220713: NOT REALLY THERE

These past couple of months have been weird in that I've not really felt like being a "comicky" person at all. This is odd because if there's been one constant in my life for the past thirty-odd years it's been comics. Music, football, speedway, girls, beer - all have come and gone and come again but comics have stayed the course. If I look back, I can probably only have two or three "interests" at any one time, and this is why the others fall by the wayside to be replaced by something new, but comics? Hmm. I'm still reading them, occasionally, on my tablet, but there's four weeks' wroth sitting at the comic shop and I haven't drawn one in two months. Ah, well, I'm sure I'll get back on that particular horse once the weather stops being stupid.

 

Of those I've read recently, none have made as big an impact on me as The New Deadwardians. It's a crime procedural set in an alternate Victorian era, where the dead have risen and the upper classes have taken a cure to prevent them falling prey to becoming zombies. The cure, although not explicitly stated, is heavily implied to have turned them into vampires, and all that that entails. It's really very good, and I hope there's a sequel. I didn't write this, though, to do some kind of review job. I want to tell you why it affected me so much. One of the central themes of the vampires' (called "the young" in the comic) lives is their lack of appetite for anything the living enjoy. They eat and drink, even though they no longer need to, because that's what they used to do. They feel no desire towards anything that could remotely be described as "sins of the flesh". They are more dead than the zombie-like creatures they sought to avoid becoming.

 

Now here's the thing, the whiny, woe-is-me, isn't my life terrible thing: I feel the same way much of the time. I get no genuine pleasure from much of what I do. I only know that I should and that one day the memory of the things that I've done might spark some pleasant, nostalgic feeling. I participate in and even seek out new experiences, but I'm not sure that I ever really enjoy them. Is that odd? Am I alone in this? And if this is what's happening to me, why on earth do I insist on pretending to like things hat cost me money rather than free non-entertainment? Life, eh? It's an anti-duck. On the surface paddling like mad but underneath as dead as anyone who ever took the cure...

 

. . .

 

The ghosts - because what else could they be? Insubstantial, howling things, all tortured faces and terrible masques, intangible trails and chilling touches. None more ghost - whipped the room into a frenzied cyclone of pain and torment, encircling the girls as they huddled together for security they knew was not going to be found. The eldest of the two whispered that everything was going to be alright, as much to herself as to the younger girl, and though neither of them believed it there was some comfort in her words. Of a sudden, the door flew open and the shape of a man stepped through, uttering an incomphrensible word that stulled and silenced the ghosts, who turned their unseeing eyes towards him. His face was covered by the brim of his hat, and with a long duster silhouetted in the low light from beyond the room, he looked every inch the cowboy from the Saturday morning picture show the girls had enjoyed in the life they had before this moment. He lifted his head and the eldest girl screamed - the youngest unable to utter a sound - at the sight of the shifting, unsettling mass that sat where his face should have been, as if what lay there couldn't quite exist in our world. With what passed for a smile in that shapeless morass the ghosts resumed their attack, the evanscent suddenly very, very real...

 

. . .

 

"Every has a right to have a favourite song." Good quote, innit? I made it up myself, whilst watching The Joy Of Easy Listening, which I'd taped off of BBC4 a few weeks ago. It - the show, not the quote - was about the genre that sprung up as technology brought music into people's homes and, as the young people had rock and roll and all that jumping and jiving music, filled a gap in the older generation's earholes. Easy Listening has been a much-maligned genre, in every incarnation of the music, from genuine soft orchestral music like Mantovani, Conniff, or Kampfaert, through the lounge music of Bacharach, Alpert, and Webb, the adult contemporary sounds of The Carpenters and Neil Diamond, right up to the hipster reclaimation of the form. All of it laughed at, derided by the music press and the cool people, but all of it brilliant. How could you not like music that is easy to listen to?

 

I've always been a fan. I didn't know that what I liked was Easy Listening until I heard it called that, around twenty years ago. I just knew that, of all the music my parents listened to, I liked this stuff the best. Bread rather than The Beatles. The Carpenters over Abba. Neil Diamond over Elvis Presley. But not Richard Clayderman. I wasn't deaf. The music I bought myself, my music, couldn't have been further from Easy Listening, all noise and angst and guitars and drums and youthful energy. But even then if a decent arrangement turned up I was all over it, I just didn't know why, and was probably a little bit ashamed. But by the mid-90s I knew, and I wasn't worried any more. I called the university music society I co-founded Easy Listening and I was probably the only one for whom it wasn't ironic. I even put The Carpenters on the flyer, hidden amongst Green Day, The Beastie Boys, and Nirvana, but mistyped it "Carpetners" - perhaps the shame wasn't all gone, subsonciously at least.

 

The music that is lumped under the umbrella title Easy Listening is actually a whole host of things but the one thing that unites it is that, somewhere amongst the thousands and thousands of songs, is the favourite song of people who you don't think really like music, like your Dad or your Nan. Everyone has a right to have a favourite song and there has to be a favourite song for everyone - chances are, it's got strings on it and it's something you don't have to think particularly hard about...

180713: BRITISH PEOPLE IN HOT WEATHER

So the heat's still here, and with it comes everything that is glorious about a British summer. Cocksure boys with their t-shirts off, thinking they look all cool and suntanned when, in fact, they're just making a great argument for eugenics. Stinking BBQs, as though hot weather gives you the right to pollute your neighbours with foul smoke and meat smells - you can't imagine these same people, in midwinter, standing at their kitchen window, wafting the smell of their rancid sausages out at passers-by, though they probably would if they could. And the moaning, all the moaning, all of it done by me.

There's one thing missing, though, and that's riots. Where are the riots? It's hot, the underclass are still oppressed, where are the riots? I make no bones about it - I'm a disasterbator, I want to turn on the news and find out it's the "shit is burning" channel, all day, every day, but so far nothing. Disappointing. Today's youth, eh? Oh well, I'm sure the Metropolitan Police will kill someone they shouldn't have soon, that'll do it.

. . .

Much to my doctor's chagrin - if she actually knew who I was - I self-medicate. It's the only way I can get anything done, because if I dosed correctly I'd be a grey, nodding cameo of a man, walking a line so mediocre they'd paint it magnolia. So I skip days if I have to get stuff done, and sometimes this tips me into depression and other times, more often, into mania.

