Mick's BICS

Last weekend, I attended the British International Comics Show (BICS) here in Birmingham, and it was a really enjoyable weekend. The venue, as it as has been for the last couple of years, was Millenium point, a giant, grey building that looks like it should be in Mega-City One. this means that the two guys dressed up as Mega-City judges looked right at home when they were milling about the place.

Our friends Jamie and Theresa came up to stay with us for the weekend, so this meant Jamie and I could go to the show whilst the ladies went shopping. They also went to see Fame at the cinema, and apparently it's a load of shit. What a surprise.

When you get there, you have to go into the lift to get to where the event is being held. This must've been the right place, because sharing the lift with us was a stormtrooper. Not the historical Nazi-type, you understand, the imperial type, from Star Wars. After we got out of the lift, Jamie, who is a Star Wars nut, saw a group of blokes dressed up as various types from the space saga. There were Clone Troopers, Stormtroopers, Mandalorians (well, a couple of guys dressed as Boba Fett, anyway)and TIE-fighter pilots. He gave me his camera and then went and asked them if he could have his photo taken with them, and they duly told him to get on his knees and pointed their blasters at him. As usual, I pressed the button and nothing happened. I have a real problem with digital cameras. It's as if my hands turn into cow's tits.(That's why all of our holiday photos have just me in them!) It's a shame, it would've been a cool photo.

After we got in, we had a mooch about, and there seemed to be quite a lot fewer stalls than there were last year, but this meant there was more room to walk about. Unless you were stuck behind the Dalek, which seemed to revel in blocking the gangways. This year, as I didn't really have anything new to sell, my plan was to show my portfolio around and hopefully get some work. Everyone I showed my work to really seemed to like it, and I've already had a couple of emails asking me if I'd like to do something.(more on that when I know more myself!)

The main reason for going to these things, however, is to catch up with people you only ever tend to see at these things or shoot the shit with the creators you've worked with before. I tend to find that you hardly ever talk about comics with comics creators. The main topic of conversation seemed to be how shite the launch party was. I was glad I didn't go. It was held in the Panama bar, which is off Broad Street (Birmingham's 'Golden Mile' , which is only golden in the same way a stream of piss is golden.) I read somewhere that BICS special guest Howard Chaykin described the women he'd seen on Broad Street as “the sluttiest, trampiest women” he’d ever seen. Sounds about right.

As usual, we met up with Andy Winter, my collaborator on Septic Isle (still selling well), and moaned about the state of the world, as we tend to do, and we arranged to go out for dinner later on. I also showed him the two pages I've done for the four-page web comic I'm doing for him right now. (preview panel above) Also, over the weekend, I bumped into a couple of people I've not seen for a couple of years. Firstly, there was Michiru Morikawa, who was on the StripSearch course with me way back in the mists of time, and anyone who lives in Brum will be familiar with her art, as it is her work that's on the back of many of our buses, asking people if they want to adopt. Anyway, she's gone back to live in Japan, but she was back to promote her book Buskers, published by Imsomnia Publications. Her work is fantastic, pick up a copy. It's worth it.

I also bumped into fellow Brummie and Villa fan Ben McCool, who wrote the script for the Stuffed comic, which included my very first published comic art. He lives in the Big Apple these days, writing for DC. As usual, he had a stinking hangover when I saw him. He told me that he was taking his DC editor to Villa Park for the match against Manchester City. That's got to be a culture shock for the poor sod. He probably now knows very well what Karren Brady gets up to of a night-time, after having it sung at him by 40,000 people.

I also had a couple of stints manning the MC2 table, which was right next to Diamond Distribution's table, which had loads of free comics on it. During both of my stints, I never sold any books, but I was asked about sixty times 'Are these free?' by punters looking at the Diamond table.

On the Saturday night, Me and my glamourous other half, Jamie and his, Andy Winter and Andy Radbourne (creator of Brit Force, another comic you should go out and get) all went out for dinner and a few drinks, and a cracking night was spoiled when I got home by me not looking where I was going in my garden and ending up falling into some bushes and skinning my knee. The less said about this the better.

We went back on the Sunday, after being forced to watch Strictly Come Dancing, which seems to go on forever. There have been wars that have taken less time. Most wars are probably less psychologically scarring, too. I showed my portfolio to the people I didn't get a chance to see the day before, and again, generally positive feedback. I ummed and aahed about forking out for some Copic pens. They were very expensive, and despite hearing 'they're what Adam Hughes uses' at least twenty times, I decided not to, as I'm not Adam Hughes.

Generally, though, it was a great weekend, and I'm hoping it happens again next year, which is likely, as more people came this year, apparently. More normal-looking people, too! Since I've been going to Comic-cons regularly, I've noticed that the clientele is getting more and more normal-looking; glamourous, even! The days of the BO-stinking hunchbacks are long gone.

Happy New Year!

Yeah, yeah. I know it's a bit late, but it's been a fairly hectic festive period for me. I didn't even start my Christmas shopping until three days before the big day because I had an art job (maybe I should say 'art favour' seeing as I've not received any payment yet) for a computer games company which took far more time than I wanted it to; it started off being five pages but then I received the script, which crammed far too much into its five pages, so I decided to virtually re-write it, making it more reader-friendly (and making it easier to draw!) and so it ended up being nine pages. Still, it was a useful exercise- I now know, should I need to, that I can produce four fully-inked, fully-lettered pages in a week and still do a day job. (Saying that, I did do the last twelve pages of Septic Isle in a week. I didn't go to work or have any sleep, though!) Some of the artwork was quite good, too, even if I say so myself:

Anyway, after that was done, Heather and I spent a weekend down south catching up with her friends and folks and spreading a bit of the Christmas cheer. Now, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but my lovely girlfriend is crazy about Christmas. She absolutely loves it. Normally, I see Christmas as a royal pain in the arse. I hate standing in queues in department stores listening to endless repeats of Slade or that awful one Paul McCartney did that sounds like an intestinal disorder (I'm still wondering why I never heard 'Rock n' Roll Christmas' by Gary Glitter at all this year. Funny how some festive songs go out of fashion, isn't it?) and all the forced jollity (you should know enough about me by now to know that I don't really do 'jolly') and repetitive strain injury from writing out all the Christmas cards for colleagues who probably don't even like me that much.(Although this year, I didn't bother with cards for work. I'm glad we don't do Secret Santa at my work. God knows what I'd receive!).
However, my girlfriend's enthusiasm rubbed off on me a little bit, so we ended up getting a massive tree (eight feet tall! I spent all Saturday sawing the bastard up and putting it into bags. I only had a poxy little hacksaw so now my arms and back are sore. Poor me.) and it did look nice, I suppose.
Christmas itself was a strange one for me, as it was the first Christmas day I've spent without my kids being present (I got them the next day and we had a nice time) but Heather's parents spent Christmas with us and had dinner and a nice day was had by all. Although, Heather was a bit pissed off that her folks had bought me more presents than they did for her! I'm currently working on Heather's dad, trying to make him an Aston Villa fan. I did succeed in getting him to say 'Up the Villa' as a Christmas toast. Sounds great in an American accent. Sounds great in any accent, actually. Especially as the Villa are doing well at the moment. (When I was doing some shopping in Woking, I saw a young lad wearing a Villa shirt, so it looks like we're picking up some of the glory-hunting Southern support. It's a good sign. He was probably an ex-gooner.)
As I said, I got my girls on Boxing Day, so we got to have Christmas all over again, and my brothers and their spouses came over the day after that for a festive drink or three. The highlight of that was when we played 'Who's in the box?' a game where you take pieces of paper out of said box, and have to describe who's written on them to your partner. You have a minute and have to describe as many as possible. This game threw up some great descriptions and answers. My partner was my youngest daughter, and her description of Gandhi as 'some bloke from the past who wore glasses' didn't win me a point. My eldest daughter's description of Jimi Hendrix as a 'left-handed guitarist, brown' got some giggles as well. My youngest got my description of Paris Hilton as 'that slag from America with a dog', which is just as well, because when I read her name all I could think about was the video 'One Night In Paris', and I didn't really want to be describing that to my thirteen year-old daughter. Other descriptions of note were:
'Old Christian singer with a turkey's neck and a colostomy bag,' and 'Rasta frog who ruined Star Wars.'

The main reason Christmas was a good one this year, however, was that I managed to get ten days off work and Heather and I spent them doing nice holiday type stuff like not having to get up, or going to the lovely Electric Cinema ( a restored 1900's cinema here in Brum where you can book a sofa and watch old movies. they also have this great service where you text them what you want from the bar and they bring it to your sofa) and watching It's A Wonderful Life on New Year's Eve. It almost made me want to emulate Jimmy Stewart when I came out of the picture house and run down the street it's on shouting 'Merry Christmas Old Rep theatre! Merry Christmas old Midland Red bus depot! Merry Christmas Adultworld sex shop and porno cinema!' but I managed to keep myself in check. We also went to the Thinktank at the Millenium Point, where I showed Heather the Spitfires built here in Brum at Castle Bromwich, and we learned that most of the guns used in the American Civil War were also manufactured here in Birmingham's Gun Quarter. So, not only is Brum responsible for keeping Hitler at bay, we're also responsible for the freeing of America's slaves. We also went to the planetarium there, where we watched a film about what Ancient Egypt saw when they looked at the night sky. And we watched Villa score a flukey win against Hull in a packed boozer in Moseley, and another flukey win against Gillingham in the same pub. All in all, it was a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and I enjoyed it so much I might even do it next year.
Hope your Christmases and New years were good too.

