Mick's BICS

Last weekend, I attended the British International Comics Show (BICS) here in Birmingham, and it was a really enjoyable weekend. The venue, as it as has been for the last couple of years, was Millenium point, a giant, grey building that looks like it should be in Mega-City One. this means that the two guys dressed up as Mega-City judges looked right at home when they were milling about the place.

Our friends Jamie and Theresa came up to stay with us for the weekend, so this meant Jamie and I could go to the show whilst the ladies went shopping. They also went to see Fame at the cinema, and apparently it's a load of shit. What a surprise.

When you get there, you have to go into the lift to get to where the event is being held. This must've been the right place, because sharing the lift with us was a stormtrooper. Not the historical Nazi-type, you understand, the imperial type, from Star Wars. After we got out of the lift, Jamie, who is a Star Wars nut, saw a group of blokes dressed up as various types from the space saga. There were Clone Troopers, Stormtroopers, Mandalorians (well, a couple of guys dressed as Boba Fett, anyway)and TIE-fighter pilots. He gave me his camera and then went and asked them if he could have his photo taken with them, and they duly told him to get on his knees and pointed their blasters at him. As usual, I pressed the button and nothing happened. I have a real problem with digital cameras. It's as if my hands turn into cow's tits.(That's why all of our holiday photos have just me in them!) It's a shame, it would've been a cool photo.

After we got in, we had a mooch about, and there seemed to be quite a lot fewer stalls than there were last year, but this meant there was more room to walk about. Unless you were stuck behind the Dalek, which seemed to revel in blocking the gangways. This year, as I didn't really have anything new to sell, my plan was to show my portfolio around and hopefully get some work. Everyone I showed my work to really seemed to like it, and I've already had a couple of emails asking me if I'd like to do something.(more on that when I know more myself!)

The main reason for going to these things, however, is to catch up with people you only ever tend to see at these things or shoot the shit with the creators you've worked with before. I tend to find that you hardly ever talk about comics with comics creators. The main topic of conversation seemed to be how shite the launch party was. I was glad I didn't go. It was held in the Panama bar, which is off Broad Street (Birmingham's 'Golden Mile' , which is only golden in the same way a stream of piss is golden.) I read somewhere that BICS special guest Howard Chaykin described the women he'd seen on Broad Street as “the sluttiest, trampiest women” he’d ever seen. Sounds about right.

As usual, we met up with Andy Winter, my collaborator on Septic Isle (still selling well), and moaned about the state of the world, as we tend to do, and we arranged to go out for dinner later on. I also showed him the two pages I've done for the four-page web comic I'm doing for him right now. (preview panel above) Also, over the weekend, I bumped into a couple of people I've not seen for a couple of years. Firstly, there was Michiru Morikawa, who was on the StripSearch course with me way back in the mists of time, and anyone who lives in Brum will be familiar with her art, as it is her work that's on the back of many of our buses, asking people if they want to adopt. Anyway, she's gone back to live in Japan, but she was back to promote her book Buskers, published by Imsomnia Publications. Her work is fantastic, pick up a copy. It's worth it.

I also bumped into fellow Brummie and Villa fan Ben McCool, who wrote the script for the Stuffed comic, which included my very first published comic art. He lives in the Big Apple these days, writing for DC. As usual, he had a stinking hangover when I saw him. He told me that he was taking his DC editor to Villa Park for the match against Manchester City. That's got to be a culture shock for the poor sod. He probably now knows very well what Karren Brady gets up to of a night-time, after having it sung at him by 40,000 people.

I also had a couple of stints manning the MC2 table, which was right next to Diamond Distribution's table, which had loads of free comics on it. During both of my stints, I never sold any books, but I was asked about sixty times 'Are these free?' by punters looking at the Diamond table.

On the Saturday night, Me and my glamourous other half, Jamie and his, Andy Winter and Andy Radbourne (creator of Brit Force, another comic you should go out and get) all went out for dinner and a few drinks, and a cracking night was spoiled when I got home by me not looking where I was going in my garden and ending up falling into some bushes and skinning my knee. The less said about this the better.

We went back on the Sunday, after being forced to watch Strictly Come Dancing, which seems to go on forever. There have been wars that have taken less time. Most wars are probably less psychologically scarring, too. I showed my portfolio to the people I didn't get a chance to see the day before, and again, generally positive feedback. I ummed and aahed about forking out for some Copic pens. They were very expensive, and despite hearing 'they're what Adam Hughes uses' at least twenty times, I decided not to, as I'm not Adam Hughes.

Generally, though, it was a great weekend, and I'm hoping it happens again next year, which is likely, as more people came this year, apparently. More normal-looking people, too! Since I've been going to Comic-cons regularly, I've noticed that the clientele is getting more and more normal-looking; glamourous, even! The days of the BO-stinking hunchbacks are long gone.

Shock News! Something Interesting Happening In Birmingham!

This weekend, I'll be attending the BICS (it used to be the Birmingham international comics show, but it has been upgraded to the British international comics show this year.), which is held at Millenium Point, here in Birmingham. I'll be manning the MC2 table for a wee bit each day, and no doubt I'll be lurking around the Moonface Press table at some point, too, so if you want your freshly-purchased copy of Septic Isle signed by me, hunt me down. Figuratively speaking, of course.


It's really strange attending one of these things in your own town. I'm used to going to Bristol and staying in a hotel, so just hopping a bus to go to a major convention like this doesn't seem right, yet. This event is going from strength to strength every year, and with the Bristol show seemingly shrinking away into nothing, it's possibly now the UK's premier comics convention. I just hope all the publishers do something original this year, the last couple of years have been dominated by zombies. Marvel zombies 1,2& 3. Zombie variant covers. Barack Obama vs. The Army Of Darkness (okay, I made that one up, but I wouldn't be surprised if something like this turns up in Previews in the near future.) And last but not least, DC have jumped on the bandwagon with Blackest Night (which is apparently quite good, although I'm yet to read any of it). I'm fed up with the reanimated dead. You wouldn't catch me jumping on that particular bandwagon.

Okay, maybe I would. It's good to see the Zombie-Mick would still wear his glasses.

Anyway, come along to BICS! You know it'll be good for you!

Oh, and following up on my last post, I thought I'd put this video up, too. You've probably seen it, as it's done the rounds, but it raises a smile, even on my dry, black-hearted , cynical lips.

Birmingham City 0 Aston Villa 1

After a tight game and a tense finish we beat our scabby neighbours from Small Heath 1-0 with a goal from the lovely-looking Gabriel Agbonlahor (left). Isn't he beautiful?

It was all too much for me and my blood pressure. I'm off for a lie-down now.

UP THE VILLA!!!!

What I did in the school holidays, by Mick, aged 35.

Hello again! Sorry for the lack of updates, but it's been a busy few weeks, mostly taken up with work, various trips around the country and spending time with my nippers during the school holidays.

If you're interested, these are a few of the things I've been up to. If you're not, well, you can stop reading, I suppose.


Nine Inch Nails/ Jane's Addiction

Blimey, this seems like ages ago now. Those of you that read this blog regularly, or actually know me personally (that does happen, sometimes) know that I'm a big fan of Nine Inch Nails. Ever since I first saw them live way back in 1991 in a shitty little club here in Birmingham that isn't even there anymore. The American leg of this tour was called the 'NIN/JA' tour, which sounded cool. I can imagine Trent Reznor thinking 'Well, we're NIN, so we need someone with the initials JA to support us, just so we can have a cool name for our tour.' So, after Julie Andrews, and then Birmingham's own Joan Armatrading both turned him down, they asked the recently reformed again Jane's Addiction. ( I'm only kidding! I know Trent Reznor is a big fan of Jane's Addiction, even sampling Perry Farrell's screaming for 'Ringfinger', the last track on NIN's debut album Pretty Hate Machine, as well as using 'Sex Is Violent' on his soundtrack for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.)

As I said, NIN/JA was the name of the US tour. By the time it got to th UK, it had changed its name to 'Wave Goodbye' as Trent Reznor had decided that NIN aren't going to tour anymore. So I can say now that I saw them on their first tour, and their last. I bet Trent saw me in the crowd and thought 'I'm glad Mick's here, it kinda bookends the whole touring experience for me.'

Anyway, the gig was in Manchester, at the MEN arena. The hotel me and my glamorous other half stayed in wasn't very good. Should've been, for the price, but it was awful. I'm not a big fan of Manchester anyway, I've been there four times now, and it's never impressed me. That said, each time I've been has only been a flying visit, maybe I'd enjoy it more if I stayed there a bit longer. (Did that sound diplomatic enough? Good.)