Being manic is not actually a very helpful thing to be, unless you're preaching on some street, and it can make me a horrible person - like the kind of person I imagine I'd be if I were any kind of boss or manager. I get short, angry, unaccommodating of anyone else's weaknesses, like Danny DeVito in Taxi. On the other hand I also get creative, and able, and I'm fantastic company - my self-worth goes through the roof, often to the point where none of you little ants could possibly match up to me, and then the negatives start again.

I wish there was some other way but I can't find it. Bi-polar is what I am, no more able to change it than an amputee can grow a new limb or a diabetic can stop injecting, and so the cycle continues. Up, up, up, up, UP!, medicate. Down, medicate. Repeat until fade...

. . . 

It's the fifteenth anniversary of my Summer Of Gin, when I grew a full beard and spent most of the time in my room, with occasional jaunts to Brighton. All my housemates had left, and so I had a big empty house to myself, which I took advantage of by walking around naked all the time. I must have looked, for all the world, like a stumpy Action Man, only with a gin problem.

Yeah, gin - what a drink! As Milk & Cheese said, "Gin makes a man mean!" and they're not wrong. I once considered a smash & grab at a Brighton comic shop because the gin told me how simple it would be, even though the books in the window were pretty rubbish. This was after watching the Eurovision Song Contest and having been up all night the night before because we'd dropped something. Good times. Many of the stories from that time are embarrassing and awful but I'm the Larry David so it's all good.

I've not drunk gin since. You can drink so much of a spirit that you can't face it much again. Whiskey, fortified wine, Cinzano Bianco... the list goes on, and each with a most un-Bukowski story attached to it. You all have these stories. Life's okay, innit?

130713: HIHOWAREYA?

Dan Hartman is screaming at me from the TV but the sound is down and Steely Dan is playing on Spotify so Dan can shout all he likes. It's Instant Replay, anyway, because what else would it be?

. . .

The heat is oppressive. But that's all anyone says so it's lost its power. The heat isn't oppressive, it's boring. Someone said something about us not hating the heat, or the cold, or the rain, or the snow, but rather hating anything that lasts for more than 2 days, and I wonder if that's just the weather?

. . .

I'm nostalgic for something so flimsy that it didn't really exist when it actually existed and there'd be so little of it left to go back there's no point being nostalgic about it. But it's there, it happens, and you can't blame me for wanting a little holiday once in a while, and spending it in the past. Alan Whicker died yesterday, time was he was the only one who ever went abroad - I wonder if he took holidays in the past, too, or if the modern world was a sense of wonder to him, like the arl fella who came into my library once and stood, pleasantly amazed by everything he could see?

. . .

I've been thinking a lot about my friends lately, particularly three very special ones who I need more in my life than is probably possible. I see ghosts of one everywhere, the form and taste glimpsed, tangible and pleasing and disappointing in their fraudulence. Another doesn't need me anymore, which was always the plan, and I'm happy about that because the circumstances of our shared time always exhausted and crushed me a little inside, and third needs me more than ever and needs support I can't geographically provide. There's a fourth, but my thoughts are always warm and never longing, because that's the way it is, and I realise this is all cryptic bullshit. Sorry.

. . .

So it's been six months since I last wrote. I've been doing other things (and not very much at all). I'm trying writing again. You never know.

12/02/13: ICANNOTTTHINKOFANYTHINGELSELATELY

You're probably sick of reading about my comic and my webcomic and all that jazz, but I totally cannot think of anything else lately. It's obsessing me to a massively unhealthy degree because I don't want to do anything else other than draw, and any time spent doing anything else seems wasted.

I need to get a grip on it because, although I'm used to obsession and always seem to have something on the go, it can't possibly take over my life to the degree it has without any kind of guaranteed reward. Everything about it is deferred rewards at best, and even probably nothing more than a, "huhm, that's funny" or a flick through my display copy before you move on to the next table.

But I can see it occupying me a while, and I'm brimming with ideas, and I thought today how cool it would be if my next comic was introduced by the tortoise from John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath, and I want to draw it even though I don't need to start working on that for another month at least.

I gots it bad.

. . . . .

I finished Brandon Graham's King City today and fuck me if it wasn't excellent right up to the end. It's hard to say what it's about because it's about lots of things and nothing at all, really.

But it's about a catmaster, who can weaponise his cat, and his ex-girlfriend and her ex-soldier boyfriend who may be turning into chalk, which is also a drug he uses to escape the horrors he saw in the Korean Zombie War, and about the catmaster's best friend, who falls in love with a sex-trafficked alien, and all this against a background of a world-ending incursion by a demon king.

It's pretty cool. And it's hundreds of pages for £15. Buy it.

. . . . .

In a week's time I'll have been interviewed for my own job. And a week after that I'll know if I've got my own job, or if I'll be made redundant at the beginning of April. It should be a worrying time, with an uncertain future and all, but you know what? Fuck it. What happens happens. I'm not going to starve. I'm not going to be made homeless. I'm not going to die. So bring it on. I'll smile through all of it x

11/02/13: WHATEVER'S COOL

What’s cool? I only ask because I’m trying to second-guess an audience for an experiment I’m doing for the London Super Comic Con. My idea is that if you make something featuring “cool” characters, people will buy it if it’s half-decent, more than they will buy something that features characters they don’t know and is excellent.

I’m not at the point where I’ll declare my work excellent. I never will be. But there are people who $hill their wares at these cons who are absolutely, 100% geniuses. People like Philippa Rice and Dan Berry. And like my own pal, HeyJude. And I’m sure they’re happy with what they sell, especially as it goes to incredibly discerning people, but I bet their sales are half of those of the guy selling portrait prints of Wonder Woman or Darth Vader (you might see now why I ask what’s cool…).

At the Thought Bubble convention, everything seemed to be Adventure Time. That and My Little Pony. So I made a little picture of Finn from Adventure Time riding a random pony. Let’s see how that bad boy sells. I also did a couple of others – you never know, this might pay for the table that my disappointing comic sales won’t.

But is it right? These aren’t my characters. They belong to another guy and a massive corporation! But it is my art, I drew it myself and made the pictures and everything! And other people seem quite happy doing it… I’m sure I’ll feel dirty for a bit, though, but then accept it for what it is. And I’ll just keep telling myself – it’s an experiment, okay?

. . . . .

I got thinking some more about the horsemeat thing the other day and a question occurred to me: would they tell us if they found human DNA in their tests?

I don’t think they would, because how do you do that? How do you inform a populace that, along with their Tesco Value burgers and Findus lasagna, they may have ingested the last earthly remains of some Romanian gangster who got on the wrong side of his capo?