Mick's BICS.

Well, Birmingham International Comics Show went by in a flash, didn't it? It's in its third year now, and it keeps getting better. It's certainly more slick and better organised , less malodorous and in a nicer venue than its Bristol counterpart, but it's still not quite got the vibe that the Brizzle expo has. Like Sting says, though, I'm sure it'll come eventually.

Andy Winter and I were there to flog Septic Isle, we got there fairly early on Saturday morning (after we'd had 'a night on the pop' on Friday) and discovered that our table was the first one people would see as they came in. However, we weren't in the main hall, so it turned out ours was the first table people would ignore as they rush past to go and meet John Cassaday. Just after we set up and had a coffee I got a phonecall from my friend and fellow MC2-er Laura Howell asking me if I could help them carry their stuff up from the car. I dutifully go down and offer my services and get roped in to carrying someone else's stuff, leaving Tim (Laura's partner) standing there in the car park like a spare prick. After I carried the other lady's stuff up to the exhibition hall, I rushed back down to see poor old Tim struggling with three big wooden boards and helped them carry it all up after all.

My good deed done for the day, I sat back down behind our table and got ready to meet the punters. We shifted a few copies of Septic Isle, but it wasn't exactly flying off the stand. Our stall was directly opposite a large projection screen, which, at about eleven o'clock, started showing an extended trailer for ITV2's crappy sitcom No Heroics. It showed it again and again and again and again. Not really helping us with sales. Jean-Paul Sartre once said that hell would be being stuck in a room with your friends for all eternity. Well, he was wrong. Hell is being sat opposite a loop of a really unfunny trailer (and besides, I like my friends. Most of them, anyway. I think you have to put Sartre's comments into context. His mates were French, after all.) The trailer was completely inappropriate anyway, as it was a room with quite a lot of young children in it, and the trailer had references to drug use, masturbation and someone said 'fucking' in it too. Andy, bless him, had a word with Shane (one of the organisers and a really nice bloke) about how annoying it was, he agreed with us and it promptly stopped. The sense of relief amongst the row of stalls we were in was palpable.

The other thing I've noticed after going to a few of these things in recent years is the change of the type of punters that are coming to the cons. When I first started going there were very few females attending, there are certainly more attending these days. Admittedly, a lot of them are girlfriends being dragged along by their nerdy other half (like my girlfriend, who I've not mentioned so far, but she did come along with me, bless her, despite us both being up to our eyes with our house-moving) but there are a lot of genuine female fans coming to the conventions.( I know there has always been genuine female comics fans out there, they just didn't seem to come along to conventions). There tends to be a lot more families coming along too, which is also a good thing.

But there are also the cosplayers. The ones at Brum tended to be of characters I'd heard of, the Bristol con tends to get the manga/anime freaks dressed as characters even I've not heard of, as nerdy as I am, and the costumes at Brum tended to be of a very high standard. There were some professional dresser-uppers there too, special mention must go to the guy dressed as the Heath Ledger Joker, as he did really look like him (or 'fucking creepy' as my lovely other half put it) and, though I wasn't looking, obviously, the lady dressed as Harley Quinn looked nice, too. There were also people dressed up as Dan Dare (although his eyebrows weren't the same distinctive shape as Dare's; things like that are important to me. I know, it's an illness, I can't help it!), Batman and some of the Thundercats.

Our friends Jamie and Theresa turned up a bit later, moaning about how poxy it is to get around Birmingham. Theresa rescued my girlfriend and they went off shopping. I later got a text from Heather telling me that Geri Halliwell was signing books in Selfridges. I asked one of the cosplayers who was dressed as Green Arrow (Connor Hawke, not Ollie Queen) sitting opposite us if he could actually use the bow he was carrying around and if he minded going to the Bullring to fire a few bolts at Ginger Minge. He looked at me like I was mental. He's dressed as Green Arrow and I'm the mental one. Figure that out.

Later on, my ex and my youngest daughter turned up, and I was shocked to discover it had cost them fifteen quid to get in. I reckon that's a bit steep. As good as the con was, there's not enough for the casual punter who is just there to buy stuff to look at or do that's worth that much money, and that got to hurt the stallholders if the punters are already a tenner lighter before they go in.

During a fag break (it took ages to get downstairs and outside for a smoke, the expo was three floors up) it was too windy for my poxy lighter to work, so I borrowed a lighter from another 'snoutcast' and got chatting to him about Brum's metal legends Sabbath and Priest, Bill Hicks and how us smokers are treated like criminals amongst other things. Then, on the way back up I found out that I'd been talking to the fairly famous artist Frazer Irving. He's a cool guy.

Generally, the Saturday's trade was steady, not spectacular, but it'd been a fun day, and it's always nice to meet up with the people you only see at these conventions.
After we all packed up for the night, we planned to meet up in town for a meal and a drink, so Heather and I headed back home so we could get changed (the thing I find weird about the Brum comics show is not staying at a hotel, it doesn't feel right going back home after a day at a comics expo) watched a bit of telly (still not sure about BBC1's Merlin) and headed back out to the city centre and met up with Jamie and Theresa, Andy and his old mate Rob, and Keith Burns (like me, a former StripSearcher and he's also the talented artist of Blood Psi) and we all went for for a big-ass burger at the Handmade Burger Company, which is on the canalside just behind the ICC. The meal was great, but the onions in it kept repeating on me and led to me doing foul rotten flesh-smelling mini-burps all evening. It's surprising how popular this makes you. Afterwards we decided to go for a pint or three, so it was up to me as the only Brummie to decide where to go. I plumped for the Tap and Spile, as it was close and doesn't have dance music drowning out any attempt at a conversation. The problem is, however, that particular pub is a bit of a dive. And it takes ages to get served. And you have have to listen to the other patrons talking about snuff movies at the bar while you're waiting. Besides that, though, it was okay and we all had a good evening. Whilst I was in there I bumped into two old schoolmates of mine and was cheered up by their distinct lack of hair. Okay, they might have better careers and all that stuff, but at least I can still ask the barber for 'a little off the top' and not worry about it!

At the end of the evening, Heather offered everyone a lift back to their hotels (she's poorly, bless her, so she decided not to drink and therefore could drive) so we traipsed through the little bit of Brum that most resembles Gotham City (Broad St.) to the car park at Brindleyplace (that's not a typo, it is all one word. When Birmingham City Council rebuild and rebrand stuff, they like to remove the spaces from names. The 'Bullring' is another example) where we were stuck in a logjam of cars. We waited nearly an hour to get out of the sodding place, but we had great fun bitching about all of the other drivers, who really were total cocks. Not so much fun were the rotting flesh belches, which are even less amusing in a car full of people. So, even though it took our friends over an hour to get to what was basically a ten-minute walk away, we were all in good humour (although I am slightly worried over one friend's admission that he fancies Rupert Everett. I think his wife might be, too) and looking forward to the Sunday.

After a very slow start (probably because of the weather. It was pissing it down as usual) Sunday was a good day for us. We sold loads more on the Sunday, very unusual as Saturday tends to be the biggie, normally. So much so, in fact, that all the initial print run of Septic Isle is now all gone. (Don't worry, there's about to be a second printing for our dispatch to shops and websites) I even managed to leave our table for a bit and have a proper look around and buy some tie-in tat as gifts for my offspring. The nice lady at the Forbidden Planet stall liked my T-shirt, it had cartoon versions of the characters from Monkey on it. She wasn't the first. I had comments about my T-shirt all day. I very rarely get nice comments about what I'm wearing from strangers, but I obviously impressed a few of my fellow nerds. Actually, whilst at the Forbidden Planet stall, a man passed by with the copy of Septic Isle he'd just bought, so I asked him if he wanted me to sign it for him. He checked the photo in the back to see if it was actually me that drew it, then he ran off to get a pen, and eventually I signed it. I always dreamed I'd be signing my comic books at Forbidden Planet; This was good enough for me!

I did a bit more sketching on the Sunday, and people seemed genuinely pleased to get my amateurish scribblings with their purchase of Septic. One bloke asked me to do a sketch, so I did him one of Marley, the protagonist from our book. He also asked me to write who it was, sign my name and date it, and he also took a picture of me doing it. As he'd bought our comic, I thought it was the least I could do. I reckon he was going to put the book and sketch on eBay('signed by the artist! photo verification!) I think he'll probably get about 12p. He obviously thinks I'm more famous than I actually am. Which is not very famous at all. Still, good luck to him. I just hope he doesn't spend all of the 12p in one go.

Other highlights from the Sunday include: My mate Jason getting work from DC after a portfolio review. That's great news, he deserves it as he's so talented. I finally got hold of the Frankenstein comic adaptation from Classical Comics, despite my own problems with that particular publisher, because my friend Declan Shalvey illustrated it, and it looks tremendous, and it's a good read, too. Had a chat with the FutureQuake guys, and it was good to see Dave 'Bolt-01'Evans telling off his son for being too nerdy. Bloody right too. The Joker looky-likey was back in a nurse's outfit on Sunday, and the girl who was Harley came back dressed as Lara Croft. she looked nice, apparently, but I wasn't looking, of course. Joining the professional dresser-uppers for the Sunday was a guy dressed as the Brandon Routh Superman. You know, the one with the burgundy cape and the too-small 'S'? He didn't really have the build for Supes, but fair play to him. My girlfriend told me how she shared the lift with him at one point, and at every floor, someone got on and said 'cape not working, then?'. On every floor. Brummie humour. Best in the world. Serves him right for not actually being able to fly.

