Ioana Spangenberg

 



 

Ioana Spangenberg

Ioana Spangenberg

Ioana Spangenberg

 ioana Spangenberg has one of the tiniest waists in the world. The Romanian model, who used to feel miiserable about her 20-inch waist, is now happy to showcase it, because it makes her feel unique and earn quite a good money.

Being a healthy size 2 I feel very proud of my figure but from time to time I still think that shedding a few pounds will make me look even better. All these photos of gorgeous models do influence the way we percept ourselves. However, after watching a video with Ioana Spangenberg rocking a metallic mini dress I decided I am in my best weight.)))

What has changed my mind so easily? Well, Ioana’s waist, and her general look… The Romanian model has a waist of only 20 inches. She looks painfully thin though she claims she eats quite a lot. If she gives true facts, her daily ration includes pizzas, kebabs, and crisps.












Ioana Spangenberg has always had a tiny frame feeling very insecure in childhood and teenage years. She tried to gain weight eating sweets and other fatty foods but nothing helped.

Now Ioana is 30 and happily married. It’s her husband who made her love herself and even persuaded her to start a modeling career. She explains that it is her small stomach that keeps her this slim.

Ioana Spangenberg told The Sun:

No one seems to believe it, but every day I eat three big meals and I snack on chocolate and crisps all the time. I just have a small stomach. It’s a bit like a gastric band, if I eat too much I feel sick.”








What makes me feel good about Ioana is that she finally learned to love herself. It is essential for being happy. She can’t change the situation but she was able to change her attitude to it. That’s great. I hope she will be fine.

As A Parrot

Iblame the school.

I’ve never been prone much to illness. Ithink after the hell of neuralgia until my mid-twenties (whereupon it just plainstopped attacking), and the gout now – which is better because it’s distanced,not in my head – mere sniffs and sneezes gave up on making an impact on me.I’ve lived in a flat so cold that a pipe bursting actually froze itself ratherthan drip and not a hint of a cold. Flu is what men get of course, or a cold asit’s more commonly known but the point is that for many years sickiness and thecommon ague were strangers to me. As an aside, stinging nettles don’t bother meeither.

But since the sprouts have been inschool I’ve suffered the odd one-day night-burns-it-away lurgie. The sprouts toohave gained some of that. Certainly when the school is laid low by a sweepinghorror they’re in there, wondering where everyone has gone, and enjoying theirday like anyone in the first reel of 28 Days Later. Or Day of the Triffids ifyou prefer, and I certainly do. They sit there flipping through books whilstzombies lurch about, occasionally twatting them with the broom at playtime.

So when on Thursday night my youngestBoswell came down with yuckiness it was to stern denials on her part. Boswellalthough but five will loudly declare to any mere injury that she is ‘brave andbold’. She never cries, even when bloody and torn. My eldest Catnip whilst moregirly than a dozen flower-fairy princesses says no such thing and though willcry at bump or scratch, never for long, and never to a sniffle, which she alsonever suffers. So Boswell was laid low (and much to her displeasure), and tothe extent she denied it all and went to school anyway where as I suppose Ishould have expected, nearly no one else was. Apart from her big sister, who inbetween reading by tallow light spent the day planting daisies on the fields ofdead. Crows fear her and leave her gifts. When I say she’s like a fairy itsworth pointing out that it’s an Unseelie one.

Inevitably Bosswell was not long thereand I had to collect her with the aid of a machete and the ancestral shotgun.Muttering and staggering home at a slug’s pace the walking dead fled, and beingproper shuffling dead that involved a lot of slapstick falling over. Copious amountsof duvets and never-nice-enough water later and Catnip decides she is also ill,all the time whilst Bosswell denies it, picking at the corpse of a puppy thatlooked at her in a funny way.

Soon and the world is a sickly place andI... am not. So it’s been a few days of up and down stairs, fetching, readingaloud, all the while being grumbled at for being merely worn out. The villagehas gone to the dead and somehow the orange juice is, I quote, wrong.

The apocalypse sucks.

Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Anniversary Ink (3)

Thisis when she was younger, back in London. Deadline style.

Anniversary Ink (2)

Thisis more mature, womanly, confident and complex, Mucha style.

Anniversary Ink (1)

I’vebeen working on a piece to celebrate my anniversary – I’ve been with my betterhalf for fifteen years now and wanted to do something personal. These form agreater piece, nicely framed, representing different parts of our life togetherand drawing on slightly different styles to do that.

Thisis motherhood in the Lakes, Love & Rockets style.

Norma June Brown

MarilynMonroe’s back at the door again. She’s not aged well, but then who does at 86?I was never particularly interested in Marilyn unlike some, she acted and shehad hips and thighs and good curves such as you don’t see so much of on screenbig or small nowadays. She was always someone that had already died to me and given heroverdose has led to a wet sack of conspiracy theories ever since it’s all inthe same part of my head where lurk people that don’t believe on the moonlandings. Marilyn was before my generation, who for such things had CarolineMunro, Raquel Welch (and according to my mate Maurice, Dennis Waterman) alreadywith a long list of films to discover. Proper women, with curves, importantwhen you’re of a certain age.