You couldn’t! Imagine the reaction! People would be retching in the streets, scrubbing their tongues, and cradling themselves in the shower, Crying Game-style.

But it must have happened, at some point. Either by accident, where a finger, arm, or half a torso has slipped into the grinder and became impossibly entangled in the day’s meat output, or on grisly purpose, the result of a killer looking for an easy way to dispose of his victims.

Tastes like chicken, I suppose.

. . . . .

I listened to Tom Waits's first album today for the first time ever. I like Tom Waits. I like his gravel voice and his weird characters and the strange sounds he uses as rhythm on his songs. I figured he'd emerged into the music business fully grown, and had always sounded like that, but then I read the story of his first few years in Uncut magazine, and it wasn't so, it seemed.

So I listened to Closing Time and it's a fucking great album. Very singer-songwriter, and very California of its time, and all the better for that. It's already my favourite Tom Waits album, and probably nudging into my top 100, if I could ever bother to make one.

Waits is not for everyone - though I defy you not to enjoy his cover version of Daniel Johnston's King Kong - and so if you don't like him for the reasons I outlined in the third line above, then give Closing Time a try. It'll surprise you.

10/02/13: FACTORY OF LESS SADNESS

No Ripper Street tonight because of some shitty awards show. Worse still, Call The Midwife got to be on, polluting the airwaves with its saccharine awfulness – anything that employs Miranda Hart to do her usual “oh, I’m posh and rubbish” thing must be destroyed.

I don’t get awards shows. I have zero interest in what people are wearing – less still when you realize that what they are wearing has only been borrowed for the night from some hoity-toity designer. Anyone who obsesses over red carpet fashion should be declared an enemy of the state and be first up against the wall come the revolution.

And then awards themselves, hosted by a “humourous” host, making safe quips about his audience that will make them “squirm in their seats”, according to the next day’s press, although I’m sure every single joke has already been agreed and triple-checked by a cadre of producers and agents.

Who cares whether some old people think one film is better than another? What’s the value in a panel of music journalists declaring an album the Best Of The year? And no-one should ever put any value on a public vote. The public are idiots.

So if you like to watch these shows, or have ever bought, watched, or worn anything because if featured on or won something at these awards things, please reconsider your life. You’re making some terrible mistakes…

. . . . .

So Villa won a game! Their first in the league for two months! And hope has returned to the Factory of Sadness, at least until they lose their next game and the Sun falls on the once-great empire again.

I’ve started to feel physically sick when I watch the Villa. My temperature raises until my body is hot to the touch and I feel nauseous. That’s not normal, right? I should probably stop – it’d be better for my mental and physical health that way. And mostly I try not to care, but it’s soooo hard.

I can’t conceive of relegation but it is a very real possibility, although really any team in the bottom half of the table could go down. The Villa need to get on some sort of run, put a few wins on the board now, with the eventual aim of securing at least five more. Tough ask, but very possible.

I have to keep the faith. I have to believe it’s going to be okay, because anything else is a catastrophe and I don’t deal in those. Help me, Villa. Please.

. . . . .

I watched some great shows tonight. I watched the first Community of the new run, which was on par, but nothing spectacular. Par for Community, though, is still head and shoulders above most other shows, but there's a danger that without show creator Dan Harman it might slip into a pattern of ridiculousness and parody, trying to outcool itself week by week with ever-diminishing returns. For now, though, it's funny and warm.

But it's not a patch on Parks & Recreation and I got caught up on that, too. The standout characters - Ron & April - are inspired and unique comic creations that should walk straight into that Hall of Fame (if one existed), to take their place alongside George Costanza, Norm Peterson, and Sheldon Cooper. And they're just the standouts - there isn't a single joke wasted, not a single character not used to make funny, and not a moment on screen that doesn't look right. It's a pretty good show.

The Big Bang Theory is still funny, too, although there's something of a backlash that I both understand and don't. It is what it is - a network sitcom, long-lived enough to go into syndication, and with all the compromises such shows (Seinfeld aside) have to make. I got caught up on that, too, and Amy Farrer-Fowler is getting close to HoF territory, too.

So, yeah, you should watch TV. And enjoy it. And you'll do that if you watch those shows. Trust me.

09/02/2013: HORSES!

This whole horsemeat scandal smacks of a massive over-reaction. Yeah, it’s probably not the best that you don’t know where the meat came from, and that it may have gotten mixed up with other meats in some God-forsaken part of eastern Europe, but there are a few things that make me laugh.

1)       It’s meat. I’m not one to proselytise overly about my vegetarianism, but if you’re eating the dead and slowly decaying flesh of another animal, you don’t much have the right to get all haughty about it. It’s meat, whatever the species, so suck it up.

2)      Am I the only thinking this wouldn’t have hit the headlines so much if, instead of horsemeat, it was pork or lamb they found mixed in? Of course it wouldn’t, because they’re not cuddly, and we don’t give them names or bet on them down the bookies.

3)      Food is too cheap. Way too cheap. It’s why most of us are so fat. Or should I say that the wrong kind of food is too cheap? And, believe me, Tesco Value burgers are the wrong kind of food. But, if you pay pennies, you shouldn’t be surprised if one of the corners they cut to bring you the food so cheaply is that the odd horse gets thrown in with whatever mechanically-recovered bits of beef they blasted off the bones of a scrawny cow, then you made your bed. Now lie in that horse bed.

4)      Even if what you are eating is 100% guaranteed beef, you have no way of knowing what happened to it between the cow popping out of its mummy’s lady tunnel and it hitting the supermarket shelves. Unless you rear, slaughter, prepare and cook it yourself, you just don’t know. You don’t know if what that cow ate, what drugs they put in it, whether a butcher hocked up a loogy into the mincer… you just don’t know.

So, yeah, chill out and either buy more expensive food, stop eating meat, or enjoy that delicious neopolitan meat of many flavours – all of them dead!

. . . . .

Sometimes life is life a movie. Not my life. That would make a pretty shitty movie, although the star would be incredibly charismatic. But other lives, and none more so than that LAPD guy on the run in California.

Christophe Dorner is his name, and he got fired a few years ago after making an accusation of bullying against a fellow officer. To hear him tell it, the rest of the force closed ranks on him, supported his colleague and backed her story. He says this is because the force is racist (he’s black) and corrupt, and few who have had many dealings with the LAPD could disagree.

