Up Against The Wall XXVII - Rats Tits!

This was meant to be the Up Against The Wall before last as the one before that reffed the bizarre media this drivel was created in. So, Rats Tits! in tape. Crap, thin tape.

Up Against The Wall XXVI - Your Mum Smok's Dimps / You Smoke Dimps Stop Playing.

From just inside the football/basketball cage in St Mary's Park, Prestwich where I was idling the hot days of April away with The Kids. Dimps, what a beautifully northern word. And for the record, my mum did smoke dimps. Usually on a Thursday when all funds had been exhausted and with Friday's pay day in sight. As it's Prestwich I'm making the logical leap that it was Mark E. Smith who had popped into the park with a sharpie in order to test out some new Fall lyrics.

Up Against The Wall XXV - DAN Shit BREAF.

Illiterate, obscene and insulting it may be, but it is also environmentally friendly. Blasted into the floor-grime of a seedy Prestwich back street by a power-cleaner. I've seen ads created using this method - most recently stencilled ads for FC United's community share scheme - but this is a graffiti first for me. Next up, more rude graffiti, and another unique media used to create it. Thanks to Paul Whositsnexttome for the pic.

Up Against The Wall XXIV - Stop Pickin' Yer Nose.

04022011231[1], originally uploaded by mithering.

In chalk, and possibly part of a longer narrative (see writings below), on a side-door on the old fire station on London Road. All that's missing is '...or your head will cave in.'

Flat-top Fucker.

27012011224, originally uploaded by mithering.

Well, apologies all round for the lack of regular updates here. Many reasons, not all worth going into on here, but they do include new phone not talking properly to Blogger or flickr, newer projects and the system in work not talking properly to Blogger, flickr etc. But, I have managed to create a 'work around', so will now be able to do what I've done in the past and blog from my desk at dinner time. (Home-made hummus butty, since you asked). Speaking of work, the above graffiti appeared on a boarded-up window outside work where everybody stands around smoking. Topical? Yes, because as chance would have it a new temp has started work on the floor above who could well have been the guy in Kirsty MacColl's titular chip shop. I really like the crown on top of the 'i' of Elvis. The King would have loved it. (And just in case you are that temp and you're reading this and thinking of applying a blue suede shoe to my skinny white arse, Flat Top Fucker was a song by Jackknife and I just couldn't resist using it as the title of this post).

Up Against The Wall XV: Louis is a Bum

Louis is a Bum, originally uploaded by mithering.

Barbarism Begins At Home. Written in the dust that gathered on the base of our television by his younger brother, Our Louis becomes the latest victim of pointless, stupid and angry graffiti.

Up Against The Wall XIV: Dick Head iz ur dad!

Dick Head iz ur dad!, originally uploaded by mithering.

I forgot about this! Had to go to Liverpool on business the other week so couldn't breeze into town on The Village Bus, so took the 135 instead. Different bus stop. At this one there's a bus shelter. If you're waiting for The Village Bus there's a bush and a suspiciously-high mound of tarmac to wait on/by. Anyhow, bus shelter had (relatively) fresh graffiti. So here it all is, for your delight and delectation, most juvenile first.

Prestwich is shit? A little unfair, if you ask me. It may not soar to the pretentious heights of whichever south Manchester hell hole is currently overflowing with students, but it has a tidy modesty, a historically-significant mental health facility and my house.



Some times words are enough.

Up Against The Wall XIII: No War Eny More

No War Eny More, originally uploaded by mithering.

Crass have a lot to answer for. Not least encouraging the youth of the Midlands to daub anti-war graffiti along isolated country walls and the substitution of peace signs for the letter 'o'.

Obscene graffiti has been a bit thin on the ground recently. People are either a lot more chilled than in the past or the price of paint has gone up.

Up Against The Wall XII: Tweeness

Hi Windmill, originally uploaded by mithering.

"Hi Windmill" Written on the side of a Wind Turbine, Scout Moor Wind Farm, near Rochdale. A very disappointing site if you want obscene graffiti; the two Turbines we walked up to mainly had people's names scratched or written onto them. That aside, I can thoroughly recommend the short walk up the hill from Owd Betts, an old pub on the A680 between Rochdale and Edenfield, to the turbines themselves as they are massively impressive. Here's a video I shot of them. What you don't get is the eerie, screaming noise they make randomly, every now and then.