            Well, Marilyn doesn’t have curvesnow. After her pretend-death she reinvented herself as a much better actress.Most popularly known for playing Dot Cotton in EastEnders I think she turned ina fantastic Nannie Slagg in the Beebs version of Gormenghast. She turned herback on the pouty-glamour and rose within the ranks of the Women’s Institute,especially here in Tolly Maw where the WI has since the early 70s adopted themore hands-on approach and name of the Dead Starlet’s Cake and Thunder VigilanteModel Railway Society. It’s a bit of a mouthful and is one of the feworganisations I’ve encountered where it’s less faff to say the whole lot thanuse an acronym. And she keeps on coming round selling raffle tickets (top prize‘Michael Flatley Sings Starlight Express’ which she is insistent on not being arecording). It’s possible since after Riverdance the terrifying soloist hasonly gotten work tamping down mastic-asphalt, he’s cheaper than a big rollerapparently.

            You can hear Marilyn coming. She hasthese rats in a birdcage she feeds only on brandy-soaked millet worms (the sortnylon tents are spun from), and they fight and swear and are always drunkbecause of it. She wears clogs made of shoehorns, hobnailed. She gets about ina pram pulled by monkeys, and not nice monkeys, but old monkeys that look uppeople’s skirts. They set upon travellers with Velcro and a kilt so they canlook up it at need. I don’t know why and I don’t ask because you can tell thesearen’t nice monkeys, nice monkeys have ruffs.

            So I’ll have to buy some raffletickets because they’ve just flopped onto the mat. She calls out that I cansell them to friends, for a good cause, but we all know that means you have tocough for them yourself.

            It’s for a good cause at least. It’sso you don’t go on the list held by the Dead Starlet’s Cake and ThunderVigilante Cadre Vigilante Model Railway Society. The list of wrong-uns. Thelist of those that need watching. By monkeys, through the window, when you’rehaving a nice read of a morning over a good poo. Where they scratch on thewindow with their one, long finger, licking the glass, whispering the words ofDennis Potter. In monkey.

            So I’ll put you all down for threeapiece?

Aunt Minerva (to the tune of) Old Ned

CharlesKimberley Bittersweet (named for the diamonds discovered in the Orange FreeState) had lied about his age to join the Loamshires. Despite the need to getmen to the front he had fallen in with two others and learned how to firstbribe, then blackmail the Battalion Clerk so that time and again when theincreasingly foreshortened training cadres shipped out he and his mates were oncourses, or once victims of camel fever. When the Clerk had been discoveredfiddling the rum the nose of an especially unlikely provost called Cromwell hadled to Charlie being just in time and overly qualified for the British ExpeditionaryForce sent to Russia. So it was he had been made, wriggling and chancingeveryone’s hand but his own, as a signaller in Arkhangelsk sent to do what the-thenSecretary of State for War Winston Churchill had described as ‘striking at thebirth of Bolshevism’. He could still remember the anger of bloody Major Bulldogwhen the field telephone failing to work and he, courses never actuallyattended but listed as passing nonetheless, had been able to do nothing aboutit.

            So it was that Corporal Bittersweethad found himself in the mess about Koikori, a scrap so bad that the officersdead the company had refused to fight. Later the details had come out and anact of Parliament saw the sentences commuted to hard labour, and that not longenough to matter. In Archangel the stores and weapons sent by the yanks hadpiled up in the harbour and that had been Charlie’s war.

            He had done better in the secondbloody-arse. Crime in the Blitz was still not talked about even today. And todayCharlie Bittersweet read the Daily Express in a deck-chair out the front of hisarches. He had knotted his kerchief to protect his head from the sun but hestill wore a muffler over his string vest because more than fifty years after Koikoriand Archangel it was still never warm enough.

            Later and his boy would come round.Already and Charlie’s little helpers, his stepsons as they were still known,had knocked off. They started early because Charlie started early. Nothing wasworth doing in the markets by the time it was light. But if Charlie was a nighthawk then here he sat with eyes closed to soak up the sun where by lateafternoon it cut for one happy hour between the train-tracks above and theyards on the arches other side. Charlie was a man that found things, and if acustomer had not strictly speaking lost what he wanted himself, then that couldbe arranged too. In a bucket two bottles of Burton pale ale kept warm nicely.You would have had to have a gun on Charlie to make him drink anything cold,and then you had better be bloody willing to use it.

            “I hear you’re the very man,” said apair of brogues.

            “That’d be my cock then,” saidCharlie without opening his eyes above the shoes.

            Mr Brogues laughed. It was high,affected, something from the radio.

            The hour was wasting.  “Fuck off,” said Charlie.

            Mr Brogues did not. “I was ratherwanting a little information. Henry mentioned your name?”

            “Henry Cooper? Hooray Henry? King bloodyHenry the VIII?”