So Dorner went on a rampage, killing a policeman, the daughter of his former captain, and her boyfriend. He also wounded some other cops. Funny thing is, the LAPD actually wounded more people than he did in mistaken identity shootings trying to capture him. Funny for me, not the people shot, that is.

Dorner posted an online manifesto, ranting at this and ranting at that, but making clear – well, as clear as an online manifesto can – his motives. There is some chatter that the manifesto we’ve been allowed to see has been edited by the cops, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they?

I can’t help but think he’s pretty cool and the whole thing is exciting, but then I’m a disasterbator and nowhere near normal…

. . . . .

If I believed in guilty pleasures - and I don't because why should you feel guilty about anything you like, especially something as stupid as music or books or film - then one of them would be Take me Out.
It's not everybody's cup of tea, and that's fine. I don't like lots of shows but I don't spend much time telling you about how I hate them. Except Call The Midwife. If you like that and are under-50, you should apply for voluntary sterilisation, pretty much immediately.

But, yeah, Take Me Out is awesome. And it's not just me - Charlie Brooker claimed you could learn a lot about life from TMO and it's hard to disagree with him. What makes the girls turn off their lights? What's that secret ingredient - other than washboard abs and a gun show - that pushes their buttons? Why don't the fat guys get the loving, even from the fat girls?

I usually get a favourite girl - Gracie & Lois in recent series - who makes me laugh and who I wouldn't mind a roll in the proverbial with, but there's no-one this time around. A couple of girls have been hot in an interesting way but they've been picked and whisked off on dates with men who don't deserve them. Obviously.

Still, I keep watching. It's dating by proxy, which is all I'm allowed to do now. Not that I ever did dating when I could, but you understand. No likey, no lighty? I likey.

08/02/13: IDIOTS

Hey, I know you! You're that guy who hates "immigrants", aren't you? Why is it you hate them again? Oh, yeah, they're coming over here and claiming benefits, living on easy street in their billion-pound houses and bathing in caviar because they can afford it, what with your tax money going to pay for them. You're an idiot.

And you, you're that other guy, the one who thinks there are millions of benefit scroungers, sitting at home, happy to receive massive cheques from the government to pay for their lavish lifestyles. I bet you even heard that some bloke who knows some bloke who has a neighbour who drives a Rolls-Royce and holidays on the moon! You're an idiot, too.

And who's that hiding at the back? Oh, you're that guy, who thinks that all immigrants should assimilate, even though you don't know what the word means, but is perfectly happy to go abroad and drink in an Olde English Pubbe and never try any food that doesn't come with chips. You're the guy who worries about sharia law, and the creeping islamification of Britain, because they insist on halal meat and chopping off the hands of any non-believers. It's true because it happened in Leicester or Bradford or Luton. One of them, anyway. You know what? You're an idiot, as well.

There's a lot of things that should concern you about modern Britain. The slow destruction of the welfare state by a government stuffed with millionaires, the rise in profits and fall in wages of just about every major employer, the lack of tax paid by people who take your money and squirrel it abroad... How about the death of job security, or a lack of subsidies for public transport driving people onto the roads, where they'll pay ever higher petrol prices? You know, big stuff.

Not one of those things will be solved by the poor - that's you and me, pretty much - turning on each other. It won't help you to blame the "Pakis" or the "chavs" one bit. All it will do is use up any energy and passion you might have about politics, or at least as they apply to your life, and let the real problems go unchecked, the real villains go scot-free. Stop being an idiot.

. . . . .

Blankie Update: We now have three. Original Blankie, who's been washed and actually doesn't look much different to the others, even though when the others arrived they seemed much bigger than the blankie we remembered. He's going into my little girl's baby box, where he'll be safe and warm and surrounded by happy memories. Blankie II has been well and truly assimilated into the family, and if she ever noticed my little girl isn't letting on that he's not her beloved. And then there's Blankie III, who was ordered as a back-up for Blankie II when it looked like we'd never see Blankie again. He'll sit in the drawer, hopefully never to be needed, but ready to be given on to some deserving little girl down the line. Ah, Blankies, I love you.

. . . . .

I was reading about the making of Status Quo's Down, Down today, and they mentioned that it was one of John Peel's favourite records. Two things struck me: firstly, it is a great record, and that the Quo are probably due for a reappraisal. And secondly, how do I feel about John Peel now, post-Savile?

My feelings for Peel took a hit when I learned that he had no time for Andy Kershaw after the latter's very public mental breakdown. The two men had been friends and colleagues for years yet Peel couldn't support Kershaw when he needed him most. And then there was the whole pederasty thing, although with Peel the girls certainly seemed to have been at least sexually mature, if legally underage.

Should crimes discovered posthumously affect an artist's body of work or how you feel about a individual? WWE all but erased Chris Benoit from history after he killed his wife and son, and you try getting a Gary Glitter record played anywhere other than NAMBLA these days!

So, yeah, Peel. He was always something approaching a hero (I don't really have heroes, partly for this very reason) and I don't want to think that everything he did for so many bands is tainted by association but it's a tough one, you know? I think I'll keep the jury out on this one. For a bit, anyway.

07/02/13: ALL I WANT TO DO LATELY IS DRAW

Almost six weeks into the new year and not a lot accomplished from the master list. That's because, as regular and no doubt bored readers will know to their cost, I've been caught up doing nothing but the proper comic. It's been good in a way, because it's kept my spending to a minimum after a heavy Christmas, and has kept my mind off the job thing that we don't really talk about.

Pretty soon, though, I'll be doing other stuff, and hitting my stride to get out and about and get things sorted. One of the first things I want to do is go and visit Stereo Mike. He's not having the best time of things, what with a bum knee and a shitty job, so it'll be good to catch up, and eat at Spankys, and throw catchphrases at each other like random comedy line generators gone wrong. or right.

The last year or so - maybe even the last two - have been a bit weird for us. Not in any "friendship falling apart way" but just we've had life stuff interfering with us hanging out or even talking as much as we'd like. That and his aversion to using Facebook too much (completely understandable because I'm addicted to this social media stuff and I can't kick it), has meant we've drifted a little, but nothing that can't be set right immediately upon picking up the 'phone or meeting him at the train station.

Good friends is good friends, and I'm unlucky that two of my besties live miles away, in London and Nottingham, because there are times when that bestie is needed and they're just not around. I miss acting the twat, and you can't really do that on your own because it makes you an, erm, twat. Two of you? Do what you like! You're not twats, you're pioneers!

