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As we were getting on the train to come home Ailz passed me a free copy of the Evening Standard, The headline was about some Tory MP who has been disobliging about Muslims and had the whip removed (it always amuses me that having the whip removed is seen as punishment) and how the Tories mustn't let the backwash split the party. Is the Standard a Tory rag? 'Course it is. I put it down on the seat beside me and paid it no further mind.
My father used to bring the Standard home with him in the days when he commuted and it was still a proper newspaper, Tory of course but all I cared about was the cartoons. From 1954 to 1962 (or something like that) the premier cartoon strip in the Standard was Billy the Bee.
Billy was a bee who had adventures. He wore an RAF cap and had a sidekick called Bumble. They looked like this
When Billy was discontinued Modesty Blaise stepped into his slot. Modesty was a human female who had adventures. She wore a cat suit open down the front and had a sidecick called Willy Garvin who was a little bit Michael Caine only even more rugged.
They looked like this....
Billy was the past, innocent and pining after WWII, Modesty was the future. Modesty had a lot to do, I now think, with moulding my emergent sexuality. Modesty is still a cult figure. Billy is hardly remembered at all.
Back to the train....
When you travel with a wheelchair they put you in the space at the end of the carriage where the toilets are. The toilets are frequently out of commission. On the trip back down from London all of them were. The guard explained thet they'd run out of water. People were using them all the same- because they had to. Travelling by train in the UK in the 2020s is an adventure....
I look out the window, I play spider solitaire, I size up my fellow travellers. On the way up to London there was a blind man with a dog, on the way back down there was a young woman knitting a woolly hat. She stood throughout the journey, leaning against the partition, while her ungallant boyfriend sat down beside me on my abandoned copy of the Standard....
My father used to bring the Standard home with him in the days when he commuted and it was still a proper newspaper, Tory of course but all I cared about was the cartoons. From 1954 to 1962 (or something like that) the premier cartoon strip in the Standard was Billy the Bee.
Billy was a bee who had adventures. He wore an RAF cap and had a sidekick called Bumble. They looked like this
When Billy was discontinued Modesty Blaise stepped into his slot. Modesty was a human female who had adventures. She wore a cat suit open down the front and had a sidecick called Willy Garvin who was a little bit Michael Caine only even more rugged.
They looked like this....
Billy was the past, innocent and pining after WWII, Modesty was the future. Modesty had a lot to do, I now think, with moulding my emergent sexuality. Modesty is still a cult figure. Billy is hardly remembered at all.
Back to the train....
When you travel with a wheelchair they put you in the space at the end of the carriage where the toilets are. The toilets are frequently out of commission. On the trip back down from London all of them were. The guard explained thet they'd run out of water. People were using them all the same- because they had to. Travelling by train in the UK in the 2020s is an adventure....
I look out the window, I play spider solitaire, I size up my fellow travellers. On the way up to London there was a blind man with a dog, on the way back down there was a young woman knitting a woolly hat. She stood throughout the journey, leaning against the partition, while her ungallant boyfriend sat down beside me on my abandoned copy of the Standard....