Trade died a death after about half four so we decided to pack up. Heather went and asked around in the main hall to see if they had any spare boxes for our move. She got some too, so now, when I do move this weekend, I'll be carting my stuff round in boxes with 'Batman figural bank' and 'Sinister Six Vulture med statue' printed on them. Even my house move has become a nerdfest!

Still, it was a good convention. We had a great weekend, but now I have to turn my attentions to packing up all my various shite and shifting it to my new abode, so this'll be my last post for a bit, as I don't know when I'll next be online. I'll see you all on the other side of the move. Ta ra a bit!

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part two)

House Hunting:

One of the main reasons I've haven't been blogging as much as I'd like is because i've been looking for somewhere new to live. When I say 'I', I mean 'we' as my lovely girlfriend and I have decided to move in and rent a place together.
Now, as all of you who have ever been house or flat hunting know, estate agents can be economical with the truth. We wanted to move to the Moseley area of Brum (or as I call it, Mos Eisley. I'll explain why later), but so do a lot of people. This means Mos Eisley is prohibitively expensive, and estate agents say properties are in Mos Eisley when they're not. We looked at places that were in Hall Green (famous for its dog track) when we were told they were in Moseley so they could bump the price up a bit. Also, what an estate agent calls a double bedroom is not what I would call a double bedroom. what they would call 'desirable' some times is what I would call a 'shithole'. We looked at one house that was a relatively new build, but inside it was terrible; the stair rods were mostly missing and every room's walls were riddled with holes. (I reckon the previous tenants were fans of the 'floating shelf'.) Apparently, having a house that resembles swiss cheese is 'desirable' these days! Not to me, matey!
My lady and I also saw a house we subsequently referred to as 'the house of death'. It was completely beige inside, beige walls and beige carpets all through the gaff. It smelled bad. Its kitchen hadn't been updated since about nineteen forty-seven and it was obviously a house where someone old had died. To be fair to the estate agent on this one, though, he could tell it wasn't the right place for us and looked suitably embarassed as he was showing us round.
We did luck out though. The house we settled on is in King's Heath, not far from Mos Eisley, it's got four bedrooms, it's in our price range and it's lovely. We'll be moving in a couple of weeks, so I'm up to my ears in packing and measuring stuff and buying washing machines. It's worse for my girlfriend, who is moving up from Winchester, so her hassles are probably ten times what mine are.

Mos Eisley Folk Festival:

My girlfriend is middle class, and I'm obviously not, so we're kind of putting ourselves through a cultural exchange. She makes me watch rom-coms (some of the time, anyway! I still won't watch anything with Reese fucking Witherspoon in it, though. I have some standards!), I make her watch kung-fu and zombie movies (but not Peter Jackson's Braindead, yet. That combines the two genres in one fantastic scene. You should all go out and see that movie if you haven't, yet. One of my faves.) I make her eat baltis, she makes me eat salad from wooden bowls. (This is the biggest indicator that someone's middle class, this is; owning wooden salad bowls.)
My girlfriend's a big fan of Seth Lakeman, who I'd not heard of before I met her, and I've since found out that he's a folk-singing midget who mostly plays violin as well. She found out that Seth was playing at the Mos Eisley folk festival, so she bought tickets for her and a friend to go and see him, and all the other bands playing at the festival. As the festival got nearer though, it turned out that her friend couldn't go, so I agreed to accompany her. This had a cultural exchange aspect to it too, as I stipulated that we had to watch the Villa-Liverpool match (which was on the same day) in a grotty pub first before we head off to the folk festival.
After watching one of the shittest nil-nils I've seen in a long time (fair play to the mighty Villa though, we're third in the Premiership as I type this, only one point off top) we headed off to Mos Eisley. Now, Moseley does resemble its Star Wars counterpart. It's a weird place, maybe not the 'wretched hive of scum and villainy' that Mos Eisley is, but it does have a strange mix of residents, so the pubs do resemble the cantina from A New Hope. There are a lot of posh people, you know the types with people carriers who take their kids to violin classes, there are also a lot of grungey students, lots of new age types, all wiry hair and sandals and creative facial hair. And that's just the women! (Insert rimshot noise here) and, Moseley also has more than its fair share of tramps. Not the modern Big Issue, dog on a string homeless, but your old-fashioned tramp. Meths-drinking, mismatched shoes-wearing, big overcoat-wearing, piss-smelling, giant beard wearing paraffin lamps. There was a famous itinerant called 'Pete the Feet' who used to bother drinkers in Moseley for small change, he was called that because he refused to wear shoes. But I digress.
We went to the festival and it was pissing down. Torrential. As has most of what we used to call 'summer'. A friend of mine said that the British weather is like the Muslim community, sometimes Sunni but mostly Shi'ite. (But, Brum's muslims are mostly Sunni, apparently, so it's a crap joke, really)
The festival was in Moseley Park, which is a park you have to go down an alley to get to, and the festival was like any other festival you've been to, but a lot smaller. That's a good thing, the queues for the chemical bogs are much smaller, for one thing. There was a real ale tent. Another good thing. There were a few stalls, including, weirdly, one that sold violins. I think the cheapest one was three hundred quid. Hardly an impulse buy at a music festival, is it? Unsurprisingly, the stallholder wasn't doing much business. There were all the usual jewellery, joss stick and hippie shit on sale, and there was quite a good book stall. Because most of the festival goers were new age-y types , I was worried I wouldn't be able to get anything substantial (i.e. meat) to eat, and, at first glance my worries were confirmed, falafels, veggie burgers, vegetarian indian nosh. I opted for a falafel, and it was lovely, but I dropped my girlfriend's chilli, so hers wasn't as nice as mine. Then, after I finished my falafel, I noticed the hog roast stand. Bastard!
The rain was coming down in big sheets, and we couldn't shelter under a tree because all the other festival goers were hugging them. And the music, whilst not my thing, was fairly good. It's nice to see proper musicians playing instruments and enjoying themselves. Bit too much accordion, though. People have a go at the metal music I like for being all morbid and obsessed with death, but it's got fuck all on folk music. The songs are about such heartwarming subjects like lifeboat disasters, the highland clearances and dead sheepdogs.
After an escape from the rain for a bit (we went to the O'Neills round the corner) we headed back into the park to watch Seth Lakeman, and he was good. Not good enough to convert me to being an Arran sweater wearing/desert boot folky, but he was alright. Despite the rain and the boring footie match, it was a good day.

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part one)

Apparently, sometime this week, this blog had its 10,000th visitor (well, since I started counting, anyway) so I thought I'd better put something mildly interesting on it! I've been busy the last few weeks, not updating as much as I'd like, so I thought I'd give you a brief round-up of what I've been up to. I'll leave out all the boring day job stuff that's taken up most of my time, as a post which just says 'I've been working harder than Janet Street-Porter's toothbrush' isn't very interesting. So anyway, here's part one of 'The stuff I've been up to':

Hiking weekend:

A few months ago, whilst out drinking with my dad and brothers on my birthday, we all drunkenly decided we were going to go on a big walk around Kinver Edge. My dad's other main hobby, besides drinking and passing wind, is hiking, but he hadn't gone on a walk for ages and talked me and my brothers into going with him when we were all pissed enough to say yes.

This was against my better judgement as I spent quite a big chunk of my childhood traipsing around canal towpaths behind my father. That's the thing, you see, my dad didn't really do the pretty walks, he liked walking along 'the cut' (that's what canals are called around here. You know how the Inuit are supposed to have four-hundred words for snow, because they're surrounded by it? That's a bit like us Brummies and canals; We've got a whole two words for them!) and subsequently knows how to get anywhere in the West Midlands by towpath. This isn't so bad these days, because Birmingham has been regenerated like Doctor Who, and the council has spent money cleaning up and renovating and prettifying a lot of the canals, but when I was a kid marching alongside the cut with my dad (this was the the early Eighties) it wasn't so groovy. Walking along a muddy towpath dodging overgrown nettle bushes alongside a canal full of shopping trolleys and used johnnies looking at the backs of semi-demolished empty factories in Thatcher's Britain wasn't really my idea of fun. But, my brothers and I all agreed to go on a walk with our dad because it sounded like a great idea at a quarter-past pint number seven.


Anyway, we decided to go for a walk on August Bank Holiday. That got changed as it was my brother's wedding anniversary that weekend. We didn't go to Kinver, we ended up going somewhere else in Worcestershire. (I don't want to put where we did go in case the guy that owns the B&B we stayed at happens upon this blog. You'll read why soon enough.)

My brothers, my father and I, my dad's mate and his son had a nice walk along the river Severn in the pissing rain, (it was torrential, most of the time) stopping in every pub along the way and taking the piss, swearing (mostly at the weather), talking football (mainly about how shit Birmingham City are) and swapping jokes and funny stories. My dad and his mate are very scatological in their humour; anything to do with farting and shite are incredibly amusing, so much so, every anecdote I heard from either of them during the weekend tended to be about all the amusing al-fresco shits they've had in years gone by. So, among the stories I heard were: Slices of bread being used as emergency toilet roll; bread which was subsequently eaten by a dog. I heard about the time my dad's mate accidentally shat in the hood of his cagoule, and the time he was dying for a crap but couldn't go because his wife's sister was using the bathroom, so he went and did it in a bucket in his shed, but he missed the bucket and crapped all over his lawnmower. These stories are base, not very clever, and yes, disgusting, but I love them! I also found out, from my dad's mate's son (who's a soldier) that, despite Hollywood telling us otherwise, people make a lot of noise when they've had their throats cut. Nice. We finished our walk in good humour, especially after seeing my brother Matthew go arse over tip in a muddy puddle, and avoiding the escaped cow that was running at us along the riverside.We ended up sitting outside a pub in the rain sinking a few more pints. Although hiking isn't really my idea of fun, I did enjoy it. It was a good craic, and all the other hikers we met were nice, always saying hello, and the views were great. It's just a shame, because of the rain, I had my head down for most of the walk and didn't really appreciate the scenery as much as I should have.

