Pavement Art : Gallery of lost and found # 10

10 of spades
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Oh happy day!
It may cold, everybody may be skint, the sun barely gets above the horizon but any day when you find a playing card in the street on the way to work can’t be all bad. This one had the added tension that it was face down so I had the drama of the reveal.

Was it one I had already? Was it the rules to bridge?

A quick scrabble and Ta dah! The 10 of spades!

Of course I had to wait to check my flickr page to confirm I didn’t have it already I think there is a 1 in 5 ish chance at the moment (including jokers) that I won’t get a double. Sadly I Lucked out and I have a 10 spades already, oh well it is a game chance!

Post 700: It's parky out (of the country)

Tha’s a reet spinner thee aka Not just lies these are M&S lies....

Listening to the radio this morning, at the half hour up popped the sports news and the discussion turned to the English crickets team’s tour of Oz and look who popped up to comment on our travails, Sir Michael Parkinson.

No big surprise there Parky’s been using the same 5 anecdotes to talk about sport for most of his career. But here’s the thing t’old MP is sunning himself down under and yet and yet before Christmas he was on the TV all the time telling us about the hilarious argument he and their lass were having about what would be on’t t’table chez Parky come Dec 25th. And yet he wasn’t as He and Mary would like us to believe sat in some prefab pensioners bungalow in Stairfoot or Wombwell blanket on their knees sharing a M&S turkey crown dinner for 2 and some mince pies with some squirty cream on top on a tray in front of the popping gas fire watching the horrors unfold on ‘stenders. Nor was He even sat next to the inglenook in his top end gastro pub in Berkshire waiting for the petit fours to come around. No Mr “we were having a reet to do about the smoke salmon starters in Mark’s wet fish section t’other day” Parkinson was sunning himself in Ramsay St. grazing on Barramundi and prawns!

If we can’t trust adverts what can we trust, you’ll be telling me next that Andi Macdowell doesn’t use 10 quid bottles of hair dye next.

You don't know me at all....

In the name of all that's holy NO!!!

I've just received an e-mail from the BBC tickets telling me about their up coming attractions. I only signed up to get "free" Elbow tickets and like some Victorian melodrama I'm paying for my crime of avarice. As today they sent me a flier for the upcoming series of " two pints of cocking lager and packet of crisps tw*tting please".

Well regular readers know I Love the BBC but TPLAPCP is such an abomination it almost makes me want to join the Daily Mail readers in burning down Broadcasting House I'd rather crawl to Wembley on broken glass sit on a spike and watch a supergrpoup formed by Coldplay keane and Maria Carey than watch the title sequence let alone the main body of this totally worthless pointless humourless lowest of low look I've sneezed on some A4 will this do asa script never laughed once belittles the people it seeks to portray the wrtiter must have pictures of Alan Yentob and goat coz they got a sequel made god it's rubbish did I say it's not funny but not not funny like last of Summer wine is not funny or My family is not funny but not funny as in watching a family pet hit repeatedly by a cricket bat on Christmas day and then dragged by behind a dustcart unfunny.

So I won't be sending in application even though I see there's a recording on my birthday score!

Badges we don't need no stinking badges # 1

Badges we don't need no stinking badges # 1
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Pottering out:
Saw the news about Wedgewood being on the skids. My Dad’s peripatetic job means that I’m part clay head having lived in Tunstall until I was six or so. I don’t always check the bottom plates to see where they come from but I do take an occassional interest in matters ceramic and so it is sad if a way forward can’t be found for UK production of Wedgewood et al.

Sadly I think the problem may be that the UK market has disappeared for these things in that I don’t think anyone of my friends of my age would think of having a china dinner service. Our homes may be filled with tat but it tends to be post ironic plastic Japanese robots and snow storms rather than Jasper ware vases or Royal Dalton flower sellers. My plates tend to be simple white ones from the market rather than “wintergarden” blue and white like my mums, and yes a trifle does look better in the special crystal Waterford bowl but well trifles don’t last that long in our house so my large Pyrex bowl serves just as well. It’s possible that Wedgwood has suffered the same fate as dark brown wooden furniture; we’ve all gone blond and modern.

So I think the Bauhaus did for Wedgewood just as much as the credit crunch the irony being that the original Bauhaus goods with their hand crafted pretence at mass production weren’t really a triumph of the factory system unlike the delicate and pretty designs made by craftsmen and women of the five towns.

Will this celebrity hell never stop?

