...Spot the difference.

Spot the difference.

One of these scenes is the open day we've been running today.
The other has ten or more differences.

Who ever spots all of them first wins a pickled egg.

...outragous boasting

When asked "Are the fish biting?..."

...six months on.

Ive just looked back & discovered Ive been doing this site for six months now.
It only seems like half a year.
So far , so good , so what?

...brain science.

...from a gentle hint.

Proof this cartooning deal is indeed not "Rocket surgery".

,but then what do I know I'm just a chickenless head.

...small biting insects

Todays scribble & possible captions :

a) "The next night it was back, & this time it had a knife."
b) "Bobby just knew this was gonna sting"
c) "Bobby suddenly regretted leaving the night light on"
d) "Bobby was not convinced his mosquito net was going to repel it this time"

If any one has any ideas let me know.

...school dinners

So I have one of those days where I loose track of what I was doing & when I get back to it loose enthusiasm to carry on with it.

Five minutes into my lunch break a colleuge comes and sits beside me & proceeds to ramble on through project calculations without the slightest "excuse me"
So being too polite I loose yet another lunch hour.
Must learn to be obnoxious and rude to people.

So like Roger, no eating in class for me today.

...fierce animals

& before he could stop himself Simon had drawn a second cartoon in a day.

...tell tale captions.

Todays scribble.

...low level thoughts

To function in any way at all at the moment I need to lay down.
On Saterday for the first time this season I took a sailing course on the water for about 8 hours.
Despite what my head tells me, Iv'e just realised I'm not 23 anymore.
Bits of me still ache & Im unfit to be described as thinking clearly
Sunday I became a Godparent for the second time.
My face still aches from grinning.

To quote Douglas Adams, "I feel like a military academy......Bits of me keep passing out"

...Supprise parties.

Ok, I'd say this one is about 14 years old, but never had a propper caption,
If you would like to submit a caption I will stick the best on on the scribble & publish.

(This is my way of making up for being lazy today)

...Celtic passtimes

Is it cruel to have a go at our Welsh neighbours,
Well no. Part of my family is Welsh & I feel it's my right, no duty to make fun of them.
(Plus I only had ten minutes to do a quick sketch at lunch today. I shall try harder over the weekend)

...local govenment.

I am at the mercy of a wild, thrashing, mindless beast.
I cannot reason with it, I cannot predict it, I cannot stop it.
On it goes carving its wave of inattentive, thoughtless, witless, unthinking destruction through my life.

I have a problem with my local city council.
I appear to be persicuted because I fall into the catagory of a single, white, tax paying, employed, hetrosexual, educated, male.

For example, last year:

Council : "We are going to install security doors on your flat."
Me : "Oh , why"
Council : "Because of the criminal element about, keep you all nice & safe"
Me : "Erm, er , but iv'e lived here 7 years & not even heard a raised voice."
Council : "yes, criminal element, keep you all nice & safe."
Me : "What about the other implication, the lack of ventilation, fire access, smoke clearance, heat stratification during the summer?, How are the postman , paperboy and milkman going to deliver?"
Me : "I know a fair bit about building regulations , fire access & smoke ventilation you know"
Council : "Criminal element, keep you nice & safe."
Me : "Erm.?"
Me : "Er, How are the postman , paperboy and milkman going to deliver again?"
Council : "Oh the door will be left open so they can make deliveries during the day"
Me : "When theres no one about & this criminal element is also, erm busy at work?"
Council : " Yes, nice & safe , deliveries not problem, make your own ventilation arangements , fire & smoke no problem"
Me "Oh."
Council : "criminals..., nice & safe."
Council : "You'll need to stay at home while we carry out the works of course"
Me : "Pardon !"
Council : "Yes , at home during the week, well make arrangements for our workmen to come between these dates."
Me : "I do work, I mean full time, during the week !"
Council : "It's settled then. We'll make arrangements"
Me : " ? "
Council : "Oh that will be £1600-00 please"
Me : " Wha the **** do you ******** think I ******* well ***** ***** **** ******** ** you **** !!!"

and so on.

