Watercolours are bloody tricky...
Showing posts with label Manchester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manchester. Show all posts
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Tuesday, 6 October 2015
Sorry but I think I would have thrown that egg myself*
The problem with an old-fashioned egging is that it lacks political nuance. Last Sunday's assault on Young Conservatives in Manchester has quite rightly been greeted with universal disapproval by the media and it doesn't really matter that 60,000 people didn't hurl eggs. One chose to vent their anger in yolk form and it was wrong, not least because this act of free-range stupidity gave the Tory party the perfect story against which to define themselves at the start of their annual conference. They can now claim to be the party that doesn't hurl eggs, or, at least, not outside the context of a dining club hazing.
Conflict is hardly new when the Tories come north. Political debate in this part of the country is a snarling business but that emanating from the left often seems more snarl than substance. Jeremy Corbyn can ask for gentler politics and Topman himself from collar to cuff but the crowd at protests will usually attract some braid-wearing pert-nippled class warriors with a good arm, lucky aim and a misguided notion of free speech.
Yet amid the sham outrage and sham counter outrage, I noticed something very familiar about the video titled ‘A Tory just got EGGED!!’ when it popped up on Youtube. I recognised the scene of the 'crime'. I spent years working in an office just around that corner on the edge of Chinatown. I've stood where the Tories stood and know how tempers run hot in a city that often feels like it has more Bez tribute acts than it has Tory voters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZB8_RMwFfI
Because I know the corner so well, I wonder how those Young Conservatives found themselves standing at that junction of Portland Street and Oxford Road. It's the latter road that channels protest marches that routinely run out of the university precinct to the south. That corner is the closest point that protesters get to the security barriers protecting Tory attendees. You'd have to walk a few minutes back towards Central Library in order to reach the Midland Hotel and further still to reach the conference venue.
It makes it hard not to question the motives of those Young Conservatives when they picked that spot to openly wear their conference passes (against the advice of event organizers) and to wave copies of The Telegraph, conference brochures, and pictures of Margaret Thatcher. These are perfectly legal things to do, of course, but perhaps not wise in the middle of an anti-austerity march unless your intention is to provoke the other lot into proving what a despicable bunch they can be. And, as usual, somebody in that other lot was only too happy to oblige.
The result is online sniping between the hard left and hard right. The left justifiably feel they have statistics on their side because it was only one among 60,000 who committed the terrible deed. The right justifiably feel that they have morality on their side because they claim the right to dress how they like and walk the streets unmolested by egg yolk. Yet it's hardly partisan to point out that the Young Conservatives seemed delighted to have provoked that response.
Manchester has many virtues but bow ties are rare and the v-necked sweater with old-school tie is not a look that wins many friends. Seen through my eyes, at least, the Young Conservatives looked just that: very young and very Conservative. I would also argue that you don't need to be on the political left to have a visceral reaction to the smugness of youths flaunting their privilege in a context in which others are protesting genuine poverty and government policies that are leading to the deaths of vulnerable people. Given the anger, the noise, the passion of the moment, I'd have been hard pressed not to lob an egg myself. Except, sitting here coolly and rationally, I also know that I wouldn't. Or perhaps I would. That's the problem with passion. It makes reasonable people do things they would regret and often those things are far worse than throwing an egg. The bigger question is why people attend a political march carrying eggs in their pockets and it's in the premeditation that my sympathy for the protesters ends.
The difference between passion and premeditation is, I suppose, at the heart of my argument. It's the premeditation of protestors looking to hurl eggs and the premeditation of the Young Tories looking to stoke the anger of the crowds. Yet the story also expresses a deeper reality about the Tories annual pilgrimage to Manchester. That they tend to hold their annual conferences in Labour heartlands makes as much sense as Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom hosting the Last Night of the Proms. The whole thing feels like a premeditated provocation on a scale grander than either the Young Conservatives or Dim Eggthrowers could ever hope to organize. It implies a reach into cities and regions that simply doesn't exist or is overstated. In the north, the Tories are largely successful in areas of affluence, the suburbs on the outskirts of major conurbations where gardens are large and every shadow cast by leaf or Range Rover. Elsewhere they are the second, third or even fourth choice party. For a few days, they might fortify themselves inside a heavily protected compound in central Manchester but the security only highlights how removed they are from ordinary Mancunians and how much effort they need to expend to truly understand the city, the people and its culture.
And that's what the story highlights to me. Throwing an egg was unconscionable but what the Young Conservatives were throwing back was cheap, snide, and self defeating. It was a militant distain about the cares of average people who will never know or enjoy their privilege. It was a lack of compassion, consideration, or conscience that only encourages more people to take to the streets and make the divides in our society feel deeper and more wilful than we've ever known them in our lives.
Whilst the Left need to identify the anarchists and trouble makers polluting their message through violence, the Tories need to rethink their own strategy and stop countenancing the fetishism of cruelty sometimes displayed so overtly by their youth.
* The title of this article was obviously intended as 'clickbait' but that doesn't actually stop some people from thinking that I would throw an egg or I'm defending the people that do throw eggs. I wouldn't throw an egg. I've never thrown an egg and I can't conceive of a context in which I would throw an egg. I'm not saying that I'm incapable of throwing an egg. If the conditions were perfect and I lost my temper and happened to have an egg in my hand, I can't be entirely certain about my actions. But, generally, I disapprove of all egg throwing and general misbehaviour with eggs.