We headed back to our B&B to get clean and dry and to change into nicer clothes so we could head into the town centre for more drinking. My dad and his mate left us to it at about half-ten, but my dad's mate's son, my brothers and I carried on into the wee small hours. I've subsequently realised we drank something like sixteen pints that day (we started drinking very early and finished late), and we moved on to spirits at the end of the night. Staying out late was a bad idea, because we realised when we got back we couldn't get back into our digs. We weren't given a key, and we all tried phoning up our fathers but to no avail, they'd gone to bed and turned their mobiles off. Bugger. we ended up having to break in through a small open window on an upstairs floor. Let me tell you, trying to scale walls and run along rooftops like a staggering Matt Murdock when you've had sixteen pints is both difficult and, in hindsight, bloody stupid. Anyway, we got in and after me and my brother Marc stopped giggling like twats about the ridiculous situation we'd just found ourselves in, finally got some sleep.

We got back to Brum the next morning via the Severn Valley steam railway, and ended up in a city centre boozer (more drink; bloody hell! My liver was aching until at least the following Wednesday) putting the world to rights until we decided to go home and get some proper kip. All in all, a good weekend.

My trip to Bristol part four: Sunday.

It's been a while since the last proper instalment of what I got up to in Bristol, and, to be honest, I can barely remember what happened! But, for all you completists out there, I'll try and do a quick recap so this blog can get back to posts about toilets and Aston Villa and Jimmy Saville impressions, because I know you all love that stuff. So here goes:

Sunday:

There had been a few drinks imbibed the night before, but I wasn't feeling that rough. We walked round to the exhibition hall, and the queue wasn't nearly as long as it was on Saturday. In fact, it was a more relaxed day. We didn't sell as many copies on the Sunday, but trade was nice and steady after a slow start. I do remember having to draw a sketch of The Phantom for a very nice young lad who was waiting very patiently for the artist that did promise him a sketch, but wasn't actually there at that time, so I stepped in and did the honours. he seemed to like it, anyway.
As it was a bit quieter, I could actually leave the stall sometimes and have a bit of a mooch around some of the stalls. I bought my daughters some gifts (My eldest got a manga-type skinny fit T-shirt, my youngest got a Gremlins Gizmo back-pack.), but I didn't really buy myself anything, as my flat is slowly becoming overrun with comics-related crap. I did, however, let my girlfriend talk me into going around the people I knew and getting sketches for her.
My girlfriend noticed that the crowd on the Sunday tended to be couples. Saturday was mostly blokes on their own, or cosplaying girls in groups, but not very many couples. What this says about the married or attached geek is beyond me, so I won't pass any comment at all. Strange, I know.
The thing that struck me about this particular Bristol Comic Expo was the atmosphere. There seemed to be more of a buzz this year than there has been in previous years, and it was generally a joy to be present to experience it.
Anyway, Andy and I stuck around until about half-four, and by then, it was dying off, so Heather and I bade our farewells and, seeing as our trains weren't due until six, headed to the local pub (The Reckless Engineer) for a bit of the hair of the dog. In fact, I'd had so much hair of the dog that weekend I was beginning to cough up hairballs! The thing I've noticed about that particular boozer on Comic Expo weekends is that every time I go in there, no matter what time of the day it is, Simon Bisley is in there. Without fail.
Anyway, after a slow pint, I carried my extremely heavy bag up to Temple Meads, kissed goodbye to my girlfriend and got on a train with some very pissed rugby fans (who luckily buggered off to another coach) and headed back to Brum, weary but happy, because it had been a fantastic weekend. Thanks to all the folks I spent time with there for making it such a great time.

Right, normal business will resume soon, I promise!

My trip to Bristol part two: Saturday

The weather had sorted itself out by Saturday morning and it was an extremely sunny day. I got to the Commonwealth rooms (where the con was being held) about half-nine and already the queue was all the way down to the bottom of the street. None of that queueing for me, as I was an exhibitor, so I joined the much smaller queue of other exhibitors and waited to get my pass. In the queue I met Hunt Emerson and Tony Bennett (from Knockabout Press) and shot the breeze with them as we waited to get our passes. This was organised very haphazardly, and I ended up with a pass that just said 'Temporary Pass' written on it in biro.(Actually, it just said 'Tempy Pass') But, I got in, and met up with Andy Winter and got ready to launch our book Septic Isle. Our table was directly opposite the Forbidden Planet stall/toyshop, and we were at the end of the aisle, and it was a fantastic spot.

We had a good day. Septic Isle was selling very well, Andy and I were signing books all day, and I've never been asked for so many sketches before. I think, over the weekend, I did a couple of Marley (Our book's hero, as it were), a Sontaran from Doctor Who, The Phantom, Conan, Judge Dredd, Superman, and a few more I can't remember. I do remember how stained my hands were because of the inks from the pens I was using, though! A tip for budding artists out there; Don't buy those 99p black felt tips from WH Smith. they lose their point after about five minutes and they leak all over your fingers!

Andy and I at the Moonface Press table. Note the Aston Villa wristband, which, apparently, is a fashion faux-pas according to my girlfriend. A fashion faux-pas? At a comics convention?! Strange, I know!

The hall was hotter and sweatier than Lucifer's balls, and though it was just about bearable by where we were (we were by a door) at the back of the hall it was roasting, and there was a lot of sweating, judging by the funky aroma at the rear of the hall. We were kept hydrated by my lovely lady, who kept bringing us water, bless her! And I know this doesn't sound like me, pessimistic sod that I am, but everyone I met at the table were really nice, including the four really nice Muslim girls who each bought a copy of Septic Isle because of its anti-Nazi/BNP stance, but then me and Andy started worrying that the sex scenes, swearing and extreme violence might offend them, and we'd forgotten to warn them about it. oops!

Heather had devised an excellent escape plan for herself by inviting her friend Jane down to a)meet me and b) rescue her for lunch for an hour or so. I wish I'd thought of something similar but I've not got any friends! I did manage to escape for a bit and had a drink (hair of the dog; still a bit rough from our rainy drinking session the night before) with my girlfriend and her mate. This drew stares of astonishment from most of the punters because it was weird that a bloke emerging from that hall actually knows some women.

Also, as usual at these things, the costumed types turned up. There was a garrison of Star Wars stormtroopers accompanied by a Boba Fett, a Snowtrooper, a Death Star Gunner, and a big Biker Scout. They were a very game bunch, posing for photos and raising money for charity and they must've been sweating buckets under all that armour. Then there were the Cosplayers, mostly teenage girls (though there were some lads doing it too) dressed up as their favourite manga/anime character. I found some of the costumes a bit inappropriate for fourteen year-olds to be wearing, I'd never let my daughter wear that kind of gear, but then that's me probably being out of step with what kids are like these days. Also, I must mention the one girl (I think it was a girl, anyway) dressed as a polar bear, or a snow-wolf or whatever (just imagine a big white furry animal thing with a big head) it shows dedication to walk around in the oven that was Bristol Commonwealth Rooms covered in fur. Especially when most people looking at you don't even know what you're supposed to be dressed as. There weren't many people dressed as actual superheroes. There was an Elektra hanging with the Cosplayers, but that was about it. Actually, at one point Kev Sutherland accosted three of these Cosplayers by our table, there was Elektra, a girl dressed as what appeared to be a giant Warhammery tank thing with knives for fingers, and another general Japanesey type costume and asked them if they wanted to take part in a video he was making. He set up the camera on our table, put on a Benny Hawkins-style woolly hat and two sock puppets on his hands to become his alter-ego 'The Scottish Falsetto Sock-Puppet Theatre' then he explained to the girls that he would sing 'my name is...' and that they had to shout out who they were dressed as. Then he said(in a decidedly Sid James kinda way) 'I'll take you one at a time'. So then he proceeds to play out this patently ridiculous act three times in a row, while me and Andy look on wondering how weirder the day was going to get. I was worried I might get roped in, so I buggered off for a tactical fag. I had a T-shirt on that had the 70s Batman comics logo on it. So, while I was outside smoking and waiting for the ridiculousness to end, a lady photojournalist said to me 'Excuse me, Batman? Do you have a light?' This is the first time I've ever been accused of being a superhero, but I made some shitty joke about telling her not to call me that name in public, and I lit her ciggie for her before I went back in. Luckily, Elektra, General Japanesy, Warhammery Tank and the Jock Socks had all done one by the time I got back. Phew.

A good thing about these conventions is the fact that you get to meet and catch up with friends that, for one reason or another, you only see at these things. Great folk like Keith Burns (Blood Psi), Declan Shalvey (Hero Killers), Dave Evans(Futurequake) and Steve Tillotson (Banal Pig). Plus you meet and make new friends too. I met Jamie, who is a frequent commenter on this very blog, and his lovely wife Theresa, for the first time and we got along like a house on fire. (Probably a bit too well-see picture!)