So this week they come back :

Council : "We've turned your door entry system off"
Me : " Oh ?"
Council : "Yes , turned it off for 10 days"
Me : " Oh , err, why?"
Council : "As a policy we need to replace the entry key fobs. As our tennents move in and out key fobs get lost so we are going to re issue"
Me : "Ok"
Me : "Just pop it through the door or in the post that will be fine."
Council : "Sorry , can't do that"
Me : "Erm. why?"
Council : "Policy, security"
Me : "Right , ok. what then"
Council : "You must come down to City Hall, bring identification & sign them out"
Me : "Incovenient,but Ok I'll see you Saterday"
Council : "We are not open weekends sir, our hours are 8:45am to 5pm Monday to Friday"
Me : "I do work, I mean full time, during the week ! 8am til 6pm"
Me : "Can we not make other arrangements ?"
Council "We could make arrangements at your local area office"
Me : "They open at weekends?"
Council : "Hours are 8:45am to 5pm Monday to Friday"
Me: "Oh...."
Council : "Oh.....we shut that office this year sir, sorry"
Council : "Can you make an effort and take some time off work sir."
Me : "No I ******* can't"
Council : " "
Me : "So where do we stand then ?, I can't make it to you when you are open"
Council "Policy, you must collect personally , bring I.D. & sign them out."
Me : "Oh for ***** sake, I do work, full time, during the week, kind of hard to get time off willy nilly drive all the way into the city center to pick up somthing that I dont't realy want due to a situation youv'e created through not keeping control of you tennents !"
Council "Policy, you must collect personally , bring I.D. & sign them out. or you could send someone to pick them up for you"
Me : " Oh for ****s sake I give up"

...& so I suffer for the councils incompidence over key control of a system that was unrequired and dangerous.

My point being, it's impossible to deal with council or local govenment on a personal basis.
It's not possible, the unbending , impersonal, impractical, unthinking machine gets an idea into its collective mindlessness & executes it with thoughtless inefficiency to the detriment of those whom it is there to serve.

If I were a un-employed, gay ,uneducated, hermaphrodite, I suspect their political correctness department would have flagged up instantly & I would have been paid for the head of the council to personally bring me my new key on a velvet cusion with a troope of naked dancing girls and the promsie of a free holiday in Bali.


Sorry about the rant,
I understand now why people sit on tall building and take pot shots at govenment workers with high powered sniper rifles.

...counting sheep

The devil made me do it !,
Littledevilworks in strange ways.

...criminal minds.

Ah, back after the break.

In order to make this blog a bit more inter-active I'm going to leave this cartoon caption free & invite anyone reading to come up with a suitable comment to go below it.
The best one , I'll add & republish.

Feel free to slander sheep or Aussies, but I'll have nothing nasty said about zombies.

My first caption was going to be:

"It turned out the brains of the outfit was the sheep."

I would welcome any ideas.

...school daze

This is a typical situation from my school days.
Practical jokes , japes, horseplay & tomfoolary.
Andy had his bike politely & carfully dismantled, (I mean every single nut and bolt) & hung on the school gate.
Fortunately he saw the funny side of this.....
...the first two times.

Andy, if by some random act you ever read this, I apologise.

...idle hands doodle

Not sure whether it's just my hands that are idle tonight or whether it's all of me.
It was the start of evening racing tonight at my sailing club.
I did'nt have the enthusiasm to go and enter.
So iv'e bobed and drifted around at home aimlessly.
Hate wasting time. Grrr.

...Toastie

Ok, poor taste.

I was awoken this morning, about 3 am by a loud crack outside my window.
The sound of wood snapping. Followed by another, & another too close together for someone to be doing it.
It dawned on me slowly & by the time I smelled the smoke the crackes were joined by a couple of voices outside.
This is one of few times Iv'e regreted not owning a telephone, how ever by the time I threw some clothes on & gone out to see if the others in the flats were out, two fire tenders drew up & sorted the blaze out.
It was a fair size, luckily mostly out side in a porch area, but everyone was ok.

Dont know what happened yet, I did not go back home last night, & not yet today. So we'll see soon.

So I was mulling it over today. The above shows just how my mind wanders off subject & how much of an attention spa.......ooo look ! , somthing shinny.

...being grounded

According to my mother being grounded did'nt work on me.
She could not send me to my rom , because I liked being alone in my room.
She could not take stuff away , because I was not materialistic.
...anyway I turned out normal. Maybe.

...blind dates

There are those who say the first stupid thing that comes in to their mind.
Then theres me, who does it for the fun of it.

(er....the above it not autobiographical)

...dawn of the unemployable

"With sound advise under his cap and a new enthusiasm in his staggered stride, George went on to a successful career in politics."

There was not enough rom to put all the occupations I wanted to ,but I can re uses this cartoon for so many jobs in the future & issue it as required.

This zombie thing has got to stop, although Im starting to think Zombie sheep may have some potential.

...zombie

The humble Zombie, so much potential.
The teenager, so little.
The parent, so.....