Because we left after work and drove straight up there, we missed about half an hour of Jane's Addiction, but what I did see was very good. I was slightly distracted by the vertical sweat stain that was on the back of the bassist's shorts, but the music was good. However, at one point, a couple of scary-looking women in front of us turned around and asked me if I liked it. When I said 'Yeah' they shook their heads and the scariest looking one said 'I just don't get it, me.' So, in summary, Jane's Addiction: Good, but not for everyone, especially if you resemble Morticia Addams' chubbier sister.

Looking around the stadium, I realised I was one of the oldest people there. Most of the crowd probably weren't even born when I saw them in 1991, which is a frightening thought. Anyway, when NIN came on, they were awesome. Their light show probably damaged my retinas forever (this was before the government's ban on filament bulbs) and even though this was their last ever tour, they didn't go for the standard 'greatest hits' setlist. They played songs that I'd never heard them play live before, as well as some of the old standards. It was, basically, a great night, and I'm glad I was there.

Banksy vs. Bristol Museum

My girlfriend's old friend Sarah came over from Amsterdam (She's not Dutch, she works there.) to visit and we all agreed that going to the Banksy exhibit would be good for a laugh, so we booked a night in an ibis (always fun!) and buggered off down to Bristol. This was the first time I've been to Bristol without being there for the Comics Expo. It was kinda strange not seeing any imperial stormtroopers or kids dressed as Wolverine milling about, but that was cool as I like Bristol. I've had many a fantastic time there. And, unusually for the Summer we've just had, the weather that weekend was fantastic.
We were told to expect queues, and by the time we got there on a Saturday afternoon, the queue was massive, and we were told that we were likely to be waiting for three hours, so we didn't go that afternoon. Luckily, unbeknownst to us before we got there, Bristol was holding its annual Harbour festival, which consisted of loads of boats, obviously, live shows, music and comedy and lots of barbecues and drinking. We watched some of the live show, but after watching some woman fanny around on a tightrope whilst some bloke sat by the side playing flamenco guitar, (It's supposed to be 'arty', but I call it 'bollocks'.) I thought it would be a good time to go to a pub. Then again, I always tend to think it's a good time to go to the pub. Thing is, because of the festival, all the bars were heaving, and they only served you drinks in plastic cups, which I'm not fond of.
So, after a few plastic pints (for me, anyway. The ladies had cocktails. That's because they're ladylike and posh, and I'm neither of those things!) we went for an overpriced al fresco dinner, which tasted nice, I suppose, but it was kind of ruined by the sight of a local teenage girl who was too pissed to stand up and throwing her ring up. We took this lesson about binge drinking to heart and then went for a few more plasticky pints in several of the dockside bars.
The next morning, we got up early, which isn't good if you have a hangover, had a mediocre breakfast and several coffees at the hotel , then headed up to the Bristol Museum an hour and a half before it opened. It sounded like a good plan the day before. Still, the wait was worth it. It was a fantastic exhibition. I've been to a few exhibitions before (including the ones I was a part of) and they tend to be dry affairs. Except for the ones where there were free drinks (which was the only reason I went to a few of them). Not this one. This exhibition was fun. Sick and twisted, but fun. No free drinks, but great nonetheless.

As you go in, you notice the Ronald McDonald figure stuck to the front of the museum, he's very high up, his make-up is tear-stained, and there's an empty bottle of Jack Daniels perched next to him, and it looks like he's about to jump. As you enter the exhibit, you walk past a burned-out ice-cream van, and behind it is a policeman on one of those kiddie's rides you see outside supermarkets, with distorted ice-cream van music, and the effect is eerie. Before you go into the exhibition proper, there's a painting riffing on the old Hansel and Gretel story, only it's Michael Jackson opening the door to the children. Out of respect, there was a candle burning in front of it. This set the tone for the rest of the show.

The main part of the exhibit focuses mostly on his graffiti stuff, most of which is very clever, although a lot of it is anti-police, and that gets a bit boring after the fifth image of coppers kissing each other or holding hands. The highlight of this first room was a giant painting of the House Of Commons, only the politicians have been replaced by chimps.

The second room was set out like a zoo, several cages with animatronic puppets in them, one with a caged ape painting an imagined sunset, one with chicken McNuggets hatching out of eggs, a rabbit putting make up on in front of a mirror, a Birdseye crispy fish-steak swimming around in a tank, and so on, all basically highlighting how awful the human race is to animals. Which is a fair point, but I reckon it's the animals' fault for being so damn tasty. My favourite part of this room was the cage with an aged, wretched-looking Tweety Pie in it. I could've stood there and watch that thing sigh all day.

That wasn't the end of it, either. Banksy had had a go at the rest of the museum, too, replacing pictures and exhibits with his own. So, you get what looks like a Constable, a country landscape, but this one has a car in it, with a visible bare arse in the windscreen , and it's titled 'Dogging'. It's not highbrow, but it's funny. There was another one where UFOs were attacking an old painting of a busy seaport. My favourite of these replaced paintings was this one, called 'Agency Worker':


This was a clever way of geting people to have a look around the whole museum, trying to find the bits Banksy had tampered with. There was all kinds of puerile things, including a dildo in the stalactite collection, a plate with a turd on in a cabinet full of ceramics, and one of those awful plates with a photo of kittens on it was put in a cabinet with fine china.
Anyway, we had a blast. It's the first time I've been to an art exhibition and come out laughing. I'd recommend you go, but I think it's finished now. Oh well, go to Bristol Museum anyway, it's a lovely building.


Other stuff.

I've also been on various trips around the Midlands with my offspring: Cadburyworld, West Midlands Safari Park, and Warwick Castle, which were all good fun, and I've also been down to Brighton for a wedding, but I'm knackered now. I just want a nice, relaxing stress-free weekend for a change. Oh, hang on, Villa play Blues this weekend! Aaaaaaarrrrrggghhhh!!

Drawing, Vomiting, Woking.

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Memorabilia.

Last weekend, our good friends Jamie and Theresa travelled up from Southend-On-Sea to come and stay at our home here in The People's Republic Of The West Midlands. (If you read my blog regularly, you'll know Jamie, as he's the only one who leaves me any comments!)

It was Jamie's birthday on the Saturday (and might I say, he doesn't look bad for fifty! Only kidding, Jamie!), and after he opened his cards and presents, and still feeling the effects of the alcohol and Moroccan cuisine from the night before, Jamie and I headed out to the National Exhibition Centre for the Memorabilia show. His other half decided her time would be better spent mooching around Brum's shops, whilst my other half was at the theatre watching His Dark Materials with my eldest daughter.

We went to the NEC by train from the lovely, awe-inspiring New St. station, mostly because it's probably the quickest way of getting there, as it's only one stop, and the fact that parking at the NEC would cost at least eight quid. The problem with going to the NEC by train is that after you get off at Birmingham International, you think you're nearly there, but you're not. You're in a building that says it's the NEC, but it's a bloody long walk to the exhibition halls. You go up escalators, down escalators, down endless corridors, along several moving walkways until, about a week later (okay, I'm exaggerating slightly) you get to the exhibition halls. But that's not the end. The Memorabilia show was in hall 12, we were outside hall one, so we walk for another three days (I exaggerate again) until we get to our destination. If we weren't sure if it was the right place, the shitloads of blokes dressed up as stormtroopers and a couple of Jedi outside confirmed that this was indeed the Memorabilia show.

After being allowed to jump the queue because we were paying for our tickets with cash (Ten quid! Each! Bloody Nora!) we went into what was frankly a massive room stuffed to the gills with all sorts of cool stuff. One of the first things we saw was a toy stall, selling lots of stuff similar to the things I had as a kid for shocking amounts of money. All of it was still boxed, and you weren't allowed to pick any of it up. I might've mentioned before that I collect models of the Batmobile (I know, it's a sickness, but they make the windowsill in my sketching room look a lot cooler) and I saw a Batmobile I'd quite like. It was from the 70s, made by the Mego company for their 7" action figures of Batman and Robin (not included) to sit in. We asked how much it was, because none of the items had prices on them. Probably because a little sticky price tag might damage the precious packaging. Anyway, the stallholder gets out a little folder that had all the prices in it, looks it up and then tells us that the batmobile would cost me £195. That was about £190 over my limit, so we thanked him and moved along.

We also saw, from the side looking in, Robert Vaughn doing a Q&A session, and he's a lot smaller than I thought he would be. Quite old, too. It's amazing, though, how he's kept his hair colour even though he's well into his seventies. More on him later.

