Millie week 76: Mon 17 - Sat 22 Feb 1992

Responding to the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, back in the days when it was automatically assumed that anyone British would be no good at sports.

'The wrong sort of snow' line is one that has plagued British railways ever since 1991, when it tried to make an excuse for its usual inability to predict the onset of winter with the excuse that its trains couldn't move because the snow that has fallen was of the wrong type. To be honest, just for once, they were correct - it was a very rare type of powder snow that Britain's damp climate usually ensures we never receive - but by this time no-one was willing to believe them. 'The wrong type of snow' has since become a byword for lame excuses. We're all waiting for George Osborne to blame his triple dip recession on 'the wrong sort of economy'.

The last strip succinctly explains why I always wear slip-ons.

That was the year that was

2012 was a year that was fantastic and miserable at the same time.

On the fantastic side, we had a Jubilee that exceeded all expectations, followed by on Olympics* and a Paralympics that were so good we all thought we'd been magically transported to another country. Locally, Hastings broke the record for most Pirates in one place at the same time, the Jerwood gallery opened, The Hastleon's Oliver was a huge box-office success and Keane played a blinder of a set in a concert just behind my back garden.

On the miserable side it started raining on January 1st and hasn't stopped yet. My work load appears to have doubled but my income definitely hasn't. Smudge died, and Gizmo's kidneys have packed up and he's not responding to treatment so he's not going to last much longer. (Though it must be said, he's baffling the vet - he has so much urea in his system he should be dead by now, but apart from the fact he drinks water by the bucket, pees it out by the flagon and smells faintly of pee, you'd never know there was anything wrong with him.) The BBC is imploding, the press isn't. And George Osborne is about to invent the Triple-Dip recession, at about the same time as the Republicans are forcing the US over the fiscal cliff with their childish intransigence. (Honestly, triple-dip is a word that shouldn't be heard outside of an ice cream parlour.)

I'm playing with Osborne's excuses for his economic illiteracy. The past few excuses he's used for the ecomomy performing worse than expected have been 'a cold winter', 'a wet spring', 'Christmas' and 'The Royal Wedding'. When he uses 'The Eurovision Song Contest' as an excuse we'll know he's finally lost it completely.

* They're over - it's safe to use the O word again.

Queen Smudge

Dedicated to the real Smudge, who died on Sunday.

Smudge was the kitten who chose me when I came round to visit her litter. There were two female blue and white cats and one hen pecked all-blue male. Smudge saw me and climbed up my trouser legs and up my jumper to say hello. I knew I was going to be hers from that point onwards. And that's how it remained. Linda says I had a special smile I only reserved for Smudge, and I guess that's true, she was always a daddy's girl, and she had me wrapped around her little paw.

She'll be greatly missed, but she'll live on to boss her brother around in this strip. May she bring laughter to other people's lives in the same way she brought joy to mine. And whenever you see a wall, think of her.

My original notes for today: There's very little surplus Jubilee tat in the shops but Sainsbury's and John Lewis are awash in unsold Olympics stuff, which only now has started to reach the sort of price where you would ever consider buying it. But only if you're a fan of Olympic fuschia.

Swimming

Of course, there are cats out there that love water. Turkish Vans and Bengals are famed for their swimming. And Gizmo loves to sit on the edge of the bath whenever  I'm having a shower and allows himself to get covered in the fine spray.

Kickboxing

However, in the semi finals, Scrumpy had to fight a kangaroo...

I got rhythm

What you can't see in the finished version of this strip is the little mound of Tippex where I kept on spelling Rhythmic incorrectly. I'm not sure I've got it right even now. However, if you're feeling brave, 'Rhythm' is a killer word to use when playing hangman.

High Jump

Time for a catchup, I think. First of all, you've probably noticed that the format of the Smith Blog has changed somewhat. I'm now using Blogger's 'dynamic' system. It's taken a bit of getting used to, but I've decided I rather like it. It means that the posts themselves need to be set in a rather boring centralised layout to be intelligible, and I wish there was a way to turn off the type justification, as, being a typographer of the Swiss school, I much prefer ragged right setting. But the advantage is that the front page allows you to see all the posts in one go, and that the reader can change the settings on the front page so they can see what the blog looks like in a choice of different formats. Try the options in the menu bar underneath the title - it's currently set at 'Magazine' but some of the others are really neat. I especially like the mosaic - it's impractical for this blog but it looks rather neat.

The other good thing about this format is that my hit rate has rocketed, and most of them appear to be real people, rather than spambots from Russia.

I'm writing this on Tuesday 30th July. The Olympics have started, the opening ceremony was spectacular and Mitt Romney is on his one-man mission to insult the entire world one nation at a time. He's now one Polish joke away from causing an international incident.

And the cats continue to run their own version of the Games, brought to you by Wiskas Dentabits, Unigate Dairies and Tush & Pat's Original Fish Rolls

Long Jump

Memories of the long jump at my old school sports ground. Our sports ground were in a private bit of parkland a mile away from the school, and it tended to be used by dog walkers in the rather well heeled housing estate that had built up next to it. You didn't want to look to closely at what you might find in the sand pit on the long jump, but you definitely needed to give it a good rake before using it.

...and they're off

There is just one subject at the moment. Let the games begin...

Sport for all

Anyone noticed how the more people say they love watching sport, the less likely they are to actually play it? Your average football fan would be hard pressed to get up from the sofa to change the channel back to Sky Sports after he's just sat on the remote with his voluminous arse. Tennis fans also have a tendency to sit in darkened rooms for the entirety of Wimbledon fortnight.

I should speak. I've been glued to the Tour de France for the past three weeks*, but I haven't been on my bike at all this year.

*I am of course, writing this two weeks before publication - so from my current perspective we're only half way through the race and two British riders from Team Sky are first and second respectively... I wonder if we've won yet...

Big Screen

Curry's is the British equivalent of Best Buy, and masters at the selling of totally unnecessary product insurance.

For your security

More on the preparations for the Olympics, which are proving to delight and annoy in equal measures. I'd like to report that the British construction industry has done us proud - all the venues have been built on time and under budget, much to everyones surprise. Not to worry though, the people in charge of transport and security have ensured that the expected British standards of chaos will be adhered to, and have pushed the budget for the games to twice the originally quoted price.

Anti-aircraft missile launchers have been stationed on top of blocks of flats around East London, in order to protect the Olympic Park from the threat of rogue aircraft. No-one has explained exactly how shooting down an aircraft over one of the most heavily populated areas of the city can be in any way described as 'protection', but never mind. I'm sure that once the games actually begin it'll all be worth it.

I don't know why Cockneys say "Lord love a duck' - it's probably rhyming slang, in which case, no further questions, m'lud.

"I'm in a right two and eight" definitely is. Two and eight - bate. Two and eight, two shillings and eight old pennies, translates to 13p in decimal currency, roughly equivalent to the cost of the film of froth on your cup of Starbucks coffee.

I try to pop out for a quiet lunch and THIS happens...

There's an Olympic torch somewhere in the second photo. Can you find it?

Eternal Flame

The Olympic torch has been touring the UK for what seems like the last couple of billion years, and tomorrow it's Hastings' turn to have it.

In fact it's going to be chasing me around the South East of England. In the morning it will be passing through the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells, about thirty yards away from where I work.

I'll be ready for it this time - just before the Jubilee we had a Royal visit by the Count and Countess of Wessex (or, as they're known around here, Prince Edward and the barmaid from the pub in Brenchley) and I never noticed as they turned up on the print day for two magazines I work on.

Then, in the evening, it will reach Hastings, where it will be relayed along the seafront, and after a few speeches by local dignitaries and a concert by Rizzle Kicks (no, me neither) it will be kept overnight on The Stade, the ancient fishing beach. Odds on, someone will try to nick the eternal flame and sell it on eBay.

This has certainly been a barbeque summer. Barbeques attract rain clouds in England in the same way trailer parks attract tornadoes in the US, and it's been raining non-stop since Easter.

A few guest stars in today's cartoon. Can you spot Mike Pike and Alonzo P Thurgermeyer in the crowd? Millie and Gemma (in the test versions I drew as a pitch for the Daily Mirror) are also there - Millie's in the pink shirt, and Gemma's to her right.