So, yeah, I'll get up and see Stereo Mike, and try and sort out some other trips to see Huge Pumpkin, the Tall Man, and Rx. Then the year will have properly started.

. . . . .

All I want to do lately is draw. Which is so not me because I hate my drawing. But I seem to have hit upon a style that works, and half an ability to use photoshop, and I'm really enjoying it. In another life, this would have been my job - I wanted to go to Rugby Technical College back in the day to study art but did so badly on my Art GCSE that it didn't work out.

The reason I did badly was that, even at that age, I was stubborn and cantankerous, and refused to do any sort of writing about my art, and in that first year of GCSE that was exactly what was required. My art alone got me a D, but any sort of future career at that sort of thing disappeared with my being a bit of a cunt. Ah, well, I'm not that good anyway, like I say.

But, yeah, I'm in a drawing groove. it'll probably end soon, at the London Super Con when I'm faced with whether people will actually pony up any money for my drawings and they don't and I cry. Still, strike while the iron is hot, eh?

. . . . .

Anyone got any horse/burger jokes? Keep 'em to yourself. heard enough to last me a lifetime, cheers.

06/02/13: FUCKSTICKS

So, the lesson is: never post a blog saying how you've had a cool day.

I got a message back from my printer guy saying that the print proofs had come out all blocky and pixelated. I'd been fearing it but it was a blow. It meant I had at least a couple of hours work ahead of me (turned out to be 5) to get the thing in some kind of shape to print. I'd not given much thought when I was drawing the comic to how it would print, and that's the first mistake. Turns out, draw everything at at least 300dpi and make sure that, at that resolution, your print size matches the size of paper you want to print on. From now on, I will.

The downside to all this is that work dragged like fuck this afternoon because I knew had stuff to get done at home. And then I had to give up an evening in front of the TV, watching the last Africa, to work on something I thought I'd already done. Fucksticks.

So that's your lot for today - I'm off to bed.

05/02/13: ANOTHER DAY

So today was just another day. I got up, looked around my usual sites for an hour, got ready for work, drove to work listening to Tell 'Em Steve-Dave, worked (a bit), kept people smiling, came home, pencilled my artswap for my comic group thingy, spoke to Stereo Mike, watched Ripper Street, and inked and coloured my artswap. Standard day.

But a good day. A really good day. No stand-out moments, but an overall feeling of when my head hits the pillow in a bit that I've had no dramas, no bad news, got stuff done, and watched TV I liked. Every day should be like this. But I guess we have to trade days like this for extra good days, and extra bad. Which if it is how it has to be is okay, too, I guess. I just thought it worth noting that an average day could be pretty good sometimes.

. . . . .

I'm feeling good about my comics and my art, which if you'd said that to me six months ago I'd have punched you in the eye and called you a fancypants liar, however fancy or otherwise your pants may have been. I'm brimming with ideas and like the stuff I'm throwing down on paper (and screen), but I've got to keep myself disciplined. It's just a cool hobby, because as comfortable as I get with what I do, I know it'll never be more than that, because there are people waaaaay more talented than I who can't get a break.

I have to finish up the book first, by which I mean I have to start it and finish it, because there is the possibility that I can actually make a (very) little money from that, and then I guess I can get on with drawing comics about giant astronauts and dismantling jokes until they fall apart in your hands.

But I might sneak the odd new comic in here and there. Strike while iron is hot, eh? Or while the eye doesn't hate what the hand draws. Either/or.

. . . . .

Despite enough anti-homosexual rhetoric to kill an elephant (a slow moving, easily-bored elephant, but still), the gay marriage bill finally passed the first hurdle to becoming a law in parliament today. Four hundred good souls said, "aye", or whatever it is they do, and that's more than enough to carry it along to the Lords, where the old fools are actually pretty cool on this sort of thing for some weird reason.

One hundred and seventy five assholes voted against it, but at least they make a stand on their bigotry, and that, in an odd way, is commendable, too. The ones I just don't get are the seventy five abstainers - what the hell is their game? How can you not vote in one of the most defining policy-making moments of our generation? Legalising something that, in future years, will seem as strange as not letting a white man marry a black woman? How? How???

I demand these people be named! And they will! As is parliamentary procedure! I know my MP won't be amongst them because she tends towards the right side of her party (guess which one, eh?), although I'd be pleasantly surprised if she voted in favour. But if your MP is one of the fudgers, demand to know why! Ask them why they thought they could pull that shit! The people demand answers!!!

Preach it.

04/02/13: BRYTER LAYTER

So, yeah, yesterday happened. Apologies for the dark, dark - blacker than black - tone of yesterday's blog. Just had my buttons pushed by people who really don't understand how I am sometimes. And then I made the mistake of looking at Facebook, at all our tiny lives, and fell over the edge.

Still, better now, eh?

. . . . .

I finished Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth tonight and fuck me if it didn't end perfectly. Not everyone made it to the finish, but the way they left the story was aposite and timely. Vertigo have a habit of having their series end badly, or at least not in a way that is totally satisfactory, but Sweet Tooth broke the run. You really should read it. And pretty much everything else by Jeff Lemire, too.

I also "acquired" a copy of the new My Bloody Valentine album. It's a winner, of course. How could it not be? Twenty years in the making, I've fancied girls that have been on the planet for less time. Usually, "found" albums are of variable quality, but there's so much distortion layered on this - and why would I be any other way? - that it' a moot point. Get hold of it, any way you can.

. . . . .

So they found Richard III under a carpark in Leicester and he looks like Noel Fielding. It's a mystery to me how such men - see also Napoleon, Hitler, and every tiny, deformed, piggy-eyed tyrant ever - inspire such loyalty, thousands of gallons of blood spilled in their name. There again, I know some people who would fight to defend the honour of The Mighty Boosh, as well as play you endless clips of it on their 'phone, so it's perhaps not surprising at all.

03/03/13: DESTRUCTION IS AN ACT OF CREATION

We're all of us perfect in isolation. Everything we say, everything we do, everything we are... until it encounters other people it's perfect. But like no plan survives first contact with the enemy, so none of us survive the opinions, plans, machinations, and unconscious selfishness of the rest of the world. You can see why being a hermit is so appealing, and why it's only those who meditate, alone and untouched for years, who truly achieve enlightenment.

Fuck the world. Fuck having to bend to its limitations, and its wants, and its needs, and its demands on you and your time! Damn it all to Hell! And see where it gets you. That's why you could never write On The Road today. Not if you meant it. The world isn't there to be shaped because there's too many hands in the toybox, having their own shitty input into everything you do. Still, keep smiling, eh?

