A Little Less Banky

According to their TV adverts Barclays are launching a great new gimmick.

Personalized credit cards.

That’s right. Anyone with a camera or a hooky copy of Adobe Photoshop can design their own picture or graphic to be printed onto their Barclays credit card which they can then use in any store, restaurant or Heritage site in the country if not the entire world. Apparently, Barclay’s idea is to be “a little less banky”.

A-effing-mazing.

Being of a puerile bent, my mind instantly leapt at the potential for comedic mayhem that I could unleash onto my favourite unsuspecting store cashiers. A credit card with my middle-finger, enlarged by enforced perspective, erupting in eye-watering 3D as my gurning face grins lasciviously behind it. Yeah, swipe that shop clerk! Or maybe something a bit more satirical… me dressed up as a stereotypical crook – black and white striped jersey and black eye-mask, hauling a bag of swag over my shoulder. How much for my weekly shop, Mr Tesco? Daylight robbery? You betcha! Or even better… the ultimate social commentary. We’ve all heard of Christmas party goers photocopying their bum-cracks during office revels. Well, that’s small fry and amateurish compared to your very own credit card proudly displaying your cranked open bum cheeks below the MasterCard icon. Yeah, I’ll take some cash back on that please, Mr Cashier. Worth every frigging penny!

I even went so far as to mock up some initial designs and break out my digital camera. I even thought about acquiring a “back, sack and crack” but figured you could take suffering for your art a little bit too far.

In the end my little comedy ship ran aground before it even left the port (kind of like the Mary Rose only without the overblown Tudor ego weighing it down). It appears Barclays, utter killjoys that they are, have stipulated a few “image guidelines”. Here they are in all their full unbroken-down glory (my additions are in italics):

 

 

1. You must own the image or have the permission of the image owner to use it. (yeah, der)

2. If your image includes another person, you must have their consent to use it. (ditto)

3. The image you choose for your card must not contain any of the following:

• Trademarks or company names – eg, images marked with ® or ™ signs (so Jedi but not Star Wars)
• Images or text protected by copyright – eg, images marked with © or other watermarks or notations (no quotes from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• Slogans, tag lines, branding, marketing or promotional products, services or images of companies (does that include “McBollocks”?)
•  Images of, or the name or nickname of, celebrities, musicians, sportspersons, entertainers, public figures, film stars, cartoon characters, members of the royal family or other famous people (bang goes my Paul Daniels’ “you’ll like this but not” a lot idea)
• Contact information – eg, telephone numbers, URLs, Facebook and Twitter usernames account numbers, addresses or email addresses (a major blow to call-girls everywhere and I can’t even poke the checkout girl)
• Political statements or images relating to ethnicity or religion (so much for my “Jesus, that’s expensive!” idea)
• Images of flags, except for the Union Jack/UK flag, St George’s Cross/English flag, St Andrew’s Cross/Scottish flag, The Red Dragon/Welsh flag and St Patrick’s Saltire/Northern Irish flag. If any of these are used, they can only be images of the original national flags and must not be edited, cropped or have any additional art work or writing on them (what about the Jolly Roger – is that not OK?)
• Images, signs, symbols or text relating to money, currency, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, gangs, hatred, graffiti, betting, gambling, or financial products and services (what? banking generally)
• Provocative, lewd or sexual images or content (that’s 95% of images on the internet ruled out)
• Nudity (does that include animals?)
• Offensive material – eg, images, signs, symbols or text relating to violence, death, injury, racism, cruelty, profanity, obscenity, weapons, firearms, ammunition or terrorism (that’s all references to the armed forces ruled out)
• Anti-social or obscene behaviour, or socially unacceptable groups (so sober pacifist tramps are OK?)
• Content where drinking, being drunk, smoking or gambling is the focus (the Great British social scene down the pan)
• Text, unless benign and in the English language (no interesting quotes from Chaucer)
• Any image that might reflect poorly or might engender hostility toward company brands, including MasterCard®, Visa® or Barclays (that’s my bumhole right out of the equation then)
• Any reference to the Olympic Games, World Cup or any other international branded event (no candid shots of the Ladies’ Bowls Tournament)
• Reference to any bank, building society or other monetary institution (so much for my “HSBC is great” idea and I guess the Mafia is out too?)
• Weapons, unless in a ceremonial context (what if I kill someone during a twenty-one gun salute?)

