My pictures today show the hellish fate that awaits any Bear Believer who enters the land of the Infidel.


a) decapitalisation with extreme prejudice using a giant CD sliding drawer

b) the body is then laid out for the dogs and crows

c) the body is packaged ready for deportation back to heathen-land post sentence

I got nothin'.
NUFFINK.

You wanna piss?
What’s that?
You wanna piss?
No I don’t ! Thank you.
Whatabout the liedy? She wanna piss?
I’m fine thank you.
You sure? No wanna piss ?
Quite sure.
Well the lovely bambinas, THEY wanna piss!
NO!
SURE they do! They ALWAYS WANNA piss!
Right that’s it…
Pissa cake? They ALWAYS wanna pissa cake. We gorrit all. What kinda piss you wan’?


Bloody foreign waiters!

I’m sitting reading an old Pilot when by the pricking of my thumbs…

‘Dad? Can you “look at” my homework?’

‘Absolument!’ (I live for these times) ‘When’s it due back?’

‘Tomorrow’

(fuck) ‘Get it out then. What is it?’

An eternity as a rucksack is dragged in then rummaged through. The tension’s killing me. Edmund Hillary never had such a backpack.

‘It’s about dividing and percentage.’

‘What’s holding you up with it? Is it crossing down the remainder?’

‘Crossing down the…what’s that?’

‘It’s quite straightforward. I’ll show you, but first, we should return to first principles. Number Theory!’ (a joke)

A shadow of disappointment on the fairest of faces. His hair’s too long and curly for a tenyearold. It’s girlish. Three of his fingernails are black; what’s he been up to? He’s leaning over the table. There is no smell of woodsmoke or petrol or larceny coming off him. He points to the photocopy:

‘Em, we’ve to put the workings in the spaces.’

‘So I see’

‘Without a calculator!’

‘Precisement. That’s as it should be.’

‘Why?’

He’s close enough for me to check the cleanliness of his ear. I bet his pockets are a disgrace. His shoes are.

‘Say you were on a desert island.’

‘That’s what Mrs Wilson said!’

‘Who’s Mrs Wilson?’

‘My teacher.’

‘What, the one with the pony tail?’

‘Why would we do percentage on an island?’

I feel almost compelled to touch the top of his nose where his frowns meet, just to see what it feels like.

‘What happened to Mrs Thompson?’

‘That was last year.’

‘If you were on a desert island there’d be no batteries for a calculator.’

‘It doesn’t need batteries. See? If you put your finger over this bit, it goes off.’

‘What happened to your fingernails?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Say it [the calculator] went down with the ship. What would you do then?’ ( kids really hate a smart ass )

‘Well it’s just…numbers.’

‘Ah yes, you say that, but could you divide 576 oranges by 24 miles per hour?’

‘What?’

‘This first one is 576 divided by 24, so to start, we say: How many times will 24 go into 57?’

‘Em,’

‘Cover the 4 and the 7’

‘Eh?’

His mother comes in and puts on the kettle. I stop the torture. I put on a creepy moaning voice:

‘Oh NO! The Mummy Returns!’ (his favourite film)

‘No’

He’s trying not to laugh, trying to stay cross, but it’s too late. I’ve stood up with my arms out in front of me like a sleepwalker.

‘No!’

I grab his jumper as he runs for the door. I’ve got my arm round his neck in the death grip. I whisper in his clean ear:

‘The death grip of the Pharaoh, little one. Don’t move; your neck might snap.’

He keeps wriggling and sniggering in spite of himself. I know this sort of malarkey between us will end soon. Next year, next week.

‘Ugh, you’ve been smoking! Mum! He’s choking me! Mum!’

‘She cannot help you now.’

Recently, I am more conscious not to take these things too far, so I release him back to the hated homework. But a light bulb has come on over his head. Ping.

‘I’ll get Mum to help me.’

‘What good would she be on a desert island?’

‘She got the bonfire going.’

‘Yeah, with firelighters. I don’t think desert islands have a corner shop. Anyway I meant if you were on the island and she wasn’t.’

‘I’ll ask Mum.’

He smiles in a cheeky victorious way. Total victory. His stuff is scattered everywhere. He turns to plead his case with her. Anyone can see the answers to the first two are roots, ie 24 and 36.

‘You’ll get no help there Sunny Jim! She did history or something; so she says! Go on then, take the path of least resistance! See if I care! You’ll be back!’

Behind his back, Mum gives me The Vics. His lack of numeracy is a shocker.

Broadsword calling Danny Boy, Broadsword calling Danny Boy, come in, over?

Now, let’s say it like Richard Burton.

Right to the back of the room everyone! With me.

