Modern Graffiti (2)

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‘Apelles the chamberlain ate here most agreeably and had a shag at the same time’.

When excavating the Roman ruins at Herculaneum, archaeologists found the above bit of waggery scrawled on a tavern wall, along with a lot of other crude and/or witty graffiti to boot. Which all goes to prove that graffiti have been around for a long time.

I’ve always enjoyed a bit of cod philosophy that someone’s taken the trouble to inscribe.

Favourites of mine include ‘beware of homosexual limbo dancers’ (at the foot of a toilet cubicle door), and ‘drinking Border Ales is like making love in a punt; it’s fucking close to water’ (on a urinal wall in Wales). And who couldn’t appreciate the legendary ‘Kilroy was here’, to which was added ‘Heisenberg might have been’?.

Oh for the good old days, when graffitists knew their place and largely confined their observations on life to bog walls, contributing something for the rest of us to enjoy while taking a dump.

Nowadays we seem to have an ‘angry brigade’ of very chippy, charmless cunts who scribble their anti-social bile anywhere. Recent examples I’ve spotted on the side of buildings include the amusing ‘Burn the Police’ and ‘Free Housing for All’ (seems like a sound economic model). I also enjoyed ‘All Coppers are Barstards (sic)’, and the hilarious ‘Covid-19 = Capitalism: LO’ (??).

It’s cold and heartless. Where’s the wit or the irony?

Even worse, given the advent of aerosol sprays, graffiti has become a nasty, wide-spread mess. ‘Community artists’ think they’re enhancing the local environment by spraying their gruesome ‘logos’ about. Then you’ve got the Picasso wannabees who deface any bit of wall space with their crazy, lurid murals.

I don’t know, maybe I’m getting old, but I don’t recall graffiti ever being so pervasive, so in your face, as it is now. It used to be a bit of fun. Now it’s just a cretinous eyesore. Fuck it, and the vandals responsible for it.

Nominated by: Ron Knee

102 thoughts on “Modern Graffiti (2)”

  1. Since I left Londinacrap and moved to the deep countryside, I’ve not seen graffiti. Gone are my days of sitting on South West Trains and having to view spray paint ‘tags’ next to the railway line.

    The most poignant graffiti I saw is on the Pantheon in Rome; the bullet marks left by Nazi soldiers. History not only speaks to you when you look at them but you also envisage the soldiers standing outside in their uniforms and shooting their guns to make those marks, presumably for laughs. (For any woke readers, let me just clarify that I do not condone what they did; they defaced a beautiful ancient monument and smeared it with the mark of their evil ideology.)

  2. My mate got detention for writing “Gillan must stay ” on the blackboard at school.

    Sadly for him the no humour deputy head was subbing in that day and went fucking crazy 😀

  3. On a board at Harwich station:
    “Change here for the Continent.”

    Scrawled underneath:
    And Frinton for the incontinent…

  4. I once spent a whole French lesson replicating the album cover for Led Zeppelin Vol. 1, on my desk.
    The teacher was impressed, but gave me a clip round the ear nonetheless.
    ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
    In Oxford, back in the 80’s ….. ‘ Lesbians are everywhere ‘
    I couldn’t find them.
    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
    Unknown, ‘ Who is Armitage and what is Shanking ?

    Get To Fuck ( everywhere )

    • At one end of the Khaosan road (BKok) there is a small bar where the toilet is up above. The walls are covered in graffiti from the US and Aussie troops who had been taking leave in Bangkok from Vietnam. I’m gonna take some photos for posterity whenever I get back in, even though posterity has done fuck all for me.

    • One seen on a few loo roll dispensers in my town toilets years back… Kimberly Clark…. is a wee whore / slut / slag etc

  6. Tramping the country lanes of lincolnshire in the eighties i saw a sign saying ‘to old bolingbroke & mavis enderby (villages) some wag had scrawled underneath ‘ A SON!

  7. Over the years, I have spotted road signs with shotgun damage and bullet holes, which are obviously not from larger calibre rounds😳

  8. Back in the 90’s, a road sign on the approach to Llandudno. ‘ Welcome to Llandudno ‘
    Under which, some wag had written…….
    ‘ Twinned with Demis Roussos ‘
    Good evening.

