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A sad farewell to Severnprint.

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I’d been a freelance cartoonist for just over 30 years and had sort of passed my ‘sell by’ date. At the time I was 58 years old and my typical day was to get the kids in the car to drive them to school or meet a friend half way, and take his, or he’d take mine. A good arrangement. David was the sales director of Severnprint, a company who I had used to print various things for me and my clients over the years. The company wwas based in Gloucester and had a good well deserved reputation. One morning … Continue reading A sad farewell to Severnprint.

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Montague Burton wouldn’t have had to deal with this sort of thing, but his suitcase wouldn’t have had wheels.

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  Off to Italy for a walking holiday. How to get there. Flight from Heathrow, sounds good but it takes off at some ungodly hour in the early morning. This means spending the night in beautiful downtown Hounslow so tha t one can be early enough to be at the airport at 4.30 in the morning. That’s 4.30 in the morning. When all good people should be ticked up in bed rather than milling about in an airport lounge. Bus to Heathrow the day before was generally uneventful apart from the temperature of the bus, one minute Baltic, the next … Continue reading Montague Burton wouldn’t have had to deal with this sort of thing, but his suitcase wouldn’t have had wheels.

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Schtubbelfrome and Wu liquid

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If, like me, you posses a beard, mine used principally to hide my face, then you will be familiar with this problem. You look into a mirror, not too often, and when you do you spy a little drop of unknown liquid attached to a hair on the beard. This is a schtubbelfrome, Taken from the German it means exactly that, a small gleaming bead of liquid that is visible to the naked eye from some yards away. The viewer is inclined to think that the owner of the schtubbelfrome is well past his sell by date and might have … Continue reading Schtubbelfrome and Wu liquid

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“The star of this movie is the staircase”

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In my illustration/ cartoon career I only ever did one movie poster that was used. I did one or two others that did not get beyond the rough stage. I had the call from a large ad agency to go in and see an art director and writer to discuss the brief. There was none. I’d been invited to see the film in a viewing theatre belonging to the large film company that had made the film and spent a vary enjoyable afternoon laughing a lot at the tale of a house purchase by a young couple, in the States, … Continue reading “The star of this movie is the staircase”

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Graham Thompson : the Master.

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We all take influences in our work, even if you are a cartoonist. I loved the work and easy line of the late Bill Tidy and he also told brilliant jokes. But the person who I think of as the master of his craft, and he tells no jokes, is Graham Thompson. Never heard of him? Well you should have and anyone reading this will now have heard of him. If you are a jig saw fanatic then you may well have done one of his puzzles as he did loads of these later in his career. I came across … Continue reading Graham Thompson : the Master.

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Embellishment, or advertising as it was called in those days.

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“Did you really earn a living from that? Someone once asked me that, and there were many times when I thought someone else might, by the look on their face, ask me the same question again.What the questioners had in common was a look of utter disbelief that I did in fact make a living from drawing cartoons. I made a very good living from my so called skills, especially in the late 70s and 80s. “Will I have heard of you?” was another regular question and after I’d said “No” they would generally follow up with the name of … Continue reading Embellishment, or advertising as it was called in those days.

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I blame Winston Churchill

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Apparently he regularly used a shorthand way of writing notes and messages. This has transmogrified into the now dreadful way that companies or organisations rename themselves. For many years now the local mental health division of the NHS has rebranded itself as “2gether” if you can believe that! For crying out loud, both parts of that are wrong, there’s no such word as gether and 2 is a sodding numeral. I suppose someone at the head of this division had already spent too much on the branding that there was no way of going back. I suppose the thing that … Continue reading I blame Winston Churchill

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Who went to your school?

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Nobody famous as far as I know. When reading reports of famous people or even unknown people attending a particular school, journalists are always looking at where they went to school. When I was at school the only person of note was a high court judge called Edmund Davies ( no relation ) it was sort of suggested that he was someone we could all to aspire to. Pop stars, criminals, writers and other such celebrities are amongst the sort of people who get a a mention, but not by the school only in the news item and sometimes in … Continue reading Who went to your school?

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Speaking to an Egyptian on a Sunday evening.

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My phone and internet provider have changed the landline. It’s now not a landline. Old tech is being phased out. Calls on my landline now come via the internet. It’s progress of a sort I commented to the charming Egyptian woman who was helping me sort out what to plug in where. “From now on” she said, “if you lose the internet you will not be able to make a call over the landline”. In effect I said, I no longer have a landline. After a while getting nowhere she then re-programmed my internet router, and now the phone works … Continue reading Speaking to an Egyptian on a Sunday evening.

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A day out in Huddersfield,bone dust and drama.

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I’m in the frozen north but it’s mildish. I came prepared for draughty railway stations with many layers. Living in the soft south has got me used to mild days in winter, and in the past I’ve been caught out on northern visits. It’s not that the cold is colder, but it is, it’s that there’s generally a wind blowing that gets under any flimsy coat and catches the kidneys. I’ve learnt my lesson and am prepared with layers that come below kidney level. I’m here amongst other reasons to visit my grandsons and to take trip up from near … Continue reading A day out in Huddersfield,bone dust and drama.

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Light years apart…

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8 miles apart but it’s light years really. Cheltenham is very close to Gloucester physically, but light years apart in reality. There are people in Cheltenham who have never ever visited the fine City down the road, thinking it a dark and dangerous place. I actually love Gloucester for all its rather ‘gone at the edges feel’, it’s full of history and the people are grand, and it has in built history in almost every step. Continue reading Light years apart…

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The Siege of Gloucester

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An afternoon out in Gloucester at the Folk of Gloucester a wonderful historic old building and the venue for the launch of a book about the Siege of Gloucester. One or two fine gentlemen and ladies in period costume made the day. There was a talk by the author but I was a bit late for class and missed that out, taking more interest in a flintlock musket, the sort that would have been used in the siege, when Gloucester’s parliamentarians resisted the surrounding forces of the Royalists. I have some sympathy even now as I’m not much of a … Continue reading The Siege of Gloucester

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“Severnprint Sales Office”: The Movie

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Taken some years ago this little movie has surfaced thanks to my former colleague Susan Morton, who was fortunately parked in the corner of our open plan office, so she could get it almost all in there. It gives a bit of a flavour of the bustle in the place when it was busy, which was most of the time. I’m not featured here, which is perhaps a blessing, I assume I was out somewhere looking for work. My colleague Andy, who seemed to think that my using the term “work” for what I did is doing some ‘heavy lifting’ … Continue reading “Severnprint Sales Office”: The Movie