It’s a question that I keep asking myself. At the outset, I used to draw for a living. It was generally a collaborative sort of thing; in short, I was a commercial artist with a bent for large noses. I’ve drawn a lot of stuff, and generally, I was asked to do it for money, so I got lucky. Later, I was asked for ideas on what to draw, so although collaborative, I sort of got more authorship, if you want to use a fancy name for it. I came up with some of the odd ideas all by myself. So the reason why then was to pay the mortgage and live, and generally it went well. I was a professional cartoonist. Never in the Premier League, but taking the odd visit there, before being relegated to lower leagues, a bit of a Bolton Wanderer if you want to continue the football analogy. I’m a bit non-league now, a Wycombe Wanderer perhaps, or Accrington United, that’s Accrington without the Stanley.

Then there was a time when I left the game almost completely, by getting a proper job which paid every month as a print salesman. I’ve retired from those ‘drawing every day’ years, but never retired from match day deadlines and the training.

Since retiring from print, I’ve taken other options.

I’ve always taken photographs, and from these images I’ve dipped into landscapes. Generally, these have been line drawings, so not a million miles from the commercial work. I get bursts of enthusiasm; it’s an untreatable condition, as is this blog, one of my early enthusiasms. My recent drawings, if I think about it, are an attempt to celebrate the area where I live and some other places that I’ve visited on holiday.

Now that they have made the process almost idiot proof, I also put together websites, two of my own, like this one you’re reading and this one. The latter shows off my landscapes, photographs, and prints, as well as the work of some friends and people whose work I like. Not many people go there, so do please take a look.

I volunteer for these people by doing their website. They do healthy digging and weeding, and I take photos of them doing such things, a great group of people and one of them is a cartoonist. Who’d have thought it? Two cartoonists with a tree allergy. Take a look at his work; he’s a few leagues above me.

Books. I’ve done a few, too few to mention, but I will. There’s the one about a cross-dressing Ostrich Jockey written by Mike Doyle, and there are three children’s books in the Henry Mouse series written by Andy Harden. Did the drawings for these and published the books on Amazon. I’m working on another with Andy about an Electric Rudolf, but it hasn’t taken off yet, it’s sort of run out of battery power.

I’m keen on kukry, that’s the way my mum used to say cookery. Here again, it’s not the Premier League, but it is climbing up the table. My signature dish? Beef and Guinness, simple recipe: get some beef, fry some onions add Guiness and ignore it in an oven for a few hours after warning the national Grid that you’ll be wanting some regular power for quite a while. Guinness does all the work here, do not reach for any herbs, or what the Americans call erbs, why can’t they pronounce the h?

I did a short painting course last year, and I’m dipping into that too in the New Year. It’s a whole new world. I’ll post the odd picture.

So why do all this stuff? Well. apart from gardening, I’d end up looking bleakly into the middle distance, or worse, watching daytime television.

Here are some of my best images from last year: