Guild of Ghostwriters

Made Up Dream Novel

2010-07-28T11:51:00.002+01:00

Made Up Dream Novel #0 on Made Up Dreamer blog.

I don't want to write anything by way of explanations etc on Made Up Dreamer, except in comments where appropriate or necessary, because everything there must be in the form of Made Up Dream, just as it is with the twitter feed. And so I shall attempt some kind of explanation here, as here is not bound by the same Made Up Rules.

As I currently hold it (and holding it is an activity much like nervously nerdling a lump of putty), the Made Up Dream Novel plan is to produce somewhere around 100 Made Up Dream images. The dreams will be free standing as always but together there will be nuances & themes & narrative threads that link them. Noting how the discipline of 140 characters on twitter more often inspires than inhibits, each image will be constructed to fit in a 13cm square. There is no reading order, the numbers are largely meaningless in a chronology or page order sense, except that #0 above is my start. The idea is for it to be a Made Up Dream illustrated novel version of a myriorama landscape card set. When finished, I may well do something with them using Lulu but my preference is for them to be in unbound myriorama-like form which I don't think Lulu currently offers. A long way to go before I need to worry about that though.

Follow the Made Up Dream Novel progress, and Made Up Dreams generally, on Made Up Dreamer, twitter and the facebook page.

Made Up Dreams

2010-07-23T11:32:00.003+01:00

It's happening more here than anywhere just now, and hopefully here as well. Not to say that this is dead, but it's not exactly thriving either. I will come back here when I'm ready to sort out that GoG#96 comic once & for all.

@MadeUpDreamer on twitter.

Made Up Dreamer blog.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #12: petunia petalbaum

2009-11-17T13:42:00.003Z

Once again, we turn to the Petalb(a)um clan for a muzzy doodle of the day.
Please donate to Movember.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #11: papa petalbaum

2009-11-16T14:13:00.002Z

Following an unplanned weekend off (unforeseen consequence of bouncing Czechs), it's back to work with Papa Petalbaum (who, in my haste to get these done, I forgot to check and so didn't discover that the family in question is called Petalbum. Well, not until the error was committed to gouache - hey ho!). Please take some time to find out more about Movember and donate.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #10: the king

2009-11-13T12:22:00.004Z

This morning, the King gets the Movember muzzy makeover. The King of South Yorkshire and the Peak District, aka Ghostwriter #96, is sporting an imperial styled moustache, much as one might expect. Ghostwriter #96 lives in a story that has been stranded in a state of flux and redevelopment for several years, a picture story based on a short prose story from which this blog derived it's name. If you can't be arsed to click any of those links, please please please click this one to find out more about Movember and make a donation. Ta.

Liverpool Scandinavian Seamen's Church Facing Renewed Threat of Closure

2009-11-13T00:09:00.002Z

I'm adding some new links to the sidebar and particularly wanted to point out the most important at this time. Liverpool Scandinavian Seamen's Church faces renewed threat of closure as SKUT (Svenska Kyrkan i Utlandet, the Swedish Church Abroad) attempts to sell what isn't theirs to sell, and to evict the congregation and other users of this distinctive old building. A member of the congregation and accomplished blogger has started a new blog detailing the campaign against closure as well as day to day activities at the Church. Save The Scandinavian Church in Liverpool is the blog, written in English and Swedish.

The Church is the hub of a thriving ex-pat Scandinavian community scattered across Merseyside and beyond, and which may as well be scattered to the wind without the Church and its activities binding them together. This closure must be stopped. I urge everybody, especially Liverpool and Merseyside based bloggers, to read, link, promote this blog. And more importantly, make use of this important cultural centre, participate in its activities, while you still can.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #9: pallo poika

2009-11-12T10:25:00.002Z

Pallo Poika (finnish, pallo=ball, poika=boy) sporting the kind of muzzy most self respecting footy players wore until the late 1980s. Pallo Poika was born when a finnish child tried to teach me finnish in 2005. Read more of Pallo Poika here. Find out about Movember/donate here.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #8: GoG ghost

2009-11-11T11:43:00.002Z

This morning one of the GoG ghosts, them scary little doodles what can be seen all around here pointing the way and making the place look ~~ghastly~~ ghostly, has been selected for the moustachio makeover. Click to find out more about Movember and donate.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #7: heavy plant

2009-11-10T21:31:00.003Z

More archive dipping and moustache make-overing. This time it's the turn of the heavy plant who once upon a time had something to do with this story and now sports a soupstrainer in aid of Movember. To find out more about Movember, clicky clicky. Ta.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #6: retro me & inner critic

2009-11-10T19:01:00.003Z

Struggling for ideas, I turned to those who haunted here in its heyday, with a view to giving them a moustachio makeover. In this one, retro cartoon me as I was in 2004 accompanied by the ever faithful inner critic. To find out more about Movember and donate, click here.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #5: must dash

2009-11-09T11:37:00.001Z

Please donate!

Movember Doodle Muzzy #4: ink pencil?

2009-11-08T18:25:00.001Z

Please donate!

Movember Doodle Muzzy #3: pencil pencil

2009-11-08T13:36:00.003Z

Please donate. Movember is an annual event where chaps spend the month formerly known as November growing moustaches to raise money for and awareness of prostate cancer in men. Click the link to find out more and make a donation. I shall post pictures of my own Movember muzzy in due course.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #2: sharpie facespanner

2009-11-07T17:42:00.001Z

Please donate.

movember twitter wallpaper

2009-11-07T16:24:00.003Z

By way of simultaneously announcing that I am a twit, where I am twittering and what I shall be wearing while twittering about Movember:

(ie this is my home made Movember themed twitter wallpaper...)

I suppose I should count these towards my moustache a day task for the month of Movember. But I won't. Unless of course I flounder and struggle to make up the muzzies in which case, start counting.

EDIT: please let me know your twitter ids so that I can follow you.

Movember Doodle Muzzy #1: sharpie toothbrush

2009-11-07T14:56:00.001Z

To mark Movember I shall be doodling a muzzy a day. Except I only thought of this today and I'm consequently already in arrears to the tune of 7 muzzies but shall endeavour to catch up over the next few days. It goes without saying that I am growing a Movember moustache as well. PLEASE DONATE!!!

the killer who calls

2009-11-07T13:44:00.002Z

The Caller Who Kills from first take on Vimeo.

In October I attended a film making one day taster course provided by Liverpool filmy people First Take. On top of learning the basics of shot selection, camera, sound, etc, we had to make a film lasting about a minute and using roughly 10 shots. All this in 6 hours. The Killer Who Calls is the result. The main guy you see was a sterling team member who came up with the main idea in seconds and stepped in when our original suave hero type got camera shy and did a runner. Special mention to the woman you see as well because she was as eager to act as I am to go to war and have babies but she acted nonetheless. I'm very pleased with the results - as well as making a cameo appearance at the end, I shot a couple of the scenes and held the boom for most of the rest of it.

Afterwards we were invited to apply for a six month course film making and I was interviewed yesterday. Following the interview, a director of First Take gave me positive feedback but there's a problem with my location. The course is only happening because of some regeneration funding that stipulates the parts of Liverpool participants must come from. First Take are double checking whether this can be relaxed but I live in L18, which includes affluent Allerton and millionaire Mossley Hill, so I'm holding a scant hope but not my breath.

stations of the Niall #1

2009-07-26T12:42:00.003+01:00

This is a very hastily scribbled 30th birthday doodle for Niall. On the day of his party, which I briefly attended in order to read the last rights to my medication destroyed liver with a sip of champagne (I kid you not - one or two sips and I've been doubled up ever since, me belly swollen like a paris lip), we scoured the bookshops in search of our preferred gift but it wasn't there and this was our last resort. When I first met Niall, he told me that his plan for the following day was to go slipper shopping with his housemate, hence this doodle.

Cartoony Fackheeds Take A Hike (#2)

2009-06-29T14:55:00.001+01:00

This is actually their third outing but I was struggling to translate the original #2 to scouse/tyke and moved onto number #3 instead. This has been sitting unfinished on my painting desk for ages because I was unhappy with the tree background and wasn't sure whether to chuck it and start again, which is somewhat against the spirit of this exercise.

Cartoony Fuckheads #1

2009-06-04T22:51:00.001+01:00

Cartoony Fuckheads first found their way onto the page about a decade ago. They were wrought of ink from my beloved, now nibfuckt, Rotring 900, indelibly smudged onto grubby typing paper. They found their way onto the webpage soon after the original Guild of Ghostwriters went pictorial in early 2004. I recently decided to try a 2009 remix using my modern equipments and devices and so they are wrought of drip pen and ink then dirty gouache applied with my beloved kolinksy brushes. I also decided to change the ethnic origins of Lefty and Righty (the two who populate the panels) to more closely resemble my own experiences. The original Lefty & Righty spoke like characters from Walt Kelly's Pogo, the reborn Lefty and Righty speak scouse and tyke respectively - me being a sort of tyke who now lives in the land of scouse and probably doesn't have too strong a hold on how either really speaks. Hey ho. There are 9 or 10 of these to remix, then I might see about doing some new ones.

Sometimes the Story

2009-04-11T19:24:00.003+01:00

red van in the morning...

2009-03-22T10:34:00.000Z

three white vans, all in a row...

2009-03-16T19:07:00.001Z

2009-03-16T13:30:00.002Z

I've been not working on something I started and which I expected to have finished before now. But I thunk wrong. And so, to tide me over until it's done, here's this sneaky preview of something from the undone thing...

Northern Lights

2009-03-03T11:53:00.002Z

In Finland, the truth about the northern lights is well known and has been spoken of since the earliest days of Väinämöinen. A fox ran across a benighted fell, a deep, fresh cover of snow reflecting moonlight and illuminating the night. Fox swept and beat the snow with his brush, sending sparks into the sky, and this is how the northern lights are formed, and why in Finland they are called revontulet - fox lights.

This is an illustration I did for a teaching pack on scandinavian culture. I posted the unpainted version ages ago but never got round to posting this because I'm not altogether happy with how it turned out. I perhaps tried to be too literal in my visual interpretation of the lights. Now I come back to it after several months, it is better than I thought but, if there was time, I'd try to redo it. It will probably go in the teachers' pack as is though.

Kitschener: all occasion card design

2009-02-22T11:28:00.003Z

I'm pretty rubbish at remember special occasions that require cards, and at remembering to buy things like cards that are required on the special occasions that I've only just managed to not forget. So I wanted to design a card that I could quickly print off on any special occasion that I have only just in time managed to remember and this is it. The idea is that I write whatever the occasion might be inside the card so that, for instance, the front will read 'I WANT YOU' and the inside 'to have a happy Thursday' which the recipient will feel duly warmed by as they read it. On Friday at the earliest.

Petunia Petalbum & the Quest for Knowledge

2009-02-20T10:32:00.002Z

This was a book I did for my daughter's birthday a few years back using the wonderful lulu.com. I didn't post this here at the time because I hoped to sell copies. However, selling has never been one of my talents. But I do think it deserves a wider audience and so I've decided to give it away here. Don't let that stop you buying a copy should you feel moved to do so - just clicky clicky (and get the plastic out).

Off Colour

2009-02-08T11:55:00.003Z

wwwhere in the wwworld...

2009-02-05T09:36:00.002Z

The sting of having my original .com hijacked from under my nose because I forgot to renew it has worn off (the sting that is - not my nose) and I have gone and done it again. That .com is still in the hands of people who don't know what to do with it (except, presumably, wait for me to make an offer to buy it back again) and so , instead (and perhaps more appropriately) I got myself a .co.uk. I got myself a www.guildofghostwrites.co.uk in fact. So please change the url of any links pointing here accordingly. Or, since the old url should just redirect to the new url (look at the address bar and it should show the new url rather than the blogspot one), don't, don't bother, do nowt. It's up to you.

Modern Ills (finished version)

2009-01-30T15:28:00.002Z

(And by way of partially demonstrating that the shaming-into-finishing strategy referred to in the previous post isn't entirely in vain, here's one I started a long L O N G time ago and finished just now...)

speechless

2009-01-30T15:22:00.002Z

In line with my not-so-recent policy of putting unfinished stuff up here in the vain hope of shaming me into finishing said stuff, here's another (even more not-so-recent) tester for the GoG#96 overhaul/revision thing. I did this so long ago (as in, well over a year) I can't remember how I was supposed to paint it or what was being said. Hey ho.

I was going to call this entry 'conspicuous consumption' but events have rendered the title inappropriate and now I can think of nothing to replace it

2008-12-03T16:09:00.002Z

First of all, apologies for more of this but it's all that's going on right now and I still need to get stuff off my chest.

There is a lesson in all of this somewhere.

Every time I have needed to contact some medical professional about my illness they have upped the ante and given me something a little bit worse than last time.This hasn't always been the worst thing in the world. When, for instance, they upgraded my asthma to atypical pneumonia or tuberculosis, I wasn't terribly unhappy about it. Asthma can be a life-sentence, it can be a death-sentence, whereas pneumonia or tb are very treatable. To be honest, and this will sound very stupid, I secretly wished for tb rather than pneumonia because, it seemed to me, there was a bit of dark romantic glamour about tb - it was the slayer or poets, composers, actors - whereas pneumonia is what old people take with them on that last visit to hospital before they shuffle off. So, once again, the news that it was tb after all didn't particularly perturb me, especially as all the contact tracing began to confirm that I hadn't passed it on to anybody else. I did expect it to be the last bit of health news I was likely to receive for some time.

Following the diagnosis of tb, a nurse called round to my house with a supply of powerful anti-tb drugs. For the next two months, these would be my start to the day. Eleven tablets on an empty stomach followed by nothing to eat for an hour. Meanwhile, the lab would grow my sputum samples to identify my specific form of tb. Assuming it wasn't a drug resistant strain, my daily intake would be reduced to two drugs after two months and I would take them for a further four months. This first lot of drugs would turn my urine purple or pink, depending on what you read (in the event, orange like SunnyD). This was normal, okay, and to be expected. They might make it difficult to see red or green or make my joint aches. This was not normal and if either of these happened, I should contact them immediately. So, when various joints did begin to ache after about a week of the treatment, I called the nurse and they made an appointment for me at the TB Clinic.

At the Clinic, I notice that for several months, my life has resembled that awful show with the boxes, Deal or No Deal. Somewhere back in October or November, I really should have said 'Deal' but I played on and watched while my luck and all the big numbers drained away. I knew I should've dealt after 'chest infection' or 'asthma' but I thought I could do better and chased my losses. Or perhaps I should stop consulting members of the medical profession. Every time I do so, they just tell me something worse. The trick is to pretend they don't exist, don't answer or return their calls, abuse the receptionists so they remove me from their lists where I can once more lead a life free of the health risks regular contact with medical professionals exposes you to. Sounds like sense to me.

At the Clinic, they tell me that the lab have reported on my strain of tuberculosis and it isn't actually tuberculosis after all. Hurray! It's something called non-tuberculosis mycobacteria (ntm). Mycobacteria illnesses include tb, which I haven't got (hurray!) and leprosy which I also haven't got (hurray!). The good news is that ntm isn't infectious so there was never any risk to others (hurray!). The bad news is that it's just about identical to tb only not so glamorous, not so well known or studied, and a lot more stubborn to shift. Which means that I'll be taking a new set of drugs for at least a year instead of six months. When I get home, I make the mistake of Googling ntm and stumble onto a debate about whether it's best to remove the infected area of the lung with surgery straight away or give the drugs chance to shift it first.

So that lesson I mentioned. Whenever, and before, any member of the medical profession tells you something about yourself that you don't already know, ask them if it's good or bad news. If they say it's bad news, hang up or say 'BLAH BLAH BLAH' over whatever they say. If they say it's good news, don't believe them and do exactly the same. If you find out you've got something, never Google it. Learn to say 'Deal' when they offer you 'Chest infection' And never ask a doctor if he needs to chop your lungs up.

Getting Stuff Off Chest

2008-11-07T12:16:00.004Z

So I moved way back in June. It was damp when I moved but the landlord, a friend of a friend, was aware of the problem and taking steps to remedy it. They took various steps to rid the house of damp but they didn't nail it and now, as Autumn pulls its coats tighter and bows its head against Winter's bitter winds, the house and its contents aren't so much damp as dissolving rapidly.

Very soon after moving in I caught a cold and when I let the cold go again, I retained a small memento of its passing in the form of an irritating cough. I probably should have done something about the cough sooner but you know what chaps are like when it comes to health and quacks, especially with something as apparently petty as a cough, so I didn't.

As a child I suffered from asthma. Not the near-death-adrenalin-injection-in-the-bum form of asthma but the milder wheezy-at-footy-and-games-involving-running form. Luckily I was free of asthma just before puberty and soon replaced the absentee asthmatic coughin and wheezin with the nicotine and thc kind so I didn't really miss it that much or for very long. And when I did eventually take my new cough along for the doctor's inspection, my asthma experience meant that I had a pretty good idea what I was in for. First a course of amoxycillin for a chest infection. When that didn't work, a chest x-ray to rule out the unmentionables plus a prescription of steroid and ventolin inhalers to deal with the more palatable, and probable, causes of the coughin. I had the x-ray on Monday and got on with using the inhalers believing that my asthma had returned, no doubt encouraged by the damp conditions, and that was that.