Scout Moor Wind Farm

Up Against The Wall XI: You Human Vermin

Human Vermin, originally uploaded by mithering.

Over the past two days I've seen two things lying helpless in the road. Yesterday, as I was walking to work up New Bailey Street, outside Salford Central Station, a pigeon fell from the railway bridge that shrouds the vicinity. It fell as if it had been pushed, stone-like, into a gap in the morning rush hour traffic. On its back, weakly-flapping, helpless to get up. I felt I should do something but knew there was no point. It was dying in some way and that had now been accelerated. I watched as I walked, the traffic just missing the bird, until it became impractical on a busy pavement to keep looking back. Later, I had a lift home and we drove down that way and all that remained of it was a millimetre thin, great coat grey, smudge on the road.

The day before I had been on Deansgate, heading off for some dinner when I heard a cry of pain some way behind me. I'm nosey by nature, so I stopped and looked back to see what it was. Over the road a man had fallen into the road, on his back. People hurried past him. Fortunately, traffic was at a minimum due to the ongoing road works. I headed over to see if I could help. Some more people hurried past, but by the time I got to him somebody else had stopped. The man was having a fit of some sort. He looked lived-in, with scruffy grey hair and could have been homeless or drunk, but how can you tell when somebody is floundering just short of the pavement, eyes rolling back?

"You have to let it pass," my kerbside companion said. I acknowledged this but went into a shop and got them to call an ambulance. Just in case. We weren't doctors.

When I came out a number of people had gathered to help. Somebody was administering basic first aid, so I headed off. What could I do? Thankfully, I didn't feel the need to keep looking back. And when I'd bought what I wanted for dinner and was heading back to work I saw the whole scene had cleared and the usual Deansgate promenade had been restored. No grey smear apparent.

Image for this post was supplied by Renaissance Man and Fall Fan, David Gaffney.

Up Against The Wall X: Merseybeat Special.

Numbnuts, originally uploaded by mithering.

NICE PAINT JOB FUCK NUTS!

Like one of those Ishihara Colour Test plates used to diagnose colour blindness (or Daltonism as we like to call it in Manchester), this one can be difficult to decipher.

Taken somewhere in Liverpool.

Up Against The Wall IX: International Special.

Photo-0027, originally uploaded by mithering.

Spotted yesterday, outside Greggs in Carmarthen, Matin Lewis is a tramp 4 eva. A little bit of Wales which will be forever Salford.

Up Against The Wall VIII: Slates, Slags Etc.

Up Against The Wall VIII: Slates, Slags Etc., originally uploaded by mithering.

"Slags go Prestwich! haha", back seat of The Village Bus.

Male slags...
In the cold nearly old ska Jamaican dawn
Dead publisher's sons
Material hardship pawns
The Beat, Wah! Heat
Male slags...

The first Village Bus of the day runs past the bottom of my street at 7.55, the last one leaves Shudehill Interchange at 17.27. A single fare is more expensive than a single fare on the other buses which get me home, or into town, but a day pass is notably cheaper. Ho, and also Hum, you say, but the good thing about The Village Bus is that there's only one an hour, which takes a lot of the randomness and pain out of journeys into and out of town. I have to be in the Interchange at a twenty-seven minutes past the hour, or waiting on Heywood Road at five-to. Previously, when I took the 135, "Bus of the Stars", I would turn up at a bus stop and wait, sometimes for up to twenty minutes, whereupon one, two or even three would turn up at the same time and stutter into town, picking up and dropping off at virtually every stop along the way.

In more recent times, before I discovered the mono-glory of The Village Bus, I had started getting the 137, the 135's shorter, less glamorous cousin, from a stop near Blackfriar's Bridge. This runs every twenty minutes, which was good for organising my life, but less good when it didn't turn up. Which was often.

Now, I take The Village Bus as far as the site of the old Boddies Brewery cross Great Ducie Street and head onto New Bridge Street to stare at wildlife from the runtish bridge which crosses The Irwell there. It's a fairly deserted spot - most of the activity along there comes from cars heading towards the crofts of car parks - and I've been lucky enough to watch an American Mink climb up and down the bankside vegetation, searching for something or other, herons fishing, fish-jumping and bizarrely, but weirdly appropriately, a moorhen chasing a rat.