Right. Basically this rules out any idea that I have already had and / or any idea that I am ever going to have. I pretty much guarantee it. Apart from one. The word BORING in very large type spread across the face of the card.

*sigh*

Yet again, the bankers of this country have stifled creativity, public spending and the potential for economic growth.

Maybe the word “shameful” would be a more suitable design?

Moob Season

25 degrees C and here in the UK the moob flowers are already a-blooming.

Everywhere you look, every vista is positively throbbing with field upon field of rubbery man teats. Everywhere you look. Little pasty ones. Sagging brown ones. Spotty breasty ones. Scary hairy ones. There are even moobs around whose owners have plainly seen Once Were Warriors and have impregnated their guy-jugs with ink in various manly designs. Once Were Warriors? Once Did Woodwork more like.

What is it about the British psyche that produces this almost Pavlovian display of undisplayable flesh? Why do our blokes think that the world wants to see their sweat smeared flesh every time the sun comes out? It’s like there is no shame. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just  a few blokes who actually worked out every now and then. I mean it would still be annoying and unnecessary but you’d think, OK, they’re ripped, they’ve got a reason to show off. But no. The human toasting-racks do it too. The tin-ribs. And also the manmoths. The guys with guts so big and chest hair so black and glistening it looks like a miniature slagheap is avalanching down their naval.

The sun comes out and suddenly every guy thinks he is an Adonis. Plainly the need to get a tan outweighs the need to be buff and trim.

And I know I’m a hypocrite. I’m not complaining about the skirts on women getting shorter or the tops getting skimpier. I know there is a double standard here. But skirts the width of triage tags aside, women still tend to keep a sense of decorum. They still cover up more than they show. In a weird kind of way I wonder if these men view their own bodies as less sexually potent as that of women and therefore there is less of a public indecency issue if they flounce their boy-nips about? As long as a guy keeps his gristle missile stashed safely away in its silo everything else is fair game.

But is it? Am I the only one who shakes his head and tuts at this ill advised exhibition of drab flesh? I mean, this isn’t corn-fed chicken we’re talking here. It’s beer-and-fag fed cock. We’re talking the kind of form normally only seen on Embarrassing Bodies. Do other countries share this phenomenon? I’m aware that you can usually spot an Englishman abroad in a hot country because he will be the only guy running around topless and red as a lobster whilst complaining that no matter where he goes he can’t shift the smell of undercooked hamburger and BO.

Maybe there’s some kind of macho thing that I’m missing out on here? Some kind of mating ritual akin to peacocks shaking their tales and Lyre Birds mimicking the sounds of chainsaws cutting through IKEA tables? Maybe these guys garner so much female interest as their lad-baps dandle in the breeze that it’s worth the inevitable sunburn and melanoma infestations later in life? I mean, a legover is still a legover, right? And what woman doesn’t want to have the outer skin of her lover left imprinted upon her after he has finished his love administrations? Everybody loves a peeler. They never quite leave you.

So. In case you are wondering. It is hot outside today. Finally. It is hot in the UK. But I’m keeping covered up. I’m wearing my (to quote Rigby from Rising Damp) ‘harvest festivals’ (all is safely gathered in).  My bod is for my wife alone. I mean to stay pale and interesting.

Moob season it might be... but for my perfectly formed nips it is definitely forever Autumn.

(Though I may issue photographs on request.)

Strapline

Straplines and folds are important.

They are important in life (particularly if you plan any nude sunbathing) and they are doubly important in marketing (where they mean totally different things).