Keith, Andy, Declan, Jamie and I all arranged to meet up and go for dinner at the end of the day's festivities, and so we did, after I went back to my hotel and changed my by-now stinky Batman T-shirt for a Kirby Hulk one (my cache of nerdy T-shirts is almost bottomless!) whilst watching the generally disappointing 'Doctor's Daughter' episode of Doctor Who. We went to a pub/restaurant called The Hole In The Wall where it took ages to get served because the poor lad serving us all had a broken arm. I asked him whether they forced him back to work, but he told me he volunteered to come back because he was bored. Jamie then replied something along the lines of 'I understand, well, you can't have a wank, can you?'

The meal was a good laugh, conversation basically consisted of us slagging off each other's favourite movies. well, except for Declan and Heather who agreed on almost everything. We also found out that, in the case of The Shawshank Redemption, Andy was 'on the side of the guards'. We all had to leave when Declan remembered he should've been at the Eagle awards because he was up for a gong for 'best newcomer artist'. We tried to convince him it would be cool and a bit rock n'roll not to turn up, but dec was having none of it, so we all headed to the nearby Ramada hotel where the awards ceremony was being held.

To Declan's relief, we got to the ceremony just as it started, and the rest of the group who weren't nominated for anything stayed at the rear of the hall, by the bar, and watched the ceremony and generally tutted at the announcement of most of the winners. All the people I knew that were nominated for awards came away empty handed. Pity. I think that the Eagles should celebrate British creators more, maybe have a couple of 'international' categories, because most of the time the awards were given to people who weren't there, because they're in the USA, and probably don't even know they've won. Still, it was cool to see legends like Walt Simonson and Dave Gibbons (who weirdly won 'best letterer'; to my knowledge he only letters his own art) up on stage. After a bit of commiserating with some of the losers, (although I didn't buy any of them a consolation drink as it was nearly FOUR QUID a pint!) we all went into the Ramada bar proper and 'shot the shit' with all the other artists, writers and general geeks I know. Random topics of conversation included Jimmy Saville's sexual proclivities and whether 'Lobster Thermidore' is a viable first name for a girl. After spilling most of last pint down my aforementioned Hulk T-shirt (I wasn't that pissed, I was nudged) Heather and I decided to head back to our hotel while it was relatively early. This was one o'clock in the morning!

Me in the Ramada bar, after the spillage incident. Notice how my coat is done up?

Still, it had been a fantastic day.

My trip to Bristol part one: Friday.

I'm extremely exhausted and trying to rehydrate furiously after the fantastic weekend I've just had at this year's comics convention in Bristol. As there's loads to tell, I'm going to split this up into fairly easy-to-digest bits. So here's what happened on the Friday:


Weirdly enough, my train was on time, and my reserved seat was unoccupied! I was sat amidst a group of French students who were extremely annoying. I'd forgotten to pack anything to read on the train journey, but luckily enough, the passenger who had occupied my seat before me had left a copy of The Times behind for me to have a read of. There wasn't a lot of interest in there, but I read the sports pages, and an interesting article about Bob Dylan and put the paper back down. As soon as I did, the French guy opposite me (I was sat in those seats that have a table, so you end up trying to spend the journey avoiding eye contact with the passenger opposite, and also trying to avoid kicking them, probably accidentally, under the table) asked me in broken English if he could read the paper. He took the paper and started laughing at the first story he was looking at, which was about Josef Fritzl. Then, he turned the page and saw a picture of a dying Burmese baby. He thought this was hilarious and held up the paper so all his mates could see it, shouted something out in French and all his mates had a good old laugh at the picture. How sweet.

Not long after, it was time for me to get up and wrestle my (very heavy indeed) bag out of the rack, which was not an easy task as my new Gallic friends had dumped all of their luggage on top of mine, and they all sat there watching me, smirking, as I struggled to get my bag out. In the end I just dumped one student's ridiculously large rucksack (it was virtually a bergen) on the floor to get to mine. He got up out of his seat then.

Bristol Temple Meads station is a fantastic-looking place, and it's how I think all railway stations should look. Especially when you consider that I'd just travelled from Birmingham New Street, a place not suffering from 'sick building syndrome', more like 'terminally ill building syndrome'. My girlfriend's train arrived about a quarter of an hour after mine did, so I hung around outside the station in the glorious sunshine topping up my nicotine levels rather than my tan. She duly arrived (bringing far too much stuff in her suitcase, as usual. It was one of them things with wheels that you can drag along like a tartan shopping trolley, which is a lot easier usually, but the area around the convention and the station has its fair share of cobbled and uneven pavements so you end up with vibration white finger after pulling it along for just five minutes!) and we went along to our hotel and checked in.

Now, for the last few comic-cons I always get there a day early so I can spend some time with two of my oldest friends, Mark and his wife Dawn, who don't live far from Bristol. Dawn came to meet us outside our hotel after she finished work and we all got on a bus to Keynsham, which is where she parks her car (it seems a convoluted way of getting to and from work to me, but apparently this saves her a hell of a lot of money in travel costs) and from there we went to a supermarket to get food and beer, survived a minor anti-freeze incident and then we went on to their lovely home in Saltford where Mark and Dawn cooked me and Heather (that's my lovely girlfriend) a fantastic Mexican meal which we ate in their garden, as the weather was glorious (but the clouds were looking ominous). Although they'd been in the house a while now, it was the first time I'd seen it, and Mark proudly showed us around his garden and the variety of crops he was growing. Ah, bless him.

After dinner, the plan was to head into Bath, where Mark was meeting up with some ex-colleagues of his, so we all piled into Dawn's car (she pulled the short straw and was the designated driver) and headed into Aquae Sulis. On the way the heavens opened; a torrential thunderstorm started to batter the south west. There was sheet lightning, heavy rain, and hailstones, and we couldn't park that close to the pub. Romans might've been shit-hot at building roads, but they're shit at providing parking spaces. This meant that we had to leg it to the pub in what seemed to be a monsoon. We turned up looking like drowned rats. However, after I had tried some fucking disgusting strawberry-based beer, we found out that Mark's ex-colleagues weren't coming as they had problems with their car or something, so we decided to head to Mark's local, a charming little tavern, and it was a lot drier there. In fact, they hadn't had any rain at all yet, so we sat outside with the smokers under an awning and watched the lightning from a distance. It all looked very Wuthering Heights. Then it started to rain again. A lot. The awning under which we all huddled started to fill up with water dramatically. We all looked up at the pregnant bulges above us and decided to make our way inside quickly. One of the other smokers wasn't quick enough and didn't make it in time; the awning collapsed and gave the straggler an almighty shower. Not only did it extinguish his cigarette, it also soaked him completely! Everyone who had made it in time was standing in the doorway of the pub pointed at him and laughed loudly. Then we all laughed at the inappropriately dressed teenage girls who were trudging past drenched. Then later, we saw two other young girls wrestling with each other in a big puddle. Strange.

When the rain died off a bit, the four of us headed back into Brizzle and had a few in the Hatchet. This is apparently Bristol's oldest pub and reputedly has a door covered in human skin. Nice. It's now a rock pub, and when I went there last year Mark and I were accosted by a woman obsessed with the SS and her very tall, very-manly looking transsexual mate. Nothing as weird as that happened this time, we had a few drinks, talked a lot of shite as usual and sang along to Flash by Queen whilst thumping the tables in time with the music. Heather, as usual, got invited to have dinner with my friends at some point in the future. (I think I might've been invited, too. It's one of the things I've noticed about Heather is that she gets invited to dinner by a lot of the people I've introduced her to. They ask her, not me!) Anyway, it was a great night, we headed back to our hotel slightly merry and happy and tired and all set for the Comics Convention the next day.

Mark and I (possibly in a refreshed state) in post-'Flash' celebratory huddle.

BICS

This weekend I attended the BICS (Birmingham International Comics Show), a much improved convention than the one last year. And it was much busier, with people queueing for at least an hour to get in when it first opened. The ThinkTank at Millenium point was a much better venue than the Custard Factory was last year, the convention actually seemed like a proper comics convention and not a church hall-type fete.
I didn't know there were function rooms at the ThinkTank, which is the new home for the old Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry. I thought they'd stick all the tables in and around the exhibition, and I was dreading our table being by the exhibit which is a giant model of a colon, which would send out the wrong impression of our comics!
I spent most of Saturday manning the MC2 table, and catching up with the bods I'd not seen since the Bristol Expo. I left early to watch the England footy match (wish I hadn't-what a shit game!) then I went back out to meet up with the other Mc2-ers at the 'official' bar for the event, which was Bennetts, a pub that used to be a bank on Bennett's Hill. Just as it was getting warmed up, though, they decided to call time, so there was a mad exodus of comics creators and fans across the road to a pub called the Briar Rose. Afterwards we went back to the Britannia Hotel and had a few more in there.
I spent most of the night drinking with John McCrea, and meeting a few new people, at one point I seemed to be surrounded by everyone from Northern Ireland who had anything to do with comics. This isn't a bad thing, as a good time was had by all.
What spoilt it was the two hour wait for a taxi when I left. I'd forgotten it was Eid, so most Muslim taxi drivers weren't at work, so there were less taxis. I didn't get home until five in the morning. So, subsequently, I slept in 'til late, and didn't bother going to the con on Sunday, as I wouldn't have got there until about three, and I felt as rough as a badger's ballbag anyway.
I'm just hoping there'll be another Comics Show next year. I was talking to Shane Chebsey, one of the organisers, on the night, and he told me that they can't afford to do it again next year, unless they get a sponsorship for the event. Let's hope so, it'll be a shame if this event never happens again.

Right, I'm off to catch up on some kip now.

Connections, Carlisle, Conventions and Celebrity Chefs.