Up Against The Wall VII.

Shannon Taylor Dose Not Suck Dick 2009., originally uploaded by mithering.

Shannon Taylor Dose Not Suck Dick 2009.

There's no such thing as bad publicity. Bus Shelter, Chapel Street, Salford.

Up Against The Wall VI.

Prick Me Pussyjack, originally uploaded by mithering.

More surreal crudity. This time from the village of Moira in South Derbyshire. Click on the image for full text. Is it a message for Jack? Is it a message for Pussyjack? Is it a message from Moira herself? In some way it put me in mind of The Scottish Play.

Up Against The Wall V.

Big Giant Poo Stain., originally uploaded by mithering.

Poetry in motion. 'Big Giant Poo Stain'. Just off Swan Street, near The Band on the Wall, Manchester.

Up Against The Wall IV

1 Ball King Dong, Higher Broughton, originally uploaded by mithering.

This particular piece of Salford graffiti is perhaps where my interest in stupid and ineffectual wall-daubings began. From what I remember, it was added in the mid-70s when I lived a couple of streets away. There used to be steps and an opening on the right, so this was a shortcut from home (Wellington Street West) or my maternal grandparents house (Kipling Street) to the papershop or the Chinese Chippy whose backyard is to the left of this image.

There was a 70s porn star, reputed to have a particularly large member, called Long Dong Silver and I've always assumed that this was a joke on that. Although, as with most of the other graffiti I've posted, you have to wonder why somebody went out of their way to paint it on a wall.

When I moved back to Salford in the late 80s it was obscured by wall-climbing plants. For all I knew, it had gone forever. That's the nature of graffiti - 'Victoire Vietnam' on the side of The Manchester Tennis and Racquet Club is slowly slipping away, 'Heath Out!' near the tip the other side of Drinkwater Park has vanished behind brambles for the time being, and 'Anita Hepburn Is A Coppers Nark' has been cleaned up.

Then, about a year ago I was passing the site and saw that the buddleia or ivy or whatever it was had been cleared away. Why, I don't know. Another fan of 1 Ball King Dong desperate for a nostalgia fix? Either way, there it was again, in its full glory. 1 Ball King Dong. I'd been meaning to get a picture of it since then, but the only time I passed it was in the car and I kept forgetting to take the camera, or forgetting to ask the driver to stop, or not having enough time to stop, snap and go get the kids.

Recently, though, I've taken up an interest-free loan from work in order to buy a bike. It's been liberating, and my route of choice into work takes me through my old territory. Down streets I've passed along so many times you could take a swab from them and clone me from the DNA. It was a natural to pop a camera in my bag and head there. There's a locked gate across the bottom of the entry now, so I couldn't get as close as I wanted, but I did manage to squeeze the lens through and get my shot.

Up Against The Wall III

The Singing Raving Tree., originally uploaded by mithering.

Which way is the ACID? That a way... When in Rome, I suppose. Or in this case, when in Heaton Park, Prestwich, simulate LSD usage graffiti style by painting the word ACID sideways on a tree. Works for me.

Up Against The Wall II

W.A.R.R.E.N. F.O.X., originally uploaded by mithering.

More graffiti. And more graffiti from Salford. From behind Maxwell House, Salford University, to be precise. Why was Warren Fox the answer in a game of Hangman played out on one of the many walls of Salford University? Was it a good thing for Warren or a bad thing? And isn't it nice that some of The Youth of Salford (I'm betting it's them rather than students) still play word-guessing games with a pen rather than beating one another to death with Nintendo Wiis?

Pictures of Match Stick Men III

Grafitti Guy, originally uploaded by mithering.

I'd passed this fella a few times as I headed down Back King Street in town, on my way to work, and finally decided to get a picture of him. He's not a blatant rip-off in the way the previous posts of comic art have been, but I like him on a Roy 'Trailer Trash' Tompkins or Kaz level, particularly the attention to detail on his shirt.

Closer scrutiny of the text below reveals a quote from Jubilee by Derek Jarman which, once placed into the giant cardfile known as Google, takes you to Kingdom of Muin . Which appears to be the site of a particularly active set of Glasgow-focussed artschool wackoes.