EDITORIAL  

THE POWER OF PRINT 

It’s interesting that just after Picasso clapped eyes on the seventeen year old hornbag Marie Therèse Walter he didn’t do a sketch of her like some oily spiv at the Place du Tertre he took her to a bookstore and showed her a book about him. In those innocent times that’d be the ultimate mark of celebrity. And perhaps even now when your average oik worships talentless nonentities like Jade Goody on TV and aspires to be on it themselves there’s still a cachet attached to appearing in print, especially ink on paper which will last a thousand years unlike your Kindle edition which will be unreadable in five. So, humble oik contributors, consider yourself among a potentially immortal elite. You’ve got what Stendhal called a ticket in the lottery. And if you do bump into a modern Marie Therèse just whip out an Oik with your piece in it – you never know.  

Picasso continued to attract hornbags throughout his career although it’s unlikely any of them were impressed by cubism or heads with two eyes on the same side. It’s difficult to image what those girls saw in that pop-eyed, slap-headed, midget multi-millionaire, although a closer look at the feature at the top of Marie’s head in Picasso’s ravishing Dream may give us a clue about what was really on her mind.  

Difficulties with girls is one of our recurring themes . It was the title of one of Kingsley Amis’s novels. Indeed all his novels could have been called that just as all Dostoievski could be Crime and Punishment and all Flaubert could be A Sentimental Education. Ken Champion touches on this topic in George while Kayti Doolittle’s story No Man’s Woman might be, mutatis mutandis, Difficulties With Blokes.  

Elsewhere Tanner and S. Kadison give us two takes on education with Maths Lesson and Let’s Kill the Teacher. Two more complementary stories describe ageing oik shipwrecks: Kenn Taylor’s Lime Street and Tom Kilcourse’s Albert. We welcome Kenn’s scouse injection, a worthy accompaniment to Tanner’s hilarious vignettes from what can seem like another planet - Liverpool. Tom Kilcourse is a classic Manc, even though he now lives in France. Well who can blame him. Today’s paper puts the UK bottom of a list of best places to live while France is at the top.  

Brett Wilson and Dave Birtwistle write characteristically crazy accounts everyday madness. Nigel Ford gives us the final episode of his weird portrayal of a Swedish road repair gang. Scandinavia is what happens when you give a small peasant community a huge area of land and a vast amount of money. Oscar quipped that the USA had gone from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilisation. The Scandies seem to have been always civilized but also slightly mad which is why they treat booze like the work of the devil and go apeshit in the pub as soon as they land anywhere south. No doubt I’m stereotyping from ignorance – but Nigel isn’t; he spends most of his time there and speaks the language, even translates it if you want anything in that line. 

Ray Blyde’s autobiography finishes with chapter 15 of My Life in Print – not so much finishes as peters out – Ray himself, we are happy to report, is far from petering out. Maybe he’ll take up his pen once more and fill in the remaining sixty years.

TANNER

A RUMBLE AND A PATTER

Round about 2 a.m. ish
and I go out into the garden for a quiet smoke
and to watch the moon deflate,
but I can hear everything coming from the main road
a couple of houses across our block,
and it seems there’s quite a gang over there,
they’re chanting ‘ASBO TIL WE DIE !’
and I heard a SMASH of the dull plastic variety,
must’ve just been a bus stop window then,
not anyone’s property really,
and they cheered at this, ‘YEAAAAH!’ and then,
and this is what set the alarm off in my head,
I heard gunshots, four or five
accompanied by some Yank-style whooping and hollering,
maybe just blanks or maybe just a toy gun,
but still they echoed off the early morn
and I heard cars revving like mad,
skidding and screeching,
must’ve been racing them
and a couple of hours later
it was a bit lighter
and just about the only sound I hadn’t heard
was a police siren, which,
to be fair,
would have irritated me too.

All this is why solitude is the only possible
god.

And it’s Brown to Balls. Balls is straining to reach it – too much endogenous growth in the gut area by the look of it. It may get to Miliband D. on the right but he’s been tripped by his brother Miliband E. who’s grinning like an idiot at his brother’s discomfort. But what’s this! It’s Cameron and Clegg coming through the middle! Cameron! Clegg is urging him on “Good show David!” he screeches “If we win this we can celebrate in the shower!”