. . . . .

I'm in one of those moods where I feel like telling everyone their faults, pointing out their little idiosyncrasies, and tearing down their carefully - and not so carefully - constructed world views. Destruction is an act of creation, right? And what would be left in place of their shitty little lives would be raw and bleeding and beautiful.

Anyone want to be first? Didn't think so.

How about a general one? How about I tell you that nothing you do today will mean anything in ten years, unless you make such a monumental fuck up that stains you for life? How about I tell you that you have a lifetime ahead of you, even if you think you've lived long enough to know better, and that making plans is useless because the world is going to shit? How about just living each day as it comes, and not worrying about your "life" because you really don't have one, just a half-random series of encounters and forced interactions with people who feel just as bad about you as you do about them?

It's a start, right?

. . . . .

Blankie came home today. The real one. Yay!

02/02/13: DUST IN THE AIR

If there's anything that says "Saturday morning" to me it's those tiny specks of dust floating in the air after you open the curtains to let the first sun into the room. You only ever saw it on Saturday morning because that was the only morning you were ever up first, putting the telly on to watch cartoons or T.I.S.W.A.S. or... well, it was one of those two if you didn't want to get a dutton in school.

Even now, when I'm (technically) an adult, I still get a little shiver of excitement when I see those dust specks, because it means it's a sunny day and I haven't got to go to work. If it's a work day, the curtains stay closed, just to confuse Iain Duncan Smith, and because who has time for sun when there's the drudgery of work to get to?

I see it now, in my kid, as she looks at that wondershow, that she'll have those same feelings when her brain starts storing memories, and I wonder how long it's been like that? Since the invention of curtains, I guess.

. . . . .

I read a great article in the Grauniad this morning about the slow death of club rugby in Wales. Now I usually couldn't give two flying fucks about either rugby or Wales, but the article struck a tone, and it's really symbolic of the death of something bigger - the death of the past.

When I look at the world around me it's so starkly different than the one I grew up in. I'm hardly ancient - 41 next birthday - yet parts of my childhood, teens, and even twenties, are unrecognisable to those experienced today. Sometimes for the better - and vastly so - but mostly for the worst. I can't imagine how much it will have changed by the time my kid reaches her teens and onwards. No jetpacks, no robot butlers, just complications and selfishness.

What was heartening about the Welsh rugby clubs is that there are still people keeping them alive, and I do think there is a backlash coming, when things will get more community-based, more local, and maybe if they're still there the people will embrace them once more. We've lost so much, let's cling on to what we've got.

. . . . .

This blogging thing has been a trial lately. In the past week I've missed my deadline three times, taking notes but not actually writing the blogs until the following day. It's acceptable, I guess, but the whole reason for doing it was to keep disciplined. Eh, what're you gonna do, right?

The ridiculous thing is that I have enough spare time in any given day to write a novel, I just spend most of it doing pointless stuff or reclining on the sofa watching CBeebies. So, yeah, I need to kick my ass, in preparation for really kicking my ass sometime soon to actually get properly disciplined about writing proper stuff.

A fool's errand, for sure, but a man's gotta dream, yeah?

01/02/13: TWO BECOME ONE

I have this little figure of Linus, from Peanuts. You can't really call it an action figure, because it doesn't really do much, and even if it did, Linus didn't really do much so there'd be no point if realistic play was your bag. Anyway. Since she could talk, my little girl has referred to the Linus figure as "Jack & Jill". Not Jack or Jill but Jack and Jill, like that was its given name.

I've always found this both endearing and amazing, and the sign of a healthy, if twisted, imagination. For the record, she calls a Scott Pilgrim plush "Ryan" for absolutely no discernible reason. Aces.

So, yeah, today she picked up Linus and called him "Jack". No "and Jill". She did sing "Jack & Jill" while holding him, but when I asked who he was she just said "Jack". Bummer. I don't know what happened to Jill. I figure it was an exorcism of some kind, or maybe it was Jill's time to go back into the light, or maybe Jack's drugs finally kicked in? We'll never know.

. . . . .

I've been massively sleepy today. I even took two 10-minute naps, because that was all I could fit in. Pointless, really, but my body simply needed to sleep that badly. God knows why, because I don't think anything's any different to usual, except maybe I finished up the comic yesterday and maybe the reserves I was using for that wore out?

I'm going to bed right after I write this, with the aim of trying to get a solid 8 before it's time to get up again. Life, eh? If there was a benevolent God he'd give us sleep machines or the time to do it naturally. As it is, we're fucked. Except old people. They can sleep whenever they want. And they waste it by getting up at 4am to "potter about". Useless.

I don't know what I'm saying here except I can't wait to be old. No potterer, me.

. . . . .

I gave blood today. It was my fourth time, although my first was over twenty years ago and there was a massive gap between that and my second, in April last year. That was because I got kind of freaked out by it and made excuse after excuse, before I realised that I'm really not frightened of anything except my own brain so I should probably go back and start giving blood.

My granddad used to do it, apparently. I never knew this. There's so many things I didn't find out about him until after he died, and so much that I'll never know. I can't carry on some of his works - like being a Sergeant in the Home Guard, or playing bowls for Birmingham - but I can do this little thing.

So I do. And you should, too. For most of you there's probably no good reason why you can't except you don't want to or can't be bothered. Look at me, urging you all to give your blood away, like a dumb Renfield, but you really should. Go to blood.org.uk and do it. You'll feel good about it and yourself.

31/01/13: FUN TIMES

Man, I'm beat. I was up past midnight last night putting the finishing touches to the art for the comic, and it took me a couple of hours to get the pdf right this morning. And then I had to do it all again because I'd done it wrong. And then, as I was reading it again just to make me feel better that it actually is funny and entertaining, I noticed that I'd not finished the speech bubbles on the last page! So back to the pdf again!

But it's all done. And sent off to the printer. And thank you for reading about all this crap because it really has helped to clock my progress as I've gone along - kind of a shoulder massage for the forebrain. Now I'll shut up about it until the last weekend in February, okay?

. . . . .

Nice time tonight with some people from work, just shooting the shit about our ridiculous job, and the people we work with and serve every day. We've had a difficult time these last three months, but we've all got through it so far, and managed to stay sane.

The next step is interviews, starting February 18th, and we'll get through that, too. What else can we do? Let "The Man" win? Damn The Man! DAMN THE MAN!!!

. . . . .