One of the things that bugs me about this kind of event (comics conventions included), and it's only a recent phenomena, is the amount of cosplayers that turn up. I hate cosplayers. I know they're essentially harmless and they're only having a bit of fun but they do my head in. I reckon they give the rest of us nerds a bad name. People look at them and think 'what a bunch of sad bastards', and think all of us geeks are like that. There was a group of about ten teenage boys all dressed up as Doctor Who. All of them were the David Tennant Doctor, except for one who must have read the email incorrectly and turned up as William Hartnell. A fat, Asian, William Hartnell. Still, at least he was the only one who stood out. I saw all those young lads, with their brown full length coats, brown suits, Converse trainers and their hair all spiked up and I was reminded of the crowd scene from Life Of Brian; "Yes, we're ALL individual!"

There were also quite a few very young teenage girls dressed in not much, including one girl of about fifteen wearing a revealing corset, and this kind of thing brings out the dad in me. I say things like 'I bet her dad doesn't know she's wearing that' and 'there's no way any of my kids are going out looking like that!' even though I know, deep down, that if my girls did want to go out like that, there's not really that much I could do to stop them. There is such a thing as freedom of expression in this country, despite all of my objections!

Also, it's very stupid going to these things dressing up as the thing you love. If you're dressed up as Anakin Skywalker, a Star Wars memorabilia dealer knows he can charge you a bit more because he know's you're a Star Wars nut and you'll pay it. I bet all the dealers with Doctor Who stuff rubbed their hands with glee the moment they saw the ten Tennants approaching them. Only under tens and the Fathers 4 Justice and those people who are paid to walk around these conventions dressed up are allowed to wear superhero or sci-fi costumes (I might make allowances for people press-ganged into going to a fancy dress party. I'm not a big fan of those, either!) the rest of you should stop. Really. Especially the ones that make their own costume out of bits of egg boxes and Lego. Honestly, it's like Paris Fashion Week for the blind and stupid.

Rant over.

The amount of stuff available here was amazing. If spare cash and spare space wasn't a problem I would've come home with shitloads of geeky stuff. Honestly, if you're a nerd like me, you would have had a field day looking at this cool stuff. There was some crappy junk as well, but it was mostly cool. Less cool, however, was the 'celebrities' charging you at least fifteen pounds for an autograph. Some of them are people the non-nerd has heard of (Stephanie Beacham, Robert Vaughn, Richard Briers-who was a bit of a weird choice, I can't really see loads of obsessed cosplaying fans turning up dressed in tweed and kilts asking him to sign their VHS copies of Monarch of The Glen, can you?) but a lot of them were 'third alien on the left' types from Star Wars and I don't think having the autograph from the guy who was 'Yak-Face' is worth fifteen quid, frankly. I'm not really sure whether these are actually who they say they are, anyway, considering that these people spent their moment of fame under shitloads of prosthetics. He could be lying and pretending he was Yak-Face, for all I know, just to get his hands on fifteen quid from a Star Wars freak who really should be old enough to know better.
Don't get me wrong, there were people there I would have liked to get autographs from. There were a few Bond alumni there, for example. There was Richard Kiel, the man mountain who played Jaws, who is absolutely fucking huge- he's probably wider across the shoulders than I am tall. It was sad to see his mobility scooter, though. I also would've liked Guy Hamilton's signature, as he directed Goldfinger, the quintessential 007 movie. (Interesting fact about Guy Hamilton: In the movie The Third Man, that famous shot where you see Harry Lime's shadow running away, that shadow actually belongs to Hamilton- who was Carol Reed's assistant director, because Orson Welles didn't bother showing up for filming that day, because he was a notorious pain in the arse and probably because the only running Welles ever did was away from the salad counter.) The thing is, if you ever happened to bump into these people in the pub, they'd probably give you an autograph for free (although it's unlikely Jaws ever drinks in Moseley, there are a few Yak-faces, though.) and that's the main reason I refuse to pay for it. The other main reason is I don't have that many spare fifteen quids at the moment! I was going to get George Lazenby to sign my picture (see last post) but he wasn't there, so stuff the lot of them.
Saying that, one of us did pay for an autograph, and it wasn't me. Jamie saw the bloke who plays PC Stamp from The Bill walk past us, and had a brainstorm. His dad is a big fan of the show, apparently, so Jamie thought it would be nice if he could get PC Stamp (don't know his real name, and I can't be arsed to Google it, either) to talk to his dad on the phone. Which he did, fair play to him, but the trouble is, he might be a well-known face on British TV, but he doesn't really have a distinctive voice like, for instance, Sean Connery, John Hurt or Michael Caine does. Jamie's dad didn't have a clue who it was that had phoned him up so the first five minutes of that phone call were really awkward. I don't know what was said on the other end, but I can imagine it was along the lines of 'Who the fuck is this?'
Anyway, when Jamie's dad realised who it was, the conversation went a bit more smoothly, but at one point, PC Stamp said to Jamie's dad something along the lines of 'Well, your son is going to buy you a nice signed photo for you' and from that moment on, Jamie felt obliged to buy a signed photo of a bloke from The Bill for fifteen pounds. He didn't really mind, it was a nice gift for his old man, after all, but I think Jamie, being a rabid Star Wars fan, would rather have spent that money on Yak-Face's autograph. I think I upset PC Stamp though, he asked if I'd got everything I'd came for, if I was enjoying it, the usual smalltalk, then for some reason, he sort of accused me of being a cosplayer. Probably on the basis that I was wearing a Silver Surfer T-shirt. Not only did he accuse me of being one of the things I hate most in the world, he suggested that I probably dress up as a superhero when I'm having sex with my girlfriend. I know he was only trying to be blokey and have a joke, but fucking hell, that's a bit much isn't it? I replied by asking him whether they let him keep his uniform (for sexual purposes) when he left The Bill.
"I haven't left, actually, but thanks for paying attention."
And that was the end of that conversation. Next to him was the German guy from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (another favourite movie of mine, but surely it's a favourite movie of everyone's.)whose face melted at the end, and I wanted to ask him about his appearance in the Ferrero Rocher 'Ambassador, you are spoiling us' advert, but I didn't have the courage so we went away and watched some wrestling instead.
Well, I say wrestling. It was a bit like wrestling. There was a ring, a referee and wrestlers, but it was all a bit, well, rubbish. For some reason, the wrestlers kept trying to get the crowd to clap along, but they didn't seem to realise that us Brummies don't really do audience participation. We have the attitude of 'I paid ten quid of my hard-earned cash to get in here, and you want me
to do your job for you? You entertain me! I don't ask you to come to my factory and polish my power press, do I?'
So there wasn't much clapping. Anyone who did clap along were either children, idiots or interlopers from beyond the Black Country. It was a bit like like wrestling used to be when I was a nipper- you know, World Of Sport and Kendo Nagasaki and Johnny Two Rivers and fat blokes with a woman's bathing costume on worn back to front, before we got slick, polished American wrestling shows imported to show us how it could be done if we could be bothered to put the effort in. To be fair, they were going for the American style of wrestling, the 'good guy' wrestlers had washboard stomachs and muscles (something the World Of Sport bunch couldn't be arsed with, they just bounced off ropes and belly-barged into someone with their beer guts) but the 'bad guy' was a bit weedy-looking and the actual bouts were unconvincing. I know wrestling is fixed, but you don't make it obvious. They were stamping on the floor when they 'punched' someone, for God's sake! I wanted one of them to slash his face with a razor, Mickey Rourke-style, that'd be cool, and it would really freak out all the five year olds watching. To be fair to them, though, they did throw themselves around with gusto, and their backs looked all red and sore, so it must hurt, and it's something I'd never do (probably because the sight of me running around in swimming trunks and bright green knee-high boots would turn the Memorabilia Show into the Projectile Vomit-Con 2009) so, my hat goes off to them. If I ever wore one. Which I don't.
At the end of the show, Jamie went up to one of the guys who organises the show and congratulated him on how good it was (Despite all my moaning above, I did have a good time. Moaning's just what I do.) and on the table in front of him was a load of large glossy prints of various people sitting next to Robert Vaughn. They apparently had a scheme where you pay to have your picture taken with the former Man from U.N.C.L.E. and you pick it up at the end, like you do when you get off a rollercoaster at Alton Towers. The weird thing was that the ex-Napoleon Solo (another intersting fact- Ian Fleming came up with that name. Also, my dad was such a big fan of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that I was nearly given the name Napoleon Trimble. I'm glad he saw sense) had exactly the same facial expression in all of them. They might as well have taken one picture of him and photoshopped him next to all of those other people.
(Actually, I read in the Birmingham Mail the other day, that the next series of Hustle is being filmed up here in Brum, and that Robert Vaughn is looking for an apartment in this very city. Hopefully I'll bump into him and get an autograph and save myself twenty quid!)
And so, after about three hours of looking at cool stuff, and after trying and failing to get our picture taken with a bloke dressed as Iron Man, Jamie and I headed on the long, long walk back to the train station with our freshly-bought junk weighing us down. I got a few books and a few more batmobiles (one of which Jamie bought for me, bless him) and we'd had a good time. I'd definitely go again. It's a good laugh.