Brawd-sawd cawlling Danny Bhoy, Brawd-sawd cawlling Danny Bhoy, come inn, Danny Bhoy.

And rest.

Very good.

See? That’s what makes Where Eagles Dare the crackerjack film it is: the rich Welshness of Richard Burton’s bloodshot eyes. That and Clint Eastwood’s machine gun. The one with the never-ending supply of homing bullets.
The book on the other hand, is torture. One of MacLean’s worst. On paper it’s got it all. Alpine setting, treachery, Germans, even cable cars for God’s sake! You cannot beat a good cable car scene. Just thinking about a cable car scene makes me feel funny, throw in some Germans and I might faint. And yet, and yet, the book is awful. I know, I just read it.
I hid it inside the cover of “Hot Gas Flow And Other After Dinner Tales” by Mayhew [one, long, murdered, darling, later] where were we? Oh yes, where eagles dare the book discuss. Fukkit. The time the cuppa the biscuit I’m off.

Back again (buttered scone and a jammy dodger)

What it needs is some Celtic mysticism along the lines of Sam’s glen of the dead. Imagine, they make it down the mountain, they’ve blown up all the cable cars, shot all the Germans, now they’re in the bus with the snowplough crashing through roadblocks on their way to rendezvous with the escape plane, but they go up the wrong road in the dark, they follow the lighthouse beam thinking it’s a signal, they pass the standing stones…

Now THAT story’s got legs. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?

30 Second Cinema.

Take a film break every day with Dr.(Doccy) Maroon.


The Big Lebowski [cont. perf.]


This aggression will not stand.

The old man told me to take any rug in the house.

It’s a league game, Smoke.

Don’t say people, I’m doing business here.

My wife’s a pain in the ass, she’s always bustin’ my friggin’ haggis.

As Brandt is my witness.

I could be sitting here with just pee stains on my rug.

Brother Shamus.

No Donny, these men are nihilists, nothing to be afraid of.

Two oat sodas Gary.

You may be interested to know that we have a trophy stove. In the same way that Mrs Maroon is a trophy wife even though we’re not married, our stove is a status symbol even though we can’t cook. Just before he put the house on the market, the previous owner installed it. Oh clever clever man. The cynical bastard never thought to fix the medieval wiring or upstairs plumbing. Sod that for a lark.
It’s not like other stoves. For a kick off, it’s English and has its own enamelled inspection man. He comes in a very smart van and wears a tie. You only get what you pay for. Jealous visitors to the kitching studiously avoid looking at it, except those who also have a trophy stove who therefore must remark on it, to show, well you know what I mean. Catholics, Etonians and Oxbridge graduates have a way of telling you within 30 minutes. Same with trophy stoves. It’s called the half hour rule.
To confirm stove ownership, the opening gambit is usually a recipe for something complicated. This never works with us because we never know what she (it’ll be the woman) is talking about. So the man, to save any conjugal abuse in the car on their way home, will come to her aid by getting technical about servicing the inlet manifold regularly. This doesn’t wash with me because I am technical. In fact I have a degree in technical from Cambridge for which I said many rosaries (Let Eton Flourish).
So it’s due an inspection for the good housekeeping seal of approval or something which means I spent last night, FRIDAY night, cleaning it with non abrasive cleaning solutions. Since we are irretrievably working class, we couldn’t have the chimney sweep going next door afterwards saying what clatty middens we were.
“That Mrs Maroon ‘ad ‘arf a pork chop stuck down ‘er diverter plate. Disgrace it was.”
Good lord no. So when he has his tea, Mrs Maroon will scorch some Marks and Sparks all butter shortbread with a blowlamp to pass it off as her own, and I shall know he has done FA because I’ve done it already, using the handy toolkit and spout brushes provided. The kitchen is now a total coup but the stove is ready. We shall eat pot noodles to keep it clean until he’s gone.

They say it might rain Tuesday.

They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard.

You human paraquat!

The airplane has crashed into the mountain.

What a piece of work is a man.

Colin’s been abducted.

The shit’s in the fan.

Yeah by a crocodile or something.

Late night on Watling Street.

Radio Scotland traffic update: a loose tarpaulin on the southbound Forth road bridge which has been causing major delays has now been removed…

Bert Scoggins pressed his heavy boot further into the wooden floor eking every horsepower from his grumbling Bedford. If he could just make the border and the A6 before nightfall. Four tons of tractor parts lashed on the back of his three tonner. Rush job. If the rozzers stopped him now… He peered through the split screen at the bridge up ahead, hypnotised by the wipers and the protesting whine of the crash box straining in third and the thought of Elsie and her tea urn waiting for him in the caff at Shap.