It doesn't matter whether it's a poster, a flier, an advertizing leaflet or even a web site.

You need to get the important stuff above the strapline. Above the fold. With a web site it is good practise not to force your prosepective customer to scroll down too much. People don't like it. It is tiresome. Carpel tunnel syndrome, etc, and all those other health problems that regularly afflict couch potatoes (e.g. swollen right wrists).

Get the exciting stuff up there at the top. Right up where people can see it. All the sexy stuff needs to be there in pole position - the glossy photos, the amazing once-in-a-lifetime prices, the bogof offers, the shiny teeth, the perky ice-cube hardened breasts of your advertizing model (doubly important if the model happens to be female).

People shouldn't have to scroll downwards, or unfold a sheet of A4 to get to the point of what you are trying to sell.

Doubly important is where you place your banner headline.

I cannot stress this enough.

Take a look at the photo above. I scanned this advertizing flier into my computer yesterday exactly as I pulled it from the envelope. It illustrates perfectly the point I am trying to make.

Now. I know what it is supposed to say. Suite Clearance Event.

But that fold... occurring where it does.

When I first saw it, I could have sworn blind the U in suite was an H...

And, yes, when I opened it further I realized that, yes indeed, it should have been an H.

Tits and teeth, people. Tits and teeth.

The Stripper

I think I’d be less amazed if it was more rare. Because then it would make more sense to me. But the fact that it happens with such mundane regularity is what disturbs me the most.

I mean, who loses an item of clothing? Who leaves the house, goes about their business in town and then gets home again and says, “Oh buggerations! I seem to have mislaid my coat / jacket / trousers / left shoe in the street?”

Because I’m not talking about leaving things on the bus or in the office or in the library or in the car park at the back of Sainsbury’s late on a Saturday night.

I’m talking about mislaying things in the street. On the pavement.

And it doesn’t just happen in Leamington Spa; it happens all over the place. Certain types of people – people whose genetic make-up and IQ are as yet unknown to me – manage to lose the clothing from off their bodies and not actually notice that anything is missing.

How? How is that even possible?

I mean, I was walking home yesterday and I came across a discarded jumper on the pavement. It wasn’t there the day before and looked reasonably clean. This in itself had me shaking my head and wondering how someone could lose that from about their person and not notice. But there was more. Ten yards further along there was a jacket. A decent looking jacket. Also discarded. I realize I am making a connection here that I cannot prove but I bet the two items of clothing had one common denominator: the same owner.

In the past I have also come across lone shoes – trainers, boots, high heels. All singular in their singularity. How can someone lose one shoe and not notice?

Two I can understand. You’re in high heels and being chased by the police (you are a transvestite thief, OK?) and it’s just easier to run without your gait being compromised by 6 inch stilettos... so you discard them to aid your getaway. But why get rid of one and keep the other?

It doesn’t make sense.

Discarded baby clothes I can understand too. I know how this works. You’re pushing young Quentin around in his Maclaren buggy and you’re so busy keeping an eye out for rogue cars, rogue pedestrians, rogue rottweilers – any one of whom could be about to make a beeline for little Quentin – that you fail to notice said Quentin hoofing his mitts, his shoes and the cardigan your mother knitted for him out of the pushchair and into the street. By the time you get home you’re too frazzled to go back and look for them and that cardigan was a bloody embarrassment anyway.

But a pair of men’s trousers?

I have genuinely found such an item of clothing discarded around my local town.

Was someone debagged on a stag night? It’s possible. But given the absence of shaving cream and novelty marital aids in the surrounding area (and believe me I looked) it seems unlikely. Was there a sudden and violent heat wave that prompted someone to whip off all their clothes in a delirium of dehydration like that poor Arab fella in Lawrence of Arabia (yes, I know, they were all poor Arab fellas)? In the UK? In summertime? I think not!

So all I can surmise is that in every street, in every town in the UK, there is someone with a genetic imperative to strip off. To strip naked and shake their tassels into the startled faces of the X12 bus queue.

