Tag: fiction

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A Map of Peru?

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The eccentric: Actually, there was more than one. I worked as a print rep for a large printing company starting when I was a mere 58. It was my first proper job since my erstwhile career in the world of cartoons and illustration; it made a refreshing change from working alone and trying to get on top of the new digital age, without a great deal of success. And it was regular money and paid holidays- what’s not to like? My remit at the company was to sell print, simple. I knew a bit about print but was about to … Continue reading A Map of Peru?

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Sliding door moment: cow gum,dandruff and the Rooster years

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I’d been in London for a while, 2 years perhaps, I’d got a job firstly at a smallish ad agency on Picadilly facing Green Park. It was a job I didn’t really understand and they gave me a tiny office next door to a large office where the Creative Director occupied his time. I was supposed to be his assistant. A sort of ‘Gofer’ , go for this or go for that. It was not a job I enjoyed very much but it put me in contact with other assistant art directors, in particular with a bloke from Pembrokeshire called … Continue reading Sliding door moment: cow gum,dandruff and the Rooster years

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The Potter and Funny Business

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Back in the early 80s I had an agent, their business was marketing and selling illustrators and cartoonists like myself to ad agencies and design companies. There were only 2 or 3 people in the business and they were good at what they did. Generating work for us and generally getting very good fees for us, the sort that we artists would never have the brass nerve to ask. We got on well. Times were good. Each Christmas we were tasked with thinking off something novel to give to out clients, apart from just a free lunch at a fancy … Continue reading The Potter and Funny Business

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Face to Face with Napoleon

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“Can Simon come out to play?” It was a simple request to the father of a boy along the modest terrace of houses where we lived way back probably 70 years ago. The father, like my own dad, was a young police officer and the police houses belonging to an estate where the big estate house served as a training establishment for the force. My father and this neighbour of ours would both have been instructors at the Police College. “I’m sorry” came the reply “ he’s busy reading ‘Face to Face with Napoleon‘ so he cannot. I went home … Continue reading Face to Face with Napoleon

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Books you might not want to read on a train.

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“Surrounded by Idiots”. It’s a book lent to me by my daughter in law whose high powered job is to look after people, not in a nursing sense, she’s big in Human Resources. Spends hours of her days talking on the telephone or via computer to people all over the world. The book is about people types and how they can be graded in colour, and on reading the first bit of it I started to understand exactly what it was talking about. It tells of a CEO of a large company who said he was surrounded by idiots, and … Continue reading Books you might not want to read on a train.

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Productive days and non.

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Watching most TV and scrolling is non. Productive is reading a book, almost any book that makes you think. Lying awake thinking can be both, it’s non if it’s negative going over stuff but productive if it’s determining to write something or even doing a drawing in your head. I’m sure most artists do that, if not all. They think drawings, at least I do, and I only get around to actually doing a few of those I think about.There’s a huge number of drawings in the head plans chest, but that’s about as far as they get. The journey … Continue reading Productive days and non.