He’d parked overnight in a bombsite just off the Fife ring road and as he slept, a gang of motorcycle thugs employed by a rival haulier had undone all his half hitches, retied his ropes in running sheepshanks and let 2 lb of air out one of his rear wheels into the bargain.
“That’ll sort you out Granddad.” sneered Spike, the gang’s leader, “Right, let’s scarper, we’ll meet at the milkbar on the B672 just before the bypass and then we can do a ton-up down that long straight that runs outside the children’s T.B. and polio hospital.”
“That’ll wake ‘em up!” agreed Snot, revving his BSA Goldstar threateningly.

Now in the grey morning, as his grey lorry stubbornly shoved its way through the grey Scottish weather, Bert, the tough cockney ex-soldier in his ex-army lorry took a woodbine from his flying jacket and smoked it. “Blimey,” he thought, “wind’s getting up.” He never heard the tarpaulin slip its bindings, to be blown off and land catastrophically on the southbound A90 behind him, blocking a major thoroughfare and arterial route vital to the economic wellbeing of the nation.

Commuters on the bridge, panicked by the sight of 10 square yards of green canvas lying silent on the asphalt, have stopped to await emergency instructions. Luckily a dashing engineer, on his way to an important meeting takes command. To the astonishment of onlookers, he ignores the risk of getting oil on his tie and drags the tarpaulin to the side, rolls it up a bit and dumps it over the railing onto the footpath where it will no doubt wrap itself around some poor pedestrian or cyclist and suffocate them to death. As the traffic starts moving again, the dashing engineer is alarmed to see in his mirror, that the tarpaulin comes to life again, rearing up in the wind, shaking its ropes in fury at him, but the wind, ever a fickle mistress, pulls the monster over the side to a watery grave, far, far below.
“Phew!” he thinks. “That’s that.”

250 feet below, the supertanker BP Hapag Lloyd III is making its way down the Forth from Grangemouth with 200 000 tonnes of high octane aviation gasoline for light aircraft and 150 000 tonnes of ethylene gas. The Forth River Pilot has control and is pointing out the normal hazards to the vessel’s master…

Maroon Island 2.

For more than a decade every bit of me was as hard as your elbow. I weighed in at 10 stone 13. (153lbs US). Pristine I was. Solid. If he had seen me, Michelangelo would have smashed up all his statues. And stamina! At the stamina, I was just sublime. I could run with the impala.
So it was around this time one Sunday afternoon that Mrs Maroon and I were reading the aspirational supplements and I found an article on Japanese naked food eating. There’s all these pot ugly Japanese company men in well cut suits and they pay over their horrid filthy money to eat seaweed off the naked skin of some fine-boned mathematics graduate (more often than not with delicate pert breasts). The degradation is so awful on every level you can think of.
The Japanese are pathetic. Oh, on the surface everything’s all neat and tidy, but I wouldn’t mind a look in their washbags. I bet every one is all gungy with old toothpaste tubes and hairy razorblades just like ours. What mingers they are.
So anyway we had a bit of a discussion about all this and the upshot was that I was sent up the street to the shops to get strawberries and a can of Anchor whipped cream. Yep. You’re there ahead of me.
I sometimes worry that today’s young people (who invented sex) get too many of their ideas off the internet. Woe to us if they do; it’ll be the end of love as we know it. We shall be like the beasts of the field, thoughtlessly rutting for status and that most transient of empty pleasures, procreation. We will flip, just like Spock did in that episode where he sat up the tree and played his space-banjo.

So you rode upon a steamer
To the heartland of the summer

That’s the trouble with midweek drink; it gives you such optimism. Our aesthetic bar is lowered. It’s like full five senses beer goggles on steroids. Up to the bathroom for a pee and the scent of toothpaste and face creams and shampoo and so on; it’s so evocative; the world is NOT a bad place, it’s a NICE place, full of nice people, just like us. (If you’re reading this Twenty Major please be assured I would beat you at arm wrestling, left or right. I have the arms of a blacksmith). Then there is the company. No matter who they are or what weird philosophy they follow, they are the best of company for the duration. Under no circumstance shall I betray my own ethos (in all its moral perfection) but I may indulge their flawed beliefs for the hell of it.
I of course, have suddenly become The Wise Seer Of The World. It’s such a privilege, an honour; I must not misuse My Gift. If I come out of this without a fat lip I will have done well. I’m on Torres 10 and Pepsi Max. It tastes better in Spain but who’s counting?
I could snog the face off Fatmammycat right now. I bet she smells really, really good. She’s a great kisser, I just know it. I am a seer.
Don’t fight it baby, we were destined…

And you see a girl’s brown body
Dancing through the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow
Where the sky loves the sea