Annotations - When You Fall

The Girl On The Netherley Bus is a poem (currently unfinished) about either Marge, Sarah, Fliss or all three, written by a Roger McGough style Mersey Beat poet about a girl he falls in love with on a bus. I felt that I had to include it here to ensure that no-one thought that my unflattering portrait of a middle aged poet was a dig at my fine co-author after Sweet & Fitting...

Joni - Joni Mitchell, the prototypical wailing witch who spawned an endless stream of twee, oh-so-earnest singer/songwriters from the late 60s onwards.

Bill Hicks - The single greatest stand up comedian of all time, famous for dying tragically young and donating all of his best material (unwittingly) to Dennis Leary.

One Day Like This - By Elbow. Great song, absolutley hypnotic video which suggests that you can find a kernel of joy in even the most crushing of jobs. Still waiting to see the Golf Sale guys in Oxford Street trying this.

Minnie, Mickey, Adolf and Eva - A bizarre night in with the Mouse family and their good friends the Hitlers. I'm not aware of any such picture existing, but perhaps in DW there's an issue of Air Pirates Funnies that never saw print over here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Pirates

Going Underground - A collection of interviews with notable undergorund cartoonists, culled from the pages of Full Bleed. The title of course also references the single by The Jam.

Portmeirion - Where am I? In the Village. What do you want? Information. You won't get it! By hook or by crook, we will...

No other great references from here to the end. Appearances from the Silver Star, Elliot and the Majister Templi and a very messy break up (and knowing what lead to it and how it plays in to the wider tragedy made it extremely difficult to write, which is why it wound up late).

But the title has a whole different level of meaning to DW and to these young ladies in particular. It is, of course, a line from the one and only Bill "Compo" Owen in the classic WWII movie Carve Her Name With Pride. There are some pieces out there which inform and shape DW, and then there's Virginia McKenna as Violette Szabo, running around war torn France in her tweed suit, Felicity Makeshift incarnate. In the space of about 90 minutes, she goes from working on the perfume counter to languishing in a concentration camp, from picking up a French Foreign Legion soldier at random in Hyde Park to running a team of resistance fighters against the Nazis in Rouen, and from a giggling, reserved English Rose (well, half French anyway) to a hard-as-nails, karate chopping, sten gun waving, torture resisting minx. It's a truly inspirational movie about the limitless resources within even the most unimposing people, and a testament to a true wartime heroine, and in DW terms, it has the whole armed females, fake identity, recreation of self, life during wartime vibe to it, and it has an amzing mix of comedy, terror and tragedy.

And best of all, it has Compo teaching Judo, flinging himself all over the place and reminding his cadets that if you' have to fall, get it right. Violette Szabo did, and I think Ari will too.