Here We Go

Here's my entry for this month's What's the Stupidist Thing you Did This Month? competition:

I went to plug in my phone to recharge it and noticed, not for the first time, that the plug on the phone end of the USB cable was broken.  The little plastic casing had just come apart.  I thought I would fix it.  So, I got some superglue and glued it back together.  Then plugged it into my phone.

An hour later...

I know it's a bit late but I just came across this:

  

The bereft inhabitants of Leeds (population of 750,700, the third largest city in the United Kingdom) turn out to share their collective grief during Thatcher's funeral.

This is horrifying. Well I find it so. Prompted by Doug Savage of Savage Chickens fame saying nice noises about my cartoons in an email to Merriol - she knows all the best people - I went and had a look at the cartoony blog. I was stunned to see that it is TWO years since I did the last cartoon there. I could have sworn it was only matter of a couple months. So I drewed a new one:

I really like the designs on Tesco's own-brand, low-budget basics 'Everyday' range. They're interesting and to me combine just the right mixture of cheapness (subtext: we're not spending a lot of money on the packages) but without being cheap (subtext: the working-class oiks most likely to buy this stuff have no design aesthetic).

 

Maybe the people at Tesco's have noticed that us oiks do have taste - or, more likely, they've noticed that  the middle-classes are broke too and are as likely to be found shopping at Lidl's and Aldi's these days. For whatever reason, they've put some thought into the new look.  Much better than their old designs which did look cheap and tatty.  A real design vacuum.  Hardly inspiring.

And I'm not the only one who likes the newer ones: introducing the Post Office's Everyday Dangerous Goods leaflet:

Not quite sure why you can't send snow through the post but I'm sure Lord MacPostOffice, or Amazon, or  whoever owns it these days have their reasons.

I got away from everything the other day.  Went on one of my round-Scotland, crappy-book-buying days out. (to be honest it's less of a round Scotland than an across Scotland: back and forth, from here to Inverness and back via both sides of  Loch Ness.)  Next time I go I'll have to find a new route as my main  stop, The Shed at Kingusie, is closing.   I loved The Shed.  The books used to be stacked in piles along one side tottering, sometimes mouldering, piles of books in front of a wall of crammed shelves.  For the last  few years used to visit once or twice a year and move the whole lot  - once coming away with 70 trash treasures.  This last trip I brought away a few Penguins for the old long-term obsessive pre-ISBN Penguin collection (currently at some 639 books) and a couple of old Pans for the more recent, and as yet less well defined, obsessive old Pan collection (pre-decimal edition certainly but I'm swithering about including pre-decimal ones with ISBNs...* )

The point of this waffling is that I was reminded, on my travels, of something that happened to me last time I went walkabout like this. I meant to blog it at the time but I never did.  It was one of those moments when I really realised why it is that I love Scotland so much.  I was in a charity shop wanting to buy a couple of very cheap books. (There's a surprise!) I'd never been in the shop before and, as it turned out, I only had a ten pound note on me.  The woman behind the counter opened her till and rummaged around for a couple of moments:

"Are ye sure don't have anything smaller?" she asked. "I'm awfy short of change here."

"No," I replied. "Sorry.  That's all I've got."

She looked at her cash drawer again as if willing a few fivers to appear.

There was an awkward pause.

"Look," I said. "Why don't I just go to the Post Office down the road and get some change?"

"Oh, that would make things easier," she said.

She reached into the drawer. "While you're there you wouldn't mind getting me some change too would you?"

And handed me, a total stranger, a ten pound note.

*Christ! I miss sex.