The Foghorn - No. 40

Issue 40The best of British cartooning talentFOGHORN

THE FOGHORN2 WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG

Contrary to local news reports, Mi-chael Jackson was not seen exiting Aldi in Glossop with a bumper pack of jelly babies last Tuesday. Turned out it was a fan, and in this edition of Foghorn, Chris Madden tells us all about them. You never know – you might be one! Whilst Kevin Pieterson may have strained a mouth tendon and won’t be available to stuff it up the Aussies, the PCO Guide herein goes some way to-wards explaining his strange job. In response to the thousands of re-quests your Foghorn team have had

for a Gardening Column – well, sev-en, actually – here it is – all the answers – what to do about Bladderwort rash, thripps, and how to make your own ma-nure. And for those who don’t like reading, LOADS of the funniest cartoons in the country. Can’t say fairer than that.

Bill Stott, Foghorn Editor

NEWS

The magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (FECO UK)

FOGHORNFOGHORN Issue 40

Published in Great Britain by theProfessional Cartoonists’Organisation (FECO UK)

PCO PatronsLibby Purves Andrew Marr

Bill Tidy

Foghorn EditorBill Stott

tel: +44 (0) 160 646002email: [email protected]

Foghorn Sub-EditorRoger Penwill

tel: +44 (0) 1584 711854email: [email protected]

Foghorn Layout/DesignTim Harries

tel: + 44 (0) 1633 780293email: [email protected]

PCO Press Officeemail: [email protected]

Web infoPCO (FECO UK) website:

http://www.procartoonists.org

BLOGHORNhttp://thebloghorn.org/

What is Foghorn? British cartoon art has a great, ignoble history and currently boasts a huge pool of talent. It

deserves a higher media presence than it currently enjoys. Our aim

is to make sure it gets it. We want to promote cartoon art domestically and internationally by encouraging high standards of artwork and service, looking after

the interests of cartoonists and promoting their work in all kinds

of media.

CopyrightAll the images in this magazine are the intellectual property and

copyright of their individual creators and must not be copied or reproduced, in any format,

without their consent.

Front Cover: Albert RuslingBack Cover: Clive Goddard

Foghorn (Online) ISSN 1759-6440

Glossop Watch: 3

“I’ll have to call you back - major international crisis - all the little flags have fallen off our map.”

That was the week that wasIf you’re a fan of cartoons (pretty likely if you’re reading this) you’ll no doubt enjoy Bloghorn’s regular feature: Cartoon Pick of the Week. This does exactly what it says on the metaphorical tin, highlighting what we think are the top three drawings and jokes we’ve seen during each

working week. Get involved your-self too. If you have a submission you think we should have seen – but have missed – pop a URL link in the comments underneath the latest se-lection.

Go to: http://thebloghorn.org/

I’ve worked out the most ir-ritating sound in the world. It’s not the sound of Sir An-drew Lloyd-Webber count-ing how much money he’s made in the last ten seconds. (that merely registers a 5.0 on the annoyance richter scale) No, the most irritat-ing sound in the world is... me, playing the ukulele. I say playing, when I really mean ‘repeating the same 3 second riff over and over again for half an hour.’ I haven’t actually learned a song after seven months of owning a ukulele, and instead noodle (technical term) endlessly on it, achiev-eing an almost blissful state of nirvana as I strum. Abso-lute hell for anyone else in the room, mind, and easily the most irritating sound in the world. (see Figure 1*) I know what you’re think ing though... a ukulele? Why would anyone buy a ukulele while still in their right mind? To be honest, I’m not sure. Probably some bizarre mid-life crisis done on the cheap. In years gone by, I may have splashed out on a sporty little coupe to quell my middle age anxiet-ies, but in these financially uncertain times, a ukelele was the cheaper option. Plus I can’t drive. So, small musical instru-ment it is then! A quick visit to a music shop called Hob-goblin (I resisted asking if they had anything by Elv-ish) and I was all set to rock the party, George Formby* style. Trouble is I fell for the hype. “It’s the easiest in-strument in the world to

play” Says who exactly? Ukulele manufacturers no doubt. Well they don’t fool me, it’s obvious that drums are the easiest instruments in the world to play - you just hit them with sticks. Hitting things with sticks is easy, you could do that drunk, (which is of course the other requirement to be-ing a drummer.) So here I am, seven months

later and I still haven’t mas-tered a whole song. Follow-ing a calm and reasonable discussion between my wife and myself (See Figure 2*) I can’t see that changing anytime soon. So... anyone

want to buy a Ukulele? One careful owner...

