of the Bible in modern colloquial English.
It has lost its poetry, its beauty, its power.
It is no substitute for the real thing.
Sorry, Linnet, but other than on special occasions like today when I'll pop along for a sing-song and a sermon, I'll read my KJV at home.
And don't get me started on modern hymns!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wholly Weak
Yup, that's Old Dive …
It's Holy Week and I can't even work up a good rant against the Godbotherers.
Hey ho.
So instead, I shall do what any gentleman surely would under such circumstances and give the ladies another glimpse of cock.
Here's Gary again.
As it's Holy Week, this time he's posing as "Jesus Having A Bit Of A Lie Down".
Sorry, ladies, but he's married.
I wonder if Jesus was ticklish.
Stuck up there on the cross with his naked feet at eye level I know I'd have been tempted to find out.
Addendum: Katherine has posed some splendidly silly questions today.
It's Holy Week and I can't even work up a good rant against the Godbotherers.
Hey ho.
So instead, I shall do what any gentleman surely would under such circumstances and give the ladies another glimpse of cock.
Here's Gary again.
As it's Holy Week, this time he's posing as "Jesus Having A Bit Of A Lie Down".
Sorry, ladies, but he's married.
I wonder if Jesus was ticklish.Stuck up there on the cross with his naked feet at eye level I know I'd have been tempted to find out.
Addendum: Katherine has posed some splendidly silly questions today.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Painting With Mud
Hokay … No naked and floppy male genitalia for the girls today.
And no jiggly and perky teen boobies for the boys (dammit).
Today we go painting with mud.
I've not done any oil painting for years, but that's what it always felt like to me; sliding around in slurpy mud. I never really got the hang of it.
Here's one of my old ones: the ruins of St.Benet's Abbey (is there a Saint Benaut?), just down the river from my village.
And a slightly closer view (at least it is if you click on it).
I no longer have the spare time to paint in oils, so I gave up a while back.
But Robyn tells me that painting in acrylics is like oils but that you don't have to wait three weeks for the bloody things to dry enough to overpaint, so I might have a go at those.
Has anyone else tried acrylics?
Lynn? You're a successful painter; you know these things.
Advice, please.
And no jiggly and perky teen boobies for the boys (dammit).
Today we go painting with mud.
I've not done any oil painting for years, but that's what it always felt like to me; sliding around in slurpy mud. I never really got the hang of it.
Here's one of my old ones: the ruins of St.Benet's Abbey (is there a Saint Benaut?), just down the river from my village.
And a slightly closer view (at least it is if you click on it).I no longer have the spare time to paint in oils, so I gave up a while back.
But Robyn tells me that painting in acrylics is like oils but that you don't have to wait three weeks for the bloody things to dry enough to overpaint, so I might have a go at those.
Has anyone else tried acrylics?
Lynn? You're a successful painter; you know these things.
Advice, please.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Something For The Lay-dees
Well, this is for Lynn and Mme B and I must say you've both earned it with your lovely compliments yesterday.
As it's Holy Week I suppose posting a picture of someone who looks like Jesus is fairly apt.
Click on him for more detail.
And as Lynn would pout (most fetchingly, no doubt) if I kept his genitalia hidden, here's a quick pen study of Gary with his cock out.
Enjoy.
Hee hee
As it's Holy Week I suppose posting a picture of someone who looks like Jesus is fairly apt.
Click on him for more detail.And as Lynn would pout (most fetchingly, no doubt) if I kept his genitalia hidden, here's a quick pen study of Gary with his cock out.
Enjoy.Hee hee
Monday, March 17, 2008
More Stiffy Trouble
Rich has been running an occasional series of posts about his art classes (and the girl he had a crush on), which are not only excellent in themselves but have the admirable side-effect of taking me right back to university and my own art college days (and a girl I had a crush on).
So I dug around in my studio and found some dusty portfolios (I never throw old crap away) stuffed with my college work and fired up the scanner.
Today I present to you a Monday bonus:
Gratuitous Nudity, a pretty girl and a Dive stiffy embarrassment story (what another one, you ask?) … Yes, another one.
Hokay … Let's hit the swirly effects and head back in time to 1978 (cue Kate Bush singing "Wuthering Heights" and a suddenly slim and hirsute college-boy Dive).
And here we are in life class (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), where we get to sit and chat with Gary (who drums in a rival band to Dive) while he poses, stark naked, for us to draw.