Oh, and the guy who plays PC Stamp's name is Graham Cole, apparently.

Punctuation.

Yesterday, I was on my way to get my children for the weekend, and on the way I was stopped by a BBC news reporter and a cameraman and asked my opinion on the day's burning issue: Apostrophes. Apparently, Birmingham City Council doesn't like Brummie place names having apostrophes in them, so places like Druid's Heath, King's Norton and King's Heath (where I live, and why I was asked my opinion, being a resident and all) will all lose their punctuation. Good to see they're not wasting my council tax on stupid schemes like better services, isn't it? Let's re-punctuate all the street signs instead. A much better use of resources.
However, directly across the road from where I was interviewed, an attempted armed robbery had taken place at a Nationwide building society, there were loads of police and the road was cordoned off. Surely that's a proper news story? Shouldn't the TV journalists be over there finding out what happened? Nope. Whether or not we keep apostrophes is far more important, apparently.
They did broadcast my response. On the BBC's regional news programme Midlands Today. My eldest daughter was doubly freaked out because her English teacher was also in the same feature. I was freaked out, too, by my big bloated unshaved pale face and my horrible voice. Surely I don't sound like that, do I?
I do?! Bloody hell.
Anyway, I don't approve of them removing the apostrophes. My response on the telly was something like 'removing the apostrophes just for the sake of making it easier to read is sorta like dumbing down'. I know, erudite, snappy and witty. I came across as a right bell-end.
Luckily, nobody 'phoned or texted me, so it looked like nobody I knew had seen it. Which was good, especially since I've been off work all week with a bad shoulder, 'phoning them up and telling them how crippled I am. Me appearing larger than life on the telly kinda makes me look a liar. And I'm not, my shoulder is royally fucked, I had to go and get my kids. But it looked like nobody had seen it anyway, so I was okay.
I thought I was, anyway. They broadcast it again, many times, today on BBC breakfast. and I'm getting texts and Facebook messages from all over the shop. My mate in Darlington saw it. So it was nationwide, then. The whole country saw what a bell-end I am. Fantastic. My colleagues have seen it. So I'm in shit at work, probably. Brilliant.
Damn you, Birmingham City Council! You and your diabolical schemes have ruined me!

Happy New Year!

Yeah, yeah. I know it's a bit late, but it's been a fairly hectic festive period for me. I didn't even start my Christmas shopping until three days before the big day because I had an art job (maybe I should say 'art favour' seeing as I've not received any payment yet) for a computer games company which took far more time than I wanted it to; it started off being five pages but then I received the script, which crammed far too much into its five pages, so I decided to virtually re-write it, making it more reader-friendly (and making it easier to draw!) and so it ended up being nine pages. Still, it was a useful exercise- I now know, should I need to, that I can produce four fully-inked, fully-lettered pages in a week and still do a day job. (Saying that, I did do the last twelve pages of Septic Isle in a week. I didn't go to work or have any sleep, though!) Some of the artwork was quite good, too, even if I say so myself:

Anyway, after that was done, Heather and I spent a weekend down south catching up with her friends and folks and spreading a bit of the Christmas cheer. Now, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but my lovely girlfriend is crazy about Christmas. She absolutely loves it. Normally, I see Christmas as a royal pain in the arse. I hate standing in queues in department stores listening to endless repeats of Slade or that awful one Paul McCartney did that sounds like an intestinal disorder (I'm still wondering why I never heard 'Rock n' Roll Christmas' by Gary Glitter at all this year. Funny how some festive songs go out of fashion, isn't it?) and all the forced jollity (you should know enough about me by now to know that I don't really do 'jolly') and repetitive strain injury from writing out all the Christmas cards for colleagues who probably don't even like me that much.(Although this year, I didn't bother with cards for work. I'm glad we don't do Secret Santa at my work. God knows what I'd receive!).
However, my girlfriend's enthusiasm rubbed off on me a little bit, so we ended up getting a massive tree (eight feet tall! I spent all Saturday sawing the bastard up and putting it into bags. I only had a poxy little hacksaw so now my arms and back are sore. Poor me.) and it did look nice, I suppose.
Christmas itself was a strange one for me, as it was the first Christmas day I've spent without my kids being present (I got them the next day and we had a nice time) but Heather's parents spent Christmas with us and had dinner and a nice day was had by all. Although, Heather was a bit pissed off that her folks had bought me more presents than they did for her! I'm currently working on Heather's dad, trying to make him an Aston Villa fan. I did succeed in getting him to say 'Up the Villa' as a Christmas toast. Sounds great in an American accent. Sounds great in any accent, actually. Especially as the Villa are doing well at the moment. (When I was doing some shopping in Woking, I saw a young lad wearing a Villa shirt, so it looks like we're picking up some of the glory-hunting Southern support. It's a good sign. He was probably an ex-gooner.)
As I said, I got my girls on Boxing Day, so we got to have Christmas all over again, and my brothers and their spouses came over the day after that for a festive drink or three. The highlight of that was when we played 'Who's in the box?' a game where you take pieces of paper out of said box, and have to describe who's written on them to your partner. You have a minute and have to describe as many as possible. This game threw up some great descriptions and answers. My partner was my youngest daughter, and her description of Gandhi as 'some bloke from the past who wore glasses' didn't win me a point. My eldest daughter's description of Jimi Hendrix as a 'left-handed guitarist, brown' got some giggles as well. My youngest got my description of Paris Hilton as 'that slag from America with a dog', which is just as well, because when I read her name all I could think about was the video 'One Night In Paris', and I didn't really want to be describing that to my thirteen year-old daughter. Other descriptions of note were:
'Old Christian singer with a turkey's neck and a colostomy bag,' and 'Rasta frog who ruined Star Wars.'

The main reason Christmas was a good one this year, however, was that I managed to get ten days off work and Heather and I spent them doing nice holiday type stuff like not having to get up, or going to the lovely Electric Cinema ( a restored 1900's cinema here in Brum where you can book a sofa and watch old movies. they also have this great service where you text them what you want from the bar and they bring it to your sofa) and watching It's A Wonderful Life on New Year's Eve. It almost made me want to emulate Jimmy Stewart when I came out of the picture house and run down the street it's on shouting 'Merry Christmas Old Rep theatre! Merry Christmas old Midland Red bus depot! Merry Christmas Adultworld sex shop and porno cinema!' but I managed to keep myself in check. We also went to the Thinktank at the Millenium Point, where I showed Heather the Spitfires built here in Brum at Castle Bromwich, and we learned that most of the guns used in the American Civil War were also manufactured here in Birmingham's Gun Quarter. So, not only is Brum responsible for keeping Hitler at bay, we're also responsible for the freeing of America's slaves. We also went to the planetarium there, where we watched a film about what Ancient Egypt saw when they looked at the night sky. And we watched Villa score a flukey win against Hull in a packed boozer in Moseley, and another flukey win against Gillingham in the same pub. All in all, it was a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and I enjoyed it so much I might even do it next year.
Hope your Christmases and New years were good too.

Always Has Been, Always Will Be.

I read in the Birmingham Mail yesterday that some arsehole local councillor wants the mighty Aston Villa Football Club to change their name to 'Aston Villa Birmingham' and we should also replace the motto 'Prepared' on our badge with 'Birmingham'. He reckons that a lot of people don't actually know that Villa are from Brum and the name change will help raise the city's profile if the Villains win the UEFA cup.
Firstly, let's try and win the cup first. Secondly, we've been Aston Villa since 1874. It's been good enough for the last 134 years, why change it now? I mean, back in 1874 , Birmingham wasn't even a city yet, and Aston wasn't part of it.
Lots of football teams don't have the city they're from in their name, I mean, just off the top of my head, there's all of the London clubs, Everton, Port Vale, Lazio, Ajax, FC Twente, Espanyol, Benfica, Celtic, Rangers, Hibernian, Queen Of The South and Juventus. There's probably loads more. Any proper football fan knows Villa are from Brum. Anyone who doesn't know probably isn't that interested in football, so how does Villa winning a trophy raise Birmingham's profile in their eyes anyway? The main reason this is a bad idea, however, is the fact that our local rivals and worst enemies are called Birmingham City. How is Villa incorporating the scum's name into our own going to be a popular idea? It's not our fault if the team actually bearing the name of the city aren't raising it's profile because they're a pile of wank is it?
If the council want to increase this city's reputation, how about they spend their time coming up with better ideas, such as cleaning up the shit bits, for example? (I reckon one of the main reasons Birmingham has a reputation for being a shithole is, ironically, because of football, as both Villa Park and St. Andrews are situated in dogholes, so visiting supporters go home with a bad impression) . I know this idea isn't going to come to anything, and it will all blow over, but it has bugged me no end. Football is all about history, and our name is part of our heritage, so leave it the fuck alone.

