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ANOTHER STICKY SITUATION

After reading that news story the other week about a man getting, literally stuck in the toilet, I've discovered that finding (too late) that there's glue on a public loo seat is something of an international hazard, as can be seen from this American news report dated November 2005:

Colorado man sues Home Depot
after he was glued to toilet seat

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - Hardware retailer Home Depot has found itself in a sticky situation, defending a lawsuit filed by a man who said the chain's Louisville, Colo., store ignored his cries for help after he fell victim to a prank - and was glued to a toilet seat.

Bob Dougherty, 57, of Nederland, Colo., said he became stuck to a bathroom toilet seat on which somebody had smeared glue on Oct. 30, 2003 and felt "tremendous panic" when he realized he was stuck.

"They left me there, going through all that stress," Dougherty told the (Boulder) Daily Camera newspaper. "They just let me rot."

His lawsuit, filed Friday said Dougherty was recovering from heart bypass surgery at the time and thought he was having a heart attack. A store employee who heard him calling for help informed the head clerk via radio but the head clerk "believed it to be a hoax," the lawsuit said.

Home Depot spokeswoman, Kathryn Gallagher, said she could not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit said after about 15 minutes, store officials called for an ambulance. Paramedics unbolted the toilet seat and while wheeling a "frightened and humiliated" Dougherty out of the store, he passed out.

The lawsuit said the toilet seat separated from his skin, leaving abrasions.

"This is not Home Depot's fault," he said.

"But I am blaming them for letting me hang in there and just ignoring me."

Bizarrely, the photograph used by Associated Press to illustrate this story appears a little bit too Mediterranean for Boulder, Colorado...


Unless, of course, there were three victims of the fiendish loo-gluer and all of them have had to be similarly unseated.

Or maybe this is the accident site immortalised in that song about a trio of Old Ladies, beginning: "Oh, dear, what can the matter be?"

SNOW SHOW

Writing about the work of cartoonist, Giles, the other day, reminded me that the pictures of his I always loved the best were those featuring snow scenes at which the artist particularly excelled - mainly because he never painted snow scenes, he simply drew or painted the bits where there wasn't snow!

At the opening of The Cartoon Museum's exhibition, Giles - One of the Family, I was looking at the original artwork for this 1956 album cover...




"No artist," I remarked, "has ever equaled Giles' ability to depict snow."

"Except, perhaps," commented Geoffrey Beare, Chairman of The Imaginative Book Illustration Society, "Pieter Bruegel..."

And, of course, he's absolutely right!

See...

The exhibition, Giles - One of the Family continues at The Cartoon Museum until 15 February 2009.

Giles cartoons © British Cartoon Archive & Express Syndication

TAGGED AGAIN

Bela of Slap of the Day has tagged me as follows...

Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal/blog along with these instructions. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST. Tag five other people to do the same.

I'm sure I've been caught with this one before, anyway, this time I grabbed one of the several books that I happen to be simultaneously reading at the moment..

It's entitled Casanova - A Study in Self-Portraiture and is the work of the 19th Century Viennese writer, Stefan Zweig. Here's the relevant passage from page 56...

Instead of wearing sackcloth and ashes, instead of lamenting over a misspent life which is ending in abject poverty and dependence, the toothless old rogue writes with delicious impudence:

"I should regard myself blameworthy if I were rich today. But I have nothing left, I have squandered all my possessions, and that is a great consolation to me."

He has laid up no treasure in heaven, has not refrained from indulging any of his passions out of regard for the dictates of morality or the welfare of his fellows; he has hoarded nothing, either for his own sake or for others'; and from his seventy years nothing is left to him save memories. Even those memories he would not hoard, but, to our good fortune, has squandered them on us. Surely, therefore, we should be the last to complain of his spendthrift ways...

Would we could all be so resignedly philosophic!

I think I've previously tagged several unfortunates with this self-same game, so - this time around - you are all excused! Unless, that is, you are sufficiently sadomasochistic as to do it simply for the hell of it - or simply want to impress us with what you are reading just now!!

FAMILY MATTERS

This last week I renewed my acquaintance with two of Britain's most prolific and gifted cartoonists and two much-loved families.

One of these clans is the Littlehamptons - notably William (8th Earl of Littlehampton, formerly Viscount Draynflete) and his wife Maudie - created by Osbert Lancaster for the 'Pocket Cartoon' on the front page of the Daily Express...


Willie and Maudie shared stardom with a supporting cast of upper-class toffs, Tory types and such politically-incorrect personages as Canon Fontwater, Father O'Bubblegum and Mrs Rajagojollibarmi.


The other tribe are the salt-of-the-earth, working-class Giles family (Grandma, Father, Mother, George, Vera, Ann, Carol, Bridget, Ernie, George Junior and the Twins, Lawrence and Ralph) created by Carl Giles for, once again, the Daily (and also the Sunday) Express.