Now a message from our sponsors
Ex Etonian poshboy former PR for family fortunes David Cameron was on the Today programme this morning spouting his usual nonsense. One throw away saloon bar Middle England pleasing dog whistle statement he made at the end with respect to governments supposed spendthrift ways “we are now even paying celebrities to appear in government adverts”

Now I’m all for the powers that be spending my money wisely but it’s hardly news that celebs get a shilling to front government propaganda.
Would you have denied Alvin his thruppence for this?



Or Sir Jim his cool few thou for this


or this



And of course I’m sure no one would begrudge old WH his fee for this or maybe David Cameron as his tiny private income elite would.

When pathetic sharks attack ....

What we learned from this weekend TV:

Telly programmes do go on a bit

Who will be the next Dr Who? BBC1 Sat 3^rd 5.35 Great White Shark - A Living Legend BBC2 Fri 2^nd & The Lost Pyramid channel 4 sat 7.25.

While I wait for my freeview adapter to turn up I've been watching the 5 terrestrial channels and watching stuff I may have skipped past normally.

Last night bbc2 added to the global shark documentary ocean with another film about the great white shark. I had a quick look and there seems to over 700 species of shark in the world so why does only one ever get shown on TV? Well I know about Jaws but let's be honest the effect of wildlife documentaries telling us great whites aren't voracious killers while showing them chomping seal cubs is greater these days than Spielberg's overhyped b movie. This is especially the case when loads of people watching these shark attack programmes have never seen Jaws.

This documentary was typical of the form in that it took ages to tell us very little; the films main selling point was that the shark expert swam with the sharks in open water which was less dramatic than it could have been as his camera man was also swimming along with him. In fact the whole show was based around five seconds of film showing a great white attacking a seal shot from below the water. Which would have been even better if it wasn't a plastic seal being pulled a boat being eaten! So interesting bit of film 2 -3 mins total length of film 1 hour.

The pyramid film was worse, all channel 4 docs are too long, I dread to think how long they must be in America with their advert rate they must last 3 hours easily. This film was about the remains of a pyramid on a hill near Giza, the whole story could have been told in half an hour tops. But they took an hour and half thus rendering an interesting story tedious. Basically the reason the pyramid disappeared was that everyone from the Romans onwards have been nicking the stone. That being said after taking so long to tell us this they didn't explain why the same fate hasn't befallen the other pyramids to the same extent, oh damn they'll need another decade to tell us that.

As for the new Dr Who, we got another half an hour of the series' worst crime "the making of documentary", nothing to do with new Doctor is worth a damn until Russell T Davis has spent 10 mins in his charming and cheeky way telling us about William Troughton genius, is there really anyone alive who doesn't know the sequence of old doctors? Is it fair to keep having to skip over the crap 80's ones? I don't care how it was made? I don't care which bit of Cardiff the chippy Celts who make the programme tried to palm off as Camden? I just want to watch the programme. May be like the others here the producers should be honest and say look we have to sell this to America so it has to be 45 mins long so they can fill the rest of the hour with pop tart commercials, why don't you go and make some tea and toast for a bit and we'll be back with that dancing programme on the hour.

As for the new Doctor well he's clearly been brought in so they can have more pouty snogging in the rain scenes which are the most over used plot devices since the series was relaunched that and because you can't have old people on the TV anymore.

sunday night update:

The Real Italian Job: James Martin's Mille Miglia: Cheeky yorkshire TV chef tries to take part in a road race in Italy he spends 800k on an old car and then it breaks down on the first day of the 3-4 day race (20 mins in) but of course the the programme ground on for the full hour hurrah!

Another case of history repeating.....

What goes around....

Here's a couple of Giles Cartoons from my 1958 annual.

They both refer to an American operation in Beirut (Lebanon) in July 1958* ostensibly to support the pro-western Government hence the GI's playing cards with "locals".

The Tommies are on their way to Jordon as we prepare to support the government there with the chaos of neighbouring Iraq; the trouble that lead to Baath party taking power in later years which meant Saddam Hussain coming to power, you will stop me when this all starts to sound familiar....

* yes it was a new one on me we just can't stop stirring stuff up

Next an excellent cartoon that could be drawn today except perhaps the posh types would be stood round a patio heater and would be spouting this classic conspiracy theory themselves.

Can I just add a quote which could have been coined for Anglo/American foreign policy.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.

by Blaise Pascal

Picture credit Giles Cartoons 18th & 20th July 1958

ps. If you click on the pictures they should enlarge so you can have a proper deco.