I’d like to think it was someone with the face and body of Keeley Hawes. Sod that. I’d like to think it was Keeley Hawes.

But it isn’t, is it?

No.

It’s Mr Bertram Hardcastle from no. 47 Middleclass Close with his ruptured hernia, his man-boobs, his asthma nebulizer from Boots The Chemist and his cornbeef cankles.

The one man in the country who should remain fully clothed at all times.

People, next time you find some discarded clothes in the street, beware and be very, very afraid.

Mr Hardcastle might be looking for someone to help remove his G-string with their teeth*.

*Apparently this exercise is rendered less onerous by only breathing in and out through one's mouth.

More Arse Than You Can Shake A Pink Stick At

I’ve taken the unusual step of publishing a picture of a lady’s bottom at the top of this post. It is not meant to be sexist or gratuitous. It is merely a response to some of the buttock shaped flak that I have received over the last 7 days. Life has been giving me the bum’s rush and I’m not sure how I should be interpreting the message.

Take last week. I’m going about my duties. An undesirable has entered my workplace despite being banned from the building. It falls to me to approach this ne’er-do-well and remind him that his bodily functions and the building wherein I work are not meant to meet. There are reports he has gone into the Gents’ toilets. I go in. There’s no sign of him. I check the Baby Change facilities and find Mr ASBO with his back to me, his trousers and boxers slumped around his ankles like Jayne Torville around Christopher Dean’s ice skates, his arse hanging out like something unspeakable in a Turkish butcher’s shop window and his gooseberries in the sink being washed with the hand soap.

It ain’t a pretty sight.

It’s one arse too many.

I asked him to leave. He got mouthy and shirty (after he hastily got trousery) but his previous nekkidness had one positive effect: it is impossible to feel cowed by someone when you have seen their hairy bum cheeks.

And then take last night. I’m walking home from college after another Sign Language class. I pass the park. I hear rowdy male singing coming from the bandstand. “Here we go, here we go, here we go-o...” Oh good, I think to myself, drunken footballers... Though I was not aware there was a match on tonight. I can make out about 15 figures prancing about in the gloom.

And then one of them makes a dash my way. And... Oh God... he is wearing nothing but his socks. He is stark staring bollocknekkid. His gennies are flopping about like one half of a broken deely-bopper. Thankfully as he nears me he is distracted by the bright lights of the pretty cars that are rushing by. He leaps out into the road and begins to ‘air-thrust” at the passing motorists. I half expect the voice of Mr Punch to emerge from his arse saying, “That’s the way to do it!” I’m holding my breath at this point because let’s be honest, erectile tissue + sheet metal travelling at 40mph = airborne ketchup. The result of a collision isn’t going to be successful insemination.

But then Mr Car-Lover changes tactics and begins to race up the road, chasing one of the cars. My last view of him is his buttocks grinding at speed and diminishing in size as his pink fleshy form blurs into the red tail lights of the car in front of him.

Now, I don’t know about you but that is too much male naked arse for a dyed-in-the-wool hetero like me to take in one week. I’m fine with homosexuality but I take no pleasure, sexual or aesthetic, in being presented with the jelly-like realities of the masculine buttock. It don’t float my boat. So what the hell is Life trying to tell me?

As near as I can figure it, I think it’s telling me that it is time for more totty on this here blog. Female totty. Rounded, smooth, female totty. Hence the picture above. I’m not just being as arsehole, honest. The Universe made me do it. I am merely answering the call. Restoring the balance. Ensuring there is no gender bias.

After all, one buttock deserves another. It’s Nature’s way.

Baps, Craps & Taps

I’m loving the new Stats link on my Blogger Dashboard and, judging from the number of posts of a similar nature to this one, so are lots of other bloggers.

Now of course it’s interesting to see which countries people are reading your blog from, which web sites are referring readers to your carefully crafted missives but really what any self respecting blogster / webster wants to know is what people are searching for when Google throws up your pearly white blog before their swinish eyes.

