I published this on here some years ago and sadly my friend Gordon who wrote the book, has since died. A sad loss. I still have my one copy of the book and some very happy memories of working with this grumpy Yorkshireman, who was not quite as grumpy as he seemed.

Events. They get in the way of blethering away on this, but I have been taking the opportunity of a wet day to get this back in some sort of order. This drawing has several lives. It started as a safety drawing for a company of builders over in the East of England. I think they used it on a poster, but it is essentially what to do in case of fire. Or more like: what not to do. DON’T PANIC!

I then used it as the cover drawing on a book project, a collaboration with my good friend Gordon Thorburn, who wrote the magic words for the book which was about people who have these days gone ‘missing’. Called:”Some Missing Persons”, it was a commentary on people who are no longer around like bus conductors, proper landlords in pubs, barbers ( proper ones not these so called hair artists ) and newspaper sellers etc,. I was not ever that keen on the title and would have preferred ” Endangered Species”. You get my drift. We published it ourselves and it did ok, I only have one copy left but we did not print that many. I loved doing it, but like many of my own projects spent far too long on the thing. Gordon’s writing deserved better.

One of the incidental drawings in the book was this one of a tea pot, with cosy. Again something that has almost died out. This drawing inspired by my own woodworking handiwork. I did woodwork at school and my very first project was to make a teapot stand! As I remember my woodworking skills were not the very best but I was keen, my maths let me down and the resulting stand had a 30% list to starboard. I proudly gave the teapot stand to my mother, and she loyally used it for years, carefully not filling the teapot too full to allow for the 30% list, which she chose to ignore. She and I were both uniquely proud of my work. The pot had a 3 and a half cup capacity, she knitted the teapot cosy.