            “Henry Lord Rockingham.”

            “Don’t know him. You’d be surprisedhow few peers of the realm come by Oil Drum Lane.”

            Brogues said nothing at first, thenafter what might have seemed a suitable pause suggested, “It will be worth yourwhile?”

            Charlie doubted that very much. Hedidn’t need money. He had tins full of it. Less now since his boy had put somuch of it in the bank, the smarty-pants.  Besides which Charlie had his bus-pass and forCharlie trains, the underground, taxis, even once a passing Austin Cambridge workedwith it, much to the startled disbelief of the padre that had been driving. ButCharlie wanted Brogues gone so he looked up to see an unshaven slob in freshlylaundered clothes. It was like one of those flip-books, he thought. One whereyou turned the pages to put heads, middles and bottoms together. Someone neededto turn to the next page. “What does old Charlie call you then, squire?”

            “Ludovic.”

            “And what does Ludovic want to know?”

            “Ludovic wants to know where to findMme Roux.”

            “Right,” said Charlie. “Whenexactly?” he laughed. The plate on his working-teeth worked lose and he sworeas he mangled putting it back. “Hang about,” he showed Ludovic the shockingstate of his dentures. Holding up a hand in apology he rose, stretched andscratched his bum before vanishing into the dark hole of the nearest railwayarch. He returned with a double-barrelled Purdey. “You remember,” he said, “whenI told you to fuck off?”

            “Now-now...”

            “Is the turn of phrase confusing you?”

            “Now look, as it happens it won’t doyou any good.”

            Charlie thumbed back both hammers. “It’sa nice day, and you’re spoiling it. Let’s just say for the sake of argument itwon’t do any good. But it’ll knock you through the fence. And when my boy comesround he’ll find you hanging from the arch by your feet. And there are ways.”

            “I believe you would call me a ‘dago-type’?”said Ludovic.

            “That’s nice. We’ll just lock you upthen. And you won’t die but you’ll get fucking thirsty until at last they knockdown the house whose bowels we’ll brick you up in.”

            Ludovic frowned, then nodded. “I’llbe fucking off then.”

            “Good boy.”

Bored

“I’mbored,” she says.

“Go and be bored somewhere else,” I answer (I’m witty like that). I should have known she was coming. My foot’s beenacting up all weekend and like a sailor feels the sea in his bones I get impendingannoyance in my foot. She sighs like a child. She’ll be kicking the chair legsnext. I put down my pencil. “What is it?”

“Bored.”

“Read a book.”

“Read them.”

“Read them again.”

But no this is that special sort ofboredom that needs company. I remember being bored once, I had to wait threehours for a lift and by an unlikely chain of events I had no book (as I’d suggested),no music, nothing. Not a thing had been open, it had been then boxing day, andI in Victoria. If I had not had a colossal backpack I would have walked thetwelve miles home, but I did, so I didn’t. In the end – this wastwenty-something years back – I managed to phone someone I hadn’t been meant tobe seeing to keep me company until the father of the one I was supposed to cameto pick me up. Different times, different person.

“What you doing?” says Mme Roux.

Nothingat the moment, because you’re here. The sprouts are being made ready for bednow Q is home. My day has been crowded with seeing to them in the morning andas much work as could be managed before an appointment in the afternoon,funnily enough about my foot – so I should have known. I’ve got pictures todraw, pieces to write. There are games to prepare. I might like to eat to atsome point. I am never, not ever, bored. Ever. I know people who could neverlive a life of leisure. I could. There are worlds to write and places toportray, people to meet and none of them as it happens, real. There are alwaysthings for me to do, and other things too when I’m doing those things. If Iactually have an hour to myself then I can always crack on with learning aforeign language and having an ear for German I went for Spanish. Which ishard.

            “Can’t we have an adventure?”

            “No, no we really can’t,” I say.It’s my anniversary soon, fifteen years, I’ve got to crack on with making thegift this evening. I can’t be stumbling over lost valleys, not again. Or runfrom Cossacks, or throw an egg at Matisse (not our finest hour). I am neverbored, and not least because if ever I could ever, ever, get everything done,then there’s everything else I could do too. Galton & Simpson made Hancockspend a brilliantly conceived half-hour with Sid where they did nothing butbicker and sigh on a long, empty Sunday afternoon.

            So don’t tell me you’re bored. Don’tpost, write or semaphore me that you’re bored.

            It bores me. “And you,” I say.

            “What?”

Fuck it, I put my pencils away. I putthe pad in its folder. Mme Roux looks up, she grins. I’m going to bake rockcakes. She can’t make toast, that’ll bore her silly.

Hopefully bore her away.

Slide23, One Year Old Today!

Slide23is one year old today.

