Nowhere. Like everyone else I’ve been nowhere but around where we live. I’ve also been pretty quiet on the blogging front too. But like a duck in the water I’ve been paddling away. More projects and one in particular has taken quite a bit of my time. I have a habit of never finishing projects and it may well be tricky to get to the end of this blog without drifting off. That aside I’m determined that my new project will take off and it’s all about t shirts. Odd really, but I never wear them myself, but leapt at … Continue reading Where’ve you been?

My mother and father inherited a small cottage in Wales in the 1970s which was formerly the home of my Aunty Gracie. Gracie lived with her sister Mary, in the house for many years, almost all her life. I remember the place well with it’s black cast iron kitchen range in the quite dark back room, usually lit even on the warmest days. We always went to visit the two sisters when we were on holiday in what was my father’s home town. We were allowed to view the parlour: the front room, but not allowed to go into it. … Continue reading Gracie’s secret.

My good friend Steve has let me borrow a book that he thought might suit me. “Edgelands” by poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. I’m not much into poetry but this book is prose. Not quite sure how one writes a book with someone else but they seem to have managed it seamlessly. I’ve really enjoyed it and what shows how good it was that it sent me off in other directions to look for things I knew little about. Including the authors. If, like me you like to see broken down old sheds, and find beauty in broken … Continue reading Meat and potato pie from Edgelands

Choosing the right place and time to go out for a walk seems to be more important these days than before we were locked in with the key seemingly chucked away somewhere. In this country you can be lucky with the weather and the further north you go the luckier you can be, or not. For instance, if it rains in the Lake District there are days when you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you and you might as well be walking around the old sewage farm close to where you live. At present we … Continue reading Spring loaded.

Same old, same old. TV is a massive hole that needs to be filled every day. Something the local council have really given up on around here, and probably everywhere. Before the ‘C’ word arrived was no better. Suspension testing holes in the roads were rife. When we lived in Gloucester the road men used to come by occasionally with a teaspoon of tarmac and add another patch to the already patchy road. It had the look of a grey quilt which had been sewn together over the years, when one big road refurb would have solved the lot. My … Continue reading “I don’t need a watch, I tell the time from the crap TV programmes I’m watching.”.

In the present scheme of things small things that go ‘wrong’ might be considered to be trifling, and they are. I have this odd theory that things going wrong come in 3s. Once those three things have passed you can move along and get on with the day and hope that something productive might emerge. Those that follow me here, and thanks if you do, will know that I’m a cartoonist and that makes me an artist. Over lockdown I have done a lot of landscapes, experimenting with media and different ways to make marks on paper. I’ve enjoyed doing … Continue reading Plottage: the answer to a bad day?

This is the canal from Gloucester, the UK’s biggest inland port, to Sharpness at the mouth of the River Severn. I found this on a trawl through old images and it reminded me that I used to take a walk out on Christmas Day camera in hand and I recall well that this particular day was bright, cold and crips and there were very few people around. It was Christmas Day 2009. This view overlooks the warehouses that would originally have been the timber yards that in their day would have been bustling with men unloading timber from Scandinavia. Some … Continue reading Home fires burning…

Pitchcombe: Combe is from the latin for dung and in this instance pitchcombe is the word used for the hurling of dung.In particular cow dung that has dried enough for it to be successfully lifted as a complete circle about the size of a piazza, and then thrown.It is thought that Pitchombe preceded Frisbee as a marketing name, but has since fallen out of common parlance. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ I did a book, a very small book, some years ago now. Loosely based on the famous bestseller ” The Meaning of Liff” by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, my book took Gloucestershire place names and gave them their true meaning and derivation. It was … Continue reading Pitchcombe

Take cats for instance. I’m no fan of cats but for some inexplicable reason I thought that since the world seems to like them then some snappy tee shirt ideas featuring cats might be a good idea. Years ago I had the idea of doing a cat alphabet. Almost a font of cats if you will. I revisited this idea when the second lockdown came, thinking it a brilliant concept that deserved my time an effort. I got them onto t shirts and there they lay, never to be disturbed. In an effort to get things rolling I thought that … Continue reading Sometimes things just don’t work out quite like you thought they might.

This is quite an old photograph from my time with the printers in Gloucester. We did work for a company that make bespoke high quality shirts, and the allowed me to take a few photographs in the factory machine room. These shirts cost around £200-00 each, or they did then, they might be even more these days. You had to order 5 as well, so that’s a thousand quid on 5 shirts. Beyond my pocket. I saw lots of shirts being made and this is one shot of someone’s hands working on a seam. Beautiful hands working on a beautiful … Continue reading Shirtmakers to the gentry.

I don’t recall if this caravan was dumped, I think not. It is pictured in South West France next to a corn field. I think it has the feel of an old master, with that dark set of trees in the background and the wonderful sculptural clouds set on a pale blue behind the tree and Mediterranean blue at the top of the image. I think this would make a fine painting, perhaps a huge one like you get in these modern galleries these days, so big you could not even get it through a caravan door. Perhaps I’ll do … Continue reading Caravan, clouds and corn.

I worked for a time for a print company in Gloucester. I sold print. I enjoyed it. I was supposed to pull in the smaller customers who were not necessarily used to print or did not see a need for it. I’d got this proper job after a life drawing cartoons and was ready for a change. The local farmers market in the city which happened every Friday morning at the Cross, was a happy hunting ground for potential customers. All small businesses, they were quite easy to engage in conversation if they were ‘quiet’ and as long as I … Continue reading Say Cheese.