  9. On a railway bridge in Charlton…….”Langton Must Die.”
    That was there for 30 odd years, might still be there for all I know. Don’t know who Langton was but he’s probably dead by now.
    Mate of mine was a teacher in Sarf Londonstabistan. I’ll say his name was Smith for the purposes of this story. In the boys bogs there was drawn an outline of a full size bloke on the wall. It said “this is Smith….gob on the cunt.” Which they duly did.
    He was proud of that. Showed he was doing a proper job.

    • Maybe Deidre wrote it about love-rat ex-hubby, Ray Langton after he tubbed that Mills & Boon?

  10. Thanks for making my day with some classics guys. Here’s a few of my other favourites which might amuse you…

    Seen around in various bogs over the years;
    *Don’t beam me up Scotty, I’m just taking a sh……………………
    *International Socialists Application Form; please complete fully (Edinburgh Uni)
    *John Wayne Paper; tough, don’t take shit off nobody (scrawled on a roll of awful, shiny Izal bog paper in my school bog)
    *Machine Accepts £1 coins only (Durex vending machine), to which had been added
    *Buy Me and Stop One, and then
    *Insert Baby For Refund

    *Make Love Not War (scrawled on desktop in Edinburgh Uni library), to which had been added
    *Amo Amas Amat It Again

    Lastly, who could forget the priceless dylsexai lures ko?

    • A friend told me about this one, he had seen written on a wall ” My mother made me a homosexual” and underneath some one else had written ” if I give her the wool, will she make me one as well?”

      • I made a Freudian slip
        Oh?
        Yes I meant to ask mother to pass the salt
        And?
        I said “you ruined my entire life you stupid cow”

    • Oh Christ Ron, I remember that shiny bog roll and certainly not fondly! Using it is a skill now consigned to history thank dog. In my early years in field service it fascinated me that in the loos in government premises said shiny bog roll had the message “Government Property” printed on each individual sheet.
      At my old secondary school in the sixties the form room used specifically for geography had a three foot diameter globe suspended from the ceiling which could be raised and lowered on a counterweight pulley system. For all the years I was there it had scrawled across Africa in big letters “CHOCO LAND”. I don’t imagine it’s stillthere.

    • Dyslexia is no laughing matter. A mate of mine died from it. He choked on his own vimto.

      • Well, at least he knows the answer to the age old question “Is there really a Dog?”

  11. I like the finger singing on commercial vans usually done by youngsters coming home from school.
    Last year when driving, I saw one on the rear filthy white van
    ‘White vans matter’

    And saw another finger scrolling on the back of a van
    ‘You think this is dirty
    You should see my wife’
    They make chuckle because at least some youngsters have a sense of wit

    • Oh forgot there was another but it might have been personal
      ‘Wear a mask if this filthy fucker comes to your house’

  12. Superb contributions Mary, arfur and Mecuntry.
    There must be many classics still scrawled on bog walls everywhere.
    Oh, and on the white van efforts, I recall the famous ‘don’t wash me, plant weed’, and of course the classic ‘also available in white’.

    • Remember classic one Ron Knee
      Hopefully some new ones to look forward to when the dreary driving conditions return , as that’s when no van can be clean for more than a couple of days 😀😀

  15. Local school kids sprayed BLM on a wall near my home. I went out at witching hour and sprayed a line on the right of the L.
    Yep it became BUM. Now that’s positive Graffiti in action.

  16. There’s a road in Navenby, Lincs called Clint lane….the local kids join the “L” and “I” together to make it read Cunt Lane….nearly crashed my car first time I saw it.

    • That’s what I love about Lincolnshire a surprise round every corner., and not always a fucking huge tractor pulling 30 tons of shite. I love this place.

  17. Great stuff from all on here. Let me close with a couple of gems from Newcastle bog walls;

    *Jane Whitney takes it up the arse, (to which was added) she also takes Visa

    and this wonderful philosophy of life

    *Eat pies
    Drink Brown
    Smerk tabs
    Shag munters
    Follow the Toon

    Splendid stuff.

  18. What happened to Chad? Remember…..
    ” wot no immigrants ” ” wot no pie keys” ” wot no boat scum” etc etc etc…….

  21. Seen on many a bog wall “The painters work was all in vain the shithouse poet has struck again”.

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