The Bed-Daughter and Some Messy Artists

 from Notebookery 1, where you'll also find the Artist and the Exterminator

 Here's another record of a stepladder-set tale told in my dyed-black days of 2000 or so, this time at shunt's cabaret in its original venue of Arch 12A Bethnal Green, and accompanied by Jeremy Hardingham. I'm so happy to have any record at all of anything Jeremy's done, and of the messes we made in those days. His approach to physical illustration looks – at least from what can be made out in this video – more chaotic than Tom's work on Phonella's Shopping, but no less precise. I also included a tiny bit of footage he took of his flat with my Hi-8 camera as prelude, because I liked the pull out and reveal. 

 Inspiration for The Bed-Daughter probably came from the idea a myth is a real person's life mangled beyond recognition, in this case: the biographies of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera – a potentially souring insight I share only because the floppy-haired twenty-something who originally wrote this would want you to know. The music is by Mouse On Mars.

 Content warning: tobacco use, live flames, hair othering, face shaming, insect powder, mention of nails through extremities, an almost entirely passive female protagonist, and David Rosenberg in a vest. 

 

 

UPDATE: As with the Phonella's Shopping video, I added a transcription to run as subtitles because the sound isn't great, but for some reason both still just play the auto-generated captions when I hit CC. Does anyone have a clue what I'm doing wrong?

Simon and Tom do Phonella's Shopping

from Notebookery 1

 

 Sometime in late 2000 or early 2001 going by my dye job (open auditions were being held for The Pianist) Tom Lyall and I staged one of the stories I'd written in the mountains of Bajardo at a cabaret at Chat's Palace, Hackney. I originally did these storytelling "acts" at Shunt's arch in Bethnal Green, and I might put one or two of those up as well now I'm finally digitising my VHS's. The scare quotes around "act" are just a reaction to my louche mumbling here. No level of video degradation can dim the splendour of Tom's work, even if the capture does little justice to his makeup choices as Phonella. Speaking of degradation, I thought I'd parcel this in a little Hi-8 footage of the region whose actual walk to the shops had inspired it, and I'm very grateful to Kane Parsons' Backrooms for cementing ageing VHS as a now legitimate liminal aesthetic. Enjoy (possibly with subtitles).

Platypus Vobiscum: a Pius Reader

Being further unsorted contributions to the Church of the Cosmic Platypus, salvaged over the course of two seasons working at "Phantom Peak" from Pius' easel in the corner of Old Town, together with illuminations – some by the author – also sundry anonymous annotations (click to embiggen)...

"Platypus Vobiscum. That's how you work the system. When it works, it works. Peace. Peace. Stop saying Peace. Take. For example take a moment. Did you mean Piece? Do you remember the psalm about the jigsaw? He puts pieces in the jigsaw. And he starts with the corners. The jigsaw is the pieces. Pushing can be pulled. Ink can run out. And then come back. Personally hopping about on the track, listening for rumbling. 

Back to the Circle. Start again. Start at the side."

"Well we start there. Stop saying Stop. Leave me be believe me. NOT EVERYTHING IS A CLUE! THERE you are, you naughty little bargain. I'm not saying the gloves are 'off' off, but nobody seems to be wearing gloves. 'I literally just got off my horse.' It is perfectly possible to exist in a state where you can INSTANTLY decide what being – say – this pen feels like. Or the candles. But I don't know you can do it with your eyes closed. Or you would do it differently. The whole concept of 'wrong', in a way, is – Oh I wanted to say 'wrong'. But."

 

"Is any dance a mandatory movement?

Vanity. Vanity. All is vanity. Apart from dressing as an Oompah Loompah.

Mockery is the sincerest form of flattery. No? But mockery just means imitiation.

In spite of its numerous legs and armour, the millipede is not the strongest animal in the pet shop. The strongest animal in the pet shop is the shopkeeper, for they feed the pets."

"The olden times had no eraser. So sometimes the angels would just look like bats. Imagine if angels hated their wings. What works is a piece of man." 

 

"Who was the first to sit down? When we were shrews, did one of us sit down and realise our hands were now free. But they had not the strength to use them. The more shoes I wear, the more I realise how little I understand about shoes. They go up and down with your feet.

But how?