It's quicker by rail...

The former are currently having an 'at home' in the suitably aristocratic surroundings of The Wallace Collection where they are participating in an exhibition entitled Cartoons and Coronets; while the later have moved in (together with their extended family of dogs, cats, parrots, goldfish and a school-full of unruly youngsters and their cadaverous master, Chalky) to The Cartoon Museum where they've taken over an exhibition called Giles - One of the Family.


At first blush, these two families and their creators would seem to have little or anything in common, but on closer examination one realises that the Littlehamptons and the Gileses are two extremes of social archetypes that have always been popular with our national sense of humour. We smile at Maudie Littlehampton stoically coping with opening her stately home to paying visitors or the accident prone Giles family on an ill-fated day out with the kids at the zoo or the seaside because - being British - we like nothing better than to indulge in a good old self-deprecating laugh at ourselves.

And, in prompting us to laughter, both Lancaster and Giles did so with a total absence of even a shred of maliciousness or vindictiveness. They laughed with us, not at us...

Whilst socially and educationally worlds apart, Osbert Lancaster (Charterhouse and Lincoln College, Oxford) and Carl Giles share many qualities as draughtsmen, notably their architectural skills.

This is ably demonstrated in Lancaster's books such as Pillar to Post - English Architecture without Tears and Here, of all Places - The Pocket lamp of Architecture in which he explored the way we've lived across the centuries is captured with unerring line and a sharp wit...


Whilst Giles (who left school at 14) never wrote any architectural works, buildings and landscapes feature in thousands of his pictures and the composition of his cartoons repeatedly set his cast of comic characters against rural, domestic or industrial backdrops that add verisimilitude to his jokes and show him to be an unquestioned master of his craft...



I always enjoyed Osbert Lancaster's Pocket Cartoons - especially Maudie Littlehampton with her fried-egg eyes...

'Let it ring! Ten-to-one it's just another
leaking Cabinet minister'

...and every year my Dad's Christmas presents always included a Giles annual that I would pore over again and again and always, somehow, managed to hoard despite my mother's constant urging to unload earlier editions to the church jumble sale!

As a Lewis Carroll enthusiast, my all-time favourite annual cover is this one from 1972 in which the Giles family are having a picnic while Grandma seems to have wandered off into Wonderland where she is sharing a pint (as opposed to a cuppa) with the March Hare, the Hatter and the Dormouse...



Cartoons and Coronets continues at The Wallace Collection until 11 January 2009; Giles - One of the Family is on show at The Cartoon Museum until 15 February 2009.

Both exhibitions have excellent accompanying catalogues, but a word to the wise: when visiting these exhibition it is inadvisable to switch your gaze too quickly from the artworks to your fellow visitors or you are likely to get a tad confused... For example, I noticed several not-too-distant cousins of William Littlehampton peering at their relatives on the walls the Wallace Collection exhibition and someone whom I take to have been Vera's sister was scrutinising one or two of Giles drawings in the Cartoon Museum with a particular intensity!

Images: Osbert Lancaster drawings © Anne Lancaster; Giles cartoons © British Cartoon Archive & Express Syndication

SIT TIGHT

I know, I know! There are those who will say that the tone of this blog is - as they say - really going down the tubes!

But it can't be helped: ELAINE sent me the following story from the BBC News website (so it must be true) and I simply have to pass it on - not for any unintentional amusement it might occasion, but as a vital public warning to my readers...

Man is found glued to toilet seat

A man had to be taken to hospital still attached to a steel toilet after super-glue was deliberately smeared on the seat.

Firefighters were unable to free the man and were forced to remove the entire toilet with the man attached.

The 35-year-old was in a public toilet cubicle in Brierley Hill in the West Midlands when he became stuck. He was taken to hospital where doctors had to get into the ambulance before using chemicals to free him.

An ambulance service spokesman said: "He appeared to be none the worse for his ordeal other than being understandably somewhat embarrassed."

It is thought the glue had been smeared on the toilet seat by a prankster.

An ambulance crew and a rapid response vehicle attended the scene just before midday but they were unable to free the man.

"With the help of a local authority and the fire and rescue service, the man was removed from the cubicle still attached to the stainless steel toilet," the spokesman said.

The toilet was later taken back to the public convenience and re-installed.

Minus the glue, hopefully...

THE GUY IN QUESTION

November 5th is - or was in the days of my youth - Guy Fawkes Day.

Overseas and New Readers (and, frankly, anyone under the Age of Thirty) who asks "Whose Day?" might care to bone up on Mr Fawkes and his famous Gunpowder Plot by reading last year's November 5th Sibley-blog.

Having done so, you can then join the rest of us in smiling at this cartoon by the brilliant Simon Pearsall...

Of course, in the case of the real Master Fawkes, having been identified he came to a nasty end, but, true to the code of the martyrs (and forgive me for making a traitor into a bit of a hero) he valiantly made his exit, managing to cheat the axeman of the pleasures of drawing and quartering his body -- at least according to William Harrison Ainsworth's 'historical romance' (how much of each being open to conjecture) Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Treason...

Guy Fawkes now alone remained, and he slowly mounted the scaffold. His foot slipped on the blood-stained boards, and he would have fallen if Topcliffe [the man responsible for torturing Fawkes], who stood near him, had not caught his hand.

A deep silence prevailed as he looked around, and uttered the following words in a clear and distinct voice: "I ask forgiveness of the King and the state for my criminal intention, and trust that my death will wash out my offence."

He then crossed himself and knelt down to pray, after which his cloak and doublet were removed by the executioner's assistant and placed with those of the other conspirators. He made an effort to mount the ladder, but his stiffened limbs refused their office. "Your courage fails you, sneered Topcliffe," laying his hand upon his shoulder. "My strength does," replied Fawkes, sternly regarding him. "Help me up the ladder, and you shall see whether I am afraid to die."

Seeing how matters stood, the executioner who stood by leaning upon his chopper, tendered him his blood stained hand, but Fawkes rejected it with disgust, and exerting all his strength, forced himself up the ladder.


As the hangman adjusted the rope, he observed a singular smile illuminate the features of his victim. "You seem happy," he said. "I am so," replied Fawkes, earnestly, "I see the form of her I loved beckoning me to unfading happiness."

With this, he stretched out his arms and sprang from the ladder. Before his frame was exposed to the executioner's knife life was totally extinct.

On reflection, of course, it does seem rather regrettable that it took such a barbaric event to give the English an excuse to let off a few fireworks once a year...

Images: Cartoon by © Simon Pearsall; Execution of Guy Fawkes by George Cruickshank.

THAT'S PROGRESS

There was a time when the BBC was such a thoroughly well-brought up and gentlemanly establishment that if a programme you had contributed to was being given a second airing, Somebody would have written to you on Corporation notepaper and given you the glad tidings...

Not nowadays! I suppose having to pay Jonathan Ross £6 million a year has meant that they simply can't afford to employ the Somebody any more or, maybe, just can't run to the expense of the notepaper (and postage) involved...

If a BBC contributor wants to keep up with examples of their oeuvre being once again shared with the listening public, they need to rely on the good offices of friends and acquaintances, such as the one who excitedly gripped my arm on Saturday and said, "Congratulations!"

"On what?" I asked.

"On next week's broadcasts!" he continued, his excitement still evident.

"What broadcasts?" I demanded, supposing this particular acquaintance to have confused me (as sometimes happens, albeit fleetingly) with Brian Sewell.

"The Pilgrim's Progress!" he explained, identifying a three-part dramatisation that I made a few years ago of John Bunyan's famous book which has since been gathering dust somewhere in the bowels of Broadcasting House.

This was welcome news, indeed - not from a pecuniary point of view since the sum for two repeats of three sixty-minute episodes (to wit, six hours of broadcasting) will only yield a revenue in the region of £30 - but because I was quite fond of this mini-epic which set Bunyan's well-known allegorical tale of Christian's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City within the context of Bunyan's trial for preaching without a licence and his subsequent imprisonment in Bedford Gaol during which time he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress.

Anton Rogers as Bunyan and Neil Dudgeon as Christian headed a great cast which included Alec McCowen, Anna Massey, Don Warrington, Peter Bowles and Derek Waring.

The Pilgrim's Progress is being broadcast on Radio 7 at various times from today until 6th November.

You'll find the transmission times on this schedule and you can check out this short review from The Independent on Sunday when the dramatization was first broadcast back in 2004. As another reviewer wrote: "Christian or no, it's worth listening to for the light it casts on that period in English history."

And for those of you who share my love of maps, here's one of Christian's pilgrimage from This World to That Which is to Come...

Click to enlarge

Had I possessed the relevant information I would, of course, have marked your present location with an arrow and the legend: YOU ARE HERE!

POLITICAL COMMENT

Oh, dear, more toilet humour, I'm afraid: a no-nonsense British chamber-pot, c 1805, from Brighton Museum...


This Guzunder (because it 'guzunder' the bed) thoughtfully provided users with something to aim at in the form of a bust of Napoleon!

No doubt patriots uttered the word PEREAT ('perish') as they relieved themselves and poor old Boney once again found himself in the merde!

TRICKY TREATS

Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve.

Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades.

From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

Ray Bradbury - The Halloween Tree

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Consult the following (foregoing) Sibley-blogs to read about...

Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day

Halloween and Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes

Linus Van Pelt, The Great Pumpkin and Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree

Ray Bradbury's The Next in Line