It’s been fun and it has beentherapeutic. I write because that’s what I do, or draw, or look after my kids,and... that’s all I do. I write for work but here I can write about what Ilike. It is no different to me than otherwise watching tele. Indeed having putthe kids to bed it’s what I do instead of just surfing the net and wonderingwhy on whatever forum people are just basically beastly to one another? And ifyou want to write, you should do. Every day. And if you can’t think ofsomething to write, then don’t. It’s a craft, not an art, you have to practiseit. You have to enjoy it. I was criticised previously for not having webpresence so this is that, for whatever purpose that serves.

In a year (at the time of writing) theSlide has had a few hundred more than 20,000 hits, which may be good, or it maybe bad, but it certainly does not matter. It jumped a lot in December wherewhilst it elicited few comments Nicely Pink must have done something as itdoubled the monthly hits, which were then exceeded in January, and thenFebruary to nigh on 3500 last month. There have been 376 posts to date for atotal of 100,782 words, and 379 comments. I like posting, I like reading thecomments, I like that a lot of people browse, and email me. I do it for myself.I don’t really trumpet the blog. There’s a link in emails, on my work board andfriends boards. Infrequently I post on Facebook. There’s no end-use forSlide23, there’s no agenda, no purpose other than what it is. 

I write oddly because I can’t reallyabide blogs that die out when people (because we’re all rather ordinary) don’tactually have that much happen, and myself more than any of you. And it’s easy,it’s what I do. Banging off a few hundred words and less than a single workpiece each day takes no time at all.

But that said, it’s been lovely havingyou. It really has, and it really is. It’s a diary of things that might havehappened.

So have a balloon, help yourself tojelly. There’s cheap wine in the fridge and the sausage rolls are in the oven.    

Here in Tolly Maw.


This time last year: Michael Moorcock Ate My Hamster

The Lankhmar Star Daily

It’snearly the anniversary of the Lankhmar Star Daily, thirty years since the nowalmost-forgotten fanzine rocked society to the core.  Founded in Cornwall, its first incarnationdrew on the popular-culture of the very early 80s for those that missed the 60sto cling to the 70s with bloodied and rather dirty fingernails. Since in 1982it was still 1973 in Cornwall this was rather easier than perhaps the scathingcritics and later Lord Chancellors knew. Certainly when I visited a couple ofyears later cars were horse-drawn and young men went to work in tin mineswearing striped loons, or practised being old by spending the day in a librarycomposed of yellow paperbacks reading the paper.

Closed down by issue 3, the LankhmarStar Daily (curiously and still proclaimed to this day as an accident  regarding the initials) was forced to move toBournemouth and the exploding hippy scene there amongst a Christchurch Roadthat mostly sold litter. Still facing charges of obscenity (later acquitted)the mysterious editor ‘Adeptus Magus’ living on cheap beans and listening tohome-taped music re-launched the ‘fanzine of dissent’ on April fool’s day,selling 6000 copies by lunchtime. Challenging the law on homosexuality, tighttrousers, Kate Bush, and the ongoing war in Vietnam some thought it hadsomething to do with role-playing-games when a typo replaced ELP with RPG.

It was here that the multi-authorfranchise fiction Hurry On Sundown was born where with very few exceptionsstories were written by a widely spread band of thin, hairy people but whichwas described by the then Lord Chancellor as ‘a wankfest’. He still contributedthough. The still unnamed Adeptus Magus was joined towards the end of its runby the equally shadowy ‘Great ArgleBargle’ who wrote a lot about punch cardsfor computers and how to make a Nuclear device. Sundown was picked up as youdoubtless know by Trident Comics which is why the Adeptus Magus is now morepopularly known for his long run on Batman, the Black Canary, and famously thetwelve issue miniseries lauded by Alan Moore Three Wax – the story of a belly dancer, a valkyrie and Kate Mossfighting crime in a post-modern tale of psychedelic superhero nudity. And verygood it is too. 

For myself I came on board during thestill legendary Schoolkids Of LSD issue. Before this point I had only made anysort of contribution by getting noted in the Player’s Handbook alongside smalliron spike and small leather pouch, the inclusion of Small Homosexual Tendency.An inclusion that saw the whole run withdrawn by TSR. It wasn’t much of anissue, not much of my stuff made it in since those similarly ungifted lads intheir mid teens were insistent on the issue being about sexism, the role of women ingaming, and poetry about why don’tthe nice girls like me?

In these days of instant... blogs, it’shard to imagine a time when fanzines fulfilled that role. Typed, pasted,photocopied and sent out in envelopes it took effort and dedication to do. Andthe LSD was by far the best of them, especially those that tried to do exactlythe same thing but not nearly so well.      

Sundown, Lost: An Important Part Of Me

“Zulus?”I ask.

Simon nods. He points. “Thahsands of‘em,” that’s not in the film, not said by Bromhead anyway but Simon’s on aworking-class kick with the baggy trousers and braces. He’s already done alittle dance. He winks. It was his turn to choose where we went and bless him, forthe old dear is fifty this year. I’m probably missing something but we’realmost certainly going to die unless we leave, and soon, but Rob’s alreadydigging about in a crate by the door.

“I don’t want to be stabbed,” I say, “bya spear.” No one’s listening.

