The cartoonist Bill today has died today. I was always a fan and in his heyday used to occasionally cut out some of his cartoons and paste them in my then scrapbook. Although I sort of drifted into drawing cartoons, and tried to emulate some of the cartoonists I was aware of at the time. The one who I thought was at the top of the game was Bill Tidy. He seemed able to be able to draw anything at great speed and with his brilliant jokes he always managed to draw a smile from me. I thought he was … Continue reading Celebrating Bill Tidy.

My book, in collaboration with my late good friend Gordon Thorburn, is now available on Amazon from here. We first published it ourselves some years ago, and now have the opportunity of getting it out there again. It is also to be serialised in Cotswold Life, so has sprung back to life. I’ve updated it recently too, and there will soon be a hardback version with more pages. Make my day, buy a copy! Continue reading Spotted!

I’m having a board meeting. The is how I like to look at my work from time to time. I review it and then decide what to do with it next, some of it gets shredded if I think that I cannot rescue it. The ones that make it to the board usually survive. Going clockwise here they are the colour drawing ( one of several in the box ) of a landscape in Derbyshire, the next one is a corrugated shed in a field, done a couple of years ago. I did quite a lot of these indian ink … Continue reading Box full of drawings…

I’m working, if it can be called working when no money changes hands for my efforts, on a reprint of a book that I did with my late good friend Gordon Thorburn. At the time the book was called ” Some Missing Persons’ and was about rare breeds of British people. Well, given recent sorry stories of real missing persons I’ve ditched. that title and it’s now a little more positively titled: “Spotted!” I am doing an Amazon paperback version which has been a journey of discovery through technical upload bollocks, but I am almost there. I’ve had the proof … Continue reading Sometimes I surprise myself…

Done some 40 plus years ago and was one for an exhibition on British Institutions, this one being “Fair Play” as I recall. Given that in the last few years I’ve been doing a lot of landscapes this one stands up ok. I never used reference much so it just came from my head. For my recent landscapes I use my photographs as reference. The original ended up on the wall of my mother in laws beautiful cottage on a hillside in Shropshire. It lived there for years and I was always very pleased that she put it in a … Continue reading One of my oldest drawings.

Four weeks without salad, how on earth will we manage? Well we have a supply of Peruvian Blueberries so we’ll just have to be creative. So it’s been in the news that we are without here in the UK, well, we are in a sense, we are without brains for a start. Local supermarkets around here are to my knowledge not short of loads of stuff, so if we have to be without a Spanish cucumber then I think we might just get by. Local news stories ,especially those put out by the so called “Gloucestershire Live”, are uniquely designed … Continue reading Peruvian Blueberries?

From another blog this old phone looks much like the one my business partner and I started with in 1972, and yes, we only had one phone. Simple. Ancient Phone Continue reading Ancient Phone

It’s a Gloucestershire adjective for being careful with ones hard earned. The opposite word for it might be generous. When I was at college all those years ago the only money we had was what the Government kindly gave us as a grant, or what we could earn on the side by taking a job of some sort. My good friend at college was notoriously generous, but this meant he was frequently without funds. I recall that he came to me one day, looking at me clear eyed in the day and asked me if I could possibly forward some … Continue reading “Toit”

Posted two identical packages yesterday afternoon second class, one managed to get to Gloucester 8 miles down the road by today, which is good. The other managed to get 350 miles north to Scotland also today, which is better than good. No grumbles here about the Post Office and Royal Mail. Good goals chaps! #postoffice #royalmail Continue reading Good Goals

Well actually just an afternoon, but what an afternoon! Collected by my good friend Mike we headed down to the River Severn at Purton. By way of a change no walk was planned but I’d determined that we should go and take some photos of the boats down there. These ships, to be more exact were rammed into the banks of the Severn there to help counteract the erosion of the banks by the river back in the 1930s. Now these hulks are a venue for people like Mike and I who consider them to be major works of natural … Continue reading A grand day out.

I’ve moved house a few times since doing this drawing, and the kids are grown up, or so they claim to be. I did this for a lady in the States who convinced me that it was a good idea. The company, her company, wanted to make some of my drawings into usable signs, which meant they would make the files ‘traceable’ by sign making equipment of the time. This is probably the reason the guy is driving on the left. I used to post off the drawings to her in California, and then wait and see if I got … Continue reading From years ago…

This does not involve music or sound, it’s a band of people who have a liking for what is termed CI. That’s corrugated iron. The Corrugated Iron Appreciation Society on Facebook to be exact. I’m not alone, there are thousands of us out there. We post pictures of ‘finds’ and over the years I’ve found loads. What qualities does the CI have to make it so attractive? It rusts beautifully for a start. In fact that may be the end as well. It’s usually but not exclusively in the country side. I love it so much I make drawings of … Continue reading I’ve joined a band…