It's either Gary or Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a lovely, middle-aged woman who always starts each session holding herself in; all firm and slim and upright. But we soon learn to anticipate "the sag" and draw accordingly, her body gradually surrendering to gravity until at the end of the session she actually looks like what we have drawn … What looks to me now like a wonderful, soft, rounded and beautiful middle-aged woman's body but back then just looked saggy and old (sigh).
So now we take a quick sidestep back to school and Dive being in the same class as a certain Louise, for whom he has the unrequited hots …
Are you still with me?
Then you'll have already guessed what happens next.
Sure enough; Elizabeth goes on holiday and we get a stand-in.
We're milling around in the life studio when in walks Louise, all jaunty and "Hi, Dive! How are you?"
"Wow! Louise! Are you joining our class?"
"No. I'm modelling today."
Cue what must have been the most comical expression my face has ever made, which reduces her to a fit of the giggles.
And the next three and a half hours pass chatting and catching up, whilst trying desperately to hide my whopping stiffy.
Sitting nekkid in front of me is a girl with whom I have sat in class, mentally undressing her many times in my spotty teenage schooldays.
Of course, Louise knows full well how I feel - and the trouser mayhem I am suffering - and flirts outrageously.
Anyhoo … This is my favourite of the half-dozen poses from that morning, because it actually looks like her.
And because moving round to get her in profile meant that she couldn't keep catching my eye and grinning and staring at my crotch, so I could actually concentrate on drawing her.
Click on the pic for more detailed perky teen … er …
After class we shared lunch in the refectory and had a damned good laugh about it all.
But my feelings remained - inevitably - unrequited so we just stayed on chatting terms.
And she never came back to life class, no matter how much I tried to talk Elizabeth into taking another break.
I wonder where she is now.
And if she's as saggy as me …
Sigh …
So I dug around in my studio and found some dusty portfolios (I never throw old crap away) stuffed with my college work and fired up the scanner.
Today I present to you a Monday bonus:
Gratuitous Nudity, a pretty girl and a Dive stiffy embarrassment story (what another one, you ask?) … Yes, another one.
Hokay … Let's hit the swirly effects and head back in time to 1978 (cue Kate Bush singing "Wuthering Heights" and a suddenly slim and hirsute college-boy Dive).
And here we are in life class (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), where we get to sit and chat with Gary (who drums in a rival band to Dive) while he poses, stark naked, for us to draw.
It's either Gary or Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a lovely, middle-aged woman who always starts each session holding herself in; all firm and slim and upright. But we soon learn to anticipate "the sag" and draw accordingly, her body gradually surrendering to gravity until at the end of the session she actually looks like what we have drawn … What looks to me now like a wonderful, soft, rounded and beautiful middle-aged woman's body but back then just looked saggy and old (sigh).
So now we take a quick sidestep back to school and Dive being in the same class as a certain Louise, for whom he has the unrequited hots …
Are you still with me?
Then you'll have already guessed what happens next.
Sure enough; Elizabeth goes on holiday and we get a stand-in.
We're milling around in the life studio when in walks Louise, all jaunty and "Hi, Dive! How are you?"
"Wow! Louise! Are you joining our class?"
"No. I'm modelling today."
Cue what must have been the most comical expression my face has ever made, which reduces her to a fit of the giggles.
And the next three and a half hours pass chatting and catching up, whilst trying desperately to hide my whopping stiffy.Sitting nekkid in front of me is a girl with whom I have sat in class, mentally undressing her many times in my spotty teenage schooldays.
Of course, Louise knows full well how I feel - and the trouser mayhem I am suffering - and flirts outrageously.
Anyhoo … This is my favourite of the half-dozen poses from that morning, because it actually looks like her.And because moving round to get her in profile meant that she couldn't keep catching my eye and grinning and staring at my crotch, so I could actually concentrate on drawing her.
Click on the pic for more detailed perky teen … er …
After class we shared lunch in the refectory and had a damned good laugh about it all.
But my feelings remained - inevitably - unrequited so we just stayed on chatting terms.
And she never came back to life class, no matter how much I tried to talk Elizabeth into taking another break.
I wonder where she is now.
And if she's as saggy as me …
Sigh …
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Here Am I Floating Round My Tin Can
"Here am I, floating round my tin can,
Far above the moon,
Planet Earth is blue,
And there's nothing I can do …"
I make no excuses for another NASA post because it's fucking brilliant.
Before you do anything else, flick iTunes on and find Bowie's "Space Oddity".
Then sing along as "it's time to leave the capsule if you dare."
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen
and welcome back to The Rick And Mike Show,
coming to you today from Space!
Yaaay!