“Martini?” this was Maurice. I’m notsure this is the right one. He arrived in a Rolls that smokes now outside wherehe shot it in the face with an elephant gun. Not a gun for shooting elephants (forthat would be cruel and he hates cruelty to animals). No this was a gun such ashe found to equip elephants in order to deter ivory hunters. He says it again, “Martini?”

“Henry!” says Rob who starts to hand outrifles. “Breech loaders, accept nothing less.”

We don’t, there’s only the elephant gunas an alternative and that takes nearly an hour to prepare. I’m hung over. Iwoke up only an hour before with my bladder halfway to the toilet and beingvery stealthy in case my stomach noticed. We all have off days. At times wehave off us, if we find the wrong one. We’ve been stuck flitting about between1955 and 1989 since 1986, and it’s now... I ask.

“1991,” say Simon. Then, “’Ave abanana.”

1991.

In the 80s they were all at universityflunking a variety of degrees, apart from Maurice who studied Librarianship AndSalem, and who not only made it to the exam, but passed. We only found outlater that the reason degrees were so sparse was that Sarah had them all.Sarah-world is a nice place to visit, only not for too long. It’s like Sex& The City, only in three week blocks and in the shadow of Glastonbury.More sort of three-weeks on, three weeks off, in the sticks. Her army of loverswork the oil rigs, and they’re all called Roy.

At university the boys all took BlueSunshine, or so Simon says, but given all includes Jerry that seems a littleunlikely. And that’s why we can do, what we do.  Jerry would be here preparing to fight offthousands of Zulus but he’s skiing. He found a world where it’s always winterand never Christmas, and off-piste (we’re told) is to die for. He means it too;if you go off-piste he hunts you down like a dog with his packs ofpolitically-minded grumpy fighting-badgers. It’s a very unlikely life we lead.There’s more, and it’s not very complicated, but I’ve got this hangover.

I don’t know where we are either. Robsent round a maxi-cab. He doesn’t hold with mini-cabs, they don’t have thelegroom. And they need the legroom because they’re always driven by one of hislegion of giant super-models, not named but numbered. I was picked up by NumberNine. Literally, as like I say I’ve got this cracking head on me and NumberNine had her orders, and me by the scruff of the neck. Maurice says they pissPinot Gregio and shit croissants, and everything is out there somewhere so it’snot beyond the realms of possibility, in these infinite realms of possibility.Number Nine didn’t say where we were going, I ask and Rob does, it’s Hampshire.I answer, “Zulus, in Hampshire?”

“Zulus,” says Simon, “ravers, eitherone.” And then, “Guv.”

There used to be a villain, not myvillain, but there was one. He was called Firth. He had a first name but Robwas already taken so he changed his to ‘Mr’. He’d decided that we were spoilingthings what with having all the fun, traipsing about like teenagers given thechance to go anywhere, anywhen, anywhy. So he tried to kill us and somewhere heprobably succeeded. But he was very firm on rules and the big one was wecouldn’t go further than 1989. So he didn’t, and became a solicitor, and us?

We’re somewhere in a field in Hampshire,and Rob’s making notes. Maurice wants to do a bunk. He says, “Let’s all meet upin the year 2000?” and Rob’s pencil is feverish.

“Monday morning?” and the pencil snaps.

Simon’s going to stay with the commonpeople.

We’re a different class.       

Random Ink, Duidoin

London, Blue Nun, and Route 23

Route 23? Of course it is!

The news that London has returned oncemore to its iconic double-deckers pleases me no end. Every time I’ve been inthe smoke in the last ten years things have changed, inevitably you’ll say, andyou’d be right, but in little ways. The Shard for example, set up entirely tomake sure the Rockingham Estate is always, even at night, in the shade. Butwith busses I’ve missed them not being there and so with their return I’ll bethankfully saved from missing what replaced them. Bear in mind I still don’tknow what an oyster card does, and somewhere not so very deep inside I’m stillwondering where the smoking carriage went on the tube trains.

                          Thisall bodes very well for the future. With the Olympics coming to London, and myown part reluctantly agreed to in the opening ceremony. I am assured thatalready people working in the city do so once more in bowler hats (developed toact as a helmet for gamekeepers), pin-stripe trousers and with a furledumbrella balanced by a copy of The Times. Even now I look forward to roaringover Tower Bridge in a nippy little MG painted with the union flag, almostcertainly with a helicopter keeping chase to catch the footage of me, mymightily cheek-bewhiskered driver and a pair of young swingers in the back,ideally ageless Hammer actresses. Young Guards officers will be caught with abit of rough in Green Park. I shall stay in a well-appointed pad where a partyshall always be in full blow and where being middle-aged I will somehow be verygroovy, and probably solve mysteries.

                          Ah,London. We’ll toast you with Blue Nun, drunk from a shoe, provided by ChristineKieller, on a bet with Terrance Stamp, in Ladbroke Grove, and eat breakfast atthe Mountain Grill, in smart clobber, where Peter Cook will be the devil,incarnate.

