Prison

Eat your heart out Postman Pat…

I used to read bedtime stories to my kids and if I got bored by the books would start to embellish the tales.This is an idea done some time ago, and probably when I was in ‘sales’.

One of my theories about children’s books is that the ones you really like ( the adults that is, not the kids, they can listen to almost anything ) are the ones where you are not tempted to embellish. Some of my own favourites were Janet and Allen Ahlberg’s books, and I loved ‘In the Night Kitchen ‘ by Maurice Sendak, I would not change a word of them. But Postman Pat was always ‘fair game’ to me. As I recall he ended up in one of my ’embellishments’ serving time in a maximum security prison after doing a bit of unofficial post office work on behalf of some disreputable chums who had a fondness for baseball bats and wore stockings on the wrong parts of their anatomy.

The kids loved it.

Netball woman, and other sporting moments.

hockeygirlwebThis is another drawing from the archives recently found. It’s from a book called ’43 Unsporting Moments’ and was written with my old collaborator Gordon Thorburn. The book dates from 1996, so getting on a bit now.

I’ll quote here from the text which is about a fixture at a prison:

” This girl, who would have been the dominant personality in any East German field-events team, did not seem especially keen to join in the sport
today. She gave the impression that among her preferred activities was having college girls on toast for breakfast…”

The lady on the outside of the netting is the resident umpire.