Haha. I wonder how many parents recognise this scenario, nicely illustrated by Dave Engledow:
As Alice Bee learns to hone her bargaining skills, the ratio of nutrition to bribes has gotten completely out of balance.
Regular readers may recognise Dave and Alice Bee from the excellent World’s Best Father calendar post. Amazingly, it appears that she is still alive, despite her Dad’s best efforts. 🙂
P.S. Somewhat amazingly, my kids actually LIKE broccoli… Who knew that sort of thing happened?
It’s probably just full on exhaustion, coupled with the disbelief of what actually occurred last night, but I’m not really able to function today. That said, we did take the opportunity to enjoy a childless meander back from Rocking the Daisies. And I’m back home in one piece, so it can’t be that bad.
Suffice to say, Skunk Anansie’s performance last night comprehensively knocked the Manic Street Preachers’ 2003 Glastonbury set from its comfortable spot on the throne of Best Gig I’ve Been To Land.
Being right down at the front is always a bonus, and I was ready to be impressed after dreary Alt-J and the zany warm-up from The Hives. But Skin and the boys made it extra special, with a breathtakingly energetic and interactive performance, including her standing on my shoulders and holding my hand – this one here, goddammit! [holds up left hand] – while she belted out Weak.
I went back 15 years in an instant.
There was stage diving (some organised, most not so much), there was power and presence, and there was even some classic rock’n’roll violence as Skin ended the band’s one year tour by putting her microphone stand through the drum kit after their final song.
The gaggle of disbelieving road crew gathered round the damaged kit pointing and taking cellphone pictures afterwards suggested that it was a wholly impromptu and unexpected act.
This morning, I woke up with this in the room:
A piece of memorabilia that I will certainly cherish and quite possibly frame.
If you look carefully, you can even make out the print of Skin’s studded silver boot. Sadly, having checked, there’s no such print on my jacket, but I’ve still got the memories.
I Hope You Get To Meet Your Hero they sang; last night, I kinda think I did.
Because you can’t have enough about riots on your blog in any given week.
This is nice: The London Riot Re-enactment Society. And yes, we all remember the “recent” riots there, but London has a history of civil disturbance and the LRRS wants to recreate those moments for posterity. And fun.
The first of these notorious dates was Wat Tyler’s Peasants’ Revolt way back in 1381, and would – entirely accurately – be re-enacted as follows:
100 000 re-enactors dressed as peasants angry about the imposition of poll tax (and other concerns such as the fact that they had no rights) will march from Kent and occupy London for two days, opening all the prisons and ransacking the Tower and Lambeth Palace and demolishing Savoy Palace completely (this part will be easy as it isn’t there), throwing looted treasure into the Thames and beheading judges and lawyers. In a dramatic climax which will take place at Smithfield a re-enactor dressed as the 14 year old King Richard II will meet a re-enactor dressed as Wat Tyler, who will then be murdered by a re-enactor dressed as the mayor.
Sounds like posterity. And fun. But the numbers and the practicalities will make things difficult to organise. Fortunately, by doing away with some of the rules practiced by some other re-enactment societies, the red tape can be reduced.
A knowledge of historical costume and weaponry AND some experience of rioting is the ideal combination for a LRRS member, but members can join with knowledge of one, or the other, or neither. After all, many participants in the riots that we are re-enacting had not a clue what they were up to, and we want historical accuracy, do we not? Neither will we, like some re-enactment societies, impose strict rules against the consumption of alcohol. Most of the top riots involve a bit of drinking. If, for example, you are involved in a re-enactment of the Gordon riots and you are very good at acting drunk for days on end, then feel free to just drink water, but if you think that only gin will do the trick, then drink gin, and we won’t ask where you got it from.
And why stop at re-enacting riots that have actually happened? Why limit yourself in that manner?
We could re-enact riots that haven’t happened yet. Or ones that might never happen.
We could re-enact riots that so far exist only in books or films.
The LRRS is full of excellent, innovative ideas in order to preserve London’s fascinating history and I’m hoping that I’ll be lucky enough to take part in a full-scale re-enactment next time I’m visiting the homeland.
I have no idea where this came from or whom I should be crediting, but I thought that it was very clever:
Obviously, drawing or writing on other people’s things is very naughty, no matter what font you choose to employ.
UPDATE: OK, according to a Facebook commenter, we need to thank Banksy for this. Thanks, Dr F. And… er… Banksy.
Sadly, it’s all too late. The Rhinoceros Party of Canada became extinct in 1993. Not due to excessive poaching to supply any lucrative South East Asian market, but probably simply down to a lack of votes.
South Africa has 19 new political parties, all vying for your vote ahead of next years elections and with great names like the Bolsheviks Party of SA and the Nehemiah Liberation Christian Party. I’M SURE THEY’LL DO JUST BRILLIANTLY NEXT APRIL.
But amazingly, we don’t have a Rhinoceros Party. And even if we did, it wouldn’t really be as good as the Canadian Rhinoceros Party (RIP). Because they wouldn’t have brilliant policies like a promise to repeal the law of gravity, putting the national debt on Visa and declaring war on Belgium, along with the rather more typical political promise of “promising to keep none of our promises.”
Yet some of these are really good ideas.
Yes, this was a comedic parody party, made up of artists and poets, and yet they polled almost 2.5% of the vote in a couple of elections in the 1980s. That’s almost 30 times as much as our local comedy party, The Cape Party got in their last outing.
How emboerresing.
Go and visit that wikipedia page, because they had many other wonderful ideas that could surely be adapted to our local political and geographical landscape to make South Africa a better place for us all to be.
Until election time, celery and sidewalks. Thank you. Good night.