*Yes, I know George Formby didn’t play a Ukelele, Yes, I know he did play a Banjolele. Yes, I know no-one really cares, least of all George.

FEATURE TIM HARRIES

Noodles with everything Tim Harries makes a small noise.

Ukepedia

*Figure 1.

*Figure 2.

The ukulele is associ-ated with Hawaii, a place equally famous for hula skirts, ham & pineapple pizza and having a slight-ly irritating second ‘i’ at the end that should make it sound vaguely Geordie (‘Haway-aye man!’) but doesn’t.

The word Ukulele rough-ly translates as ‘jumping flea’ since this is appar-ently what the player’s fingers look like when strumming, although af-ter the first five minutes with a Uke, a more accu-

rate translation is ‘epilep-tic sausages’.

Ukuleles come in a va-riety of sizes - soprano, concert, tenor, and bari-tone, and the smallest size - nano, which is 2 microns across and can only be played under the microscope.

Ukuleles are generally made of wood, although other materials can be used including plastic, and for genuine Hawai-ian models, ham & pine-apple.WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG


BLOGHORN

PCO Artist of the Month for July 2009 was John Roberts. John spe-cialises in caricature, gag cartoons, humorous illustration and has been a highly successful on-the-spot car-icaturist for the last ten years. He is also one of the founders and or-ganisers of the annual Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival.

We asked John how he makes his cartoons: Like everyone else, I have this huge old trunk of ‘cartoon ideas’ in the loft and once I’ve had a good

rummage through I’ll sit down and draw them up. Until recently I would use a computer but now I have reverted back to good old pen and paper and watercolour (with a little bit of scanning in and colour enhancement using various soft-ware programs). I now realise that there is something ‘alive’ in the simple black mark of a pen that I just cannot emulate using a Wacom tablet. Drawing caricatures using a computer however is a different thing altogether and all my studio work is done this way. It’s the only place he can get

a signal on his mobile phone!

Engines of Enchantment: The Ma-chines and Cartoons of Rowland Emett is at the Cartoon Museum in London until November 1. The exhibition brings together for the first time in Britain the eccentric genius of Rowland Emett both as a cartoonist and as an inventor of bi-zarre machines. The show includes five of his whir-ring and winking “Gothick Kinetic Things”, including three created for the children’s film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968. Emett built his machines using antique doorknobs, umbrellas, lamp shades and any other bits and pieces he found around the house. The results were like cartoons come to life. The machines will be displayed along-side originals of many of Emett’s best cartoons, some on show for the first time. Emett first submitted a drawing to Punch in 1939. It was rejected but he was told that it was “ingenious” and

was encouraged to try again. Soon his work was appearing regularly in the magazine. During the Second World War he worked as a draughtsman at the Air Ministry but continued to supply drawings to Punch, increasingly of trains, trams and boats which appeared to be nostalgically humorous relics of a bygone era. In 1951 some-one had the idea of turning Emett’s spi-dery railway cartoons into reality and he was invited to construct three child-sized en-gines for the Far Tottering and Oyster-creek Railway at the Festival

of Britain. They were a huge success. The Cartoon Museum exhibition in-cludes the original model train, com-plete with driver, which Emett pre-sented to the festival committee. The Cartoon Museum, at 35 Little Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London is open Tuesday-Saturday 10.30am to 5.30pm & Sundays 12pm to 5.30pm.

Engines of EnchantmentRoyston Robertson previews the latest exhibition at The Cartoon Museum.

Artwork (c) Rowland Emett

THE FOGHORN 5WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG

FEATURE LADY VIOLET

Random acts of humour

Foghorn’s very own ‘Agony Aunt’ Lady Violet Spume, an-swers your nasty little personal problems. (Dictation by Lady Violet’s private secretary Clive Goddard)

Dear Lady Technicoloured Yaum,I’ve been a bit worried recently as things seem to have dropped off somewhat. Unfortunately my somewhat is also experiencing some areas of disfunctionality. A friend told me, willynilly, just to keep my pecker up and it will all work itself out in the end, but his advice strikes me as a bit pre-mature and just a shot in the dark, really. Sometimes it really is quite hard to know just how to handle it. Please could you possibly give me a shaft of light to help me unload my burden.

