Hostess Trolley

It's the weekend … and one's thoughts inevitably turn to a golf cart full of fake air hostesses … er …
or is that just me?

Bacon Belle

Is it just me, or is everyone else also a little bit in love with their favourite barista?

I've got a couple of long term favourites, both of whom I'm a little in love with, but of course in different ways as one of them is a guy … ahem. I'm talking about Chris and Louisa from Saturday Breakfast Club.
Chris, because he's a hairily handsome bastard and impossibly cheerful in the face of bickering families with screaming kids, but mostly because he proudly sports the most extensive and expensive collection of traditional and beautifully coloured yakuza-style koi tattoos ever seen on a white guy.
You can't beat the classics, and Chris makes all of those token tat guys with 'trendy' Maori, tribal or Celtic tattoos look a little bit pathetic. Yay him for doing it properly.

And Louisa, because … well … because she's Louisa. Tall, willowy, ponytailed and perky and always ready to chat and laugh with a creepy old guy like me while she serves the rest of the queue. And yes, she's pretty and yes, she has a butt I could cup in one hand and yadda, yadda, yadda … So yeah, you can chalk this one up with all of my 500 Words stories that come under the tag: "My Apparent Waitress Fixation."

Anyhoo: on to the real point of this excruciating ramble: this morning at breakfast whilst chatting away to Louisa I learned of the existence of THE MOST WONDERFUL THING IN THE WORLD™ and I WAAAAANT one!

We were discussing the difference between an Italian latte and the version Louisa serves with her Norwich accent: 'the larrrr 'ee', when the implausibly slender and lissome Polish girl, Anita, poked her head round the kitchen door and yelled across to Lou, "I've rung the bell for bacon!"

And the world stopped spinning and we all fell off …

"I have GOT to get myself one of those!" I said.
"One of what?" asked Louisa.
"A bell you can ring for bacon."
At which her eyes opened wide and she started moaning with unfulfilled desire.
"Baaaaay-con. Oooooh, a bell that brings baaaay-con. Yes, Yes, YES!"
"That's going to torment me all weekend." I said, and we both moaned some more, and there may have been some drooling going on there, too, for a bit.

Admittedly, my own moan of desperate longing was not just for the bell that brings bacon - wonderful though that is - but inevitably involved the impossible dream of practicing another pork-related activity with the pony-tailed princess of the foamy milk jug. But for a minute there we enjoyed a Meg Ryan gasping and moaning episode together, which will indeed torment me for the rest of the weekend but I've learned to be happy with what I can get.

So if anybody ever wonders what to get me for birthdays or Christmas, start searching now for THE MOST WONDERFUL THING IN THE WORLD™: A bell I can ring for bacon! I want one of those so much!
Or if you can't get that, I'll settle for Louisa, nicely packaged in a little waitress outfit and delivered to my door. And don't forget to poke air holes in the box; we don't want a repeat of the time Knudsen shipped me that Japanese girl and forgot the air holes (see posts passim). Sheesh, that was not nice.

So fess up: who's your favourite barista?

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 …

Inducing Knudsenesque Apoplexy

Hokay.
I've managed to get a good enough connection to load a blog page.
Now what shall I do with it?

I know …
It's been a long time since I've induced apoplexy in Old Knudsen.
First it was my spice rack, then my Tiffany lamps, then my ironing.
Now …
Knitting patterns!
Woohoo!

Hey, I was over at Mum's yesterday, helping her load a couple of her sweaters onto Peahen's "Stitchin' Bints" blog.
Anyhoo, Mum got out her big book of old knitting patterns and I just cracked up at these gems from the sixties.

Dolly birds!
Woohoo!

Note the Jack Jones album in the first photo.
A sophisticated and sensual young lady with discerning musical taste.
hehehehehehehe …

Groovy hair, baby!

When you look this good, gay men will listen to your legs.

I don't think this one even needs a caption.

Now there's a fashion that could do with a revival.
Whaddya say, girls?

Hee hee … OW!