Conflict is hardly new when the Tories come north. Political debate in this part of the country is a snarling business but that emanating from the left often seems more snarl than substance. Jeremy Corbyn can ask for gentler politics and Topman himself from collar to cuff but the crowd at protests will usually attract some braid-wearing pert-nippled class warriors with a good arm, lucky aim and a misguided notion of free speech.
Yet amid the sham outrage and sham counter outrage, I noticed something very familiar about the video titled ‘A Tory just got EGGED!!’ when it popped up on Youtube. I recognised the scene of the 'crime'. I spent years working in an office just around that corner on the edge of Chinatown. I've stood where the Tories stood and know how tempers run hot in a city that often feels like it has more Bez tribute acts than it has Tory voters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZB8_RMwFfI
Because I know the corner so well, I wonder how those Young Conservatives found themselves standing at that junction of Portland Street and Oxford Road. It's the latter road that channels protest marches that routinely run out of the university precinct to the south. That corner is the closest point that protesters get to the security barriers protecting Tory attendees. You'd have to walk a few minutes back towards Central Library in order to reach the Midland Hotel and further still to reach the conference venue.
It makes it hard not to question the motives of those Young Conservatives when they picked that spot to openly wear their conference passes (against the advice of event organizers) and to wave copies of The Telegraph, conference brochures, and pictures of Margaret Thatcher. These are perfectly legal things to do, of course, but perhaps not wise in the middle of an anti-austerity march unless your intention is to provoke the other lot into proving what a despicable bunch they can be. And, as usual, somebody in that other lot was only too happy to oblige.
The result is online sniping between the hard left and hard right. The left justifiably feel they have statistics on their side because it was only one among 60,000 who committed the terrible deed. The right justifiably feel that they have morality on their side because they claim the right to dress how they like and walk the streets unmolested by egg yolk. Yet it's hardly partisan to point out that the Young Conservatives seemed delighted to have provoked that response.
Manchester has many virtues but bow ties are rare and the v-necked sweater with old-school tie is not a look that wins many friends. Seen through my eyes, at least, the Young Conservatives looked just that: very young and very Conservative. I would also argue that you don't need to be on the political left to have a visceral reaction to the smugness of youths flaunting their privilege in a context in which others are protesting genuine poverty and government policies that are leading to the deaths of vulnerable people. Given the anger, the noise, the passion of the moment, I'd have been hard pressed not to lob an egg myself. Except, sitting here coolly and rationally, I also know that I wouldn't. Or perhaps I would. That's the problem with passion. It makes reasonable people do things they would regret and often those things are far worse than throwing an egg. The bigger question is why people attend a political march carrying eggs in their pockets and it's in the premeditation that my sympathy for the protesters ends.
The difference between passion and premeditation is, I suppose, at the heart of my argument. It's the premeditation of protestors looking to hurl eggs and the premeditation of the Young Tories looking to stoke the anger of the crowds. Yet the story also expresses a deeper reality about the Tories annual pilgrimage to Manchester. That they tend to hold their annual conferences in Labour heartlands makes as much sense as Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom hosting the Last Night of the Proms. The whole thing feels like a premeditated provocation on a scale grander than either the Young Conservatives or Dim Eggthrowers could ever hope to organize. It implies a reach into cities and regions that simply doesn't exist or is overstated. In the north, the Tories are largely successful in areas of affluence, the suburbs on the outskirts of major conurbations where gardens are large and every shadow cast by leaf or Range Rover. Elsewhere they are the second, third or even fourth choice party. For a few days, they might fortify themselves inside a heavily protected compound in central Manchester but the security only highlights how removed they are from ordinary Mancunians and how much effort they need to expend to truly understand the city, the people and its culture.
And that's what the story highlights to me. Throwing an egg was unconscionable but what the Young Conservatives were throwing back was cheap, snide, and self defeating. It was a militant distain about the cares of average people who will never know or enjoy their privilege. It was a lack of compassion, consideration, or conscience that only encourages more people to take to the streets and make the divides in our society feel deeper and more wilful than we've ever known them in our lives.
Whilst the Left need to identify the anarchists and trouble makers polluting their message through violence, the Tories need to rethink their own strategy and stop countenancing the fetishism of cruelty sometimes displayed so overtly by their youth.
* The title of this article was obviously intended as 'clickbait' but that doesn't actually stop some people from thinking that I would throw an egg or I'm defending the people that do throw eggs. I wouldn't throw an egg. I've never thrown an egg and I can't conceive of a context in which I would throw an egg. I'm not saying that I'm incapable of throwing an egg. If the conditions were perfect and I lost my temper and happened to have an egg in my hand, I can't be entirely certain about my actions. But, generally, I disapprove of all egg throwing and general misbehaviour with eggs.
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
What Classless Society?
I've had a few emails in the past few days from people asking about my accent. At least two thought that I'm from Yorkshire.
I didn't think much about it until I read this morning an excellent interview with the actor Christopher Ecclestone who hails from Salford just down the East Lancs from here. He talks about class in the UK and I liked particular the way Ecclestone talked about himself. 'I was a skinny, awkward-looking bugger with an accent, as I still am,' he said, in words I've probably used a few times to describe myself. 'Bugger' is a word I find myself using quite a lot. It's distinctly part of the vocabulary of the North West of England.
Yet it's what Ecclestone went on to say that is more significant. 'British society has always been based on inequality, particularly culturally,' he explained. 'I’ve lived with it, but it’s much more pronounced now, and it would be difficult for someone like me to come through.'
I lingered on this paragraph because just the other day I was discussing with a friend if we really live in a so called 'classless' society. I have never been an advocate of 'Class War' and my politics have never been so far to the left that I'd ever consider myself 'left wing'. Yet I maintain that the past five years has seen class divisions grow even deeper. I'm even more aware of my own alienation from British culture where a privileged elite enjoy the arts and the rest of us scrape around looking for greater meaning amid the closed libraries and non-existent gallery space. I write a lot of essays, books and poems, draw my bad cartoons whilst pretending I'm not attempting to be 'arty', and I study culture through multiple sources. I have so many qualifications I've made myself largely unemployable. You could argue that I'm deeply cultured except I don't exist in that world where such things are cherished. I live in a deeply working class town where I'm very much the oddball, the outcast, and clearly unwanted. It's the rich BT engineers who rule the town. They have the money. They dictate our culture or lack thereof.
Yet I digress slightly. I've read a few times in the past twelve months of some London-based social critics proclaiming that we're now living in an age without class. I suppose to David Cameron, the UK does look classless. I imagine it looks amazingly homogenous if you surround yourself with friends from Eton. Yet that's not my perception of the UK. Nor, it would seem, is it the perception of one of our best actors.
It goes back to the problem of people not recognising my dialect. It would never have occurred to me that anybody would confuse the Lancashire and Yorkshire accents, any more than somebody would mistake a Newcastle accent for the accent of Cornwall or Birmingham. Yet perhaps the confusion is actually not that surprising given than the accents on the TV tend to be of a very narrow range. There are little bits of the Welsh accent, quite a lot of Scottish, occasional Geordie or Brummie, and once or twice you might hear a Scouse twang. Yet really the rest is just that same flat English of the estuaries or what Ecclestone calls the 'milky, anodyne culture'.
At a tangent slightly: on The Daily Politics a couple of mornings ago, Andrew Neil made passing reference to the Labour Party's manifesto launch taking place in Manchester. Neil suggested that Labour were only doing so to avoid scrutiny from the press. This led to a big family debate and I found myself on an unusual side of the argument.
Normally, I defend Neil to the hilt. There's no journalist I admire more. Yet on this small matter I thought he was wrong. My argument ran: 'Why shouldn't Labour launch their manifesto from Manchester? Labour are strong in the north and we're as much a part of the electorate as anybody in London'.
I was being naive, of course, and Neil was right. All the main political journalists are based in London and though they could travel easily to Manchester, there were possibly fewer of them up north to ask questions of the Labour leader. Yet if Andrew Neil was right in fact, he was wrong in spirit. And that's what I'm trying to argue here today.
I never think of myself as having much of an accent. I don't really think much about accent. I watch a lot of TV news. I enjoy debates and newspaper reviews. I enjoy the Neil triumvirate: the Daily Politics, the Sunday Politics, and This Week. I watch Question Time and the new show hosted by Tom Bradbury on ITV whose title escapes me. I watch the Daily Show and Bill Maher's weekly panel talk show. I don't consciously think accent. Yet when people think I'm from Yorkshire, it makes me realise how little my Lancashire accent is really heard on TV. When it is, it's usually the twisted perversion of an accent coming from the mouth of Johnny Vegas. (Incidentally: I really like Vegas but I hate how he represents our area. It feels like he plays the stereotype that confirms people's worst prejudices about a boorish uneducated North West.)
This might be a trivial point but I'm not entirely sure that it is. Individuals don't form opinions. Opinions are formed as if in a collective consciousness, as good points are repeated and carried forward by people engaged into the community debate. So, for example, I might watch the news and see Kevin McGuire on Sky News say something I agree with. I hear somebody repeat that on the Daily Politics and the idea hardens into a personal opinion that I might repeat. It enters into the public debate at multiple points and the arguments circulate around it, help develop and refine it, and then the whole mass of ideas moves on as new opinions are generated.
Yet what I notice is how many of the people engaged in that debate live in a closed intellectual biome. Even those like McGuire who speak with an accent do so from a somewhat privileged position. For example, you rarely hear from somebody from Eccles talking about their experiences living in Eccles. Newspaper reviews have the same London suburbanites speaking from a very limited worldview. The news agenda is incestuous; set by people whose outlook is formed by living a few miles around Westminster, or, more broadly, within driving distance to the main TV studios. It means that their perceptions of culture are different to the rest of the country. They view public transport differently to how people might view it if they live in a poor town in Yorkshire or in the Scottish borders. They are the people who think, for example, that to enjoy culture, those of us in the North can simply hop on a train and visit London. Logically, they might make sense but they lack the practical experience of trying to do that which would demonstrate why it's impossible. They wouldn't know, to further my example, that trains into London in the morning are prohibitively expensive, whilst trains to the North in the morning are astonishingly cheap. Trains out of London are prohibitively expensive late in the day, whilst trains into London late in the day are cheap. It makes it easy to travel out of London in the morning and home at night. It's nearly impossible to do it the other way around. People in London can explore the rest of the country cheaply but those of us in the north are economically restricted from accessing our capital city. You have to travel on a late afternoon train, travel home in the morning, paying for a hotel overnight. It's hardly a 'day out'.
This is just one example of many I could use. My point is: as I've noted before, it's remarkable and deeply depressing how politics and political debate is largely confined to people with London identities. I was no fan of either men but, unlike the 1980s, there are no figures like Derek Hatton or Arthur Scargill to provide a different view of reality. Why do none of our big cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Newcastle have people who are recognisably part of the city like Boris Johnson represents London? Where are the social critics giving the point of view of the North West or Manchester or Warrington? There simply are none.
Classless society? I suppose it is if you completely ignore nine tenths of that society and act like the poor buggers don't exist.
