The Road Trip, The Reunion and an Italian speaking Uber driver.

We decided to take a trip back to our lives when we were 6 and even younger. My brother and I set off on a journey to Lancashire where we spent out early years. John’s good at driving so he was roped in to be at the wheel. He’s used to long hours at the wheel gathering antiques for his business from contacts up in the North. I only ever went on one of these buying trips once but it was an education. He had what seemed then to be a bladder the size of a garden water butt, able … Continue reading The Road Trip, The Reunion and an Italian speaking Uber driver.

Back to school

I was last at art school in the 60s and if my memory serves me right, the art bit was not on the top of my priority list. I was then a recently released internee from a boarding school I was not terribly aware of the world. In my first year at this art school I was allowed to have a go at everything, with a base layer of life drawing. The first time I’d ever seen a naked woman for life drawing, and this one seemed to be having a day off from being a traffic warden. I did … Continue reading Back to school

Dark chocolate and a baguette.

My mother gave me a fruitcake to give to the French. She’d arranged the trip for me with a friend who worked at the local girl’s grammar school. I was to be the only boy amongst thirty 16 year old schoolgirls going on a French exchange to Paris. Sounded reasonable to me, I might learn a thing or two. I did and it wasn’t all French. To put this in context I was a boarder at the local all boy’s grammar school. My contact with any girls at all was minimal. Our school did no such sort of exchange with … Continue reading Dark chocolate and a baguette.

Gill by the River.

When I went for an interview with a lady called Ruth Gill at a huge ad agency in London back when stuff was in black and white and the London tube had wooden escalators, she asked me at the end of the interview what my hobbies were. My reply was ‘ I haven’t got the job have I?’ She was gracious in her reply and said she was sorry ‘No’. I think she used the question to fill the gap after the more serious questions and what’s more she was not remotely interested in what I did in my spare … Continue reading Gill by the River.

Books you might not want to read on a train.

“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.

Productive days and non.

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.

It’s like a moving bus.

In days of yore you could hop on a bus at the back, and then hop off just as easily when you got to where you wanted. No doors on buses then and just a conductor or clippie on the back to take your fare. So it seems with a hospital ward, people are moved around in their beds for the most part and come and go into wards ready wrapped in the first bed they are allocated. My bed had travelled across the hospital with me in it the night before and here I was with five other men. … Continue reading It’s like a moving bus.

Coming up next year…

I’m working on a little book written by my chum Gordon Thorburn, ( Men and Sheds ) who apart from writing about sheds and bomber pilots from the Second World War ( Books about all sorts ), has written a little tome about…well, I’ll leave exactly what it’s about until I have it all ready. I’m doing the drawings for it and hope to publish it on-line in the New Year, or perhaps will be able to make a start before Christmas, as you’ll have plenty of time to read, learn, and digest. We’ll see. It will be on this site … Continue reading Coming up next year…

A brilliant little museum.

I’m not one for going to Museums that much but this one seemed like a good idea. I’ve always liked the work of Charles Dickens and grew up on his storytelling, sometimes for my own pleasure or more often as set text for us to read at school. I like the sort of places where the star of the show might have just left to get a bottle of milk. Dickens would of course have had servants to do this, but whatever. The Dickens Museum ( Take a look here ) is a house where he lived for only two years or … Continue reading A brilliant little museum.