Johnny Come-Lately

Dear Johnny,One cannot help but notice a distinct undercurrent of sim-mering filth in your missive, peppered as it is with the vilest of smut. Whether this is a subconscious trait or a deliberate attempt at thrusting your supposed ‘wit’ into the public do-main, one can only conjecture. In either case I would urge you to seek professional help at once, you horrid little man.

Lady V.

Dear Foghorn,Lady Spume’s younger brother Ronald once knocked up my cousin Doreen in 1956 in the back of his Austin Cambridge just outside Bletchley station. My cousin Doreen’s subse-quent baby knows nothing of his father, having been told that same had been killed in the Great Trifle Explosion of 1961 at the Glossop Pudding Factory. I am concerned that now Lady Violet is appearing in your columns, the boy, who took our family name might stumble across his disgraceful past.

Yours truly,Muriel Wobblybottom [Mrs, 53]

Muriel,Rest assured that your tales of your nephew’s rather sordid parentage will not find their way into print in these pages. Of somewhat greater concern, however, is your wholly un-founded slur relating to Ronald’s behaviour. It is well known that he has long been incapable of, as you insist on putting it ‘knocking up’ anyone, due to a particularly virulent case of childhood Pangolin Flu which rendered him impotent and allergic to Austin Cambridge upholstery.

Lady V.

“What would you recommend goes with something half my age?”

“Have you been feeling another woman?”


FEATURE CHRIS MADDEN

Are there any Liverpool fans out there? (You’ll never walk alone!) Andrew Murray fans? (There’s al-ways next year!) Michael Jackson fans? (His music lives on.) You may think that the word fan is de-rived from the word fantastic, because that’s the adjective that fans apply to the object of their attention, however a friend of mine who’s a big fan of ety-mology tells me that it’s an abbrevia-tion of fanatic. A fanatic is someone who displays an excessive and uncritical enthusi-asm for something, often in a bad way. A fan also displays an excessive and uncritical enthusiasm for something, but more often than not in a good way (the fringes of football fandom being a notable exception). If you like Osama Bin Laden you’re a fanatic: if you like Barak Hussein Obama, you’re a fan. (Here’s another difference between fans and fanatics: the energies of a fanatic tend to be applied to subjects of societally overarching importance, such as religion or politics: the ener-gies of a fan however are often di-rected towards areas of more focused and lesser consequence, such as sport, music or celebrity culture. To some extent Barak Obama is a product of celebrity culture – but he is wonder-ful, isn’t he? Who do you think they’ll get to play him when Hollywood gets round to making loads of films about him – surely he’ll have to play himself, he’s so inimitabley fabulous?)

Fandom, as with fanaticism, is often a subset of obsessiveness. You can be obsessive without being a fan or course: for instance you can be obses-sive about cleanliness or about order and tidiness without necessarily being a fan of these things. (While I’m out

and about, in cafes, railway carriages and the like, I often pass the time by noticing whether the fittings in the es-tablishments and vehicles are screwed into place with the slots in the screw heads lined up, indicating a slightly obsessive personality trait in the work-man who did the fitting, or whether the screw’s slots are at random angles, in-dicating a more laid-back personality at work. My friends tell me that this observational habit of mine is some-what obsessional behaviour in itself, but because I’ve got most of my friends down as random-angle screw head per-sonality types I ignore their comments.) Obsessiveness is a solitary, often secret, activity (Even those lined-up screw heads are not necessar-ily meant to be noticed by any-one, although I see them, yes I do). Being a fan however is more often than not a very public statement. This is partly because one of the pur-poses of being a fan is to define your-self as part of a group. It’s about what we sociologists refer to as community and identity. One of the results of this is that the fan’s life is given enhanced meaning out of all proportion to the activity or person onto which the admiration is projected.

For example, I know more than a few people who are football fans, who will happily while away many a hour down the pub discussing the merits of the different ways that various people kick a ball around a field. But strangely I know none who are fans of Inuit ice hurling, even though it’s a superior game in every way imaginable. This is because it’s not the specific game itself that’s important, it’s the position that the game holds in society, and amongst your mates and peers.