I was imaging some high falutin’ search terms like “leamington novelist”, “people’s poet” or “literary giant”.

But no.

People are coming to my blog via the following keywords:

alice roberts skinny dipping
"debbie does dallas" "2 disc" dvd
naughty why men don’t skinny dip
plumbing"blogspot.com"

And for some strange reason:

aid for constipation in dogs

Basically, as the title of this post suggests, baps, craps and taps.

In fact, the search terms that make reference to Alice Roberts outnumber everything else by an alarming amount and are always and inevitably combined with the words “skinny dipping” or “in a pool naked”. Although one dyslexic Alice Roberts fan wanted to see her skinny diping – not quite sure what that involves but it plainly requires the p to be taken.

It doesn’t take a brainiac to deduce that Alice Roberts is a popular girl and my bloggerly admiration for her drives a huge audience my way with not much effort on my part at all. Hence I’m mentioning her a lot in this post and even posting a picture of her above, complete reprobate and media whore that I am. Come and get her guys; here she is!

So. To conclude. Nobody is here for the fine writing, for elucidation, for philosophizing of the most noble and high minded kind. You’re here for the sex, the innuendo, the eye candy and the canine version of Imodium.

I’m so glad to be of service.

Wild About Skinny Dipping

We like Dr Alice Roberts in my house. Or rather, I like Alice Roberts in my house. My wife, I suspect is a little more ambivalent seeing her as yet another addition to the already overlong list of top television totty pin-ups that I adolescently maintain in my mind to mull over on a rainy day.

But you see, Alice Roberts isn’t just eye candy. She’s intelligent and astute and has a soft gentle voice that was just made for television voiceovers. And she’s a doctor. And a scientist. And she sometimes dyes her hair red and she once showed an X ray (or something) of her clitoris on TV. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: that’s going the extra mile in the name of science, but for me it was a very direct and very personal come-on – there it is, Steve; I’ve shown you where to find it!

So it was with interest that I noted she’d made a documentary for BBC4 on the subject of Wild Swimming. My mind blazed with images of Dr Alice, face and body painted like a tiger, cavorting in a swimming pool alongside other suitably painted animalized ladies... possibly the top ten from my list of top television totty pin-ups... but as I read the Radio Times review I realized it wasn’t going to be like that at all. It was in fact a documentary about swimming, free and unfettered, in the UK’s rivers and waterways. A televisual homage to Roger Deakin who extolled the virtues of wild swimming in his famous book, Waterlog.

And I have to say it was lovely. Although I am not a great swimmer, I can really see the attraction of wild swimming. You are immersed in the natural environment, part of it rather than just a casual observer, you are seeing the natural life of the river and the riverbank the way the wildlife sees it.

At first Alice did her swims in a wetsuit; her rubber enveloped limbs cutting smoothly through the peaty water, but she soon proclaimed that she was missing out on the full sensory experience. She wanted to feel the water upon her skin, moving across her flesh, tingling her all over... my Bunsen burner suddenly pulsed with an intense flame so blue it cracked my petri dish clean in half.

Could she mean...? Did she mean...? I hardly dare whisper the words skinny dipping... for, ahem, I was taking no vicarious titillation from the intimation only wandering how far Dr Alice could push the envelope of respectability whilst honouring the ethos of wild swimming and being at one with nature. After all, I am not the kind of man who watches TV programmes just to get off on occasional glimpses of flesh and suggestive movement, no; I wish to be edified and educated. My higher ambitions illuminated and excited.

As it was, Dr Alice merely meant losing the thermal protection of her wetsuit and swimming in nowt but a one piece bather. Would she be able to take the cold though? The average river temperature in the UK for the time of year she was filming was something like 15 degrees C. Now that’s damned cold. Would there be pokie action? Some of the more uncouth of you were probably thinking. But not I. No. I was pleased they showed how cold Alice was with nothing more than a nice thermal imaging camera borrowed from a passing thermal imaging camera salesman. Look how blue she’s gone. Oh heavens. That water is cold, isn’t it? I do hope they get her warmed up again soon. Nothing to titillate here, folks. All good science.