More screengrabs from NASA TV showing genuine Grade 'A' heroes, Rick Lenahan and Mike Foreman working their socks off to get Dexter the robot up and running.
This is what the sun looks like from space. Wowee!
"Weightless" means what it says on the box.
Watch in awe as Mike carries tons of metal in one hand.
On the right of the picture is one of Dexter's enormous arms and on the left is the socket into which it will fit.
Superman, eat your heart out!
Would anyone here honestly rather watch "Big Fucking Brother"?
THIS is reality TV!
"Day Two of Rick and Mike's spacewalk" and are the two guys sitting by the pool, arguing?
Are they fuck!
I want to be born all over again and be a spaceman.
Rick and Mike carry on a great and funny banter as they work.
They are astonishingly like Tom and Ray off NPR's "Car Talk" radio show.
They also grunt a lot when things get stuck and say "Pass the wrench" and "Good work, buddy" a lot.
And "Hey, Houston! can we use the pry-bar?" when things really get stuck and they have to hit bits of the robot to free them up.
This is the pallet that Dexter's bits are stored in.
The guys' task is simple:
Assemble several tons of metal and make a working robot.
In space!
Let's face it. The pictures from NASA are fucking astounding.
When the sun goes behind good ol' Planet Earth, the guys have nifty headlights on their helmets.
Star Wars?
Bollocks!
This is the real Mc.Coy.
"Planet Earth Is Blue And There's Nothing I Can Do"
Power tools in space!
The ultimate boys' dream!
Woohoo!
This was the pallet before they started work.
And yes, Lynn … For several parts of their mission they are "freefloating",
dicking around in outer space with no tether!
Scary or what?
And this is Dexter when the guys went in for tea.
Far above the moon,
Planet Earth is blue,
And there's nothing I can do …"
I make no excuses for another NASA post because it's fucking brilliant.
Before you do anything else, flick iTunes on and find Bowie's "Space Oddity".
Then sing along as "it's time to leave the capsule if you dare."
Good evening, ladies and gentlemenand welcome back to The Rick And Mike Show,
coming to you today from Space!
Yaaay!
More screengrabs from NASA TV showing genuine Grade 'A' heroes, Rick Lenahan and Mike Foreman working their socks off to get Dexter the robot up and running.This is what the sun looks like from space. Wowee!
"Weightless" means what it says on the box.Watch in awe as Mike carries tons of metal in one hand.
On the right of the picture is one of Dexter's enormous arms and on the left is the socket into which it will fit.
Superman, eat your heart out!
Would anyone here honestly rather watch "Big Fucking Brother"?THIS is reality TV!
"Day Two of Rick and Mike's spacewalk" and are the two guys sitting by the pool, arguing?Are they fuck!
I want to be born all over again and be a spaceman.
Rick and Mike carry on a great and funny banter as they work.They are astonishingly like Tom and Ray off NPR's "Car Talk" radio show.
They also grunt a lot when things get stuck and say "Pass the wrench" and "Good work, buddy" a lot.
And "Hey, Houston! can we use the pry-bar?" when things really get stuck and they have to hit bits of the robot to free them up.
This is the pallet that Dexter's bits are stored in.The guys' task is simple:
Assemble several tons of metal and make a working robot.
In space!
Let's face it. The pictures from NASA are fucking astounding.
When the sun goes behind good ol' Planet Earth, the guys have nifty headlights on their helmets.
Star Wars?Bollocks!
This is the real Mc.Coy.
"Planet Earth Is Blue And There's Nothing I Can Do"
Power tools in space!The ultimate boys' dream!
Woohoo!
This was the pallet before they started work.And yes, Lynn … For several parts of their mission they are "freefloating",
dicking around in outer space with no tether!
Scary or what?
And this is Dexter when the guys went in for tea.His body and two arms are ready for placing on the ISS.
Get a hold of your own copy of the NASA TV widget and tune in right now for the greatest show on (or off) Earth.
Unless you really want to watch crap like Celebrity Liposuction.
Get a hold of your own copy of the NASA TV widget and tune in right now for the greatest show on (or off) Earth.
Unless you really want to watch crap like Celebrity Liposuction.
Can You Hear Me, Major Tom?
Hokay.
You've got to bear in mind the fact that I was a space nut when I was a kid in the sixties.
I had huge posters plastered all over my room of the Earthrise and other shots taken by the crew of Apollo 8 when they whizzed around the Moon.
I was a member of the amateur astronomy club and I still have my spiffy telescope … and I still use it on occasion; it's something I'll never grow out of.