Having a sense of identity is a thing of paramount importance to the sec-tion of society that we call adolescents. This is the group of young adults (or is it old children) who haven’t lived long enough to acquire a proper identity of their own, and who are thus forced to proclaim their personality through off-the-peg accessories such as an ostenta-tious and over-enthusiastically stated


FEATURE CHRIS MADDEN

by Chris Madden

taste in music. Being a music fan is particularly important to adolescents as the spe-cific type of music involved aids in setting them apart from other groups – from the older generations (which they think they’ll never become them-selves, the happily deluded naives that they are), from the younger generation (which they’ve just left), and just as importantly from other rival groups of similarly aged adolescents. In my own adolescence I was very pleased when my parents banned my LPs from be-ing played in the house (because the music sounded suspiciously as though it was being generated by bands that had taken various sorts of mind-rot-ting chemical). However, a year later I had to reject my own LP collection myself, as the bands involved had by then become quite popular with the general mass of the nation’s adolescent population, and as a paid-up member of the insufferably pretentious fringe of adolescence, being associated with anything anyone beyond my own ex-clusive clique liked was too demean-ing to contemplate. I then took up a keen interest in a particular band of a ludicrously affected and ostentatiously pompous stamp – mainly because a particularly attractive female of my acquaintance happened to be very keen on them (This activity shows the way that all adolescent males are un-swervingly superficial and predictable in their motivations, even as they try so desperately and pathetically hard to pretend that they are deeply individu-alistic and non-conformist).

While being a fan of a particular type of music may frequently be motivated by trying to be attractive to members of the opposite sex, being a fan of sport seems to be more concerned with mak-

ing you more attractive to members of your own sex (although not necessar-ily in the same sort of way). Sports fandom is very much about group solidarity and bonding. In fact there’s more than a small amount of tribalism about the whole thing. Team colours occupy the same psychological pigeon-hole as national flags and military uniforms. Sport is, after all, nothing other than a ritualized battle. Being the fan of a team is a form of patriotism, and like patriotism for one’s country it has a supposedly high-er moral status than does the lack of it (as long as it’s applied to the right side of course – the patriots of the op-posite side have a low moral status due to their obviously misguided, though in many ways arbitrary, allegiance to the wrong team). Often a football fan is condemned to supporting the local team, and is thus fated to a lifetime of non-achievement. Despite defeat after defeat the fan will be heard to mutter the mantra “They’re still the best team in the world” (de-spite the overwhelming and indisput-able evidence to the contrary). To not support the local team would be an act of disloyalty or betrayal of your friends, neighbours and work-mates. Some sports fans however won’t support the dismal local team and will plump for a top ranking, high achieving team instead, a team such as Manchester United – a team whose fan-base knows no geographical boundaries. Supporting such a team is an activity reserved for the lazy, oppor-tunist and unscrupulous fan who gains satisfaction from the easy certainty of their team winning game after game, all without the need for the fan to ever have to prove their loyalty through ‘trial by defeat’. Think the opposite to

a Tim Henman fan.Being a fan is very much an activity for the younger person, for the person who’s in need of aspirational role mod-els of a nicely uncomplicated variety. With maturity the urge to be a fan di-minishes – or so we like to think. The concept of being a fan has a bad image in certain strata of society, par-ticularly the strata that have elevated opinions of themselves. The whole im-age of the fan just seems too common, so people at the high-minded end of society tend to avoid the word when it comes to talking about their own en-thusiasms. Opera doesn’t have fans: it has buffs. (I knew of someone who learned Italian for the sole purpose of understanding the words of the operat-ic efforts of Rossini, Puccini, Verdi et al. If that’s not the action of a dement-ed fan (along the lines of a Trekkie learning Klingon) I don’t know what it is. Imagine learning a whole lan-guage just to discover that the words and plots of the operas that you have such unbounded admiration for are so appallingly dismal that they wouldn’t get their writers through GCSE Eng-lish (or whatever the Italian is for GCSE English). Other posh names for fans are cogniacenti and afficianados – both words that are deliberately long enough and foreign enough to require me to look them up to check the spell-ing, which is an affectation that you can’t lay at the door of a no-nonsense word such as fan.