I'm bang on time, and now does Time bang on me. Ribbons. Safer than candles. Three & four & never more."

"This is why old Mister Sleevey is very careful about where he sets up his knockoffables. And a good scribe always knows where the paper ends. 

I met a blogger from some retro land who said 'Two massive kneecaps – nobody knows whose – take up the landing, hairy lean and tanned. I think they might belong to Nerys Hughes, but now I can't remember how this poem originally scanned.' That's all they said. Then, falling on their face – as if to salvage some measure of grace, after such a dwindling finish – they uttered one last 'Thanks' in accents tinnish. But I would not be moved. I stood there still. I mean still like – oh, you know. And moved, as in Not here because they're there now.

All water is a feature. Even ice.

'a' came after 'the' because it changes the subject.

INFECTIOUS"

 

"Ordinarily this is not a forum for factional hoots. Changing one's mind can be be very useful. Two types  – at least – of crossing out (motives for deletion) A mistake or a change of heart."

 

"This is just to say that

I have sold the elephant

foot umbrella stand

Things fall on my back. And the trays are wet. And the shirts we wash are never as clean as the shirts we didn't buy.

Handwriting wasn't always calligraphy. Who wants to learn cursive when you can sprout the sentence separate and friendly. Not formal and exclusive. And when did exclusive become a compliment?"  

"I've drawn a little city. It's looking pretty pretty.

One can imagine the future, and spend all that time grieving.

SINGS: Elbows and kneecaps and drops of brown liquid. Nicknames that hurt like a stone or a stick would. Hairplugs that give you a tickle-y cough. These are some things that I hope will fall off. Hubcaps and breezeblocks and bits of old sofa. Pablo Neruda and Gordon the Gopher.

Happiness is a sense of control."

 

Poem About Nuclear Weapons Written Possibly Before I Knew What Nuclear Weapons Were

NO-ONE RECALLS THAT FATEFUL DAY

WHEN, NOT FROM WATER, WOOD, OR CLAY

THE NUCLEAR MISSILES FROM THEIR BIRTH

HAVE TERRERIZED THE EARTH

OUR PRECIOUS LIVES SWING LEFT AND RIGHT

NOBODY CARES WHO'S WRONG OR RIGHT

THE DESPERATE STRUGGLE OF THE LIVES

OF HUSBANDS, CHILDEN, WIVES

ALL WE DO IS SCREAM AND PROTEST

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN THESE MISSILES ARE PUT TO THE TEST

 

 Happy National Poetry Day! 

 Despite growing up during the Cold War I've no memory of actually ever being particularly scared of a nuclear winter (although I was definitely enjoying the work of artists who were). I can't think of anything else I wrote for school in block capitals either, so this is certainly an outlier. Is it a spoof? I normally only used block caps for comedy. So now I think about it, it might have been a spoof. But then why was it marked? And what kind of corrections are those anyway? No idea what year. I just found it loose in the box. Yes, now I've been living in Notting Hill for a whole year it's time once again to start sorting through the boxes and make sure I just keep the good stuff. 

 Like this:

A small sad sausage sat beside a spider.

A really good day

 An old sketch for a painting of my parents who today received their second, final vaccinations, in a sports hall in Alès two hours' drive away, requiring an Attestation de Déplacement Dérogatoire – or Certificate of Travel Restriction Waiver (for persons residing in departments subject to reinforced measures) – because France is currently under curfew. 

 "A really good day," Mum emailed. "Sun was shining, and the Tramontane Wind of the last few days had lessened" and it wasn't until my sister tweeted her relief that it struck me just how good. 

 I'd been treating this like a census deadline, rather than the granting of immunity to a global pandemic after a year's lockdown, and I hadn't dared give any outcome other than this a second's credit.

 Thank you, Mum and Dad, for staying safe. 

 And thank you to everyone who is staying safe.

"Pooper Man" by Simon, aged 6 or 7

 As with yesterday's untitled Jaws parody, I start out with a straight steal, this time from Mad's "Superduperman!" (viewable here, although our paperback version at home was in black and white, making Lois Pain – far right - far more prominent in the opening splash)...

 

 ... and then I wander off. It's possible nevertheless I was at the height of my creative powers here. I would have had to come up with my own solutions to depicting stuff before I was proficient enough to start copying styles, and both the grizzly robot/monster hybrid and the balding, pot-bellied editor are surprisingly elegant, I think, considering – like the ripples yesterday. I'm also reminded of these fish I drew...