Space, £19.99

Over at the inestimable Mister Knudsen's place, the talk yesterday was of NASA's proposal for a manned moonbase.
This of course sparked off memories of the hilariously wonderful 1970's TV romp "Space, 1999".
In a childishly overexcited frenzy of confused memories, I posted a comment about the sparkly wigged, mini-skirted girls, and how our government would try to stop the Moon People from coming down here and taking our jobs and our weemen.
When I later hit Google Image with "Space, 1999", I was disappointed to find not a single sparkly-wigged girl.
It was then that I remembered the awesome, low budget magnificence of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's "UFO" (Space, £19.99) …

"UFO" …
A "live action" spin off from the people who had made my sixties childhood so wonderful with Fireball XL-5 (gasp) …
Stingray (wowee) …
Thunderbirds (Yaaaaay) …
Captain Scarlet (Whoop) …
and Joe 90 ( … er … ) …

They abandoned the puppets, that fabulous "Superanimation" not seen again until Team America, World Police, but they did not abandon the puppet-like acting.
What they DID have, however, was Lt. Ellis …
Whaddya mean "Who"?
Look on the left. That girl in the purple sparkly wig.
By the time this came on TV, I was old enough to get wood.
Lt. Ellis gave millions of adolescent boys the opportunity to get sticky …



This was what adolescent girls got to fantasize about: their uncle in a string vest … Mmmmm.


And for the dads? … Hmm. Not quite the same nipple action (sorry, Robyn) as on the men's uniform. And saggy elbows, too …

And in charge of this farrago … Our gallant Commander Straker, played with admirable deadpan restraint by the lovely Ed Bishop.

Then there was gorgeous, sultry Aishea Brough, the only one to make it out of the series with her career intact.

Ahh … swoon … The unutterably beautiful if slightly tetchy-looking Lt. Ellis.
If only all the girls at school had looked like that. Purple wig, silver uniform, unfeasibly long eyelashes, moody pout (oh yeah, they did have that) … sigh …


So come on, NASA, get a base on the moon so we can have proper space weemen down here. Real, feminist-baiting weemen, who wear silver leotards with detachable sleeves and platform boots with perspex heels (apparently practical in zero gravity). And men can wear string vests and be considered attractive. And bring back Lt. Ellis.
What are you waiting for?

The New Bond

Just been over to The Other Girl's blog to put the case for Stephen Fry as the "Sexiest Man Alive".

George Clooney, my arse!


Norfolk's own hunk of gorgeousness could lick Clooney any day (and probably would).
Watch Wilde again. Watch the man on QI. Listen to him speak. Peer inside the biggest brain on the planet. Dribble down your cardie as he turns those piercing eyes your way. Revel in the wit and charm of the only possible contender* for the title: "Sexiest Man Alive".


And while Daniel Craig (the blonde Bond … "We expect you to dye") may well have worked out a bit, there is only one man truly born to play Bond (in much the same way as he was born to be Wilde).
Blofeld would have never stood a chance against such übercool rapier wit.

Genefluct unworthily in his general direction.
Laydees and gentlemen. Stephen Fry. Sexiest Man Alive. No contest.

* Runners up: Old Knudsen and Eddie Izzard.

Fornication Invitation

I drove past Norwich's big, scary evangelical Christian church this morning. Or at least the building site, as somebody burnt it to the ground a little while back.
The rebuilding is taking place at an astonishing pace; perhaps we should award the construction contract for the 2012 Olympics to the evangelists, as the government are so pants that they will never get it built on time.

Now I have never really given much thought to the evangelists, to the extent that I'm still at a loss to know what branch of what church they profess to being (they're commonly known around here as "that big old cult [that's c-u-L-t-, Knudsen] place up on the ring road near Mousehold").
The only time their path crosses mine is the event of their annual cultathon (or whatever they call it), where they take over the football stadium for the weekend and bring the city to a standstill. The roads are gridlocked with tens of thousands of extremely polite Americans dressed like extras from the Waltons, which means I either avoid the city altogether or end up with smiley-noddy syndrome from all the excessive politeness.