On the subject of Trekkies… Hang on a moment – is that the time! Sorry, but I must rush. The cricket’s on. (Talking about cricket, do you re-member Douglas Adam’s great theory about the Ashes? I’m a big Hitchhik-er’s fan too!)


FEATURE THE POTTING SHED

As summer rolls on, and all crea-tures great and small nibble your penstemons - welcome to the Fog-horn Potting Shed. Tucked safely inside are Gordon Honkmonster, Binkie Homebrew and Euphor-bia Marmelade; delving into the postbag is that loamy old veteran, Alan Goatrouser.

Our first letter is from Ivan Dumpwell, curator of the Glossop Weed Museum, who writes:

“Dear Foghorn, I’ve noticed a lot of bright red things making whoopee on my lilies, and now the lilies look like brussels sprouts stalks, but af-ter the sprouts have been picked. What’s going on?”

Gordon says: “Sounds like an inva-sion of scarlet lily beetles. Their dis-gusting grubs will eat. And eat. They

also cover themselves in stuff to pro-tect themselves from birds – mostly chewed-up copies of ‘Clay Pigeon Shooting’ magazine and suchlike. Proprietary Bugblaster will help, but it’s better to pick the blighters off with a few carefully aimed bricks. You might want to use gloves. Better still, get someone else to do it.” That should sort ‘em out, Ivan! So, onto our second poser; this time it’s an email from Suzi Nutcrusher in Bude. Suzi says she’s new to gar-dening and is a self-confessed air-head. Sounds fun, Suzi!

Her question is: “What do you think about keeping an alliga-tor in a pond that you’re also hop-ing to have ducks in? I’d like to get an alligator, but would it eat the ducks?”

Well, Euphorbia’s got her hand up,

Random acts of humour

The Potting Shedwith Cathy Simpson.

“No animals were harmed inthe making of this leather whip”

“Faced with a high street full ofmarket researchers, Elfinhorn swiftly

donned his cloak of invisibility.”

but Binkie hasn’t noticed. Off you go, Binkie! “An alligator would not only eat the ducks, but any careless pets or bits of wildlife and probably your neighbours, too. The advantages are that cats will stop using your borders for a quick dump, and you won’t be pes-tered by little boys asking for their football back. Just remember to wait until it’s asleep before trying to mow the lawn.”

Well, that’s all we’ve got time for today, readers, but keep those let-ters coming! The Foghorn Potting Shed can be contacted by all the usual channels, plus table-rapping and ouija. Unfortunately the panel can’t reply to letters individually, because they can’t be arsed and make it all up anyway.


LETTERS TO THE ED

Letters to theEditor

Snail Mail: The Editor, Foghorn Magazine, 7 Birch Grove, Lostock Green, Northwich. CW9 7SS E-mail: [email protected]

Save the pangolinDear Editor,

At a time when the earth’s resources are being wasted by unscrupulous, faceless corpo-rations for the benefit of our heedless throwaway society, I was shocked when I saw a copy of your magazine. What an utter waste of paper it is – paper derived from the mind-less destruction of rain forests the world over. For what? A useless collection of child-ish jokes and grammatically dreadful writing which also purports to be humorous. Have you no conscience? The natural habitats of hundreds of creatures – Gormley’s Oryx, thousands of pangolins, puff

adders, straight adders, wilde-beest, gob beetles, tiny furry jobs with big staring eyes I can’t remember the name of – are disappearing at an alarming rate. Every second, an area the size of Goole be-comes an arid wasteland. I ap-peal to you... cont. on p98

Brian surgery

Dear Sir or Ms,

Why don’t you have a car-toon caption competition? Let’s face it, most of the cap-tions on Foghorn cartoons are crap.

B Sewell. Critic.

PCO Artist of the Month for June 2009 was Kate Scurfield. Kate is well-known for her cartoons on equestrianism, her work can be seen in Polo Times, Horse & Hound, Horse & Rider, Equestrian Trade news and Veterinary Nurses Jour-nal.

We asked her what made her be-come a cartoonist: Realising that winding up the staff at school by caricaturing them was highly entertaining, though coun-terproductive at exam time. They fi-nally bribed me with a prize to stop harassing them. I like cartoons over other forms of art because you can’t cheat by transposing photos as so many artists do.

And how does Kate create her cartoons? Almost always soft lead & wa-tercolour/Tria pens and colour en-hanced in Photoshop if necessary.

