Scarecrow.

Darth Gummidge., originally uploaded by mithering.

To get the kids out of their Mum's hair yesterday afternoon I took them up the road to a pub with a play area. (Yes. I know). The pub is in a village called Simister and it appeared that they had been having some sort of Best Scarecrow competion. Going by his rosette, this fella impressed the judges and won first prize. He was big as well.

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.

The Book I Read - Turn The Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco by Peter Shapiro.

I'm cheating slightly here as I'm only a hundred or so pages into this, but it's all good so far. Ticks lots of boxes for me; index - tick, footnotes - tick, bibliography - tick, discography - tick, only £3 from Fopp - tickety tick. It's wide-ranging, all-encompassing and for Doctor Who fans of A Certain Vintage features Whoberfan (and composer of the K-9 and Company theme music) Ian Levine in a prominent role. Best of all, though, was the revelation that there was a disco/high-NRG cover of this:



Which, given the double entendre implicit in the title, is not surprising. Listen for the 'guitar' break in the cover.

Sorry For Laughing.

Only two posts on this blog this month, so please treat this snak rock gem as an apology.

Pictures of Matchstick Men VII.

Saw this dirty little bugger last week when in town with The Kids. They loved him. Mainly because he has 'his nuggets' out.

Man or astro-man? - Reversal of Polarity

They are, most definitely, out there. The playing of the 'double bass' on this is brilliant. A band full of entertainers. I hope their reconfigured line-up gets somewhere near Manchester very soon.

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).