Then it all changes …

I am travelling back from London on the train. It is packed as usual, but I manage to get a window seat and settle in for the long crawl back to Norwich.
Beside me is what can only be termed a lovely little old lady. Grey hair in a bun; old fashioned frock; reading quietly.
Halfway home; I've finished the paper and the crossword and am about to start on my book when along comes the trolley and the little old lady orders a coffee. Now, I've got a couple of free coffee vouchers in my wallet and, to reward her for not being a fat, elbowy businessman shouting into a mobile phone, I offer to treat her to coffee (big mistake).
She has a charming smile and thanks me sweetly as she accepts.
The trolley squeaks off down the aisle and she turns to me and says:

"That was really very kind of you. Are you a Christian?"

Not wishing to offend her with "Well I was brought up as a Christian, but when my brain started to work I rebelled and became the Godless heathen you see before you", I nod and say "Yes".

And suddenly people are turning and staring. A dozen faces all around me focus on my own. The blank eyes and rictus smiles of … uh, oh … evangelists!

"We're Christians" says the little old lady. "Which Church are you from?"
I start to dissemble. I'm stuck with these people for the next hour at least, and I really don't want to upset the little old lady, so I talk about my old church from childhood.
Luckily, she goes off on a long one about the lovely day they've all had in London at a "miracle ministry" or somesuch. I nod and smile in what I judge to be the right places. The scary faces are still locked on mine. Surely their necks must ache from being twisted round like that …

My heart sinks still further when she rummages in her bag and presses a bundle of tracts into my hand.
"You really must come along to our Church."
I hazard a guess: "Is that the big one up near Mousehold?"
I'm blinded by a communal BEAM from the surrounding faces.

The little old lady continues, but by now I am trying to make excuses, so she goes to plan 'B'.
She has noticed that I don't have a wedding ring and I fess up to my single status …
"This is my daughter, Emma."
And she waves to a drop-dead gorgeous girl in her twenties, who flashes me the kind of shy smile I wouldn't even get in my wildest fantasies.
"Emma is a member of our Church. She doesn't have a young man …"

WHAT?
I mean WHAT THE FUCK?

An increasingly surreal conversation follows, with the gorgeous girl smiling at me and her mad pimp mother telling me about all the young women who attend the Church, and how so many of them are reaching "marriageable age" with no "young men" of their own …

I want to tell her to look closely at me. I am a man in my forties. Would she really want me interfering with her daughter?

I want to yell at her; to tell her that in my experience, the Christian Church does not recruit members by offering strange, middle-aged men the chance to fornicate with the young women of their congregation.

The trouble is, Emma is … er … well, let's just say that she has got me all unneccessary. Even though I know that the beautiful girl's smile is the last thing I will see before the brainwashing starts and my bank account develops a Church-sized hole, I am almost tempted …

Somehow, I manage to last the rest of the journey without actually signing any banker's drafts, but the hard sell continues full force, and as I wave farewell to the group at the station and to the beautiful, smiling Emma, I realise I have agreed to attend a service there the next weekend. They certainly know how to prey on weak and lonely men …

Perhaps there is some kind of twisted deity watching over me, because that very week the big old culty Church burns to the ground …

And I T … W A S … N O T … M E !

Honest …

And even when it's rebuilt, there's no amount of gorgeous young girls gonna drag me in there!
I promise … Really … I do … er …

Hello Ian

It's around this time of year that old Dive gets a touch of the lonelies.

I don't know what it is about witches but they seem to cast a spell over me (sorry). Come All Hallow's Eve, and I'm filled with irresistible cravings:

• baked apples with loads of cinnamon;
• all kinds of squash (sorry, Robyn);
• sweet chestnuts straight off the tree;
• gleefully kicking leaves all over the garden instead of raking them;
• shouting at small children who buy their costumes instead of making them;
• shouting at small children, period …

… but most of all, that old annual ennui, the deep, deep longing for the woman in black …

Be it Willow Rosenberg, Jill Thompson's wonderful Scary Godmother (above), Connie Booth with a root vegetable over her nose in Python's Holy Grail … there's just something about a witch that's, well … bewitching.
They're just a little bit kooky and a little bit spooky, and I like that in a girl.

That said; from where I have breakfast on a saturday morning*, I can see what they call the "alternative lifestyle" section of Otto's bookshop (where they keep the books on Wiccan practices). Sadly, the modern witch seems to be a dumpy woman in her late thirties who has forgotten to have children and daren't come out as gay.