When asked which other cartoon-ist’s work she admired, we were not surprised by the answer: Norman Thelwell…I adored his books from age six and met him ten years later ! I even trained in techni-cal drawing like Thelwell as part of my studies, which probably accounts for the tightness of my cartoons. I admire Matt for his ‘loose’ style but was told by a very experienced edi-tor to stick with my style…so I have, and remain unchallenged by the tax-man to this day. Kate’s website is at www.katesart.com


FEATURE GUIDE TO CRICKET

Like golf, line danc-ing and eating worms, cricket is stupid and goes on forever – ex-cept with eating worms where you could stop if you wanted to, but if you’ve actually got to the worm-eating stage, you probably don’t know how to, or care, cricket just goes on and on and on. Like golf, cricket’s all about hitting a ball with a stick, but unlike golf, which is dead easy – stick, ball, whack, walk, find ball, stick, ball, whack, walk, find ball – repeat – cricket rules demand that the cricket ball – usually made from wrought iron or rock – must be moving be-fore the hitter [bats-man, woman, person] gets to clout it. So – the ball gets thrown at the bat-sperson by the bowler – sometimes very spitefully by deranged people called “fast bowlers” - from a distance of 22 yards, which is quite a few me-tres. Each of the batspersons know where to stand by the provision of three little sticks at each end of the pitch. Behind the little sticks at the bowler’s end is a bloke in a white coat. He’s an umpire, knows all the rules, is often partially sighted and may sometimes be called upon to deal with worm – eaters, sort out naked people with wobbly chests who often run on to the field, as well as deciding if the batsperson is “out” or not. “Out” means that your turn is over because the bowler has flattened your little sticks or you’ve hit the ball and its been caught by the bowler or one of his chums, or the ball has hit you and

you’re dead. At this point you have to let another member of your team have a try at hitting the ball, which is the whole point of cricket. Cunningly, there are TWO batsper-sons – one at each end. When one hits the ball, he has to dash off down the pitch and change places with his friend from the other end. This is called “scoring a run” and in some matches, five or six hundred runs are scored, which is why the whole thing is so tedious. To save batspersons from getting too puffed out, if the ball is whacked all the way to the boundary, it scores four runs automatically. If it gets REALLY whacked and crosses the boundary without bouncing it gets six. Years ago, if it got knocked out of the ground and killed a horse, you got twelve. You know this has happened because the umpire waves his arms about in a strange way. Many umpires are also Druids and their very pres-ence often makes it rain.

THE most important cricket matches in the world are the ones be-tween England and Aus-tralia. These are called “The Ashes” for reasons involving arson and too weird to go into. Anyway, the Australians are very good at cricket and go round telling everybody that, forget-ting that we, the Eng-lish, taught them how to play in the first place. The England players are usually very good at los-ing to Australia and say things like, “Well, on the day, the best team won” This is called “being gra-cious”. Whilst they’re saying this, they’re think-ing, “Arrogant Oz bas-tards”. Or somesuch. Australians are very bad losers, have sulky faces,

tight lips and are called Dean, Wayne, Ricky or Brett. Australian cricketers, especially the ones closest to the bats-men, whisper horrid things to put the batsman off. Of course, English crick-eters, who have proper names like Kevin or Andy never do that, but mur-mur encouraging words like, “I hear there’s a bush fire closing in on your hometown Geoff, but there’s nothing you can do about it out here – better get out and go watch the news cover-age back in the pavilion “ Very occasionally England win the Ashes . This is far more important than absolutely anything else, including the Second Coming, the Pope getting married, victory in two World Wars, Fred Goodwin giving half his pension to charity, or the England Womens’ cricket team regularly beating Aus-tralia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, West Indies, India, Bangladesh and South Africa.


THE GALLERY

“Oi, take it easy! This is an English Heritage site.”

Random acts of humourThe Gallery

“Nothing for me, thanks.”

“Actually, he was on my shortlist too!”


