Cartoon Power

Cartoon Power ©

By Michael Casey

We just watched the Lorex film again, it’s really good fun with a message thrown in too. Cartoons both entertain and inform us, they are sweets for the mind, I hope when I write I’m writing cartoons for your mind too. Or at least leading you up the garden path as little Joan once said to me, but once you are up the garden path I hope you do laugh.

Cartoons are big oversized adjectives if you like, they make something small much much bigger and distorted. In 1970 I started my first year at grammar school, it was then that I started the “torture” that is called Latin. I did 5 years of Latin, so I know all about “torture” so immediately you have a  cartoon in your head of me being tortured by a teacher in Roman attire. If you have no imagination just think of George Clooney in his latest film.

In fact the 1^st Latin teacher was called Little Caesar by my brother’s form a few years ahead of mine. He was of short stature like the Speaker in the House of Commons, but like him he had much power.

Our Latin teacher could shout till his face was as red as a tomato, so even though he was small, he was feared.  He reeked of Brut and had steel heels on his shoes. The Speaker of the Houses of Parliament doesn’t have to shout like that, he can just use mace, or have I misunderstood what they mean about the power of the Mace in Parliament?

Either way I hope you all have a cartoon in your head now, of my Latin teacher and of the Speaker in the Houses of Parliament. I should add I do really like Speaker Bercow, he is a great man, even if he sends me an autograph with an explanation of the Mace, scribbled on the back. However you Americans out there will no doubt keep your own cartoon in your mind, forget a gavel those English take no rubbish from anybody, mace man, mace man.

Which brings me on to my 2^nd Latin teacher, Mr Proctor, and you can make your own jokes up about his name, but it will explain just how difficult Latin was, you can imagine your own analogy. Over a 2 hour lesson with a break for oxygen in the middle, 1^st 2 periods on a Tuesday I think, he explained the Ablative Absolute, which only Boris Jonson could possibly explain nowadays.

Although Boris might say, the People tired by the EU decided to tell them to sling their hook. In our Latin lesson it was the Greeks tired by the War, they gave up, or maybe it was they started to break plates, rather than wash them.

So I’ve not really spoken of cartoons at all, but I hope as you listen to your nanny read this, or mistress whatever your social status allows you, well I hope you are listening to cartoons appear in your mind, and all without the use of alcohol, or stimulants, whatever your social status allows.

Another trick Mr Proctor did was ask us to close our eyes and use our imagination, in this way he explained adjectives. So I want any readers out there to hold their nanny or mistress, depending on your social status, or if you are an M.P. to wave your Order Paper at the Speaker of the House, or if you are in a Chinese takeaway just to smell the duck and pancakes being prepared. Sorry for that sentence, I was just feeling hungry, anyway can everybody close their eyes.

Think of a car, any car you like, then think of a big car, then a think of a big red car, then a big red car with a bell on, and ladders too. So you may have started with a Skoda, or a Rolls Royce, depending on your social status. Then a big car may have been an estate car where you first made out with the nanny, depending on your social status, but don’t tell the wife, or the 2^nd mistress. I just added that sentence to see if you were paying attention, this is Radio after all.

When RED is added it always becomes a sports car, or the 92 bus, depending on your social status. With bells and ladder you end up with a fire engine. So you have just leant the power of adjectives, thanks to Mr Proctor.

And what of cartoons? They are fun and if I get it right when I present something to you they are cartoons made with my words.   

 hope you liked this yesterday was a pain day...