I didn't think much about it until I read this morning an excellent interview with the actor Christopher Ecclestone who hails from Salford just down the East Lancs from here. He talks about class in the UK and I liked particular the way Ecclestone talked about himself. 'I was a skinny, awkward-looking bugger with an accent, as I still am,' he said, in words I've probably used a few times to describe myself. 'Bugger' is a word I find myself using quite a lot. It's distinctly part of the vocabulary of the North West of England.
Yet it's what Ecclestone went on to say that is more significant. 'British society has always been based on inequality, particularly culturally,' he explained. 'I’ve lived with it, but it’s much more pronounced now, and it would be difficult for someone like me to come through.'
I lingered on this paragraph because just the other day I was discussing with a friend if we really live in a so called 'classless' society. I have never been an advocate of 'Class War' and my politics have never been so far to the left that I'd ever consider myself 'left wing'. Yet I maintain that the past five years has seen class divisions grow even deeper. I'm even more aware of my own alienation from British culture where a privileged elite enjoy the arts and the rest of us scrape around looking for greater meaning amid the closed libraries and non-existent gallery space. I write a lot of essays, books and poems, draw my bad cartoons whilst pretending I'm not attempting to be 'arty', and I study culture through multiple sources. I have so many qualifications I've made myself largely unemployable. You could argue that I'm deeply cultured except I don't exist in that world where such things are cherished. I live in a deeply working class town where I'm very much the oddball, the outcast, and clearly unwanted. It's the rich BT engineers who rule the town. They have the money. They dictate our culture or lack thereof.
Yet I digress slightly. I've read a few times in the past twelve months of some London-based social critics proclaiming that we're now living in an age without class. I suppose to David Cameron, the UK does look classless. I imagine it looks amazingly homogenous if you surround yourself with friends from Eton. Yet that's not my perception of the UK. Nor, it would seem, is it the perception of one of our best actors.
It goes back to the problem of people not recognising my dialect. It would never have occurred to me that anybody would confuse the Lancashire and Yorkshire accents, any more than somebody would mistake a Newcastle accent for the accent of Cornwall or Birmingham. Yet perhaps the confusion is actually not that surprising given than the accents on the TV tend to be of a very narrow range. There are little bits of the Welsh accent, quite a lot of Scottish, occasional Geordie or Brummie, and once or twice you might hear a Scouse twang. Yet really the rest is just that same flat English of the estuaries or what Ecclestone calls the 'milky, anodyne culture'.
At a tangent slightly: on The Daily Politics a couple of mornings ago, Andrew Neil made passing reference to the Labour Party's manifesto launch taking place in Manchester. Neil suggested that Labour were only doing so to avoid scrutiny from the press. This led to a big family debate and I found myself on an unusual side of the argument.
Normally, I defend Neil to the hilt. There's no journalist I admire more. Yet on this small matter I thought he was wrong. My argument ran: 'Why shouldn't Labour launch their manifesto from Manchester? Labour are strong in the north and we're as much a part of the electorate as anybody in London'.
I was being naive, of course, and Neil was right. All the main political journalists are based in London and though they could travel easily to Manchester, there were possibly fewer of them up north to ask questions of the Labour leader. Yet if Andrew Neil was right in fact, he was wrong in spirit. And that's what I'm trying to argue here today.
I never think of myself as having much of an accent. I don't really think much about accent. I watch a lot of TV news. I enjoy debates and newspaper reviews. I enjoy the Neil triumvirate: the Daily Politics, the Sunday Politics, and This Week. I watch Question Time and the new show hosted by Tom Bradbury on ITV whose title escapes me. I watch the Daily Show and Bill Maher's weekly panel talk show. I don't consciously think accent. Yet when people think I'm from Yorkshire, it makes me realise how little my Lancashire accent is really heard on TV. When it is, it's usually the twisted perversion of an accent coming from the mouth of Johnny Vegas. (Incidentally: I really like Vegas but I hate how he represents our area. It feels like he plays the stereotype that confirms people's worst prejudices about a boorish uneducated North West.)
This might be a trivial point but I'm not entirely sure that it is. Individuals don't form opinions. Opinions are formed as if in a collective consciousness, as good points are repeated and carried forward by people engaged into the community debate. So, for example, I might watch the news and see Kevin McGuire on Sky News say something I agree with. I hear somebody repeat that on the Daily Politics and the idea hardens into a personal opinion that I might repeat. It enters into the public debate at multiple points and the arguments circulate around it, help develop and refine it, and then the whole mass of ideas moves on as new opinions are generated.
Yet what I notice is how many of the people engaged in that debate live in a closed intellectual biome. Even those like McGuire who speak with an accent do so from a somewhat privileged position. For example, you rarely hear from somebody from Eccles talking about their experiences living in Eccles. Newspaper reviews have the same London suburbanites speaking from a very limited worldview. The news agenda is incestuous; set by people whose outlook is formed by living a few miles around Westminster, or, more broadly, within driving distance to the main TV studios. It means that their perceptions of culture are different to the rest of the country. They view public transport differently to how people might view it if they live in a poor town in Yorkshire or in the Scottish borders. They are the people who think, for example, that to enjoy culture, those of us in the North can simply hop on a train and visit London. Logically, they might make sense but they lack the practical experience of trying to do that which would demonstrate why it's impossible. They wouldn't know, to further my example, that trains into London in the morning are prohibitively expensive, whilst trains to the North in the morning are astonishingly cheap. Trains out of London are prohibitively expensive late in the day, whilst trains into London late in the day are cheap. It makes it easy to travel out of London in the morning and home at night. It's nearly impossible to do it the other way around. People in London can explore the rest of the country cheaply but those of us in the north are economically restricted from accessing our capital city. You have to travel on a late afternoon train, travel home in the morning, paying for a hotel overnight. It's hardly a 'day out'.
