Hello again!

Hello again! It's been ages since my last post, I know. It was, in fact, the last decade when I last wrote anything for this blog of mine. Apologies to my three readers who kept looking at my blog for anything new only to see that fat pillock Gio Compario looking at you.
There are a few reasons for this absence. Firstly, there was Christmas, which was nice (despite my constant girlfriend-annoying grumbles about how much a pain in the arse Christmas is). We had a house-full this year, Heather's parents and my offspring and us all sharing the house for a few days, but it all went swimmingly. My youngest brother got himself engaged over Christmas, so congratulations to Matthew and his lovely fiancée, Emma, they're a great couple and it's about bloody time. ( He proposed on the Lake Of Love in Bruges, and Heather's good friend Jane also got engaged over Christmas when her boyfriend proposed in Costa Rica. I've got a bloody hard job trying to top those if I want to propose anytime soon. Thanks, lads.)
Secondly, over the last few months, my ISP has only been supplying me with internet only when they feel like it. Most of the time, I was getting 'Page not found' or 'Oops! This link appears to be broken' (I love how Google makes me not being able to access my email for weeks at a time sound like a minor inconvenience) and most of my time on the PC was spent trying to connect to the web and repairing links. Bloody BT. Seems to be okay now, though. Fingers crossed.
Thirdly, I've been busy on a secret project. I've been offered a 100-page graphic novel to do, but that's all I can say about it. I'm still in the character designing phase, which involves sending emails back and forth, not so easy when your bleeding computer won't work. The emails they send me have this scary non-disclosure legal message at the end, so I can't really tell you anymore, or show you any art just yet.
Fourthly, being a supporter of the mighty Aston Villa has been quite a big distraction over the last few weeks, with all the ups and downs (mostly ups, to be fair) that that entails. Villa are doing well on all fronts, and we've actually managed to get to a cup final for the first time in ten years. Can't get a ticket for Wembley, though.
So, anyway, I promise to update a bit more regularly in 2010. This blog is four years old at the end of this month, and I've been neglecting it. I never want to be accused of neglecting a four-year old. Not again, anyway.

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.

Ahh, There You All Are!

In the words of trailer-trash headcase Britney Spears; "Oops, I did it again!"

I've been such a busy boy lately that I've not had the time to update my blog. (I've also found out that this blog has 'followers', now. Some of them are blogs I wasn't aware of until recently. I've got readers I didn't know about!The number keeps going up and down, though. That's what happens when you very rarely update, I suppose.) I've got an art project on at the moment which is taking up an inordinate amount of my time, and that's on top of all the stuff that moving to a new house entails, and that's on top of me being very ill this week with a virus that made my joints swell up and stop my bowels from moving. Still, not going to work for three days is almost compensation for not being able to bend or poo. Or bend and poo; after all, I don't do it standing up. Not every time, anyway.

More news on my art project if and when it gets finished. If you're reading this on the other side of the pond, firstly, happy Thanksgiving, and secondly, Septic Isle is now on sale in the US., so go out and get yourself a copy. As soon as the stores re-open after the holidays, obviously.

I promised to tell you what I've been up to since I've moved, but that would take ages, so here are the highlights:

We had a mini-housewarming with a lot of my glamorous other half's friends from down south. I made a twat of myself by slipping on the wet uPVC ledge on my patio door and crashing in a heap onto the very hard kitchen floor in front of everyone. My brother Marc thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. I wasn't even drunk by then, either. My shin is still bruised. We'll probably have a housewarming with some of my friends from here in Brum at some point in the future, if I can find any.

The day after we moved in properly, Heather and I decided to go for a drive to get a feel for the area and find out if there's anything cool or useful nearby. We ended up in nearby Earlswood, which is near Bromsgrove and about ten minutes' drive away. We saw a garden centre and decided to have a look around. We looked at the cacky statues and gnomes and windchimes and the usual shite you get at these places, then we saw that this place also had an aquarium, so we had a look around there, too. Not because we want any pet fish, you understand. As we were walking around, I noticed that in one tank, the tiny fish inside were reacting to my movement. I waved my hand to the left, the fish all quickly swarmed to the left. I moved my hand to the right, they all swam to follow suit. Heather had moved along so I called her back to show her. She stood by me as I waved my hands all around the place quickly. The fish all went mental! The water acted as if it had suddenly boiled and the fish started leaping out of the top of the tank like some aquatic mass suicide attempt. My hands were moving rapidly again, trying to pick up all these dying little fishies and chuck them back into their tank quickly before the shop assistant saw me. I think I saved most of them. Heather had a look that said 'I can't take you anywhere, can I?' as we swiftly left the garden centre.

Heather's Mom and Dad came to stay with us, and we went to a posh restaurant as it was her mother's birthday. I even put a suit on. And a tie. It was a lovely meal,her folks enjoyed their time with us, I think. Which was good, as it was only the second time they'd met me. I had an interesting chat with a guy outside whilst having a fag, apparently he was taking photos for British Sausage Week, he was travelling around the country with famous cricket umpire Dickie Bird sampling and judging local bangers. I tried to see if Dickie Bird was in the restaurant with us, but I couldn't see anyone sitting at a table with five jumpers and three hats on. Pity.

We're more or less all moved in now. We still have a spare bedroom full of shite, though, and we don't have an aerial for our telly yet, either. We have to use a portable aerial, which isn't the best, and because it's plugged in to our freeview box, it means most of our programmes tend to be stop-start, i.e. the picture freezes for a bit or the sound comes and goes, which means the continuity announcer sounds like Norman Collier (but obviously not when he's doing his 'other joke' when he puts his jacket around his shoulders and pretends to be an unfunny chicken. By the way, is Norman Collier still alive?) but we get by. Most importantly, though, I now have a room where I can go and draw, it's got a desk, drawing board and everything. It's also got a 'gas lift' chair that doesn't stay lifted so when I'm drawing I start to sink every few minutes. Still, it's all good fun.

Also, it's very nearly Christmas! That's snuck up on us this year. I don't know where this year's gone. We finally get the house to look like a home and now we have to fuck about putting trees up. Bah Humbug! Nah, I'm looking forward to it really. I just have to act curmudgeonly to keep appearances up.To prove how much Christmas spirit I've actually got, check out the following clip:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Right. There's probably loads I've forgotten to tell you about, but I can't be arsed to type anymore, but I promise to update a bit more regularly from now on.

I am still here!

Hello again. I know it's been a while and you've probably all buggered off to more interesting blogs (ie. ones that update more than once a month!), but I thought I'd post anyway, just to keep my end up. If nothing else, a blog is just the 21st Century way of talking to yourself!
Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. Mine was okay, it had its ups and downs, but for the most part, it was good. Except for the unbearably grim TV they thought was appropriate for the festive season. I didn't watch much telly this Christmas, but the bits I did see were mostly shite.
There's loads of things I want to write (more accurately, moan) about, but I'm busy working and drawing. I'm on the last stretch of Septic Isle now, I'm about three-quarters done, and just about to start the big bloody denouement, which I'm looking forward to, God help me. There's nothing I love drawing more than graphic violence! I hate it in real life, you understand, but you can't beat a good, brutal, comic-book punch up. It should all be finished for the end of the month, so normal blog service should be resumed by then. There might even be some pics from the aforementioned strip as soon as I sort my malfunctioning scanner. I think my scanner may need some persuading with a clawhammer. Like I said, I hate violence.
So, I'm still (just about) alive, and I hope you're all okay, too!

Tinselitis: Slight Return

Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting morbidly obese, and all that shite. I've left the Christmas shopping extremely late this year, on account of being potless and always at work at either my dull day job, or my glamorous art career. (If you can call it 'glamorous', or a 'career', come to that!)

I made a good start this week, but man, do I hate Christmas shopping and all the annoying crap that surrounds it. Like standing in queues and being cold, and avoiding other shoppers who decide to suddenly change direction, or worse still,just stop dead in front of you, leaving you a braking distance of about four inches. Listening to the same bloody Christmas records over and over and over again, and getting annoyed at the records that aren't Yuletide songs, but end up on these bloody festive compilations just because they had a Christmassy video, and that bothers me, for some reason. Songs like Stay Now by East 17, The Power Of Love by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Keeping The Dream Alive by Freiheit are lyrically nothing to do with the festive season!! Alright?!! Stop bloody playing them!!

I know a sound like a curmudgeonly Scrooge-type, but I hate the forced friendliness that retailers insist their staff use on us, the stressed out customers. I like the normal 'get what you want to buy, take it to the counter, pay for it, and fuck off' system thats employed the other ten months of the year. I don't want to have yuletide smalltalk with shop assistants. They don't really give a toss whether I've finished my Christmas shopping or not. I was in WH Smiths the other day, purchasing a video game for my youngest daughter. The game is based on a popular cartoon character, and the girl serving me was a big fan of this character and was filling me in on the history of him. All well and good, but by that point in my shopping hell, I really wasn't interested, I just wanted to go home. But, lo and behold, the game's barcode wouldn't scan, so she had to bugger off for ten minutes to find it, leaving me standing at the counter like a spare prick. It would've been unbearable but for the girl on the next till who was wearing a rather revealing blouse (apologies for the Sid James-type sexism that will follow) and kept bending down to get carrier bags and showing me her 'goods', so to speak. Smiths have a campaign at the moment in which they donate some money or something to help plant trees every time someone refuses a carrier bag, so I was getting annoyed at the do-gooders who wanted to save the environment, because it meant the girl wasn't bending down to get a bag. I was thinking 'bollocks to the environment!' (I know I'm sounding like an old lech, but you really can't argue with the truth.)
Anyway, the more sombrely dressed girl who was serving me came back with the appropriate barcode and proceeded to tell me all about an old college friend of hers who asked for her mobile number, but she wouldn't give it to him because he didn't phone her up the last time she gave him her number. I don't care, just take my money and let me go home!! For fuck's sake!!

Also, during a shopping expedition, I bumped into my eldest daughter, who was buying gifts for her schoolfriends, and she also happened to be with her boyfriend. Now, the other day, after finding out she had a boyfriend, I jokingly said to her (acting like all the fathers of girls I've been out with, and once, I even met the father of my girlfriend for the first time after I'd already impregnated her. That was fun!) that if I ever met him, I'd rip his balls off. I was only joking, really! Anyway, she told him what I'd said, the devious little cow, so when I bumped into them in the BullRing shopping Mall, he promptly turned about face and fled. Surely I'm not that scary! I feel bad now. I've still not finished my shopping, either.

Anyway, despite all this, I do like Christmas, and I hope all of you out there that actually take the time to read the cobblers I write, have a great Christmas and an even better New Year, and remember, enjoy alcohol responsibly!

Holiday Bargains.

During this festive season, it's good to remember the festivals happening in other cultures and faiths, and include them into our own, so we're all one big happy human race celebrating the end of another year. In that respect, it's fantastic that this particular store is trying to sell hams to the Jewish during the busy holiday period.

Post-Mortem.

All the turkey is gone. Christmas has come and gone with the inevitable feeling of anticlimax. Weeks and weeks of build up just lead to a living room floor covered with bits of wrapping paper. Wrapping paper you've spent hours sitting cross-legged on the floor putting on, and ultimately giving yourself either arthritis or thrombosis, just for some snotty-nosed breadsnatcher to rip it off and chuck it on the floor.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Christmas, I love seeing my kids' faces as they open their presents. I love Christmas dinner , I love spending time around a table full of nice food (even if there isn't any dead pig-related produce) with my missus and kids whilst wearing stupid paper hats. Hats which remind me that I have some kind of mutated giant cranium ( like the Tefal men or the Hulk's nemesis, the Leader) because I've never got one to fit me, ever. They always rip down the seam. I love and appreciate the thought and work and effort my better half has put in to making sure my kids and I have a nice day. I hope she appreciates similar (if not so kitchen-y) efforts I've made. Like not shouting at the telly like usual.
Christmas tends to be the time of year my family tell me I smell bad. I was given shower gel and shaving gel by my good lady, my daughter bought me a can of Marvel Super Heroes foam soap, which I thought would probably smell like Matt Murdoch's crotch after a particularly gruelling swing around Hell's Kitchen on a summer's day, but actually smells quite nice, even if the actual point of foam soap escapes me. I was also bought socks from M&S which, apparently, have special technology in them to stop your feet from smelling. Another subtle hint there, from the people that are supposed to love me, that I stink. Also, these socks have the days of the week embroidered on them, so I know how many days it's been since I last had a bath. (Interestingly, the socks had a sticker on them saying "Special Offer! Two Pairs Free!" which got me thinking; Before they implemented the offer, did Saturday and Sunday not exist? Or is it just me who dares to wear socks on the weekend?)
Christmas also has other pitfalls, i.e. relatives. There are the ones that don't make any contact at all and upset you with their indifference to you at this time of year. At the other end of the scale there are those who you wish would just fuck off and leave you alone. Those people you are related to because your partner is related to them, and even she doesn't particularly like them, either, but we feel obliged to either go to their houses or let them come to ours. I know it sounds ungrateful, as they do want to see us and give us our gifts, but I could really do without listening to my Mother-In-Law fart loudly on Boxing Day. Saying that, I could really do without listening to my Mother-In-Law at all. (I might tell you all about my barmy M-i-L one day. There is a lot of material there. I'm just worried she might chance upon this blog one day, and then come flying around on her broomstick and zap me into a frog-shaped creature.)
Generally, 2006 was a crappy year and I'm glad it's nearly finished. With my new job starting in January, a job I've wanted to do my whole life, I'm hoping 2007 wil be a good 'un. Here's hoping you lot have a great New Year also.

Merry Chrimble from Mister Trimble.

It really is amazing what you find on Google Images. I was trying to find a funny picture of Santa to send in an email, and I found this particular image. It appears Santa is lying comatose (using a holly wreath as a pillow!) on a wooden table without his trousers on. The tiled floor might suggest he's in some sort of medical establishment, like he's had an accident, or it could also suggest it's some poor sod's kitchen, and Father Christmas has collapsed after one too many sherries. I really love his Christmassy socks. I had a jumper like that when I was six. I've since destroyed that particular photograph. I thought it was just too weird so I used an image of Santa about to eat Rudolph's head instead.
Anyway, below is a nice image of Santa having his guts pushed in by an almost omnipotent alien.

I digress. This post was intended to wish you all a very merry Chrimbletide and a ridiculously terrific New Year, but gone off on a tangent about Santa's socks. So- have yourselves a very merry Chrimbletide and a ridiculously terrific New Year!


Enjoy Responsibly.

P.S. In addition to my previous post, I've found my appointment as penciller on Jane Eyre has been announced on a Bronte fan blog, using big chunks of my blog as part of the announcement. It was posted the day after I wrote my post! News travels fast! It's kinda weird and if I didn't worry about it before, I am now, as I've realised there's thousands of Bronte fans out there who don't want to be disappointed.

Tinselitis.

I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I am a total atheist, yet I believe we should celebrate it. Surely all cultures, Christian or otherwise, have a festival to help lighten the mood during the dark months. (I was one of the few who supported Birmingham city council's attempt to call their Christmas events 'Winterval' a few years back, as it didn't exclude anyone from joining in.)
Whilst I love spending Christmas with my immediate family (my extended family can fuck right off) I hate the build-up to the festivities with a passion. I did some Xmas shopping today, and the bastard who first coined the phrase 'goodwill to all men' obviously never tried to buy any presents in Argos on any Saturday in December. People barge you, push in, stop dead in front of you when you're marching forcefully, and people in my extended family, in-law or otherwise (outlaw?) steadfastly refuse to be easy to buy gifts for.
Also, I hate listening to the same old shite every Christmas. It's something the bands of the Midlands have a lot to answer for. Slade and Wizzard's Christmas records are good examples of their type, but after listening to them twelve thousand times every November and December they lose their Brummie charm. (My auntie Linda is part of the kids' choir on Wizzard's I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day and it makes me feel guilty to criticise her only claim to fame. That's not true, actually. Her laugh is also famous, as it sounds like a seal with whooping cough.) Local radio doesn't help, either. I'm forced to listen to it at work, and it doesn't play the decent Christmas records until the day itself is really close, and so they force feed me Mariah Carey and Bon Jovi until I throw up.
Also, for the last few years, Birmingham has had a Frankfurt Christmas market invade the top of New St. We're twinned with Frankfurt, you see, and I wonder what we send them in return. Do we send them our market traders? Do the festive Frankfurt shoppers delight to our local wares, such as five lighters for a pound? West Bromwich Albion phone fascias? Factory second Cadbury mis-shapes? Special offers on cabbages, ladies? ( I don't know about market traders in other parts of the country, but in Brum, all our marketeers shout out all their special offers with the word 'ladies' at the end. It's sexist, and it makes me feel excluded, as I might actually want three aubergines for a pound.) It's also interesting that they put the Frankfurt market in New Street, and not by our other markets in the city centre, as that's where the statue is that commemorates those we lost in the Blitz. It's a shame as our German friends might be shamed into selling us their tat at a discounted rate. That said, the German market is varied and colourful, and adds a lot of spice to what is, frankly, a very dull street the rest of the time. I just wonder where do the Frankfurters go if they want to buy traditional German Christmas stuff like lebkuchen and stollen if all of their traders are over here?
Like most things, I blame my indifference to Christmas on my parents. My Dad would not let me and my brothers believe in Father Christmas. He said, and I'm paraphrasing; "I work fucking hard all year to pay for your presents, and I'm not letting some imaginary fat cunt from Lapland get all the glory!" He's got a point, but I reckon it took a little of the magic away from the festivities. Maybe living in Erdington also took some of the shine off!
Despite all of this, I want my family to have a great Christmas, and I also hope that you, my friends in blogland also have a great Chrimbo. I hope the 'imaginary fat cunt from Lapland' gets you exactly what you want, and if he doesn't, it's the thought that counts!