...little things that make babies cry.

Evil Ted.
I think most things make babies cry, but Im sure to baby some of the toys thrust in thier faces must look pretty odd.

Anyway this was inspired by a comment made by Julia Wertz about missing out seeing a baby bear while camping.
The words 'bear & baby' stuck in my head.
Julias stuff is well, well worth checking out www.fartparty.org

...the lucky escape.

Another reason not to go into a church. You are just plain likely to get eaten.

I suppose thats not fair, Im sure they don't eat those out side the congregation........just the babies. (Grins)
Which leads me onto my thoughts to day while drawing.
Ok, I'm a confirmed agnostic. I've no problem with people having beliefs in any god, devine nature and/or major/minor deity that they choose. I can't. Simple as that. I do have a little jealousy inside for the people that can have these beliefs.
Any way I would think it hypocritical of myself to get involved with any goings on within the church. Maybe me being daft, but there you go. I don't go into churches & churches don't bother me, every one wins.
(Yet I live in a very small city that has over 50 of them within it's old walls and two cathederals, go figure).

So why later this month have I agreed to be a Godfther?......agian.

Little Emma, is one year old this month. Born the dayafter I came out of surgery last year.
She's the second Daughter of my to best friends. Helen & I were practically in the wards next to each other.
Last time Helen had real problems that nearly killed her, Abigale was also not too good for a while.
So second time round I guess I was apprehensive for them.
The day Richard walked in, drained & grining with good news was a good day for me also. I helped me recover.
I'm sure Helens' beliefs helped her.

So for this and many other reasons I'm happy to put aside my points of veiw and take part in this christening.
I've explained previously to them that I'm not going to be much cop at supporting the spritul welfare of Abbie or Emma , but I believe in the priciple behind the post of a godparent, so does this make me a hypocrit?

...one is not amused

Well I did'nt get time to finish this, & sort of lost interest in it too. I lost my thread with the disturbance at lunchtime & didnt get accross what I had in my head. Never mind.
I doubt I'll finish this one off, but I willl blog it anyway to teach myself a lesson. How not to do things.

...continued retrospective.

I shall continue my retrospective ( Introspective?) with my old sketch books, simply because I was disturbed at lunch today & my cartoon ruined, so I have nothing to show for myself. (Hey Ho.)

This is a sketch I did some years ago of my elder brother & I as kids, from an old photo of us camping in Derbyshire. I love the photo, I'm not sure there have been that many of us both together since. Never mind.

Why spend so much time drawing an old photo?
Now this seems kind of pointless now, I could scan the photo and filter it and come up with the same result. Ok there would be less imperfections. It would take minuites insted of the few hours with some pencils, but then I would have missed the fun of doing it.

I stopped drawing some years ago & for the life of me I can't remember or explain why. It's fun. It's relaxing. I can only equate it to playing music. I can get lost in it. Absorbed.

These last few months Ive started cartooning again for the first time in years, suprised myself that my style had changed. I keep telling my self I shall start drawing again. Start painting again maybe.
I hope I will. Finding time at present is not easy.
My sudden lust for life last year has me throwing myself at all sorts of things Iv'e not done for years, or have taken up or am committing to.
Arhg, I have a head full of things to do at the moment.

Right , enough of that , I must get back to maiming sheep.

...retrospective

This is my way of lazy blogging, Ive been mending boats all day & can't really be bothered to pick up a biro.
Having a scim through my mothers book shelf the other day I found some of my old school sketch books.
I sort of studied art as a teen.
Sort of.
By this I mean I took art in my sixth form & then promptly skipped every class for next two years.
(Oh how I pissed my tutor off when I pass my A level.) ( oh & how he pissed me off when he sent my course work off in an exebition & never returned it.)
I wasnt popular with him anyway, because I drew silly cartoons. Not the Pollock like, expressive, random stuff he favoured & I could not get my 'super mature' mind around. Anyway the feeling was mutual. Plus he had a beard so should not have been trusted.
However I will for ever be grateful to my other art tutor, A lady by the name of Bedford, who took me for my figure & life drawing class. Which I absolutely loved. A) becuase she gave me exactly the opposite of which my senior tutor did not, encouragement & enthusiasm. Didn't matter if I was not great. A simple thing that I have remembered & now try to pass on to my sailing students. B) I let me study the pretty girls who skipped PE & had to model for us.

I digress, I found some of my old sketch books. The sketch above is I suppose a Micheal Whealan period when I was about 17.

Consider this a self portrait, not the chap up front , but the chap top right, in the tower waiting to get burned.