Hiya! I know it's been a long time, but I've been a busy lad just lately.
This is my first post from my new computer in my (fairly) new flat, I've just this minute plugged myself back into the 21st century, and I've missed it. My ex is probably very glad that I don't have to usurp her computer throne any longer to make various emails , delete the hundreds of spam emails I've received since I last logged on, use it for various comicky/arty reasons, or generally take up space in her living room; space that she fought hard for by fucking me off in the first place!

I've just come back from a trip to Carlisle, which is a great looking city (old fashioned stone built houses, twisty streets and a castle) but of a night, filled up with the same pissed-up wankers you get in any town centre, and there were rather a lot of coppers about. I thought Cardiff had Plod-overload the other week, but Carlisle was like Mega-City One in comparison. (I think the impending visit of Millwall F.C. to the local footie stadium might've had something to do with it, though.) Weirdest sight of the weekend was four Policemen interrogating a dwarf on the Carlisle Road, outside the hotel I was sleeping in. Although I wasn't actually sleeping at the time, I was outside, staring at four burly coppers questioning a PORG.
Ah, the hotel! Wasn't it lovely? Well, no, actually. The toilet made this noise whenever you flushed it that put me in mind of the noise a Harrier VTOL might make whenever it takes off. It was this loud 'BOOOOM!!!' which I was certain was waking everyone else up in the city of Carlisle, never mind the next room!
As I was going out with a nice young lady, I thought I'd make an effort and actually iron my shirt. I know! Crazy behaviour!! As this hotel was shit, there was no iron or ironing board in my room, but there was a leaflet in my room telling me about the special 'ironing room' which was on the second floor. I walk up the stairs, clutching my crumpled shirt, towards the ironing room, imagining a pressing paradise, rows and rows of ironing boards, hundreds of young professionals, like me (okay, not like me, then!) ironing their garments with a beatific smile plastered all over their boatraces, the combined outpourings of steam turning the second floor of the hotel into a sauna...
Let's say the reality didn't match up. the ironing room was a windowless room about the same size as the bedrooms, with a smattering of litter on the floor, unheated (it was bloody cold) with one ironing board and battered-looking iron in it. It has to be the most soul-destroying room in the whole world .(Actually, Birmingham City's trophy room is probably worse, but seeing as no-one has ever needed to go in there, we'll never know.) I quickly ironed my shirt and got out of there before the Devil realised I was trespassing on his property and try to claim my eternal soul as compensation. It worked, anyway, as the afore-mentioned evening with the young lady was a great success.
The weekend was nearly ruined by the British Rail network returning to form after lulling me into a false sense of security with a hassle-free journey up, with a return journey that took twice as long, and an enforced connection because they decided not to stop at Birmingham New Street anymore. I can't really blame them for this, it is a shithole, but I've got no choice, I have to disembark there! So, I had to get off at Stafford and wait half-an-hour to catch a train that did stop at my station. While waiting, I went outside the station for a cigarette (it had been at least five hours since my last one) and noticed that the bloke smoking a fag next to me was none other than celebrity chef Paul Rankin (the longish-haired Irish one who sometimes has a goatee). He got on the next train as well, and got off in Wolverhampton. The lady in the seat behind me asked her friend "Isn't that that chef? Irish one off of Ready, Steady, Cook? Thought so. You'd think he'd travel First Class, money he's got!" He was only going one stop!! He wouldn't have had enough time for a cup of tea, let alone any of the other treats First Class has to offer! Silly woman! Then I remembered we were in Wolverhampton, and there's more brains in a butcher's sink than there is in the whole town (sorry, it's a city, now, isn't it?) of Wolvo.

Anyway, I'm home now.

Next weekend is the Birmingham International Comics Show (BICS) at Millennium Point, Curzon Street, funnily enough, here in Birmingham. I'll be there at the MC2 table, trying to flog our new comic Ghosts , which I didn't contribute to, as I'm busy with Septic Isle, still (I'll post some more images from that as soon as I get this sodding new computer to recognise my old scanner. Don't want to buy a new one as it's an A3 one, and them are dear!) If you can come along, please do, as the guests include Mike Mignola, Kevin Nowlan and one of my all time faves Mick McMahon, who I reckon draws the definitive Dredd, and doesn't do many conventions, so it's worth checking out. We need this convention to be a success! Not least because I know how much work the organisers are putting in! Come and meet me-I'll be the four-eyed one sweating out a hangover at the Midlands Comics Collective table (found out today that there exists a Manchester Comix Collective! First they pinch our big wheel, and now this!) and buy one of our books. You could purchase the ones I'm in!! See you there!

It's amazing how quickly sitting here typing gets boring. Not missing it anymore!)

Jose Who?

I'm still smiling (I know it's strange) from the brilliant result the mighty Aston Villa got against Chelsea on Sunday. The cheating Cockney bastards got stuffed 2-0! First time they've been beaten in seven months! Our mostly British team beat the team of expensive foreigners! Both goals scored by lifelong Villa-supporting Brummies as well!
Drogba, who is up for a BAFTA for his performance as 'man who has just been elbowed in the face' even though there was no contact at all, ironically REALLY did get injured and had to be helped off at the end. Serves the cheating bastard right. He is one of the best strikers in the world at the moment, and it saddens me that players of his calibre have to resort to play-acting. The same goes for that Ronaldo at Man Utd.
After the match, a bloke came into the pub covered in blood, telling someone on his mobile that he'd been jumped by three Chelsea supporters (it was probably only two, really) but, like he said 'at least we beat the cunts'. If he'd worn a claret shirt instead of a white one, the blood wouldn't have shown up anyway.
Being a Villa supporter is very hard work sometimes, but every now and again they do something that makes it all worthwhile, and Sunday was one of those times. When the second goal went in I was so happy it took me at least twenty minutes to get back to my natural 'slightly pissed off' state.
Also priceless was this moment, which happened straight after Gabby scored:


The way Doug Ellis is laughing at Abramovich almost made me like him again.

UP THE VILLA!!!

Stags.

I remember, a few years back, stag nights just consisted of going out with your mates, getting pissed up, maybe getting a stripper involved and then possibly rounding it off with some enforced nudity and lamp-post bondage for the unfortunate groom-to-be. These days, the stag night has evolved into the stag weekend and this involves going away to a strange town for two days just to do the things I mentioned above. Is this progress?

My brother (our Marc, the middle one) is getting married on Friday, and I've just got back from his stag weekend down in Cardiff. It seems everyone else getting married this week had the same idea. Cardiff has stag and hen parties coming out of its ears. Whoever said all brides are beautiful obviously didn't see some of the brides-to-be I witnessed. Bloody hell. In one bar, there was one extremely rough-looking obese woman wearing L-plates and a veil (so I assume she was the bride to be) carrying a giant inflatable penis, 'dancing' and singing 'Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?'. The irony was obviously lost on her. Unless she was genuinely too warm.



The plan was to get there on Friday, have a few drinks, but take it steady, as the seven of us in the party had paintballing to do on Saturday. That plan went AWOL. We got wrecked. Some members of the party got told off by the hotel's management for making too much noise when we rolled in at about 4.30 in the morning. (not me, I'm a good lad, and anyway, I was too busy being passed out on my hotel room's bathroom floor!) So our Marc diplomatically sorted the situation by taking off his belt and hitting the transgressor with it while saying "Shut the fuck up, or they'll chuck us out, you daft cunt!" Henry Kissinger has nothing on my brother.



Saturday morning, we all get up feeling as rough as a badger's ballbag, so we decide to get a fry-up in a local greasy spoon on the way to the paintball. I didn't feel like the full English, as I was still feeling the effects of spewing my ring up the night (morning?) before, so I had a bacon butty and about four cups of tea. It seemed to work, as I felt okay afterwards, and the rest of the lads seemed to enjoy their fry-ups, and we all went on to the paintball site. Now, on Saturday morning, the weather was bad. It had been raining continuously since we got to Cardiff, so the paintball site was now one big quagmire, if your feet didn't sink in all the way up to your knees, you just slipped and fell on your arse instead. I didn't have any sturdy footwear, I just had a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors which gradually got destroyed as the day went on. I've not done any paintballing for years, not since I was a teenager, and I was a lot fitter in those days! I've discovered something else I'm rubbish at. The whole day I got shot to fuck. I looked like a plasterer's radio by the end of the day. The crappy weather didn't help visibility, as the masks we had to wear were either steamed up, covered in water or splattered with mud and paint. Also not helping the day, was another stag party from Scotland, who took it all a bit seriously and tried to give us tactics. We decided to take their tactics and stick them where the sun doesn't shine (which was Cardiff, that weekend!) and just basically run like fuck and shoot everyone you saw. It seemed to work as our team won quite handsomely at the end of the day.



Like I said, my shoes were destroyed, so I decided to bin them. We all drove back to the hotel, and we decided we couldn't walk in with our muddy feet (none of us were sober enough to think of bringing a change of shoes) so all seven of us walked through the hotel lobby in our sopping wet socks, and we all got admiring glances from the other guests because of our Brummie sartorial elegance. When I got back to my room, I took of my shirt and surveyed the damage. I looked like ED-209 had had a go at me for not complying within 30 seconds. I had livid red circular welts all over my body. Arms, chest, stomach, back, arse, legs were all covered in bruises. I looked like Superted's best mate.