I took the little one to Berzerk! today and she had a blast, as usual. It's this giant indoor playground, with slides, and bouncy castles, and ball pits, and she just throws herself around it until she's sweaty and thirsty and ready to go home. It's the best £2.75 you'll ever spend (apart from buying my comic and a packet of Transforma Snacks, anyway) and I really wish they did them for adults.

But then I got to thinking - adults fucking around on stuff usually involves alcohol. And alcohol means vomit. I can't imagine how you clean vomit out of a ballpit. And that's why they don't have them for adults, I guess.

30/01/13: POINTLESS

I almost got into an argument about politics with my Dad again today. It's something I stopped doing a while ago, because my Dad and I are increasingly on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He's an arch-Tory, who once said that our public schools produced our leaders and we should let them get on with it. I'm getting more and more left wing the older I get, and I'm this close to starting a commune.

Towards the end, before I stopped starting any kind of discussion about the modern world, our arguments would largely end with him claiming to have heard evidence for his ridiculous position - one often affecting the quality of life of him, me, and all of us - on Radio 4, and me telling him to, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" because his people were wrecking everything I've worked for. So, yeah, I told him, we could never discuss politics again. Ever.

But seeing a piece in the paper about this retarded "spare room tax" that local authorities now have the power to levy - whereby people in receipt of housing benefit can have that benefit reduced if they have unused bedrooms - and knowing that my Dad is probably going to be affected by this down the line, made me think it might be worth discussing. You'd think, yeah?

Nope. So I stopped it in its tracks before he could praise our glorious leaders. Lesson learned: never fight water.

. . . . .

I know it's a weekly tradition by now, and one I don't care if you enjoy or not, but Africa was awesome again tonight. We got more fights - zebras this time - and more insane adaptations to life in a harsh climate: how sci-fi were those silver ants?

It got me thinking, though... Is there any good reason why we haven't covered the Sahara Desert in solar panels? Surely if we could we'd produce masses of power that would reduce our reliability on oil and gas and shit? People could even live in their shade! There must be a good reason why they've not done it - socio-political difficulties, logistical problems, the lobbying pressure of Big Oil™ - but get over it, eh!

. . . . .

I killed the shit out of the comic yesterday and today, and I've only got one page left to finish. It's been a battle, mostly of my own making, and I need to schedule the production of issue 2 a lot better. Yeah, there'll be an issue 2, because it has been fun, but it's been a constant nag that I could have managed better.

It'll be out on February 23rd at the London Super Comic Convention, for you comic-show attending hipsters, and in Close Encounters in Northampton (and maybe some other shops), and online shortly after that. At £2.50 it'll be less than a pint. Nice.

29/01/13: CHAINED

I didn't even get dressed today. Didn't put my lenses in, didn't shave, just put my glasses on and got straight on with the business at hand: drawing comics. I'm getting near the end now, so pretty soon I'll have something else to write about. I may even venture out into the outside world and do something worth writing a blog about. You just might be that lucky.

So, yeah, I had a productive day. Just a couple of pages left and the comic is all finished and ready to go ff to the printers. I'm 75% happy with it, which is a good 50% more than I usually am, so that's a good thing, right? HeyJude! has seen bits of it and he says it's funny, so blame him if it isn't. I think I even managed to draw girls okay! That, my friends, is progress.

I also got my first non-spam comment on the webcomic today, from someone (apparently) in Germany, to boot! I reprint here in its full German glory:

Hallo!
Und grüße von sonnigem Stuttgart!!!
Ich liebe dieses komische, es berühre mich in den plätzen, nicht, das anderes komisches mich vorher berührt hat.. Ich hoffe diesen einen tag, die hauptfigur habe sex mit dem Zauberer, ich würde interessiert, um zu sehen, wie groß seine penis ist
Haben Sie einen wunderbaren tag, und erhalten Sie die große Arbeit! Tschuss!!!
Martin

Or in English:

Hello!
And greetings from sunny Stuttgart!
I love this comic, it touch me in places, not the other comic I was touched before .. I hope that one day, the main character had sex with the magician, I would be interested to see how big his penis
Have a wonderful day, and you get the great work! Tschuss!
Martin

I feel complete.

. . . . .

I'm five episodes into season 5 of Fringe and it is captivating and confusing and frustrating and satisfying and unsatisfying, and lots of other words. The Observers are fully creepy and hateful, and their new villainous scheme is a great extension of their role in previous series - it makes it worse that we saw how good one of them could be, before he got shot to death. I miss that guy.

There's another eight episodes to watch and then it's done, another JJ Abrams series in the books, and one which didn't last long enough for some people, too long for others, but which had more ideas in it than most networks manage in a decade. More, yeah?

. . . . .

The Factory of Sadness opened its gates again tonight, with predictable and depressing results. How much longer can this go on? Until it stops, I suppose. A slow, slow death in thirty-eight parts.

28/01/13: I AM MACHINE

Enormously productive day today.

Had a contact lenses appointment with an optician who could have been Jeremy Speight's brother, and found that my right eye has, as I thought, gotten a lot worse. Fuck it, still a long way to go before I'm in Magoo territory. That's a reference for you kids, there. Mister fucking Magoo. What was up with that? A crotchety old blind man? Kids love that! So, yeah, new lenses for my right eye, same old for the left.

Jezza tried to sell me some new lenses, called Oxy-something. They let your eye breathe or something. For only 40% more than I pay now! My eyes can fucking suffocate before I'll spend an extra £9 on that upgrade. Now if he'd offered lenses with TVs on or something cool we might have had a deal.

Then I went to Ikea. Now I loves me some Ikea. I've loved it ever since I went to my first ever one, in Houston in 1996. I loved it when I couldn't afford anything from there, and I loved it when I filled my house with their brilliant furniture. The only rocky part of our relationship was when I bought a sofa from there and it wasn't all that great of a sofa. A man has to be sofa-happy. The sofa I replaced it with, sadly not from Ikea, has been the best thing I ever bought. See? Sofa-happy.

Didn't buy much today, but it doesn't matter. Because it's an amazing place. Don't see it? You don't get it. It's that simple. If fate had been kinder we'd have an Ikea in Northampton, but a combination of Grange Park NIMBYs and a council stupidly hellbent on protecting the shitty Grosvenor Centre put paid to it. The fools! Milton Keynes got it, and we got shafted. Again. So now I have to go to the outskirts of Bletchley. Even that is worth it. Yeah, Ikea!