 

 I'm not sure I could design anything so simple and effective now.

 The Tarzan's just background, I think. I still don't really understand muscles. Sorry there was so little poop.

Untitled "Jaws" parody by Simon, aged 6

 Or maybe seven. That's my excuse for the "you're"/"your" confusion. The first page is missing, as you can see, so I don't know now what pun on Jaws I used as a title. The layout's based on paperback reprints of EC's "Mad" which we had around the house, as are some of the panels:

 

  Characters in Mad parodies would occasionally break character to ask "How's your mom, Ed?" I didn't know why*, but it hopefully explains some of what follows. I hadn't seen Jaws, obviously, but I assumed the film followed the plot of King Kong, which Mad had also parodied, (source):

 

 I didn't follow the plot of King Kong either though, because I was six. Clearly I stuff every frame with as much extraneous detail as my felt tips would let me, in the Mad style, but the way I depict things emerging from the water is actually quite minimalist and, I'd even go so far as to say, elegant. I'm pleased. Minimalism and elegance were big in 1980, as were were sharks. I remember, I had a big book that taught me how to draw "sea monsters" in four steps. A shark was a cone with two eyes and gills. It's all coming back now.

 This is too long an introduction for what follows though. Sorry.

 

 

 Did you guess the twist?!

* I've only just now looked up what the line refers to, and it's perfect.

Last night in the quiz I learnt why Vauxhall changed their logo

to this in 2008...

 

from this...

 

 

 

 Apparently it was because everyone had started seeing the face of Olive Oyl. I should probably say I can find no corroboration for this fact online...

 

 

 But I can't unsee it now either.

 

 We also concluded that, despite the myths of Sleipnir and John Carter From Mars, a horse with eight legs won't actually go any faster. In other updates, Disney Plus crashes every time I pause it, the foxes outside seem really pissed off we've left Europe – honestly, they won't shut up – and I've spent the day subconsciously worried everything I sit on will now collapse. How's your 2021 going, gang?

The Annotated "The Empire Strikes Bac" by Simon, aged 9

  Continuing this blog's Star Wars long weekend: One of the things I used to make as a child were unfinished pastiches of Mad Magazine. I'd write and illustrate parodies, articles and little Sergio-Aragonés-type doodles in the margin, just like Mad, but laid out in landscape, because I was using the gum of the notebook to hold the pages together, and that's how they opened. I had definitely read Mad's parody of The Empire Strikes Back (above) by the time I came to make my own. I'd also read the photobook, the behind-the-scenes book, and bought the action figures. I knew the names of the bounty hunters, and what "AT-AT" stood for. I'm just not sure I'd actually seen the film but anyway, knowing all good parodies subtly and hilariously change the name of the title, I began work on "The Empire Stikes Bac" without a "k" below. Exelanto!

 Pithy punchline from C.G.P.O. there. I wouldn't be aware of "Quee-er" as a gay slur until I saw Five Go Mad In Dorset a few years later. And I remember being shamefully aware of how little Pham Shmoelo looked like Harrison Ford, but also quite excited to have accidentally captured the likeness of Jack Lord from Hawaii 5-O. I am pretty merciless in my depiction of Mark Hamill's new nose...

 

 "Fab on" indeed! Frame seven of this page contains the first evidence of me knowing that rude body parts and functions are, in theory a staple of comedy, without actually knowing what any of them are called. I would later learn that an appendix is not rude. Barbara Woodhouse was of course a celebrity dog trainer at the time – television's always been turning out reality stars – but I might have spelt her name wrong. However there seems very little guesswork in the design of either the snow steed, the snow beast or the AT-AT, so I was probably using my own toys as models. I also notice. Nice foreground/background stuff in the frame with the spy droid by the way. Nice gag too. I'm also particularly proud of this next visual gag...

 Another cracking panel seven, politics of course also being a staple of comedy. Dusty Bin's there too, great. Giant nostrils, yep. Puke is in his vest and pants when he gets kicked off the ship because he was definitely wearing a vest on Dagobah in the photobook so I assumed he was doing PE. Which he sort of was. And I've clearly abandoned any hope of making Pham Shmoelo look like Harrison Ford now and am just doubling down on the Jack Lord thing.  Panel two of the next page features another botched bodily function joke: Is Puke farting, sneezing, burping, shitting? No idea...