After we all had our afternoon shushes (shit, shower, shave) we went to the Walkabout bar around the corner and watched the Villa play Newcastle on the telly. How Welsh was that? Standing in an Australian bar watching the Villa on the telly. We could never do stuff like that back in Brum. Hang on, that's EXACTLY how I spent the previous Saturday afternoon here in Birmingham! The whole weekend was like that-we had drinks in O'Neill's, Rococo, Edwards, Walkabout and The Prince Of Wales- and they all look the same as their Brummie counterparts on the inside, why the hell did we come to Cardiff?! Still, the Villa played well and should've won, but it was nil-nil and a point at St. James's Park is always a good one. Also, Wales were playing Argentina in the rugby at the Millennium Stadium, so Cardiff was full of drunk Welsh rugby supporters. I had on a T-shirt that said Empire Strikes Back on it, and was told by a drunk Welshwoman , while I was outside having a cigarette that she'd never seen a Star Wars film. She told me this about six times. "I've never seen a Star Trek movie either", she added as a little epilogue. How interesting!

After the match, we decided to get some din-dins because we all agreed that going out with a virtually empty stomach was what done us in on Friday. The noisy fuckers who nearly got us all chucked out all had McDonald's, but me, my brothers, and my brothers' mate Liam decided we'd have some proper food, so we went to an Italian restaurant and filled up on chicken and pasta. Our stomachs properly lined, we went back to our hotel, got changed and went out on the town.

The bit of Cardiff we were in was full of hen and stag parties. They stood out because most of them were in fancy dress. We couldn't be arsed with all that shite, as it makes you a target for other arseholes, and you also look like a prick. The stag parties tended to dress up in afro wigs, for some reason, whereas the hens tended to go with a theme, I saw women dressed up as pretend policewomen, sailors, gangsters, pyjama parties, and in one case, Quasimodo (though I'm beginning to think now that wasn't a costume!) my favourite group of hens, nerd that I am, were the group dressed up as Superheroines- Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Generic Superhero Woman whose costume I didn't recognise. I was willing to try and get Batgirl to slide down my Batpole, but the party told me to hurry the fuck up as we were going to a titty bar. It's a stag night, there HAS to be naked ladies, apparently.

Typical Brummies, we haggled to get a fiver knocked off the entrance fee to the lapdancing bar, and eventually, they let us in at a fiver off. This seemed a bit stupid in hindsight as we spent shitloads of money in there. Apparently, we bought thirteen bottles of Champagne in there, at over thirty quid a go. The ladies in there seemed to like us (besides the fact we were spending lots of money) as we were just in there to have a laugh and take the piss and not take it seriously as some of the other blokes in there, who think the girls really want to dance for them, and they joined in with our piss-taking of each other. Apparently, we spent more in there than Robbie Fowler (now a striker for Cardiff City) did, when he went in the other week. At the end of the night, when they let us out, it was through another nightclub, and could we fuck find our way out. It took us about half an hour to find an exit, but we managed it. While me and my youngest brother were finding the way out, my other brother, the groom-to-be, managed to stop one of our party getting glassed because the twat said something he shouldn't have. This rounded the night off superbly, because Marc was fuming and told his mate exactly what he thought of his behaviour. This nearly led to another punch up, but it was all settled fairly amicably, and we all went to bed for about three hours.

We left at about Twelve on Sunday, and the trip home was fairly uneventful, except for when our car hit the kerb the moment we got back into the Brum. We swerved into the other side of the road, and if anything was coming the other way it would have been extremely serious, but nothing was, so we were okay. The reason for the driver's collision with the kerb? "I was looking at that field over there." That's okay then. Worth dying for, that.

So anyway, I'm back now, covered in bruises and stiff as a board and dehydrated, but at least I'm still alive!

TW3.

It's been a while since my last confession, sorry, blogpost, but I've been stuck away from a computer for most of the time, which is probably a good thing as it means I can get some proper work done. Since my last post I went to see Transformers with my nippers, which, even though I am of the right age and in many other ways I'm your typical geek, I had no interest in seeing.
(The whole Transformers craze passed me by as a kid, probably because for a lot of the eighties my dad was one of Thatcher's three million and the toys were so fucking expensive. When I moved house recently, I dug out some of my old 2000ADs from the early eighties, and some of them had adverts for the Optimus Prime playset, and that cost £25 back then! I remember one of my cousins, you know, the more affluent branch of the family tree, the uncle who got a VCR first, the first microwave, the first inside toilet (I'm joking! I've always had an inside lavatory really!) having an Optimus Prime and realising even then, at about eleven years old, what a waste of money it was.)
Anyway, my eldest wanted to see it, so we went, and even though I'm not a fan, it was enjoyable enough, despite the fact that during the fight scenes I couldn't tell what was going on at all. I just spent the time perving over the female lead of the movie, and being a typical dad. ("HOW much for Pick n' Mix?!!")

Saturday night I went drinking with my brothers, and I found out something about what Joan Collins does sexually that I can't repeat as it is totally unverified and probably legally actionable, but it seems to work for her. That's all I can say.

I got another page done this week, started the next one, and I seem to have got into a rhythm which is good. That's the thing with relationship break-ups and house-moving, it don't half bollocks up your schedule.

Went to a Midlands Comics Collective meeting on Wednesday, I told them I couldn't take part in the next anthology ("Ghosts") as I want to concentrate on Septic Isle, but I don't think my absence from the next book will be noted especially, as the rest of the guys are just so damn talented! At the meeting I also got some free comics from Hunt Emerson, including the American Splendor anthology for Vertigo he did a strip for, as well as a fantastic Robo-Hunter trade paperback. Ian Gibson is fantastic, always been a major fan of his stuff. Free comics are always good!

Yesterday, I attended the funeral of my ex's Granny, my kids' Great-Granny and it was a good service which went without a hitch, and as far as 'nice' can be said about funerals, this was a nice funeral. If she was looking down, I'm sure she would've appreciated it.

So, that was my week. It'll probably be another week or so until my next confession.

What I Did At The Weekend, by Mick, aged very nearly 33.

As you know, I've been in Bristol all weekend, for the comics convention, and it was a great weekend. A bit weird sometimes, but fun.

FRIDAY
I got there Friday afternoon, checked into my rather posh hotel (I'd got my tickets at a special price, it was £59 a night rather than the £139 it said a room was going to cost on the sign behind the counter), and as is usual in every hotel I've stayed in, the receptionist was a foreigner with a heavy accent. (Probably because a lot of the hotels I have stayed in have been abroad!) This time she was French, she gave me my key said I was in room 401 and that I was on the fourth floor. What I heard though, because of her accent, was 'feurce' floor, so I went to the first floor wondering why room 401 wasn't there. The room number itself should've give me a clue. Ah well, I found it in the end.
The night was spent with my old schoolmate Mark, (who defected from the People's Republic Of Birmingham to live in Brizzle), his wife, and her friend. The ladies left us in a rocker's pub, called The Hatchet (which, according to Mark, has a door which is covered in human skin. It's a pub which dates back to the 1600s, apparently, and they used the hides of flayed pirates. The door itself doesn't look like human skin, it does look all gnarled and black, but who knows what happens to human skin after four centuries?) while they buggered off to somewhere civilised.
Whilst in there, a woman latched on to us and between her rants at other patrons of the boozer told us all about her sexual fetish for SS uniforms and Hentai. Later on, she introduced us to her friend, whose name I didn't catch, but it was a very tall transsexual, with giant shoes on, making him/her seem even taller. A seven-foot tall bloke with tits and a shocking pink dress on certainly sticks in the memory. At this point, the ladies came and got us, with a strange look on their faces that said 'What the fuck's going on?'
We then went to the Academy to see Mark Ronson, and if you like that sort of thing, it's the sort of thing you'll like, but it was alright, not really my cup of tea, but there was beer there and gyrating females, so the time passed reasonably pleasantly enough.
Got back to the hotel at around two in the morning, hotel bar was closed, so I went up to the room and watched the end of Theatre Of Blood, in which Vincent Price forces Robert Morley to eat his poodles in a big pie, and Diana Rigg dresses up in a ginger afro wig and a stick-on 'cockduster' moustache. It's brilliant.