The decline in standards seems to me symptomatic of the modern world. A witch who pigs junk food and watches reality TV when she should be dancing naked round a yew tree or setting fire to Edward Woodward in a big old basket.

A plea, then: (I've always thought advertising yourself was for pathetic losers, but if Sassy can do online dating, then I can do online pleading) …
If there are any of the stripey-tights brigade still out there who are as skinny as death and as weird-looking and spooky as the Corpse Bride, you know where to find me.

*The coffee shop upstairs at what used to be Ottakar's but is now the new Waterstone's bookshop, Norwich; nine a.m. every saturday.

No pointing and laughing!

Train Stiffy

It's difficult to write when, five time zones and an ocean away, far beyond hugging range, someone is wandering around, picking up pieces of her heart and trying to reassemble them into something that works.

That situation is just too awful for words, so I'll be my usual facetious and offensive self and write about my embarrassing stiffy on the train.

It's last friday morning. This time of year, daylight gets rationed and it's dark for the journey to work. A girl takes the seat in front of me. Not a regular commuter. Pretty. Late teens. I'm dozing, in and out of sleep. Joan As Police Woman is playing on my iPod; that nice track where she duets with Antony, you know the one.
After Manningtree, the train is full as usual. Sweaty Bike Man sits next to me, engrossed in his sports pages. Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General sits next to the girl.

Historical note: Manningtree is where Matthew Hopkins, self proclaimed Witchfinder General, started setting fire to any woman with an independent mind; a repulsive perversion which spread rapidly through this country, then across the water to Salem.
Mary Hopkin was a folk singer in the sixties with long, blonde hair. The woman who gets on at Manningtree looks just like her, hence, Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General.
I know I'm not alone in giving other commuters nicknames (I dread to think what they call me). In my carriage, we regularly have have Spike, Wiggy (the toupée from hell), Underbite and Backspace (two dim sports fans from Ipswich), and A Woman Called Horse, among many others.

Anyway, back to the girl … (WARNING: My regular dear readers had better skip the rest of this post as it's unnervingly like porn and I'm deeply ashamed of it, but there you go. God, I'm disgusting. Old Knudson might like it, though) …
She has fake blonde hair and a pageboy bob. I notice that much as we pull out of Manningtree. When it's dark outside, the train windows act like mirrors (albeit filthy ones), and I gradually become aware that the girl in front of me is acting strangely.
She keeps looking all about her at the other passengers, most of whom are dozing like me, then turning furtively to the window. If she'd turn her head a bit further, she would realise that the bloke behind her has a life-sized mirror image of her, not eighteen inches in front of my face (and not just me, but all the blokes behind me) …
What she's doing is this: she is very furtively and alarmingly erotically, sucking her thumb.
She has flicked her hair round to cover her face from the front. Her thumb, already glistening and wet, slips between her lips and, well, she's sucking away like there's no tomorrow.
Normally, I would find this faintly nauseating. I am extremely disturbed, however, to find myself fumbling with my iPod in a desperate attempt to cover a whopping stiffy!
Luckily, Sweaty is more interested in England's dire football team than the trouser mayhem beside him, so I manage to cross my arms over it to hide my embarrassment.
Concentrating hard on the mental image of George Bush doesn't help. I cannot stop myself watching the girl. What the hell is a girl her age doing sucking her thumb? Every time somebody stirs, her head whips round to the front, wet thumb diving for cover. Then she's back again, putting on a private porn show for an old git who is discovering a perversion I didn't know I had. The pretty girl, her eyes darting nervously in every direction but mine, her wet lips, her thumb, the … er … sucking bit …
Suffice to say that, when the train stops at Liverpool Street Station, this newly pervy old man has to sit there for several minutes, rummaging through my bag, shuffling papers, thinking of George Bush and blocked drains and washing up, until my trousers are a more socially acceptable shape and I can walk to work without being pointed to and giggled at.
I am disgusted to discover that I'm a voyeur. Eww! I'm also ashamed that I didn't cough or something to let the girl know I could see her. Yet another justification for my self-loathing.
So mea culpa. A public confession of my pervdom. I throw myself on the mercy of the court …