So anyhoo; last night I went on to Apple's widget download site to look for more silly crap to clutter up my dashboard, and there, on the "Staff Favourites" list was something called NASA TV …
So I downloaded and launched it and there - to my unutterably joy - was live TV from mission control!
Sure, it was only two VERY bored looking guys sitting at their workstations going through checklists with the folk up on the International Space Station, but to me it was the best bits of childhood all over again.
Then they showed this …
I thought it was a still photo, but even so, it was as cool as fuck.
To see the shuttle "Endeavour" docked with the ISS! Wow!
But then …
For a second I thought it was another "still" shot …
And then the Earth moved for me!
Non space-cadets could never imagine the thrill I got last night when I realised I was watching live TV FROM SPACE!!!
The Earth was there! Moving round below us! Woohoo!
I tried going to bed but I lay there all fitful and restless until I got up, wrapped a duvet around me, fired up the kettle and sat glued to my monitor for the entire seven hour spacewalk.
This is Mike heading down to the airlock with his cool 3D glasses on.
Here's Bob in the command centre, giving us a commentary.
For a middle-aged geek like myself to see balding old men in space is a great feeling!
Say "Hi" to Peggy.
She's going through the checklists with Mike and Eric in the airlock and making wisecracks with mission control.
Peggy's cool and funny.
Klingons!
There are grabrails like this all over the ISS, but every now and then one of the guys lets go and reaches for something else.
Shit, guys! You're not tethered yet! It's a fucking long way down if you miss your handhold.
Whew! Tethered at last.
This is Mike taking off his gloves.
You heard me … Luckily they are only "overgloves" to protect his thin inner gloves while he makes his way to the cargo bay.
That's us down there. Wave to the nice people in space.
Oooh, looky!
Cute little spacemen.
For someone who watched the very first spacewalk all those decades ago, seeing this live on my monitor was simply staggering.
The guys are installing "Dexter", the "dextrous" robot with two, multi-jointed, eleven foot long arms who will be taking over a lot of the maintenance duties on the outside of the ISS.
Cool as fuck, or what?
No more terrestrial TV for me. I'm hooked.
You've got to bear in mind the fact that I was a space nut when I was a kid in the sixties.
I had huge posters plastered all over my room of the Earthrise and other shots taken by the crew of Apollo 8 when they whizzed around the Moon.
I was a member of the amateur astronomy club and I still have my spiffy telescope … and I still use it on occasion; it's something I'll never grow out of.
So anyhoo; last night I went on to Apple's widget download site to look for more silly crap to clutter up my dashboard, and there, on the "Staff Favourites" list was something called NASA TV …
So I downloaded and launched it and there - to my unutterably joy - was live TV from mission control!
Sure, it was only two VERY bored looking guys sitting at their workstations going through checklists with the folk up on the International Space Station, but to me it was the best bits of childhood all over again.
Then they showed this …
I thought it was a still photo, but even so, it was as cool as fuck.To see the shuttle "Endeavour" docked with the ISS! Wow!
But then …
For a second I thought it was another "still" shot …And then the Earth moved for me!
Non space-cadets could never imagine the thrill I got last night when I realised I was watching live TV FROM SPACE!!!
The Earth was there! Moving round below us! Woohoo!
I tried going to bed but I lay there all fitful and restless until I got up, wrapped a duvet around me, fired up the kettle and sat glued to my monitor for the entire seven hour spacewalk.This is Mike heading down to the airlock with his cool 3D glasses on.
Here's Bob in the command centre, giving us a commentary.For a middle-aged geek like myself to see balding old men in space is a great feeling!
Say "Hi" to Peggy.She's going through the checklists with Mike and Eric in the airlock and making wisecracks with mission control.
Peggy's cool and funny.
Klingons!There are grabrails like this all over the ISS, but every now and then one of the guys lets go and reaches for something else.
Shit, guys! You're not tethered yet! It's a fucking long way down if you miss your handhold.
Whew! Tethered at last.This is Mike taking off his gloves.
You heard me … Luckily they are only "overgloves" to protect his thin inner gloves while he makes his way to the cargo bay.
That's us down there. Wave to the nice people in space.
Oooh, looky!Cute little spacemen.
For someone who watched the very first spacewalk all those decades ago, seeing this live on my monitor was simply staggering.
The guys are installing "Dexter", the "dextrous" robot with two, multi-jointed, eleven foot long arms who will be taking over a lot of the maintenance duties on the outside of the ISS.
Cool as fuck, or what?No more terrestrial TV for me. I'm hooked.
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