This is just one example of many I could use. My point is: as I've noted before, it's remarkable and deeply depressing how politics and political debate is largely confined to people with London identities. I was no fan of either men but, unlike the 1980s, there are no figures like Derek Hatton or Arthur Scargill to provide a different view of reality. Why do none of our big cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Newcastle have people who are recognisably part of the city like Boris Johnson represents London? Where are the social critics giving the point of view of the North West or Manchester or Warrington? There simply are none.
Classless society? I suppose it is if you completely ignore nine tenths of that society and act like the poor buggers don't exist.
Thursday, 8 January 2015
Perhaps It Was My Hat...
An odd thing happened today.
This afternoon I escaped to Manchester. I hadn't been there in a couple of months and I needed a break from the constant work and yesterday's grim news.
It was just after noon when I emerged from the Maplin store on Oxford Road and found myself needing to get to the city centre. I had a little shopping to do, plus I wanted to spend some time looking around Waterstones where I knew they have quite a good collection of books about C# and the NET framework, which I've been using these last few weeks to build myself an interesting app. I vaguely hoped one might be in the sales, though I'd be ultimately disappointed.
The obvious way into the city centre is to walk but it is a bit of a hike and I was in no mood for testing my ankles so soon after Christmas. Thankfully, Manchester is an enlightened city and has free buses that run the main routes. They're not normal sized busses but are adequate for the job and very regular. Not long after I arrived at the bus stop, a bus arrived. I was also in luck. It was pretty empty.
So off we go...
Not many people get on or off the bus until we arrive at the Museum of Science and Industry where a group of adults is waiting. The adults were a variety of ages and there might have been fifteen or twenty of them. It was also very obvious, looking at them, that they very had some quite severe mental and learning difficulties. There was also too many to fit on the small bus. However, the bus was fairly empty and we all cleared our bags from the seats to allow as many as possible to sit down. So, after a few minutes of people squeezing between people, the bus is loaded with loud, raucous, but happy customers. All is well. On we go.
At the next stop a few people get on. A few people get off. One woman squeezes though the crowd and into the seat next to me. I'm at the back, central because of my unreasonably long legs mean that I just can't fit into normal bus seats without either sitting sideways or tucking my knees under my chin.
Off we go again.
A couple of stops on, we're pulling approaching the stop outside Forsyth's music shop. I always look in the window of Forsyth's at the guitars I'll never be able to afford. I was looking that way, probably dreamily waiting to see a Les Paul Sunburst, when I felt a tapping on my arm. I turn around. It was the woman. She starts to speak to me.
'Can. You. Move. Your. Legs? I. Want. To. Get. Off.'
That's how she spoke. Very, very slowly. I immediately thought 'what an odd woman' but I didn't say anything. I just smiled and moved my legs. She squeezed past and moved down the bus.
And that's when I saw her mouth the word 'Aw! Bless' to a friend. They both gave me sad little smiles.
That's when it struck me. She thought I was with the museum group.
Now, this doesn't happen to me very often. I might not be the best looking man in the world but neither (I hope) am I too much of an eyesore. My biggest fault is that I dress a bit shabbily and refuse to make any fashion statements. I refuse to be a walking billboard for companies so I wear nothing that endorses brands. About the only thing I wear that endorses anything is a Ralph Steadman T-shirt emblazoned with Dr. Gonzo. That's what I was wearing today beneath a blue sweater and my coat. My jeans were just black jeans. On reflection, it had to be my hat: thick navy blue Peter Storm 'thinsulate' number from Millets.
Meanwhile, I didn't know what to think or what to do. You can't suddenly start saying 'Oh no, I'm not with them' for fear of upsetting people who don't deserve upsetting. At the same time, I was by myself. I couldn't start discussing politics or goat metaphors in Dostoyevsky's novels simply to prove a point. As it was, I just sat on the bus as it pulled out of the stop and the two women disembarked. As we pulled away, they looked at me from the pavement and gave me a small wave.
I won't tell you how I responded.
I might, however, have to buy a new hat.
This afternoon I escaped to Manchester. I hadn't been there in a couple of months and I needed a break from the constant work and yesterday's grim news.
It was just after noon when I emerged from the Maplin store on Oxford Road and found myself needing to get to the city centre. I had a little shopping to do, plus I wanted to spend some time looking around Waterstones where I knew they have quite a good collection of books about C# and the NET framework, which I've been using these last few weeks to build myself an interesting app. I vaguely hoped one might be in the sales, though I'd be ultimately disappointed.
The obvious way into the city centre is to walk but it is a bit of a hike and I was in no mood for testing my ankles so soon after Christmas. Thankfully, Manchester is an enlightened city and has free buses that run the main routes. They're not normal sized busses but are adequate for the job and very regular. Not long after I arrived at the bus stop, a bus arrived. I was also in luck. It was pretty empty.
So off we go...
Not many people get on or off the bus until we arrive at the Museum of Science and Industry where a group of adults is waiting. The adults were a variety of ages and there might have been fifteen or twenty of them. It was also very obvious, looking at them, that they very had some quite severe mental and learning difficulties. There was also too many to fit on the small bus. However, the bus was fairly empty and we all cleared our bags from the seats to allow as many as possible to sit down. So, after a few minutes of people squeezing between people, the bus is loaded with loud, raucous, but happy customers. All is well. On we go.
At the next stop a few people get on. A few people get off. One woman squeezes though the crowd and into the seat next to me. I'm at the back, central because of my unreasonably long legs mean that I just can't fit into normal bus seats without either sitting sideways or tucking my knees under my chin.
Off we go again.
A couple of stops on, we're pulling approaching the stop outside Forsyth's music shop. I always look in the window of Forsyth's at the guitars I'll never be able to afford. I was looking that way, probably dreamily waiting to see a Les Paul Sunburst, when I felt a tapping on my arm. I turn around. It was the woman. She starts to speak to me.
'Can. You. Move. Your. Legs? I. Want. To. Get. Off.'
That's how she spoke. Very, very slowly. I immediately thought 'what an odd woman' but I didn't say anything. I just smiled and moved my legs. She squeezed past and moved down the bus.
And that's when I saw her mouth the word 'Aw! Bless' to a friend. They both gave me sad little smiles.
That's when it struck me. She thought I was with the museum group.
Now, this doesn't happen to me very often. I might not be the best looking man in the world but neither (I hope) am I too much of an eyesore. My biggest fault is that I dress a bit shabbily and refuse to make any fashion statements. I refuse to be a walking billboard for companies so I wear nothing that endorses brands. About the only thing I wear that endorses anything is a Ralph Steadman T-shirt emblazoned with Dr. Gonzo. That's what I was wearing today beneath a blue sweater and my coat. My jeans were just black jeans. On reflection, it had to be my hat: thick navy blue Peter Storm 'thinsulate' number from Millets.
Meanwhile, I didn't know what to think or what to do. You can't suddenly start saying 'Oh no, I'm not with them' for fear of upsetting people who don't deserve upsetting. At the same time, I was by myself. I couldn't start discussing politics or goat metaphors in Dostoyevsky's novels simply to prove a point. As it was, I just sat on the bus as it pulled out of the stop and the two women disembarked. As we pulled away, they looked at me from the pavement and gave me a small wave.
I won't tell you how I responded.
I might, however, have to buy a new hat.
Sunday, 13 October 2013
So I Saw The Back of Tony Husband's Head...
I don’t as a rule travel into any city or town on a Saturday evening because I have a rough idea about what goes on there once the shops close. However, I didn’t expect that nightlife to be as evident on the 4.20pm train into Manchester.
A group of girls arrived at the station. They were in their mid-teens but their clothes would make anybody hope it was the legal side of mid-teens. Their dresses were barely covering their buttocks; their short thick legs brutal, muscular and a strange shade of brown like those of some East European marathon runner caught short in their quest for Olympic gold. Their legs matched faces that were callous and calculated with the eyes of desperate maneaters. I recognised the type. In nine months those strong legs would be pushing flimsy prams, passed on down generations of single mothers.
Arriving in Manchester, I quickly realised that the city was already full of their kind. I walked through the gathering crowds of revelers and the last of the normal shoppers. The women were brazenly sexual, devoid of anything that I could find attractive beyond a pre-programmed admiration for breast or leg. They were trying to appeal to men who were similarly outlandish in their choice of clothes for a cold October night this far north. Gangs of four, five, six or seven were roaming making loud noises and drunken humour and wearing thin t-shirts over grotesquely inflated pectorals. There were arguments, posturing, playful fighting, and some of it was good-natured. A guy stopped in front of a beggar in St Anne's Square. He gave her a hat shaped like a bear and joked that he'd come back later and check that she was wearing it. Yet such generosity was rare. As darkness fell, the rowdiness increased. I felt jaded by witnessing such sad lives lived out publically and after a coffee in the main branch of Waterstones, I got out of the city centre and made my way to the art gallery behind the Arndale.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="230"]
Richard Goodall Gallery[/caption]
I arrived not knowing what to expect but finding the doors locked, a sign ‘private showing’ posted in the window. A woman working the button that opened the door didn’t seem keen on letting me in but when she did I explained that I’d been invited, which was embarrassing since the person inviting me had just passed me as he nipped out for a cigarette. I hadn’t recognised Bill Stott since we'd only spoken on email. I went after him, chatted briefly with Bill who was clearly on edge. The guest of honour was late and the evening couldn’t really go ahead without Bill Tidy. We went back inside and I left Bill to his worrying and began to wander around the gallery.
My impressions were so mixed. I was fascinated by the cartoons but the place didn't feel hospitable. Going to the Cartoon Museum in London had been so different. There I found people to talk to. Perhaps it was because they were genuine cartoonists or fans of cartoons. This was a different crowd, perhaps Manchester's cultural elite. I don't know... Here I felt daggers in my back. I felt so out of place and utterly unwelcome. Perhaps it was just my usual working class neurosis at play. I'd try to catch a person’s eye, start a conversation but the only responses were polite but cool smiles. Eventually, I gave up trying.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="412"]
Those closest I got to Tony Husband (his back to camera)[/caption]
I recognised Tony Husband immediately and then Bill Tidy arrived. I didn’t get anywhere close to speaking to either and felt so foolish to think that I’d taken my copy of Tony Husband’s book 'I Nearly Died Laughing' in the vague hope that I’d get him to sign it. There was no chance. They were soon trapped in respective corners by people seeking audiences. Yet it left plenty of room to study their cartoons diligently, which I did, doing circuit upon circuit of the room, finding the only pleasure of the evening in looking at some great gag cartooning. Bill Stott's were the most familiar to me but it was good to see so many in once place. Tidy's cartoons were surprisingly delicate for a man who made his reputation drawing broad stokes on a whiteboard. Yet Tony Husband's were the standout for me. It's too easy to dismiss them as being roughly drawn. They are but, looking at the originals, I found myself really appreciating the technique. This alone made the night worth it and might even encourage me to try a second visit, if they let me in...
As I studied the cartoons, behind me the audience seemed familiar to itself. I stood there speaking to nobody as a world moved around me, kisses exchanged between familiar cheeks, old friendships renewed, gossip, gossip, gossip. I drifted between these groups, feeling like I didn’t belong and thinking each moment that I would escape.
It reminded me so much of days at university when I’d stand in a room of middle-class southerners so familiar in each other’s company that they knew the rules of being social. Around the edges of the room would be the rest of us from working class backgrounds and places like Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and (as in my case) the wilds in between. These were be the friends I made and kept over the subsequent years. As a postgrad my friends would be from Ireland and America. Class seemed important then. It felt important now. There was never much mixing and same felt true here. I didn’t belong.
I waited until Bill Stott, Tony Husband, and then Bill Tidy had finished their live cartooning and I joined the rest singing 'Happy Birthday' as a cake was presented to Bill Tidy but then I was gone. I made a dash for my train through crowds that already stank of stale beer.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="384"]
Manchester[/caption]
I was delayed a minute by a group of pink middle-aged angels blocking the pavement with a rubber sex doll. I missed my train by a minute, took refuge in the Nero near Manchester Victoria. Coffee and hot food helped and I started to draw on my Note hoping to pass the hour there waiting for my train. Except a couple moved next to me so he could charge his iPhone beneath my seat. They hadn’t bought food or drink so they started to kiss, passionately, and so close to me that I was technically part of a threesome. I quickly got out of there, exchanging my hot coffee for a thirty minute wait as I stood shivering on a cold platform until the train arrived with more drunks but eventually I was home and swearing never again…
A group of girls arrived at the station. They were in their mid-teens but their clothes would make anybody hope it was the legal side of mid-teens. Their dresses were barely covering their buttocks; their short thick legs brutal, muscular and a strange shade of brown like those of some East European marathon runner caught short in their quest for Olympic gold. Their legs matched faces that were callous and calculated with the eyes of desperate maneaters. I recognised the type. In nine months those strong legs would be pushing flimsy prams, passed on down generations of single mothers.
Arriving in Manchester, I quickly realised that the city was already full of their kind. I walked through the gathering crowds of revelers and the last of the normal shoppers. The women were brazenly sexual, devoid of anything that I could find attractive beyond a pre-programmed admiration for breast or leg. They were trying to appeal to men who were similarly outlandish in their choice of clothes for a cold October night this far north. Gangs of four, five, six or seven were roaming making loud noises and drunken humour and wearing thin t-shirts over grotesquely inflated pectorals. There were arguments, posturing, playful fighting, and some of it was good-natured. A guy stopped in front of a beggar in St Anne's Square. He gave her a hat shaped like a bear and joked that he'd come back later and check that she was wearing it. Yet such generosity was rare. As darkness fell, the rowdiness increased. I felt jaded by witnessing such sad lives lived out publically and after a coffee in the main branch of Waterstones, I got out of the city centre and made my way to the art gallery behind the Arndale.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="230"]
Richard Goodall Gallery[/caption]I arrived not knowing what to expect but finding the doors locked, a sign ‘private showing’ posted in the window. A woman working the button that opened the door didn’t seem keen on letting me in but when she did I explained that I’d been invited, which was embarrassing since the person inviting me had just passed me as he nipped out for a cigarette. I hadn’t recognised Bill Stott since we'd only spoken on email. I went after him, chatted briefly with Bill who was clearly on edge. The guest of honour was late and the evening couldn’t really go ahead without Bill Tidy. We went back inside and I left Bill to his worrying and began to wander around the gallery.
My impressions were so mixed. I was fascinated by the cartoons but the place didn't feel hospitable. Going to the Cartoon Museum in London had been so different. There I found people to talk to. Perhaps it was because they were genuine cartoonists or fans of cartoons. This was a different crowd, perhaps Manchester's cultural elite. I don't know... Here I felt daggers in my back. I felt so out of place and utterly unwelcome. Perhaps it was just my usual working class neurosis at play. I'd try to catch a person’s eye, start a conversation but the only responses were polite but cool smiles. Eventually, I gave up trying.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="412"]
Those closest I got to Tony Husband (his back to camera)[/caption]I recognised Tony Husband immediately and then Bill Tidy arrived. I didn’t get anywhere close to speaking to either and felt so foolish to think that I’d taken my copy of Tony Husband’s book 'I Nearly Died Laughing' in the vague hope that I’d get him to sign it. There was no chance. They were soon trapped in respective corners by people seeking audiences. Yet it left plenty of room to study their cartoons diligently, which I did, doing circuit upon circuit of the room, finding the only pleasure of the evening in looking at some great gag cartooning. Bill Stott's were the most familiar to me but it was good to see so many in once place. Tidy's cartoons were surprisingly delicate for a man who made his reputation drawing broad stokes on a whiteboard. Yet Tony Husband's were the standout for me. It's too easy to dismiss them as being roughly drawn. They are but, looking at the originals, I found myself really appreciating the technique. This alone made the night worth it and might even encourage me to try a second visit, if they let me in...
As I studied the cartoons, behind me the audience seemed familiar to itself. I stood there speaking to nobody as a world moved around me, kisses exchanged between familiar cheeks, old friendships renewed, gossip, gossip, gossip. I drifted between these groups, feeling like I didn’t belong and thinking each moment that I would escape.
It reminded me so much of days at university when I’d stand in a room of middle-class southerners so familiar in each other’s company that they knew the rules of being social. Around the edges of the room would be the rest of us from working class backgrounds and places like Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and (as in my case) the wilds in between. These were be the friends I made and kept over the subsequent years. As a postgrad my friends would be from Ireland and America. Class seemed important then. It felt important now. There was never much mixing and same felt true here. I didn’t belong.
I waited until Bill Stott, Tony Husband, and then Bill Tidy had finished their live cartooning and I joined the rest singing 'Happy Birthday' as a cake was presented to Bill Tidy but then I was gone. I made a dash for my train through crowds that already stank of stale beer.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="384"]
Manchester[/caption]I was delayed a minute by a group of pink middle-aged angels blocking the pavement with a rubber sex doll. I missed my train by a minute, took refuge in the Nero near Manchester Victoria. Coffee and hot food helped and I started to draw on my Note hoping to pass the hour there waiting for my train. Except a couple moved next to me so he could charge his iPhone beneath my seat. They hadn’t bought food or drink so they started to kiss, passionately, and so close to me that I was technically part of a threesome. I quickly got out of there, exchanging my hot coffee for a thirty minute wait as I stood shivering on a cold platform until the train arrived with more drunks but eventually I was home and swearing never again…
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Hey Wayne!
Today I’ll be skipping my evening meal. I would normally call it my ‘tea’ but I’m reliably informed that you civilized folk call it ‘dinner’ and today I’m trying to raise my game. That means it’s a non-jeans day as I also give myself an early birthday treat. Birthday, you ask? Well, yes. Tomorrow, this lump of the corporeal jam marks the day when the Earth reaches the same arbitrary point in its orbit that it reached when I first had my bottom smacked by some firm-handed midwife. Famous people who also had their bottoms smacked on October 13th: Margaret Thatcher, Paul Simon and cartoonist Michael Heath. And what’s remarkable is that I’m a big fan of all two.As to my treat: later I’ll be catching the Manchester train to attend the opening of ‘Hey Wayne!’, a new exhibition of cartoons from Bill Stott, Bill Tidy, Tony Husband and Chris Madden. It’s at the Richard Goodall Gallery starting at 6pm and ending at 8 with fisticuffs in the car park (Bill’s words, not mine). Now that I’ve advertised it here, I expect queues around the block, though I’d expect that anyway. This is a rare chance to see some of our most important contemporary gag cartoonists together in one room. If you like gag cartoons and live in the Manchester area, you’d be crazy not to attend. A prize for anybody who spots the tall nerd standing in the corner…
It’s my high level of cartoon nerdishness that gives me the confidence to attend, otherwise, it’s not in my nature to go to cultured events such as this. I usually plan to go and then discover a path of less resistance which takes me back to my more familiar routines. However, this time I’m determined to make the effort of showing up, standing in a corner, feeling extremely out of place, and then slipping away unnoticed. I wish I could be different, arrive with a flourish, slap Tony Husband on the back and give Bill Tidy a thumbs-up. Instead, I’ll be happy to finally meet Bill Stott, one of my favourite cartoonists and a really nice guy who displays remarkable levels of tolerance by enduring an email correspondence with a miserable would-be cartoonist plagued by a compulsion to over-draw everything.
Okay, now for a late lunch (dinner in these parts) and then I’ll get ready for the train. I’ll probably blog tomorrow. It’s my birthday but I try not to think about these things. I look younger than my years and I’m still a child at heart, even if you can count the years on the rings of my teeth. If I have the nerve, time, and figure out how to put a pound on my phone, I’ll Instagram tonight’s event. From here on, things will be bleak. Next week I’ll begin to anticipate the huge disappointment of not featuring in the results of the Observer’s short graphic story competition.
Saturday, 22 June 2013
It's A Sparks Show
Coming soon... It's A Sparks Show: Part 2...
[caption id="attachment_2166" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
Click to enlarge[/caption]This was a comic strip idea that had been rattling around in my head for a long time so I’m glad to have finally sat down and drawn it out. I think drawing this was some kind of penance for once writing to Ron Mael as Stan Madeley (movie frogman) offering to teach him how to scuba dive. He never replied but I can hardly blame him.
I’ve been a big fan of Sparks, possibly from early childhood but, on a conscious level, since I discovered the 'Gratuitous Sax' album yet I consider myself to be far too sane to be one of those 'super fans'. I stood next to a few of them outside Manchester’s Ritz last October when I saw Sparks play live. It was a birthday present otherwise I would have probably missed the tour and missed standing in line with one scary woman who was ready to throw body parts onto the stage if Russell Mael had only looked in her direction. Rather than stand at the front, I crept up to the balcony and, as fate would have it, got one of the few seats in the house (video here). I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Sparks will come back to Manchester around October when they do another live tour later in the year. The evening was sublime.
Next to seeing the Ralph Steadman exhibition or going to the Fringe to see Stuart Lee and Baconface, a Sparks concert could be another highlight of that fantasy year when I actually earn money for my cartoons/books and can actually afford to see all the things I want to see.
Looking back at this strip, there are things I could have done much better. I mainly read underground comics so I love roughly framing, though, doing this again, I perhaps wouldn’t make it quite as rough. Some of the crosshatching was also rushed. Yet there are parts of this I really like. Learning to draw cartoons is all about constant practice. I didn’t want to spend too long on this, though I’ve not drawn two A4 sheets for quite a while. Anyway, success or failure, this is one of those things I draw for myself. The monkey at the end amuses me enormously and I've not stopped smiling all day.
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