CURMUDGEON

Dishing the dirt

A recent inexplicable assault on our freeform garden by my good self and my focused and determined partner has resulted in one chock – full Gar-den Waste Wheelie Bin [NO SOIL, BRICKS, MASONRY OR SCRAP METAL]. Do people do that? Put bricks in their dedicated garden waste wheelie bin? Hmmm. What shall I do with this redundant wall? I know, I’ll put it in my dedicated Garden Waste Wheelie Bin. Maybe. Mind you, soil’s a different matter. Personally, I found that the 73,000 weeds I pulled out actually had soil ATTACHED to them. Resisting the urge to wheelbarrow the lot into the kitchen and rinse off the of-fending humus I bunged ‘em in the bin. Soon, as Wellbeloved’s First Law of Overgrown Garden Dynamics so accurately predicts, the bin was full, so out came several rolls of Tesco’s Garden Waste Heavy Duty Plastic Bags. CAUTION. THIS IS NOT A TOY. Time passed and Dr Wellbe-loved was proved right again. Undeterred and bleeding only slightly from three kilometers of cunning bramble, I

plonked as many of these full – to - bursting non – toys into the car as possible and headed for the Council Tip [Refuse and Reclamation Cen-tre], and in so doing entered a Dif-ferent World. Incoming traffic is warned to Get In Lane, important if you don’t want to end up heaving your duff washer into the Card and Cardboard [ONLY] skip, and risk the derision of Refuse and Reclamation Centre Personnel, and the dozens of Tip regulars, all of whom are aching for your overstuffed plastic bags to give up the ghost before you empty them into the Garden Waste Only [NO BRICKS, MASONRY OR SCRAP METAL] skip. Even before you stagger skipwards and whilst still in your car, slowly edging towards a soon to be vacated space [by a bloke who appeared to be dumping a whole hedge], there’s a peremp-tory knock on the window from My Name’s Kenny And I’m Here To Help. “Woff yer got?” enquires Kenneth, unmissable in day–glo or-ange overalls, hard hat and goggles. “Oh just weeds and brambles mainly”. “Any soil?”“OF COURSE

THERE’S SOIL, YOU BERK. PLANTS GROW IN IT. THEY LIKE IT. AND THERE’S LIVE-STOCK TOO. EARWIGS AND CENTIPEDES, SLUGS, SNAILS, WORMS, THE ODD TARANTU-LA - OK?” But I didn’t say that, I went sort of, “Er, well, there’ll be a bit, I suppose…” Kenny dismisses me, waves me on with, “This one’s OK Baz “ Baz [I’m here to help too] is Gar-den Waste Skip 1 Supervisor. Baz watches as I totter back and forth from boot to skip. He is very help-ful – offering tips like, “Yer don’t want ter let any plastic bag drop in the skip, mate. It’s a offence, that is. Contaminates the waste that does” “And soil? Is soil a waste contami-nator, my dear Baz? If it is, might I suggest that you have a word with Kenny who, under your own super-visory gaze allowed me to dump several grains of the stuff” No, I didn’t say that either, but on the way home I did wonder about in-vesting in a lorry load of concrete.


CARTOONS CLIVE COLLINS

“The maid is taking us to court - her solicitor says that since it was our washing she was hanging out

when the blackbird attacked her...”

“He said his first words today.He said ‘I’m only in this for the money.”

“This is Martin. Martin is a resting actor - you may have seen him featured at parties at the Addisons,

the Filmore-Davenports, and the Harrisons...”

“He’s under a great dealof pressure to evolve.”


BUILDINGS IN THE FOG

Stadia

Being summer, it’s the time that a man’s thoughts turn to that thwack of leather on willow that is so evoca-tive of football. He will rush out to spend unreasonable sums of money to sit with thousands of fellow fanat-ics in echoing chaos as he cheers on his favorites as they pound around the bright orange track, whilst performing their thumping, loudest, crowd-pleas-ing hits. Seeing it on telly just isn’t the same; not got the atmosphere. There is something unhealthily in-herent in humans that attracts them to watch other humans competing against each other. This instinct was shown by the crowd that instantly gathered at school with the yell of “Bundle!” as two lads started thump-ing the daylights out of each other in the playground. It is commonly believed that the Greeks were the first to formalise how to watch sport in ac-tion, with their games in the hills outside Olympia. The first grandstands were grassy banks. The grassy bank has evolved over the years to be-come Henman’s Mount. Back then (776 BC), the Greeks conveniently had a somewhat useless length of measurement, being as it was approxiately 180-200m, called a stadion. Not know-ing quite what to use this imprecise measure for, they decided to build the view-ing terraces to this length. It seemed a pretty good size and it would do until someone thought some other equally vague length would do bet-