                          Itwill, won’t it? 

                          Yeah,it will. Course it will.

No Longer Big, No Longer Clever

Everyone was on glue in the 70s

It seems very unfair that given I neverread the Beano as a boy life now begins to emulate it. It’s the swearingmostly, I clearly can’t in front of the kids and that took some getting used togiven that once upon a yesterday my every third word was the ever poetic‘fuck’. When in the kitchen hammering a slap up feed* into place, or the gardenmore recently when Tracey Emin got stuck up a tree and the sprouts set aboutone another, shouting and a hollering, I wonder when the dread fear of Daddyyelling out ‘What the blinking flip is going on in there’ is going to growthin?

                          Mybeloved Q tries hard but hasn’t mastered the art yet, albeit when driving.She’s a better driver than anyone else on the road, or must be because everyoneelse seems to be by oath and curse considerably worse. Swearing is big andclever, everyone knows that, and I feel a right plum** when my computer actsaccording to my nature and I in a rage scream at it ‘right you blinking flippingthing, I’ll blinking flip you, you flipping see if I don’t’. I sound like anargument in the playground of Grange Hill.

                          No,I was never one for the Beano. I was a boy for comics called things like War! and Sharks! which probably explains why I’ve caught myself saying both‘strewth’ and ‘crickey’.

                          LogicallyI’ll be saying ‘borag thungg’ in a year or two, and referring to everyone as an‘earthlet’.

                          Andhow zarjaz will that be?

*There it is! Beano, from when inpost-war Britain a decent meal was a reward for... I don’t know, I never readthe flipping thing. Foiling things I think. Back in those halcyon days of themiddle-century when all it took to thwart the plans of a foreign power wereboyish pluck and a robot chum? Something like that?  

**Plum? For flips’ sake!

Trench Foot In Waterloo

Thisis one of our trips together.

            Every half term, every schoolholiday, and my Granda Bill takes me to London. It’s not far by train. He usedto commute until last year, since he moved in with us. But the family nevertalk about where we came from, or that side of it at least. It’s funny becausewhilst he, quote, married well, and my Dad’s side look down on that part theymarried in to I’ll find out later that all roads that don’t lead down fromScotland lead to Lambeth, both sides. My Granda Bill doesn’t care. My GrandaBill doesn’t give a stuff for any of it. He went through seven years in thearmy and never had to be shot at once. He was a company clerk, the eternalcorporal, and he and his likeminded mates transferred each other moments beforebeing sent anywhere nasty. Can’t really blame him can you? It meant he was inuniform before most and got demobbed two years after the war, oddly he gotposted to Germany only when the surrender was made. He didn’t see his daughter,my mum, until she was two. Fly fucker.

            We go by train because we always goby train.

            You might remember them. They havecompartments, and they’re smoking. And you have to lean out the door to openit. On tele a running gag would always be about British Rail sandwiches, andthey weren’t far wrong. If there was a buffet car it’d be musty, damp, andthere’d be a glass dome with a scotch egg, and the noteworthy sandwich and asausage roll under the smeared horrid display. And crisps if you were lucky,but we took our sandwiches with us, always cheese. He’d make them from hisbread, because his bread was different to the family bread. You had to cut ityourself, and it wasn’t stale, and the cheese would be circus strong, and therewould be pickle from a jar all sticky about the rim, layers of roll-top stickywithout a crust.

            We’re going to visit the sights inLondon. Really we’re just going to London because he can’t really adjust to notbeing there. He thinks it silly that no one keeps a pig and chickens in theyard, and he calls the garden a ‘yard’. Everyone used to, and that’s why baconand eggs are such a breakfast fixture now. We’re going to some touristy placeand he’ll know half the people working there. When we get off the station we’llbe picked up a taxi and it’ll be Uncle Roy or the other Uncle Roy, who aren’trelated but know Bill and who secretly he’d write to first to meet us, and Ispent years thinking there were only two cabbies in London. Or that all the cabbieswere called Roy. And when we go home we’ll be carrying half a bloody greatfish, or a parcel of giant liver, and we’ll be roundly told off.

            We’ve been everywhere everyone elsegoes. We’ve been to funny museums no one else goes to. We’ll walk these funnylittle streets and sometimes these new, equally horrid streets and he’ll tellme about who was there, once, when there was another London there. We’ll stopevery hour for a cup of tea because he’s fuelled by tea. Not in a cafe. He’llknock on a door and we’ll go in and I’ll drink this milky tea, and listen topeople I’ll never, not ever, meet again. Or we’ll go into the little shacksUncle Roy or Uncle Roy use.

            But it’s the toilets I’m scared off becausethe ones on the train are never working. And the ones in the station are fearfullythings. Stained wood, never cleaned, shit everywhere. The one in Waterloo isthe worse, or at least the one I always have to use, when I have to use it. It’sunderground. On the way there’s a barbers where you can get a shave. And thetoilets are an inch deep in what I hope is water (but which I know is not). AndI have to sit there with my feet off the ground, and there’s no seat, and thepaper if there is any is that stuff in school, paper, shiny on one side, thatscratches your arse.

