Category: cartoon

Secrets of the ‘Inkwell’ Underground

Under a Victorian house cartoon

A busy week for birthdays including, for Arden, some Secrets of the Underground beneath a Victorian villa. The map is 70% accurate: the Victorians did a lot of groundwork when they built their villas.

Paul Simon
Paul Simon at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival. Photo Credit: Rett Rogers, Newport Folk Festival, Newport Buzz website.

Less accurate: Paul Simon didn’t, unfortunately, include the exciting new ballad Dave in his surprise set at the Newport Folk Festival. My nephews James (happy birthday today), Richard and Tom gave its world premiere last month, at Dave and my sister Lin’s golden wedding celebrations.

It opens with Dave on his trusty NSU Quickly moped phut-phutting to the rescue with nothing to sustain him on his journey except a raw onion, hence the chorus, ‘Bite! Bite!’.

Dylan's album

Performing alongside the Ingham brothers, my great-nephew Dylan, who also celebrated a birthday during this last week.

Celebration

guitarists
Dylan and James

Celebrating a golden wedding, Lin (my sister) and Dave’s, with their sons Richard, James and Tom plus grandson Dylan supplying the music.

guitarists
Dylan and Tom (not the complete drum kit: in addition to the bongos he had a tambourine which he played with his right foot).

I already knew that my sister during her time at Cambridge had had two close encounters with Prince Charles, himself a student at there at the time: one when she nearly ran in to him on her bike and another when she was next in the queue to him in the bread shop and she bought the muffin that had been next to the one that His Royal Highness bought.

Prince Charles
Lin takes Prince Charles home one weekend to meet our mum and Burke the black cat. This looks like a fake to me, but then surely my mum wouldn’t normally dress like that to take in the washing?

But according to a Golden Wedding ballad performed by the boys there was more to it than that. In their version it’s Charles that runs into Lin to get her attention and Dave – a student in Liverpool – has to leap on his scooter and drive to Cambridge for a dramatic face-off with the Prince on the college croquet lawn.

wedding cartoon

My brother Bill and I were the grooms at the wedding. Family friend Muriel was convinced that I’d get my hair cut.

Manx sheep

More celebrations: happy birthday to Zoe on the Isle of Man.

pigeon
Town pigeon taking great care to select the perfect twig at Pinderfields this morning.

Osla’s Camp

Osla

Ossett is a Viking place name, which might mean ‘Osla’s seat’ or ‘ridge camp’.

Chickenley: ‘chicken meadow’

I’m transferring my 1998 booklet Around Old Ossett from the Microsoft Publisher version on my now defunct PC to Adobe InDesign on my iMac and taking the opportunity to spruce up my cartoons of local place names in Adobe Illustrator.

In my original booklets I wanted the blackest of blacks possible so I went for bit map format where each pixel is either black or white – never grey but this gives a slightly pixelated image. In Illustrator I can use the ‘Image Trace’ function set to ‘Black and White Logo’ to get a smoother effect.

Gawthorpe: ‘Gauk’s (an ugly person’s hamlet)
palce names page

R2-D2 and C-3PO

cartoon characters

R2-D2 and C-3PO: how they are related.

Happy birthday (yesterday) to a Star Wars fan who shares her name with NASA’s plucky little (weighing in at just 200 kg at the launch) solar Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph.

family tree cartoon
Published
Categorized as cartoon

Earl ‘Eaton

Drawing the Archibald Stanton cartoon

Drawn with a Canada goose quill that I picked up at Cannon Hall last week, another colourful candidate in our Wakefield by-election: Sir Archibald Stanton, Earl ‘Eaton, Monster Raving Loony Party.

Archibald Stanton cartoon.

A Little Fish

cartoon

Happy birthday to Simon, who’s been dipping his toes in the water in Brighton.

Brighton cartoon

The Elephant in the Shed

shed cartoon

Happy birthday (yesterday) to Damian, who once constructed a greenhouse using recycled plastic water bottles.

shed pop-up card

Of course in real life he never messes up on dimensions.