If you want to read about how we got our name, and also, if it wasn't for Aston Villa there wouldn't be a football league to start with, read this fantastic article from the Times Online.

Ahh, There You All Are!

In the words of trailer-trash headcase Britney Spears; "Oops, I did it again!"

I've been such a busy boy lately that I've not had the time to update my blog. (I've also found out that this blog has 'followers', now. Some of them are blogs I wasn't aware of until recently. I've got readers I didn't know about!The number keeps going up and down, though. That's what happens when you very rarely update, I suppose.) I've got an art project on at the moment which is taking up an inordinate amount of my time, and that's on top of all the stuff that moving to a new house entails, and that's on top of me being very ill this week with a virus that made my joints swell up and stop my bowels from moving. Still, not going to work for three days is almost compensation for not being able to bend or poo. Or bend and poo; after all, I don't do it standing up. Not every time, anyway.

More news on my art project if and when it gets finished. If you're reading this on the other side of the pond, firstly, happy Thanksgiving, and secondly, Septic Isle is now on sale in the US., so go out and get yourself a copy. As soon as the stores re-open after the holidays, obviously.

I promised to tell you what I've been up to since I've moved, but that would take ages, so here are the highlights:

We had a mini-housewarming with a lot of my glamorous other half's friends from down south. I made a twat of myself by slipping on the wet uPVC ledge on my patio door and crashing in a heap onto the very hard kitchen floor in front of everyone. My brother Marc thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. I wasn't even drunk by then, either. My shin is still bruised. We'll probably have a housewarming with some of my friends from here in Brum at some point in the future, if I can find any.

The day after we moved in properly, Heather and I decided to go for a drive to get a feel for the area and find out if there's anything cool or useful nearby. We ended up in nearby Earlswood, which is near Bromsgrove and about ten minutes' drive away. We saw a garden centre and decided to have a look around. We looked at the cacky statues and gnomes and windchimes and the usual shite you get at these places, then we saw that this place also had an aquarium, so we had a look around there, too. Not because we want any pet fish, you understand. As we were walking around, I noticed that in one tank, the tiny fish inside were reacting to my movement. I waved my hand to the left, the fish all quickly swarmed to the left. I moved my hand to the right, they all swam to follow suit. Heather had moved along so I called her back to show her. She stood by me as I waved my hands all around the place quickly. The fish all went mental! The water acted as if it had suddenly boiled and the fish started leaping out of the top of the tank like some aquatic mass suicide attempt. My hands were moving rapidly again, trying to pick up all these dying little fishies and chuck them back into their tank quickly before the shop assistant saw me. I think I saved most of them. Heather had a look that said 'I can't take you anywhere, can I?' as we swiftly left the garden centre.

Heather's Mom and Dad came to stay with us, and we went to a posh restaurant as it was her mother's birthday. I even put a suit on. And a tie. It was a lovely meal,her folks enjoyed their time with us, I think. Which was good, as it was only the second time they'd met me. I had an interesting chat with a guy outside whilst having a fag, apparently he was taking photos for British Sausage Week, he was travelling around the country with famous cricket umpire Dickie Bird sampling and judging local bangers. I tried to see if Dickie Bird was in the restaurant with us, but I couldn't see anyone sitting at a table with five jumpers and three hats on. Pity.

We're more or less all moved in now. We still have a spare bedroom full of shite, though, and we don't have an aerial for our telly yet, either. We have to use a portable aerial, which isn't the best, and because it's plugged in to our freeview box, it means most of our programmes tend to be stop-start, i.e. the picture freezes for a bit or the sound comes and goes, which means the continuity announcer sounds like Norman Collier (but obviously not when he's doing his 'other joke' when he puts his jacket around his shoulders and pretends to be an unfunny chicken. By the way, is Norman Collier still alive?) but we get by. Most importantly, though, I now have a room where I can go and draw, it's got a desk, drawing board and everything. It's also got a 'gas lift' chair that doesn't stay lifted so when I'm drawing I start to sink every few minutes. Still, it's all good fun.

Also, it's very nearly Christmas! That's snuck up on us this year. I don't know where this year's gone. We finally get the house to look like a home and now we have to fuck about putting trees up. Bah Humbug! Nah, I'm looking forward to it really. I just have to act curmudgeonly to keep appearances up.To prove how much Christmas spirit I've actually got, check out the following clip:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Right. There's probably loads I've forgotten to tell you about, but I can't be arsed to type anymore, but I promise to update a bit more regularly from now on.

Mick's BICS.

Well, Birmingham International Comics Show went by in a flash, didn't it? It's in its third year now, and it keeps getting better. It's certainly more slick and better organised , less malodorous and in a nicer venue than its Bristol counterpart, but it's still not quite got the vibe that the Brizzle expo has. Like Sting says, though, I'm sure it'll come eventually.

Andy Winter and I were there to flog Septic Isle, we got there fairly early on Saturday morning (after we'd had 'a night on the pop' on Friday) and discovered that our table was the first one people would see as they came in. However, we weren't in the main hall, so it turned out ours was the first table people would ignore as they rush past to go and meet John Cassaday. Just after we set up and had a coffee I got a phonecall from my friend and fellow MC2-er Laura Howell asking me if I could help them carry their stuff up from the car. I dutifully go down and offer my services and get roped in to carrying someone else's stuff, leaving Tim (Laura's partner) standing there in the car park like a spare prick. After I carried the other lady's stuff up to the exhibition hall, I rushed back down to see poor old Tim struggling with three big wooden boards and helped them carry it all up after all.

My good deed done for the day, I sat back down behind our table and got ready to meet the punters. We shifted a few copies of Septic Isle, but it wasn't exactly flying off the stand. Our stall was directly opposite a large projection screen, which, at about eleven o'clock, started showing an extended trailer for ITV2's crappy sitcom No Heroics. It showed it again and again and again and again. Not really helping us with sales. Jean-Paul Sartre once said that hell would be being stuck in a room with your friends for all eternity. Well, he was wrong. Hell is being sat opposite a loop of a really unfunny trailer (and besides, I like my friends. Most of them, anyway. I think you have to put Sartre's comments into context. His mates were French, after all.) The trailer was completely inappropriate anyway, as it was a room with quite a lot of young children in it, and the trailer had references to drug use, masturbation and someone said 'fucking' in it too. Andy, bless him, had a word with Shane (one of the organisers and a really nice bloke) about how annoying it was, he agreed with us and it promptly stopped. The sense of relief amongst the row of stalls we were in was palpable.

The other thing I've noticed after going to a few of these things in recent years is the change of the type of punters that are coming to the cons. When I first started going there were very few females attending, there are certainly more attending these days. Admittedly, a lot of them are girlfriends being dragged along by their nerdy other half (like my girlfriend, who I've not mentioned so far, but she did come along with me, bless her, despite us both being up to our eyes with our house-moving) but there are a lot of genuine female fans coming to the conventions.( I know there has always been genuine female comics fans out there, they just didn't seem to come along to conventions). There tends to be a lot more families coming along too, which is also a good thing.

But there are also the cosplayers. The ones at Brum tended to be of characters I'd heard of, the Bristol con tends to get the manga/anime freaks dressed as characters even I've not heard of, as nerdy as I am, and the costumes at Brum tended to be of a very high standard. There were some professional dresser-uppers there too, special mention must go to the guy dressed as the Heath Ledger Joker, as he did really look like him (or 'fucking creepy' as my lovely other half put it) and, though I wasn't looking, obviously, the lady dressed as Harley Quinn looked nice, too. There were also people dressed up as Dan Dare (although his eyebrows weren't the same distinctive shape as Dare's; things like that are important to me. I know, it's an illness, I can't help it!), Batman and some of the Thundercats.

Our friends Jamie and Theresa turned up a bit later, moaning about how poxy it is to get around Birmingham. Theresa rescued my girlfriend and they went off shopping. I later got a text from Heather telling me that Geri Halliwell was signing books in Selfridges. I asked one of the cosplayers who was dressed as Green Arrow (Connor Hawke, not Ollie Queen) sitting opposite us if he could actually use the bow he was carrying around and if he minded going to the Bullring to fire a few bolts at Ginger Minge. He looked at me like I was mental. He's dressed as Green Arrow and I'm the mental one. Figure that out.