But as it was, all was not lost on the skinny dipping (purely for scientific research and artistic integrity) issue, for to honour the memory of Roger Deakin Dr Alice decided to conclude the documentary with... gasp... a real totally naked and unrobed skinny dip in an unnamed pool in the Lake District that has by now, I suspect, been religiously sanctified and dedicated to the memory of this great boobs-out event. (Latest news reports state that votive offerings have been left at rocks near to this sacred tarn and candles lit in the trees to better aid the sight-lines of passing binocular users).

And so, as the denouement of this fabulous documentary neared, Dr Alice, proud and curvy in her geeky boffinness, threw off her white fluffy bathrobe with an almost Old Testament defiance, and plunged full length and body long into the cold clear waters of Wordworth’s birthplace. Back and forth she surged, scarcely causing the surface water to ripple or break, a veritable nymph of the pool awaiting the pen of Tennyson to immortalize her forever... while some inept camera man floundered around behind her doing the doggy paddle and only managed to snatch occasional shots of her legs from the mid-thigh down and her arms barely up to her shoulder tops, I mean, really! What kind of shoddy camera work is this? Is this what I pay my TV license for, BBC? She was skinny dipping, for God’s sake. Bloody skinny dipping! Naked in that there pool and you had a ruddy great professional film crew to capture it. Where were they? Did they shove a couple of apprentices behind the cameras or something? Were the real film crew down the pub playing Sudoku or sinking jars of Riggwelter? Sod respectability and the higher cause of science! I feel really let down.

Damn you, BBC!

P.S. In protest at the BBC’s ineptitude I may have to start a new series on this here blog called Steve’s TV Totty Of The Week. This will be a new feature and will probably not be weekly at all but merely dragged out when I have little or nothing else to waffle on about and will feature – you’ve guessed it – my TV Totty Of The Week. Well done, Dr Alice: you have the honour of being the first in a very long and very shallow line of totally self indulgent, sexually gratifying blog posts about TV totty. A round of applause for this week’s winner, please.

I’m A Model And I’m Looking Good

Sometimes, when money is short, you find yourself willing to undertake things – paid work – that you would not normally have ever entertained. You find a sudden flexibility in your pride and your prudishness. A willingness to consider options that normally you would have laughed at. Even scoffed at.

Today, at lunchtime, I became a male model.

In exchange for £10 I allowed a local artist to do whatever she wanted with me for a whole hour. I allowed her to pore over my blushing form, to caress my trembling curves with graphite, to render me intimately in tone and texture upon the naked page.

I wore my leopard-skin Y-fronts especially.

And I am glad to say they were not needed. No people, scrub those unwholesome visions of my rude deflowerment from your eyes. There was nothing at all seedy about the transaction.

I was not required to present my male virility nude, naked or otherwise disrobed. It was merely portrait modelling. Head and shoulders. My clavicles upwards. Not even as far down as my man-boobs (very tight and pert thank you for asking).

And to be honest it was a very pleasant hour indeed.

I shan’t name the artist as that would be unfair but she’s a local Asian lady, well into her eighties, with a passion for painting and drawing. A number of my friends model for her and for £10 an hour and a sandwich it’s the easiest work you’re ever likely to get. To be honest the homemade lunch would have been payment enough. The £10 per session is a lovely bonus and means I can buy myself the odd treat. It’s almost like getting pocket money. Add into that mix fascinating conversation, genuine kindness and a wonderful sense of humour and it’s a damn good way to spend a lunch time.

I shall be going back next week and for as many weeks as the benevolent Mrs X is willing to entertain my visage beneath her immaculately décored roof.

I’d be an idiot not to.

After all, only fools and horses...