            So years later when the toilets cost20p and are clean, and metal, and don’t leak, and you don’t have to read ancientgraffiti you don’t understand, and they don’tsmell, at all, it's a little piece of wonder. But that's a few years yet and my ticket stub is that. A rectangle of cardboard that I'll clutch in the cubicle of strange sounds and stranger smells.

            So we’re going to London.      

This Saddest Day

Now Empty

25/02/2015

Mybest mate died last week.

            I’ve just been to the funeral and I’msitting here in my hotel room where the wake is getting going below, and it’sshit. We knew it was coming but we didn’t know, our certainty was all talk anda talk we’ve been having for five years now. I don’t even know what eventuallykicked him off. He was overweight and every time I saw him every few monthsworse still. Three or so years ago he had a scare, blood clots in the leg andperhaps worse but he told us around another fag and drank another sixteen cansof lager, or a box of wine and whilst he didn’t laugh it off he certainlypretended it wasn’t there. Around us at least. I think it kept him company whenhe was alone, but he had no will power and had this thing where ‘no one toldhim what to do’. That makes him sound like some feeble oaf, and he wasn’t. Hewas kind, and he was gentle – and he was funny. And there were a lot of peopleat the funeral all of whom went to the pub with him, like me not reallythinking that he’d be at it like that all the time so that over the last twoyears especially he was forever elsewhere.

            He got addled some time ago.Forgetful, you’d have to say things to him a few times.

            Once a year he’d swear offeverything. He would lose weight, cut out the booze, get off the fags. And henever did.  I’m smoking now. Funnilyenough I smoked around him (which can’t have helped) and then back with myfamily I’d knock it on the head for another month or three. The good die youngand he was fifty, I think, but it wasn’t an accident, he did it to himself – Iknow that, but I feel guilty. Rationally I’ve no reason to. A few years backhe asked me to phone him each night to check he wasn’t drinking. I soon stoppedthat because firstly he was a compos drunk, I wouldn’t know half the time – andthe other half, I worried he’d just lie to me. And I didn’t need him to lie tome.

            He was fucked up at times. He hadn’thad a girlfriend since the last century, he was engaged, and they broke up, andthat hit him hard. Even when mates would set him up with someone else, evenwhen he met a girl at a party and she asked after him he would hide. Hecouldn’t see why anyone would like him like that, when clearly they did. It washis weight, he loathed himself so didn’t understand why anyone else would thinkotherwise.

            We go way back. We met in the bar ofthe Horticultural Halls near Victoria in the 80s. We hit it off right away. Wewere good friends very quickly. We shared a few flats, when I was right down onmy luck I crashed on his sofa for a year. Later and he let me and Q stay whenwe were having our first in his big old house and we were saving. He was likethat.

            I can hear the first cheers below,toasting good-old-him. But I’m not there yet, and a couple like me too. We’regetting our shit together first so we don’t shout, or rant, or spoil theoccasion.

            We were mates, we were partners,buddies. We were a double-act. He was funny, though he lost that recently. We’dfinish each other’s piss-takes, we were the naughty corner.

            He hated suicide. He hated it whenpeople made that choice. He never understood it and there we divided somewhat,talked about it sometimes after a few beers. He couldn’t understand why theyjust didn’t go to him. But he did it too, just slower and without facing it andnow he’s dead, and it was painful, and sudden and I don‘t even want to go intowho told me, and me having to post the news. Two of us did that, we had muchthe same relationship with him, and now he’s dead.

            This group of friends we were a partof isn’t the same now. It won’t be the same again. There’ll always be this bigfucking empty space. I’d like to say I half think he’s going to be down therein a minute. That I’ll get down there and he’ll be there, large as theproverbial life, pint glass raised, all in slimming black and laughing withthat fleeting look in his eyes that now I’ll always remember as looking out forthe robed feller with the big sickle.

            It’s not fucking right, and I couldn’tdo anything then, less now.

            We were meant to grow old. And he,me and the lanky one would fall down hills in bathtubs and I’d chase Nora Batty.

            Because he’s dead, the stupid fuck, andlater tonight there’ll be a half-dozen of us left, or out in the carpark, oraway, or something and I know we’ll say nothing. And we’ll never say much toeach other again because anything we say, we’d be thinking of him.

            I love him, and I miss him, and Iwant to shout at him. But I can’t.

            So that’s that.   

BEEB! Plans Scrapped

Techno, techno, techno, techno!

TheBBC found guilty today of ageist discrimination against dropped presenterMiriam O’Reilly has been forced by the announcement to scrap its own plans tooust itself in favour of the new format BEEB! Set to appeal more readily to allthe important youth market the BBC has been forced to cake itself in pancakeand dance like a dad, in brogues, to Blondie’s Heart of Glass, which will meannothing to anyone since everyone in Britain today is aged under 21.