After that - well, after buying some pants and some bolt-locks from AsDa - I came home and drew. ALL DAY LONG. Got a load done. All the pencils are done, and I inked three pages. Just seven or eight pages to ink now. On schedule for a Friday finish and BOOM! my time is mine again. For about a day.

Busy is good. Stepford busy.

. . . . .

Zayn from 1Direction flew back to the UK yesterday for crisis talks with his girlfriend, Perrie from Little Mix. He'd been splashed all over the Sunday papers for having fucked a slag in America and... WHOAH WHOAH WHOAH! I thought Max Clifford would be lying low after his arrest for noncing, but this shit has his hallmarks written all over it.

The kiss and tell is a staple of tabloid journalism. It's a shitty business, but if you lie down with dogs you get crabs. Most of the time it's not actually a kiss and tell, it's an entirely ghosted affair, pun intended. Both parties are fully aware of what's going on, and it's done for reasons of exposure, an image change, or just to hide the fact that one - or both - of the parties are as gay as a window.

The mutual benefit ones are the ones to watch out for - like a black footballer rumoured to be gay marrying a female pop star accused of being racist. Look hard enough, you'll find they're both clients of the same publicist. Or record label. Or came from the same TV show. Now I'm not sure what Perrie's getting out of this - maybe she likes girls, or has a secret boyfriend she'd rather keep out of the papers, but this latest scandal has Clifford written all over it. Prison can't come quick enough for him.

. . . . .

There's trouble in Syria. It's been a virtual civil war there for the past couple of years. And in a lot of areas, a lot of collateral damage has been done, and the emergency services - what's left of them - are stretched to breaking point. One thing they could really do with is some fire engines - giving a bit of money to help buy them is a good way for everyone, especially pacifists, to feel like they are doing something. I applaud it.

But someone on my Facebook is doing a sponsored climb of Snowdon to raise money. Is it just me or is that a bit shit? Doing any of these sponsored things where you - or somebody on your behalf - pays money for you to do something amazing (and mostly life-threatening and resource-draining if it goes wrong) is a ridiculous thing that could only ever exist in this ludicrous world we've created for ourselves. A good editor would reject it from any speculative fiction so why does it happen? JUST GIVE THE FUCKING MONEY. Ghod!

27/01/13: THE HURT SUBSIDES

Both my pains eased today. This is a good thing. We'll soon have a new blankie in the house, making everything right in his inanimate, pink way, and my ear will soon be better. This is the way of the world. The world is good.

. . . . .

I hung out at the comic shop a tiny bit today, squeezing in a visit in what's been a hectic week. The shop was busy, with lots of passing trade, which is another very good thing. They even sold three of my comics while I was stood there, and one guy asked me to sign his. This would be a massive moment for most of you, but for me, with the tens of autographs I signed back in my wrestling days, it was just another day. I even got to say, "if you're at SuperCon come by my table", like a proper comicky person might. What a year it's going to be!

HeyJude! finished his comic last night, and you can check it out here for free before you (obviously) buy the print version, which also launches at SuperCon. It's very, very good, and puts my efforts to shame, which is as it should be.

Tomorrow is an Ikea day and a drawing day. I'm equally excited about both, although the prospect of drawing two men in the their pyjamas, sharing a double bed as if it were the rightest thing in the world, probably tips the balance towards drawing.

See, I told you - the world is good.

. . . . .

In tonight's Ripper Street one of the toms turned down good old Seargeant Drake, saying she could never be "a copper's housewife". I think that sounds lovely, apart from having sex with a copper, anyway. The show, once again, was cracking, and it's actually made me look stuff on Wikipedia. Edutainment at it's best.

26/01/13: THE HURT CONTINUES

I'm still torn up about losing my daughter's blankie. I went back to Sainsbury's this morning to have another look - still no dice. I asked at the customer service again and the girl said, "ah, yeah, you did a sketch. We've stuck it in the diary." What can have happened to him? Did someone pick him up and think, "a pre-loved child's blankie toy - perfect!"? Is he under some undusted shelf-unit, waiting to be rescued? It's killing me.

I bought one off eBay tonight, so that should be here in a week or so, when "Mr B comes back from his holiday", but it'll never be the same, will it? I'll always know that I failed her.

. . . . .

The ear thing is beginning to piss me off. It's not the pain so much, although it hurts a lot, it's the disconnection, and the not being able to hear properly. I like to go to sleep listening to the radio - I have one of those ace pillows with a speaker in it - but also like to lie with my right ear on the pillow, and it's the right ear that's fucked, so I can't hear Stephen Nolan and Dotun Adebayo talk rubbish and my brain has nothing to stop it performing evil, so I'm grumpy and tired and forlorn.

I'm not in a good place.

. . . . .

We're nearly a month through the year and I haven't really accomplished much. I've kept up with the blogging thing, and I'm working my way towards the comic thing, but everything else remains undone. I should probably sort that. Let's get the comic, and the ear, and the blankie sorted, yeah? Then it'll be playtime and progress.

25/01/13: BLACK

A really, really bad thing happened today. My daughter lost her blankie. She's had him since birth and she'll be distraught when she realises. At the moment we're telling her he's gone on holiday but that won't hold for long. It's utterly upsetting for everyone.

When we went into Sainsbury's she had him. When we got home she didn't. None of us could remember the last time we'd seen him in the shop, and they haven't had one handed in. I walked and walked the aisles, tracing our exact route, and nothing. Like he vanished into thin air. I left a sketch and my number with the shop but there's not a lot else I can do.

Luckily there's one exactly the same on eBay, so I've put a bid in for that, and hopefully I'll have it by this time next week, ready for Mr B to return from his "holiday". This is the worst I've felt in years, so utterly useless. All over a little, pink blankie. God help me if anything real ever happens to me.

. . . . .

Villa humiliated. Again. This is going to go on for some time, because our once-heralded owner has done a vanishing act from the public eye, and seems content to leave the feckless cunt we've got as manager in post until the inevitable happens. I can only conclude one of three things: he's an idiot, he doesn't care, or he's got a bet/insurance policy on us going down. All three have the same result, a rudderless ship.

My pal Joe Costello has declared the Villa a "Factory Of Sadness". It's hard to disagree.

. . . . .

I'm still making steady progress on the proper comic, and I hope you're enjoying the webcomic. After work in the morning I've got a whole week off, so it'll all be done and sent off to the printers by Thursday, fingers crossed. And then it's on with the speedway book, and start work on fresh stuff for the webcomic. It never stops. Which is a good thing.