SATURDAY

Got to the convention hall at about 11.30, had to wait to get my Exhibitor's Pass, but got in and sat down at the Midlands Comics Collective table, which was directly opposite a Dalek. It was a proper dalek from the TV show, and it moved around and said stuff and frightened children. At one point, the bloke operating it got out, and let kids gathered around the stall have a go on his microphone/headset thing that you speak into, and the dalek says it out loud in a Daleky voice, and his lights all blink and stuff. A couple of kids said 'exterminate!', one just said his own name out loud, but one kid grabbed hold of the mike and made the Dalek shout "Doctor Who Is An Arsehole!" Made me laugh for a good while, that did. It's the kind of rich dialogue that is sadly lacking in the so-far lacklustre third series. Because we were directly opposite a dalek, mostly all I saw while I was at the table, were people with their backs to me, taking pictures of the dalek, or pictures of their mate draped across the thing. Subsequently, they weren't looking at our books. Saying that though, the hall was packed, numbers were up significantly on last year, and we sold far more copies than we did at the Birmingham show in December.
Also, this year, people in costumes were let in for free. There were 'Cosplayers', (a manga/anime thing) Star Wars characters (all bad guys-Boba Fett, Vader,Biker scouts, stormtroopers, etc., The SS fetish lady from the night before would've had a field day if she'd have turned up, which, thankfully, she didn't.) There was a young lady on the stall behind ours dressed as the Black Cat from Spider-Man, which was nice.There was a half-woman/half-fox thing, a bloke in a silver gimp suit and carrying a silver surfboard (I assume he was being Norrin Radd) which was quite impressive, as it was exceedingly hot in there, and his knackers must've been swimming. For all the good costumes, though, there are some that let the side down, such as a Nightcrawler whose face was only half-blue. There was a lad carrying round a big crucifix wrapped in bandages, and no-one I asked about it knew what it was supposed to be. Considering I was surrounded by comics creators and comics fans, doing something no-one had heard of is some achievement. I suppose it might've been his look, and he carries around a big crucifix all the time.
When I wasn't at the table, I went round to the stalls of the people I know and have worked with, to catch up and get my comp copies of the books I'm in. Everyone seemed to be doing alright, selling a few books, and having a good time.
In the evening, A few of us from the Collective went for a Chinese meal with Jemima and Dave from Hi8us, the current batch of StripSearchers, and John McCrea, Hunt Emerson, and Tony Bennett (not the crooner, the bloke who runs Knockabout Press), so there were over twenty of us. we went to a restaurant next to the Old Vic called Cathay Rendezvous, which has hundreds of pictures inside of celebrity patrons they've had, politicians, film stars, footballers, thesps, musicians have all been in there. Funnily enough, they didn't want my photo. A great time was had, anyway. This would turn out to be the only proper meal I'd eat all weekend, as I mostly lived on liquids and fags. Thanks, Hi8us!!
We went back to the Ramada hotel, which was hosting the Eagle awards, had a little chat with Glenn Fabry (I later managed to cadge a fag from him as well) saw little random bits of the Eurovision song contest, such as a big silver man, and some French blokes running on the spot (they'll probably be checking me into my hotel next year) I had a theological argument with a Christian, in which we amicably agreed to differ. I am right, though. Congratulated Andy and Dec, who had just won an Eagle award for Hero Killers, I kept getting asked by Tony Bennett to tell mates of his a joke. He was well impressed by my vast repertoire of low quality humourous stories. I bumped into Mike Molcher, who used to publish the now sadly defunct The End Is Nigh, and sat and drank with him and Simon Bisley, and I also vaguely remember drawing a picture of Nightwing on a girl's back. She asked me to! I wasn't wilfully scribbling members of the New Teen Titans on complete strangers all night. I had to try and remember what Nightwing looked like, and seeing as I'd been imbibing all night, it probably wasn't my best ever effort. If the girl is reading this, I'm sorry. I'll be practising drawing Dick Grayson all year, now, and I'll be ready next May! (I was telling Dan Cox, who wrote Why Can't I Be You? for me, about this episode of me scribbling on females, and he remarked how 'Rock n'roll' it was. I said it would only be Rock n'Roll if I'd scribbled on her front rather than her back. It's a start, I suppose.)
It got late very quickly, and because I wasn't a resident of the hotel, I had to go up to people I didn't know and ask them if they'd get me a drink. Two very nice married ladies got me drinks, and they also refused to let me pay for them. Which was nice. I got back to my hotel as dawn was breaking, around half-five.

SUNDAY

I spent a lot of Sunday feeling as rough as a badger's ballbag, but we managed to sell a few more copies. I bought my eldest a manga-type T-shirt, and my youngest an Alien facehugger plush. That might sound weird, but it is something she's wanted for ages. Alright, it is weird. Saw the guys from Doctor Who dismantle the dalek and put it in the back of an averaged-sized car whilst I was outside having a smoke. Its head was on the passenger seat. What was funny, though, is that there was a car waiting to park behind them, they had nothing to do with the convention, and I was wondering what they thought of a bloke spending ages putting bits of dalek into his car, wasting their time. Simon Bisley was next to me, having a fag and said "Even in bits it still fucking freaks me out." Now, Simon is built like a brick shithouse, I wouldn't have thought anything would intimidate him.
I left the con to go home at around three o'clock, said ta-ra to everyone, and stood waiting for my slightly delayed train (Wildfowl on the line, apparently. Bloody Virgin trains.) standing next to the half-woman/half-fox type-thing who was getting the train home in full costume. I don't think I saw her real face at all over the weekend. That's dedication, that is. (There's a picture of her on the MC2 mySpace, I think. It's part of the slideshow on there.I think my left hand makes an appearance in one of the pics. fame at last!) Spent the train journey home trying not to fall asleep and wake up in Preston, (I'd only slept for about six hours the whole time I was in Brizzle) and trying to use my WAP phone to get the football results, but my phone decided to not work. I got home, looking lke a drowned rat at about half-five. It'd been a good weekend. I might just need a new liver, though.

The Villa drew 2-2, if you're interested.

Hi to all the peeps I met out there, and might read this,(Steve, Ez, Andy, Dec, Ian, Dave, Dan et al) good to see you.

What's So Bloody Good About It?

Happy Easter. The time we remember the pain and suffering and violent death of Jesus as he sacrificed himself to save us by eating Creme Eggs. It looks like Easter Monday will be a nice day as well, not pissing down like every other Bank Holiday Monday.

I was out drinking until very late last night, it was a MC2 meeting, and then I bumped into some old schoolfriends of mine, one of which is a TV star! His name is Imran and you can currently see him in the Computeach advert where he plays a binman or summat who retrains as an IT expert. He's so good at IT but he still can't type.

A good evening was had, and was rounded off by a mad African man who kept shaking my hand in the taxi queue and warning me to stay away from women.

So I spent today recovering and watching what passes as entertainment these days. I watched Prince Of Egypt, an animated version of the Moses story, where the Hebrew slaves were so oppressed and brutalised by their Egyptian captors that they felt the need to burst into song. I watched three minutes of 102 Dalmatians, and hangover or not, I will not watch that shite. I ended up watching the best 25 TV cars or something on Sky, where they counted down the most memorable motors from the telly. I was incensed that the Batmobile only came fifth! Patrick Macnee said that 'you can't call a motor car sexy! Female genitalia, that's sexy!'

Why, Mister Steed, what an old perv you are! The General Lee won outright, which I think is pretty fair. Easter telly is shit. The 'Good' in 'Good Friday' obviously doesn't refer to the TV schedule.

In my other life as an artist, I've finally got a page done of Septic Isle; that's it at the top, there. I've also got to do a strip for the MC2 mini-comic which has got to be done by the end of the month, and I've had a couple of scripts sent me from the U.S. for a horror anthology. If these people knew I spend my days watching programmes about KITT and Bergerac's car instead of drawing I'd never get any work.

Bus Stop Incident #48

I finally have some evidence of my art being on show in the city centre! My friend who saw it took a picture with his phone, and through the magic of bluetooth and USB cable it's here on your screen. It's not a very good picture, but it'll do. I particularly like the bloke walking past showing no interest at all.

An update on my favourite bus stop in Digbeth. Today there was a man dressed like Hungerford spree killer Michael Ryan fast asleep on the pavement at the entrance to the bus shelter. He was snoring loudly, with a bottle of White Lightning not far from him. Because of the snoring, I assumed he was okay, but a sensible lady who was also at the bus stop phoned the police. A less than sensible old man kept trying to wake him up by hitting him with his walking stick, at one point trying using the stick to try and lever his head off the pavement, but he was sound asleep. I was especially touched by the way the man's hands were down his trousers. He probably assumed that at some point in the future, an old man was going to hit him with his walking stick, so he was just protecting his crown jewels. Isn't Digbeth High Street wonderful?

Mithering Sunday

I thought the humour on this year's Comic Relief was in very bad taste. Those sketches based in Africa just weren't funny. What we want is more Mr. Bean!
Not really. I avoided Comic Relief completely this year. I hate the whole notion of millionaires asking me for my money. Don't get me wrong, the causes are a good ones, and I do give to charity quite often, I just don't like being pressganged into giving money. Even if you go out drinking on the night, like I did, you still get arseholes dressed as the Pink Panther or something bothering you in the pub by waving buckets of change at you. I don't even know if these people are on the level or not. Those buckets of change could be paying for the Paddy's Day piss-up the night after. Still it makes a change from those people with buckets of roses (the flower, not the individually wrapped Cadbury's choccies) who try and lay a guilt trip on you if you don't buy the lady you're with one of their minging flowers.
Speaking of Paddy's Day, everyone celebrating it in town yesterday had the same hat on. It was a leprechaun-type titfer but with the top being a felt facsimile of a pint of Guinness. I'm from Irish stock (probably why I'm called Mick and not #shudder# Mike.) but I hate going out on St. Patrick's Day. The pubs are full of English people with Ireland rugby shirts on who think that having a long-lost decendent who was from Donegal somehow makes them more interesting. They'll still support England in the World Cup. I generally hate all displays of public patriotism. I really am a miserable killjoy bastard.
Today, as you all know, is Mothering Sunday, but I'm not really close to my Mom. I've not bought her anything as I think today is supposed to be an acknowledgement of all the hard work your mother does, and I don't think that I have a lot to acknowledge. I feel a little guilty about this, but I think she should feel more guilty.
In other news, the story Why Can't I be You? a strip I drew for writer Daniel Cox nearly two years ago, is finally going to see the light of day. I'm glad about his, as this strip has a lot of art in it that I consider among some of my best pieces. It should be on sale at the Bristol Comic Con. My character designs for Septic Isle are also being highly praised, and I'm nearing the point where I can actually do the pages. Also, I'm going to feature on an online gallery called Art Peeps which features a lot of local artists, as well as a Birmingham City Council online artists' database. Things are beginning to happen to me and my artwork now, after months of famine, it looks like there might be a feast soon.

Going back to the Mother's Day theme, here is a clip involving an awkward call to your parents: