A friend of mine today sent me a link to the ten best websites to avoid the warring factions and all they stand for. its not good to wallow in the sickness which is enveloping the globe right now, like a fog of death and desperation, it was M, remember him, one of the original members of the Ministry of shrawley Walks ( a brilliant play on the Monty P sketch, and yet no fucker is willing to give me the credit where its due) Anyway, M sent me the links but on this occasion I thought to myself

“No, Count, Don’t do it”

Its all well and good to look at cheerful uplifting website of Cats in washing baskets and the like, but if I don’t like cars then I should probably not get involved. However, M did teach me a valuable lesson today, and that is/was to not be so damn grumpy about the world and try and find the good in things, and in fairness I’ve always been a glass 3/4 full type chap anyway and finding the good in people who actually have real good, good inside of them is a trait I have. I also get cross at incompetence and stupidity, based on my judgement, and my judgement alone. With this i thought i may take us all back to  the Louvre, a few days ago, where the queue for to look at (bad grammar like the idiot kids see) the Mona Lisa, was massive, snaking through those elastic post and strap temporary fences in front of the painting, no glass, and incredibly expensive. It seems that the people queuing were really only there to stand in front of the painting, at a distance dictated by the elastic post and strap fencing probably about 2 years old with points of access at either end. When they reached the painting, they would switch the phone camera into selfie mode (pointing at the subject NOT the object, but it could be the other way round) position themselves in front of the painting with the enigmatic smile and then make that putting thing with their lips which if held for too long leads to saliva leaking out onto their chin and t-shirt, crop top, whatever. By that time I was so fucking cross with these idiots not looking at the painting, which is pretty famous, and in my opinion, not that brilliant, I prefer others. But I understand its not all down to me, the ML is famous for a reason and who am I to stop folk who want to raise their selfie sticked had up towards the light so as they can put the photo of them pre or mid dribble on their Insta profile for a while, and people will say…

“Oh right”

I’m glad we saw it, but we also saw a whole heap of other marvellous stuff, really brightly coloured paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries, loads of Italian Renaissance art which I really don’t like but impressive none the less, but best of all the sculptures from Asia, Oceania, Africa, South America. My favourite; most definitely the Moai from Easter Island, one day i’ll go there, somehow, i’ll see a kidney or a brain possibly. That’s been a dream since I was 14, Thor Heyerdahl, blame him!

So in a spur, a hard to find area of the Louvre was the galleries which offered safe and spacious harbour to the wonderful sculptures of elsewhere and nowhere brought to me at least on the telly by Thor Heyerdahl, Jacques Cousteau and the Cities of Gold (some cartoon in the 80’s) And this is what I saw. And I hope that this will cheer some folk up, or give some respite for a few minutes