ter. The whole assemblage was then called the same name as the measure-ment. (I’m not making this up) And the name has stuck. (It is a total myth that the word “stadia” comes from the Ancient Yorkshire term “stood ‘ere”) The Greeks built a shed-load of stadia and the Romans built a stadium-load of sheds. But it was the Romans who really developed the building type (stadia, not sheds, although Roman sheds were doubtless quite something too, although few have survived, just the odd wheelbarrow). Being Romans, they built stadia with abandon all over the place. Even today, as ruins, they somehow convey their purpose and how dramatic they must have been in use. From antiquity to today, stadia have come in just three basic layouts: rect-angular, circular/oval and open-ended oval, with the first two being the most common, so not much development there then. Not much to show for nearly three thousand years of sport. It may not in-terest you at all to know that Europe has tended to go for the rectangle and the US, the oval. Today stadia mainly get built when a country has foolishly won a bid to host some major sporting event or other, when ridiculous amounts of dosh are available. They are always bold engi-neering and architectural statements

as they are expected to double as em-blems of the host city. This can some-times seem a stronger design criteria than just being a good place to watch sport in. It also means politicians get to stick their fingers into project management they don’t understand and may never have been involved with before. It makes them feel important and MPs need to feel important, otherwise what is the point of being an MP? Project committees and prevarication send budgets rocketing. There are no real reasons for busted budgets other than (a) unrealistic budgets or (b) bad man-agement, usually both. Unforeseen problems should be allowed for by realistic continency funds in the bud-get. However the contingency money is the first thing to be slashed to get the initial budget estimates down to a level acceptable to the politicians. Most big stadium projects are doomed to cost way above budget, as soon as the politicians approve them. A final point of information. An open air arena tends to be called a stadium and an enclosed stadium is called an arena. If the venue has a retractable roof, it keeps having to change its name according to the weather, thus confusing the postman.

Roger Penwill


THE LAST WORD

The CriticMurder in the AtticFoghorn’s resident critic Pete Dredge watches telly so you don’t have to.The term ‘Daytime Television’ has always had a rather condescending ring about it. A bit like ‘Assistant Stage Manager’, ‘Promotions Con-sultant’ or ‘Regional Account Ex-ecutive’. There’s a strong sugges-tion of something meaningful, high powered and substantial but on closer inspection there’s not much there at all. If we have ‘Daytime Television’ then there must be, I know it’s a sweeping assumption, a Head of Daytime Television. Some, no doubt handsomely paid, executive whose sole job it is to oversee and programme this substantial amount of daily airtime on our television screens. Analysing the target audience for this specific time band must be, to be fair, a tricky balancing act. What common viewing mix would the housebound, young mothers, pensioned, retired, students and the unemployed find grip-ping enough to keep them all viewing

until ‘Daytime’ merges into the heavy-duty, business-end ‘Evening’ segment of telly viewing? (Strange how you never see Paxman in daylight hours). Well the ‘Head of DT’ (sounds more authorative that way, don’t you think) must have sat through many hours of Focus Group type consultations be-fore finally coming up with the solu-tion… “Property and greedy cash stuff before lunch - Murder Mystery after”. The thinking behind this is quite logi-cal. After sitting through a seemingly

endless supply of pretentious oiks looking to improve their work/life balance with a move to the coun-try, developing property or cashing in their old tat at auction, thoughts of murder and violence would be a natural calmer post lunchtime view-ing. ‘Diagnosis Murder’. ’Murder She Wrote’, ‘Columbo’, it doesn’t really matter what sanitised, air-brushed act of butchery is served up, as long as the corpse looks like it’s experiencing nothing more vio-lent than a post bottle of Wincarnis

afternoon nap then all is well in Day-time Viewing land. And for those who can’t bear to face up to the starker realities of ‘Evening Viewing’ they can, provided they have the appropriate digital box of tricks, decoders and cable interface, tune into endless repeats of ‘Best of More Day-time Viewing Choice Extra Plus’ until it’s time to call it a day and get stuck into the the Price Dropper shopping channel.

FOGHORN (ONLINE) ISSN 1759-6440

The Foghorn - No. 40

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