 "You nerdy jerk!" "Baboons' pants"! What filth was I reading? And why is "a matron" asking for money for seats. Do I mean "usher"? I know jobs have names, again I'm just not quite sure what any of them are. "Your Tallness" is a valid honorific though, and knowing how unpublishable my drawings of Short Round from the The Temple of Doom were, I'm hugely relieved to see how handsome I've made Landoff...

The light sabres here were drawn with a rubber. Now Vader carbon-freezing Solo just to test the kit, was that an actual plot point from the film? Seems weird. There's a little misunderstanding here about who is being fined for not having a driving license, but nothing remotely comic. But I'm really filling these frames with research: Boba Fett, Slave One, Ughnauts. I don't know where I got "I must only use the Force for defense and thought" from, but I applaud the simplicity of itssentiment. It's a good mythos, isn't it, Star Wars, though I still maintain Leia doesn't get nearly enough to do in this one.  Oh, there's a little marginal Aragonés-type doodle coming up top left...

 

 "Michael Foot". Heh.

Gods, Men and Monsters. And Snakes... Oh, and Women!

   For centuries, it seems, the defining characteristic of a gorgon was actually her tusks. This two-and-a-half-thousand year old antefix from the island of Thasos for example doesn't even bother with snakes in the hair. I hadn't realised not having snakes in the hair was an option. I wish I'd known that when I was nine.

 I just assumed you really had to commit to the snakes. I also thought you had to give a gorgon breasts, which as a nine-year-old I would definitely have found harder to draw than snakes; but the Medusa in Clash of the Titans had breasts, and the Medusa on the front cover of my school's copy of Gods, Men and Monsters clearly had breasts, so in the best traditions of Classical Sculpture, room was made. And speaking of grotesque misrepresentations of women from Greek Mythology: my friend and teacher Natalie Haynes has a new book out to set the record straight called Pandora's Jar, which she talks about on a very fun Book Shambles HERE! 

 Here's another misrepresentation: the Pythia at Delphi, showing a lot less skin than Medusa, and surrounded by big, scary Dangermouse eyes in tunnels. I've clearly misunderstood "Pythia" to mean "half-lady-half-python" which it didn't at all. It just meant "priestess". Still it gave me a chance to draw more snakes. And here are more: the giant cobra that apparently guards the Golden Fleece, facing Jason in his Speedos over on the right...

 And one of the heads of the magic deity Hecate up in the centre, whom I have also given hairy legs, knee windows and a nighty. On the bottom left is Medea, single-handedly taking on the bronze giant Talos. Not Jason at all. I'd forgotten this, but Natalie mentions it in the Shambles so I'm happy to see this was also the version I was taught. And fuck it, here's a slime monster.

 Now a plug: On Friday I'll be one of seventy-two actors reading The Odyssey aloud in its entirety on the Jermyn Street Theatre's live stream here. I'll be on around 4pm, I think (after Mark Corrigan's mum!) telling of Odysseus' conversations with ghosts in Hades, including the ghost of Agamemnon who sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia and was in turn murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. "She has poured down shame on her own head," Agamemnon moans, "and on all other women, even good ones." The italics are mine, but I'll be the one reading it so they're staying. Natalie also talks about Agamemnon. She says her next book will be a novel about Medusa. I can't wait.

"My Island" Part Four

 Continuing that story written when I was seven and illustrated when I was eighteen...

 

The streams have bright pink water weeds

 

 

 

 and the fish dazzle your eyes with bright colours of the rainbow.

 

 

 The weather there is sunny all through Atumn and Winter and cold all through Spring and Summer.

 

 

 

 I call it The Isle of Surprises.

 

 That last image was definitely inspired by this.

"My Island" Part Three

 Continuing a story written when I was seven and illustrated when I was eighteen...

 

 As for the plants, they all turn into flying horses with silver hooves, a silver mane and a silver tail,

 

 

  and spend most of their time flying around the moon.

 

 

 

 When they land at sunrise they turn into plants again.

 

 

 

To be concluded...