The launch of BEEB! with its controversialnew line up of presenters, programming and cheap steady-cam shouting hasalready attracted headlines with its casting in the Celebrity News slot at 9pmwith a foetus. The last in a long line of hirings and firings starting withKimberley Zap (16) in the Newznite slot has left the BBC with egg on its face –although the announcement of a return of Top Of The Pops headed by a handful ofsperm leaves doubt as to the actual composition of said egg.

With the actors on EastEnders alreadyreplaced by those from Bob The Builder it’s difficult to say how theannouncement will leave the sudden reversal of scheduling. Country File havingalready been taken out and shot in a barn with Old Yeller due to the widely heldview that there is no such thing outside the M25, that leaves the currentseason only with Dik & Dom Boy Detectives to rank up alongside repeats ofscience and gadget show Why Don’t You.

A further announcement is set to followtonight’s coverage of the all-important St Peters Primary vrsDrew Street Junior in the Surrey under-11s quarter-final.

Meet The Stigs

A family of Neanderthal have moved inacross the river, but I shouldn’t really call them that because they don’t comefrom a German valley. The Stigs seem very nice, Q’s spoken with the wife MrsStig who’s into mocking our attempts at computers whilst Mr Stig whilst itcould be said works in the dump, he also owns it. It’s lucky they’re friendlysince whilst racist stereotypes have them as being short, 5’5” or so that wastwenty odd thousand years ago. We were averaging that at Waterloo. They’rebigger at the shoulders too, stronger, with those big old hands and much as welike to think otherwise they’ve got bigger brains. Mr Stig suffers for this arthritisand about our age they’re martyrs for their backs and knees but what struck methe most isn’t that they look, forgive me, somewhat lumpen so much as we looklike children. Our features as adults are still those, in comparison, as ourkids.

                          NowI’m not going to join the parade that feels guilty about my ancestors. Minewere mostly in music-hall. So sorry for ‘Woops Mr Porter’ but you’d have to goa lot further back to find where we might herald our triumph in a post-ice-age,or the competiveness for territory, our roaming blah blah blah. Shit hashappened and Mrs Stig loathes people apologising when she would far ratherlaugh at us – not us, but just as sweeping – turning to crystals rather thanmedicine, looking at auras and reading the future in cards. She thinks it funnythat Ming The Merciless is our shaman. But she does take the Daily Mail withher New To You Scientist, and you don’t want to get started on immigration. We’refrom Africa after all. So we’ll be politeand with luck, friends.

                          Theyaren’t all Robbie Williams.

Fifty Ways To Use Your Pancake

Pancake day and as everthere are many more made than eaten. Obviously we’ve already wondered why wedon’t have pancakes more often – and yet there they are, more left over, forshame. But it’s a waste and I hate that, so if like me you have leftovers fearnot, for here are fifty uses of excess pancakes.

Anironic page marker for cookery books.

Aprotector for very cheap smart phones.

Sunblock for bald men, better the pancake crispy.

Anergonomic tissue.

Aholster for a banana, when used as a weapon.

Amilk mop.

Apocket kerchief when wearing a beige tie.

Arope for safe games of tug-of-war.

Anet for catching crafty flies.

Ameans by which wellies can be readily turned into pirate boots.

Ameans of storing CDs when all confused amongst their boxes.

Foruse in challenging only a very mildly deadly enemy to a less lethal than normalduel.

Ablanket for a poorly hamster.

Wetwipes for people with greasy skin.

Asa clay pigeon for Nerf guns.

Anemergency nappy when camping.

Amouse mat for practising computer dexterity with a boiled egg.

Aflag for attracting passing lemon vans.

Acomic for the short-sighted.

Asa knife for a Buddhist out mugging.

Asears when disguising oneself as an elephant.

Aclue in batter-related crime fiction.

Birthcontrol for couples that want children – one day.

Anapron for vegetarian cenobites.

Asail for toy boats on a gravy pond.

Theskin of a drum for tired musicians.

Aski-mask for hot summer days.

Prostheticleaves for an ailing house plant.

Ajudo mat for combative mice.

Avinyl LP for a record player without a needle.

Abandage for sugar-cuts.

Underpantsfor shy flashers.

Apatch for a threadbare batter tent.

Afrisbee for the disinclined.

Analien monster for Action Man B Movie re-enactments.

Awimple for a confectionary nun.

Alead for an unwanted dog.

Apresent for someone you mildly dislike.

Asa ghost costume for a chicken invited to a fancy-dress party at very shortnotice.

Asjewellery for the metal-intolerant

Awallet for the cash-challenged.

Asa throw to hide very small piles of mess.

Aliving environment for overweight pond-skaters.

Ascymbals for the easily startled.

Asaw for margarine planks.

Acrash helmet for workers in a pillow warehouse.

Atarget for spaghetti arrows.

Ablurry poster for fans of potato boy-bands.

Acushion for very mild piles.

And,as a buffet plate for the overweight.