Later on, my ex and my youngest daughter turned up, and I was shocked to discover it had cost them fifteen quid to get in. I reckon that's a bit steep. As good as the con was, there's not enough for the casual punter who is just there to buy stuff to look at or do that's worth that much money, and that got to hurt the stallholders if the punters are already a tenner lighter before they go in.

During a fag break (it took ages to get downstairs and outside for a smoke, the expo was three floors up) it was too windy for my poxy lighter to work, so I borrowed a lighter from another 'snoutcast' and got chatting to him about Brum's metal legends Sabbath and Priest, Bill Hicks and how us smokers are treated like criminals amongst other things. Then, on the way back up I found out that I'd been talking to the fairly famous artist Frazer Irving. He's a cool guy.

Generally, the Saturday's trade was steady, not spectacular, but it'd been a fun day, and it's always nice to meet up with the people you only see at these conventions.
After we all packed up for the night, we planned to meet up in town for a meal and a drink, so Heather and I headed back home so we could get changed (the thing I find weird about the Brum comics show is not staying at a hotel, it doesn't feel right going back home after a day at a comics expo) watched a bit of telly (still not sure about BBC1's Merlin) and headed back out to the city centre and met up with Jamie and Theresa, Andy and his old mate Rob, and Keith Burns (like me, a former StripSearcher and he's also the talented artist of Blood Psi) and we all went for for a big-ass burger at the Handmade Burger Company, which is on the canalside just behind the ICC. The meal was great, but the onions in it kept repeating on me and led to me doing foul rotten flesh-smelling mini-burps all evening. It's surprising how popular this makes you. Afterwards we decided to go for a pint or three, so it was up to me as the only Brummie to decide where to go. I plumped for the Tap and Spile, as it was close and doesn't have dance music drowning out any attempt at a conversation. The problem is, however, that particular pub is a bit of a dive. And it takes ages to get served. And you have have to listen to the other patrons talking about snuff movies at the bar while you're waiting. Besides that, though, it was okay and we all had a good evening. Whilst I was in there I bumped into two old schoolmates of mine and was cheered up by their distinct lack of hair. Okay, they might have better careers and all that stuff, but at least I can still ask the barber for 'a little off the top' and not worry about it!

At the end of the evening, Heather offered everyone a lift back to their hotels (she's poorly, bless her, so she decided not to drink and therefore could drive) so we traipsed through the little bit of Brum that most resembles Gotham City (Broad St.) to the car park at Brindleyplace (that's not a typo, it is all one word. When Birmingham City Council rebuild and rebrand stuff, they like to remove the spaces from names. The 'Bullring' is another example) where we were stuck in a logjam of cars. We waited nearly an hour to get out of the sodding place, but we had great fun bitching about all of the other drivers, who really were total cocks. Not so much fun were the rotting flesh belches, which are even less amusing in a car full of people. So, even though it took our friends over an hour to get to what was basically a ten-minute walk away, we were all in good humour (although I am slightly worried over one friend's admission that he fancies Rupert Everett. I think his wife might be, too) and looking forward to the Sunday.

After a very slow start (probably because of the weather. It was pissing it down as usual) Sunday was a good day for us. We sold loads more on the Sunday, very unusual as Saturday tends to be the biggie, normally. So much so, in fact, that all the initial print run of Septic Isle is now all gone. (Don't worry, there's about to be a second printing for our dispatch to shops and websites) I even managed to leave our table for a bit and have a proper look around and buy some tie-in tat as gifts for my offspring. The nice lady at the Forbidden Planet stall liked my T-shirt, it had cartoon versions of the characters from Monkey on it. She wasn't the first. I had comments about my T-shirt all day. I very rarely get nice comments about what I'm wearing from strangers, but I obviously impressed a few of my fellow nerds. Actually, whilst at the Forbidden Planet stall, a man passed by with the copy of Septic Isle he'd just bought, so I asked him if he wanted me to sign it for him. He checked the photo in the back to see if it was actually me that drew it, then he ran off to get a pen, and eventually I signed it. I always dreamed I'd be signing my comic books at Forbidden Planet; This was good enough for me!

I did a bit more sketching on the Sunday, and people seemed genuinely pleased to get my amateurish scribblings with their purchase of Septic. One bloke asked me to do a sketch, so I did him one of Marley, the protagonist from our book. He also asked me to write who it was, sign my name and date it, and he also took a picture of me doing it. As he'd bought our comic, I thought it was the least I could do. I reckon he was going to put the book and sketch on eBay('signed by the artist! photo verification!) I think he'll probably get about 12p. He obviously thinks I'm more famous than I actually am. Which is not very famous at all. Still, good luck to him. I just hope he doesn't spend all of the 12p in one go.

Other highlights from the Sunday include: My mate Jason getting work from DC after a portfolio review. That's great news, he deserves it as he's so talented. I finally got hold of the Frankenstein comic adaptation from Classical Comics, despite my own problems with that particular publisher, because my friend Declan Shalvey illustrated it, and it looks tremendous, and it's a good read, too. Had a chat with the FutureQuake guys, and it was good to see Dave 'Bolt-01'Evans telling off his son for being too nerdy. Bloody right too. The Joker looky-likey was back in a nurse's outfit on Sunday, and the girl who was Harley came back dressed as Lara Croft. she looked nice, apparently, but I wasn't looking, of course. Joining the professional dresser-uppers for the Sunday was a guy dressed as the Brandon Routh Superman. You know, the one with the burgundy cape and the too-small 'S'? He didn't really have the build for Supes, but fair play to him. My girlfriend told me how she shared the lift with him at one point, and at every floor, someone got on and said 'cape not working, then?'. On every floor. Brummie humour. Best in the world. Serves him right for not actually being able to fly.

Trade died a death after about half four so we decided to pack up. Heather went and asked around in the main hall to see if they had any spare boxes for our move. She got some too, so now, when I do move this weekend, I'll be carting my stuff round in boxes with 'Batman figural bank' and 'Sinister Six Vulture med statue' printed on them. Even my house move has become a nerdfest!

Still, it was a good convention. We had a great weekend, but now I have to turn my attentions to packing up all my various shite and shifting it to my new abode, so this'll be my last post for a bit, as I don't know when I'll next be online. I'll see you all on the other side of the move. Ta ra a bit!

My plans for the weekend.

Just as Birmingham gets over a convention for sad, badly dressed, deluded people with no grasp on the real world (The Conservative Party conference) there's another one starting this Saturday October 4th (the Birmingham International Comics Show). I'll be there flogging Septic Isle, alongside the book's writer and publisher Andy Winter, so, if you want to meet either or both of us and want a signed copy, please come along to Millenium Point, Curzon Street, on Saturday or Sunday. I'm going to have a shave for this, so if I can be bothered to do that, the least you can do is turn up. I hate shaving. See you there, hopefully.

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part two)

House Hunting:

One of the main reasons I've haven't been blogging as much as I'd like is because i've been looking for somewhere new to live. When I say 'I', I mean 'we' as my lovely girlfriend and I have decided to move in and rent a place together.
Now, as all of you who have ever been house or flat hunting know, estate agents can be economical with the truth. We wanted to move to the Moseley area of Brum (or as I call it, Mos Eisley. I'll explain why later), but so do a lot of people. This means Mos Eisley is prohibitively expensive, and estate agents say properties are in Mos Eisley when they're not. We looked at places that were in Hall Green (famous for its dog track) when we were told they were in Moseley so they could bump the price up a bit. Also, what an estate agent calls a double bedroom is not what I would call a double bedroom. what they would call 'desirable' some times is what I would call a 'shithole'. We looked at one house that was a relatively new build, but inside it was terrible; the stair rods were mostly missing and every room's walls were riddled with holes. (I reckon the previous tenants were fans of the 'floating shelf'.) Apparently, having a house that resembles swiss cheese is 'desirable' these days! Not to me, matey!
My lady and I also saw a house we subsequently referred to as 'the house of death'. It was completely beige inside, beige walls and beige carpets all through the gaff. It smelled bad. Its kitchen hadn't been updated since about nineteen forty-seven and it was obviously a house where someone old had died. To be fair to the estate agent on this one, though, he could tell it wasn't the right place for us and looked suitably embarassed as he was showing us round.
We did luck out though. The house we settled on is in King's Heath, not far from Mos Eisley, it's got four bedrooms, it's in our price range and it's lovely. We'll be moving in a couple of weeks, so I'm up to my ears in packing and measuring stuff and buying washing machines. It's worse for my girlfriend, who is moving up from Winchester, so her hassles are probably ten times what mine are.

