Sunday, March 11, 2012
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.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
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.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
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?
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
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.”
Monday, March 5, 2012
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.
Friday, March 2, 2012
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
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.