Mos Eisley Folk Festival:

My girlfriend is middle class, and I'm obviously not, so we're kind of putting ourselves through a cultural exchange. She makes me watch rom-coms (some of the time, anyway! I still won't watch anything with Reese fucking Witherspoon in it, though. I have some standards!), I make her watch kung-fu and zombie movies (but not Peter Jackson's Braindead, yet. That combines the two genres in one fantastic scene. You should all go out and see that movie if you haven't, yet. One of my faves.) I make her eat baltis, she makes me eat salad from wooden bowls. (This is the biggest indicator that someone's middle class, this is; owning wooden salad bowls.)
My girlfriend's a big fan of Seth Lakeman, who I'd not heard of before I met her, and I've since found out that he's a folk-singing midget who mostly plays violin as well. She found out that Seth was playing at the Mos Eisley folk festival, so she bought tickets for her and a friend to go and see him, and all the other bands playing at the festival. As the festival got nearer though, it turned out that her friend couldn't go, so I agreed to accompany her. This had a cultural exchange aspect to it too, as I stipulated that we had to watch the Villa-Liverpool match (which was on the same day) in a grotty pub first before we head off to the folk festival.
After watching one of the shittest nil-nils I've seen in a long time (fair play to the mighty Villa though, we're third in the Premiership as I type this, only one point off top) we headed off to Mos Eisley. Now, Moseley does resemble its Star Wars counterpart. It's a weird place, maybe not the 'wretched hive of scum and villainy' that Mos Eisley is, but it does have a strange mix of residents, so the pubs do resemble the cantina from A New Hope. There are a lot of posh people, you know the types with people carriers who take their kids to violin classes, there are also a lot of grungey students, lots of new age types, all wiry hair and sandals and creative facial hair. And that's just the women! (Insert rimshot noise here) and, Moseley also has more than its fair share of tramps. Not the modern Big Issue, dog on a string homeless, but your old-fashioned tramp. Meths-drinking, mismatched shoes-wearing, big overcoat-wearing, piss-smelling, giant beard wearing paraffin lamps. There was a famous itinerant called 'Pete the Feet' who used to bother drinkers in Moseley for small change, he was called that because he refused to wear shoes. But I digress.
We went to the festival and it was pissing down. Torrential. As has most of what we used to call 'summer'. A friend of mine said that the British weather is like the Muslim community, sometimes Sunni but mostly Shi'ite. (But, Brum's muslims are mostly Sunni, apparently, so it's a crap joke, really)
The festival was in Moseley Park, which is a park you have to go down an alley to get to, and the festival was like any other festival you've been to, but a lot smaller. That's a good thing, the queues for the chemical bogs are much smaller, for one thing. There was a real ale tent. Another good thing. There were a few stalls, including, weirdly, one that sold violins. I think the cheapest one was three hundred quid. Hardly an impulse buy at a music festival, is it? Unsurprisingly, the stallholder wasn't doing much business. There were all the usual jewellery, joss stick and hippie shit on sale, and there was quite a good book stall. Because most of the festival goers were new age-y types , I was worried I wouldn't be able to get anything substantial (i.e. meat) to eat, and, at first glance my worries were confirmed, falafels, veggie burgers, vegetarian indian nosh. I opted for a falafel, and it was lovely, but I dropped my girlfriend's chilli, so hers wasn't as nice as mine. Then, after I finished my falafel, I noticed the hog roast stand. Bastard!
The rain was coming down in big sheets, and we couldn't shelter under a tree because all the other festival goers were hugging them. And the music, whilst not my thing, was fairly good. It's nice to see proper musicians playing instruments and enjoying themselves. Bit too much accordion, though. People have a go at the metal music I like for being all morbid and obsessed with death, but it's got fuck all on folk music. The songs are about such heartwarming subjects like lifeboat disasters, the highland clearances and dead sheepdogs.
After an escape from the rain for a bit (we went to the O'Neills round the corner) we headed back into the park to watch Seth Lakeman, and he was good. Not good enough to convert me to being an Arran sweater wearing/desert boot folky, but he was alright. Despite the rain and the boring footie match, it was a good day.

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part one)

Apparently, sometime this week, this blog had its 10,000th visitor (well, since I started counting, anyway) so I thought I'd better put something mildly interesting on it! I've been busy the last few weeks, not updating as much as I'd like, so I thought I'd give you a brief round-up of what I've been up to. I'll leave out all the boring day job stuff that's taken up most of my time, as a post which just says 'I've been working harder than Janet Street-Porter's toothbrush' isn't very interesting. So anyway, here's part one of 'The stuff I've been up to':

Hiking weekend:

A few months ago, whilst out drinking with my dad and brothers on my birthday, we all drunkenly decided we were going to go on a big walk around Kinver Edge. My dad's other main hobby, besides drinking and passing wind, is hiking, but he hadn't gone on a walk for ages and talked me and my brothers into going with him when we were all pissed enough to say yes.

This was against my better judgement as I spent quite a big chunk of my childhood traipsing around canal towpaths behind my father. That's the thing, you see, my dad didn't really do the pretty walks, he liked walking along 'the cut' (that's what canals are called around here. You know how the Inuit are supposed to have four-hundred words for snow, because they're surrounded by it? That's a bit like us Brummies and canals; We've got a whole two words for them!) and subsequently knows how to get anywhere in the West Midlands by towpath. This isn't so bad these days, because Birmingham has been regenerated like Doctor Who, and the council has spent money cleaning up and renovating and prettifying a lot of the canals, but when I was a kid marching alongside the cut with my dad (this was the the early Eighties) it wasn't so groovy. Walking along a muddy towpath dodging overgrown nettle bushes alongside a canal full of shopping trolleys and used johnnies looking at the backs of semi-demolished empty factories in Thatcher's Britain wasn't really my idea of fun. But, my brothers and I all agreed to go on a walk with our dad because it sounded like a great idea at a quarter-past pint number seven.


Anyway, we decided to go for a walk on August Bank Holiday. That got changed as it was my brother's wedding anniversary that weekend. We didn't go to Kinver, we ended up going somewhere else in Worcestershire. (I don't want to put where we did go in case the guy that owns the B&B we stayed at happens upon this blog. You'll read why soon enough.)

My brothers, my father and I, my dad's mate and his son had a nice walk along the river Severn in the pissing rain, (it was torrential, most of the time) stopping in every pub along the way and taking the piss, swearing (mostly at the weather), talking football (mainly about how shit Birmingham City are) and swapping jokes and funny stories. My dad and his mate are very scatological in their humour; anything to do with farting and shite are incredibly amusing, so much so, every anecdote I heard from either of them during the weekend tended to be about all the amusing al-fresco shits they've had in years gone by. So, among the stories I heard were: Slices of bread being used as emergency toilet roll; bread which was subsequently eaten by a dog. I heard about the time my dad's mate accidentally shat in the hood of his cagoule, and the time he was dying for a crap but couldn't go because his wife's sister was using the bathroom, so he went and did it in a bucket in his shed, but he missed the bucket and crapped all over his lawnmower. These stories are base, not very clever, and yes, disgusting, but I love them! I also found out, from my dad's mate's son (who's a soldier) that, despite Hollywood telling us otherwise, people make a lot of noise when they've had their throats cut. Nice. We finished our walk in good humour, especially after seeing my brother Matthew go arse over tip in a muddy puddle, and avoiding the escaped cow that was running at us along the riverside.We ended up sitting outside a pub in the rain sinking a few more pints. Although hiking isn't really my idea of fun, I did enjoy it. It was a good craic, and all the other hikers we met were nice, always saying hello, and the views were great. It's just a shame, because of the rain, I had my head down for most of the walk and didn't really appreciate the scenery as much as I should have.

We headed back to our B&B to get clean and dry and to change into nicer clothes so we could head into the town centre for more drinking. My dad and his mate left us to it at about half-ten, but my dad's mate's son, my brothers and I carried on into the wee small hours. I've subsequently realised we drank something like sixteen pints that day (we started drinking very early and finished late), and we moved on to spirits at the end of the night. Staying out late was a bad idea, because we realised when we got back we couldn't get back into our digs. We weren't given a key, and we all tried phoning up our fathers but to no avail, they'd gone to bed and turned their mobiles off. Bugger. we ended up having to break in through a small open window on an upstairs floor. Let me tell you, trying to scale walls and run along rooftops like a staggering Matt Murdock when you've had sixteen pints is both difficult and, in hindsight, bloody stupid. Anyway, we got in and after me and my brother Marc stopped giggling like twats about the ridiculous situation we'd just found ourselves in, finally got some sleep.

We got back to Brum the next morning via the Severn Valley steam railway, and ended up in a city centre boozer (more drink; bloody hell! My liver was aching until at least the following Wednesday) putting the world to rights until we decided to go home and get some proper kip. All in all, a good weekend.

And Finally....

Having lived in the People's Republic of the West Midlands for nearly as long as there's been a county called 'The West Midlands', I thought I'd be used to the stupidity and crassness of our local news bulletins by now.
It turns out I'm not. I'm still weirded out by what I witnessed on Central Tonight, tonight (funnily enough). This is the bulletin on ITV, and it's been presented by Bob Warman for what feels like forever. I think his first story for what was then ATV Today was something along the lines of 'Sabretooth tiger attacks Neanderthal in a cave near Bromsgrove', but I might be making that up. Because Bob's the elder statesman of news in the West Midlands, the news bulletin tends to be a bit more straitlaced when he's on it, because he doesn't understand the modern world or senses of humour. You can see he's uncomfortable with the friendly lightweight stories or the affable banter with the sports presenter covering the lack of transfer activity at Villa Park that day. And rightly so, in my opinion. News is for news, not for giving airtime for some local tit who's designed a new way of getting jam into doughnuts or something.
Anyway, Bob Warman was away today. It was instead presented by that woman with the Lego hair and that Scouse bloke whose face is far too small for his head. (I think it's wrong for a Scouser to read out Midlands news).This gave the editorial staff the chance to fanny about a bit. It went like this; the weather girl, Emma Jesson likes to do her daily reports from different locations, although it usually tends to be an ice rink or the Walsall arboretum. Today, however, it was neither of those exotic locales. She was, wait for it, in a living room in Sutton Coldfield! (I can sense you're all getting excited by that particular piece of prose!) She had a couple behind her who were both dancing, albeit slightly out of sync with each other and a bit rubbish. This carries on for a couple of minutes, the lovely Emma telling us it's going to piss down all week, with this man and woman acting like they're both dying for a wee in the background.
Then we found out why. They're practising for their elaborate first dance at their wedding, which they're going to film and put on YouTube. How original! To prove how original it was, Central Tonight then showed us a montage of all the other wankers who have done something similar and put it on YouTube. (Just put 'wedding dance' into YouTube, you'll see the kind of shit I mean.) Why do people do this? Why is it always to a shit song? Why don't they do something original? (I'd love to see a wedding dancefloor with a big circle pit and lots of moshing! That'd be cool! Maybe I'll have it at my own wedding, should any woman be daft enough to agree to become Mrs. Michael Trimble.) What happened to dignity? Why do they feel the need to show the fucking world how 'wacky' they are?
I know I sound like a miserable old fart, but for fuck's sake, the last thing I want to see at a wedding is a re-enactment of Dirty Dancing, which is probably the biggest crime-against-the-eyes shown in a cinema ever made. (This reminds me, actually, of a wedding my dad told me about. It was one of his mates from work, and it was about twenty years ago, when Dirty Dancing was first out, and they tried to recreate that scene where she jumps into his arms and he holds her aloft. Thing was, she wasn't the lightest bride, nor was he the soberest groom. She gets up on a chair when the song reaches its big chorus, there's no way she can actually jump from the floor without a block and tackle. He's ready with his arms out. All their nearest and dearest are all round them on the dancefloor in a big circle, to give them both room. She launches herself at him, and he catches her, but he's too weak and too pissed and after about eight seconds of sweating , straining and swaying they both crash to the floor in a heap of white lace and grey tails. Fantastic. Now that, I wouldn't mind seeing. Unfortunately this was before the internet, so it will just have to live on in oral tradition.)
Where will it all end? Divorcing couples having a West Side Story-type dance off at the custody hearing?
As you can see, I'm a hopeless romantic.

This bit of the news wasn't the weird bit, though. Afterwards, they cut back to the studio and Lego Hair and the Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head both remarked to each other how nifty the Sutton Coldfield couple's moves were. Then, and I shit you not , they went into a crappy dance routine of their own, which culminated in Lego Hair jumping into Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head's arms and he swung her around at waist level. Then the theme music and credits came on, and Lego Hair carried on shimmying around the set with all the grace of a three-legged tortoise, whilst Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head had a suitably shameful look on his face that was too small for his head. This was on the same show that had a big story about a poor bloke getting stabbed to death, and they looked like they were celebrating the news!
Local news, eh?

Kids Today.

I know this post will make me sound like a moaning old fart, but what the hell is wrong with some young people today? (Please notice that I wrote 'some', not 'all', as I know that there are many great youngsters out there.)
Usually, I'm thinking these negative thoughts about teenagers after every bus journey I take around Birmingham. Usually, it's thoughts like 'Why haven't these wankers heard of headphones? Why do they think everyone wants to listen to their shitty, tinny music? It sounds like Pinky and Perky!'
Today, I'm also hating youngsters because of a bus journey, but it wasn't because of some selfish scrote playing his crappy MP3s out loud on his phone. It was because, today, whilst travelling back from Birmingham city centre on the 97 bus with my two daughters, some little shitbags lobbed a brick at the bus window. The bus window right next to where my youngest daughter was sitting. Luckily, it struck the bottom of the window and bounced off. Any higher, and the rock would've probably come straight through and who knows what would've happened? The window was a write-off, though, and the driver had to make the rest of the journey at a snail's pace so it wouldn't fall out.
What makes these little wastes of spunk tick? Why is this fun? If I ever grab hold of them, it'll stop being fun for them. I'd make them wish their fathers pulled out early, the little fuckers.
Right, rant over.

Hypocrisy: The Curse Of The Brummie Nerd.

Sorry for the big gap between posts, but I've been a busy Brummie boy lately. There's been lots of things I've wanted to comment on while I've been away, so this post is a quick roundup of my thoughts on said topics:

My accent:

It's been reported in a few newspapers in the last week or so that the Birmingham accent is the least liked of all the regional twangs. Apparently, prospective employers equate the Brummie accent with stupidity. So, do all companies in the West Midlands employ from outside the region because all the locals are stupid? Of course not. I'm sick and tired of the stick we Brummies get from the rest of the country. For example, in a recent episode of Ashes To Ashes, there was one character (played by Matthew MacFadyen) who was a famous charity fundraiser, who suffered from OCD, embezzling the money he'd raised by pulling a bath along, or some other bollocks.(As you can see, I was far from impressed with the return of Gene Hunt.) MacFadyen gave his character an unconvincing Brummie accent. This had no bearing on the plot, and seemed to be used just as shorthand for making the character a bit laughable. It's the same with Timothy Spall in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. It's just an accent, no better or worse than Scouse or Geordie or Cockney. And I couldn't really give a toss if people like my accent or not, it's part of who I am and where I'm from, and I'm not going to change it. I'm proud of where I'm from.

Sausages:

Apparently, sausages give you cancer. Does that mean that, in a couple of years, every time I want to munch on a sausage, I'll be forced to do so outside, whatever the weather? Forced to brave the elements, exiled, risking hypothermia just for the crime of being addicted to pork?
If sausages do give you cancer, then Germany is fucked.

Charlton Heston R.I.P. :

No good will ever come from kissing apes. Now old Chuck's dead, I can finally get his gun off him, at last!
As much as I disagreed with his stance on gun ownership, it's a shame he's no longer with us, he did make some great films. He's probably best remembered for his epics, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, etc., but generally, those biblical movies leave me cold. I liked Charlton's SF efforts from the late '60s and '70s: The Omega Man (much better than Will Smith's version of Matheson's I Am Legend) Soylent Green, and, of course, Planet Of the Apes:



Ta-ra, Chuck.


Return of the Doctor:

Doctor Who returned, and it was okay. Catherine Tate wasn't as annoying as last time, and the return of an old character at the end made me want to stick around to see what happens. The thing that gets me is how a lot of my female friends fancy David Tennant like mad. Besides the criminal jealousy this instils in me, I still think it's wrong that women should fancy the Doctor. When I was a kid, the Doctor was Tom Baker! Hardly a sex god. I don't remember my mother rushing to finish in the kitchen so she could rush in and swoon over him, anyway. Generally, all the Doctors have been a bit funny-looking. It goes against all tradition for women (or men, for that matter) to have a crush on Doctor Who. Actually, it goes against tradition to have women interested in SF in the first place!
(Not that I'm saying that it's a bad thing, by the way. It just tends to be a certain type of male that's really into SF. I don't know, one minute I rail against the stereotyping of Brummies, then I go and stereotype all SF fans. I know I'm a hypocrite, but as a Brummie nerd, it's just another reason for everyone to dislike me!)

That's all for this update. More from me soon, I promise!