My GP called on Wednesday afternoon. The results of the x-ray are in and something on them indicates that it's slightly more serious than just asthma and further tests are needed. It seems likely that I have one of two things: atypical-pneumonia or tuberculosis. TUBERCUWHATSIS?!?!? I explained to my doctor how, when the BCG vaccinations were being inflicted on my schoolmates, my skin-test indicated a built-in immunity to tb and I was spared the BCG. Ah, my GP reassured me, it's not as simple as that - they now believe that in some cases, a test result that was previously thought to indicate immunity might actually mean that I have been a carrier of latent tuberculosis for a very long time.

So now I have to spend several mornings spitting in sample jars so they can work out which I have. On the one hand, I'm not spitting up blood so tuberculosis does seem unlikely. On the other hand, I have spent large portions of my life at least attempting to write romantic poetry and I do quite fancy a trip to Lake Geneva (not to mention 5,000 grains of opium if you have Dr Polidori's mobile number handy?), so perhaps the evidence is inconclusive. I think the craziest thing is to be bagging up jars of my own sputum in a bag bearing a very conspicuous BIOHAZARD label!

Moustachiana

2008-11-07T12:09:00.003Z

What ho! You simply wouldn't believe all the bits of kit necessary to keep a first rate handlebar in order, or even a second rate fledgling grizzler such as mine. Luckily, it's all lovely.

That Handlebar Club moustache brush was the last they had in stock, and they don't plan ordering any more. Something to treasure!

Too much yellow

2008-09-29T21:43:00.004+01:00

I really really really need a daylight mimicking bulb. They're a kind of lightbulb that fills your studio room with a light that works very much like daylight works - that is, it allows you to see all the colours. As in the colours on your palette, on your brush and then those all important colours that you transfer from your brush onto your paper. Because the kind of light that was in my studio room today - a sort of dingy grey daylight mixed with orrible urine yellow bulb light - doesn't allow you to see all the colours. You know, like the colours on the palette, on the brush and those colours that end up on the paper without you actually realising because you can't see them because of the orrible urine yellow bulb light mixed with depressing wintry grey daylight. Yes, I am pissed off having just scanned the polar bear I painted this afternoon to discover that instead of the almost visible suggestion of yellow I was aiming at, a kind of yellow that is more for the brain than they eye, my polar bear is actually the same urine yellow as the bulb light in my room. SO I really need that daylight bulb soon. Either that or give up painting til summer - as if the english summer is gonna help!

Vanity thy name is moustache

2008-09-27T14:41:00.004+01:00

First of all, opportunities to post and read here have been limited lately because I have been unable (or only sporadically, rarely able) to access anything blogger related such as my blog, other blogspot blogs, my account etc. This seems to be something to do with my isp but I can't sort it out for complicated reasons best long-story-shortened to administrative cock ups. Not that I post or reply to comments as often as I should anyway but it's annoying when I can't.

Secondly, moustaches. Handlebar moustaches. According to the British Handlebar Moustache Club, a handlebar moustache is "a hirsute appendage of the upper lip, with graspable extremities". And that, dear friends, is what I have set about raising from the erstwhile bare region in question. Last year I grew a moustache for a play and quite liked it. Nobody else liked it and one night after a performance, an unkind fellow called out "Got your number 118!" (viewers of commercial television from the United Kingdom may understand the reference) and so I removed it as soon as the show was over.

During the summer I took part in another amateur dramatic production wherein my endeavours were enhanced by a hirsute appendage. Googling around in search of grooming tips and purveyors of wax, I found the Handlebar Moustache Club and my purpose in life became clear. I immediately set about extending my hirsute appendage in the direction of graspable appendages. When the play finished, I kept the beastie, remodelling it slightly with the aim of achieving an english. I quickly secured the position of Pirate Captain for which a handlebar was considered appropriate and so now the hirsute appendage is a permanent fixture, and one of which I'm insufferably proud.

It is somewhat alarming and depressing to note the derision and hostility with which hirsute appendages are generally received by 90% of the Liverpool population, including close friends and family. I can number on one sawmill adjusted hand the number of positive comments it has attracted in person. The uninformed moustachism of the hairless-toplipped-masses have only hardened my enthusiasm to be a moustache activist. That is, if some of you who hate it had only expressed a little indifference it might not be there now for you to hate but as it is, well, it is and so shall remain.

incomplete illos

2008-09-23T12:03:00.002+01:00

A couple of illustrations waiting for a paint job. Both for a teaching pack on Scandinavia and Liverpool.

According to one legend from Finland (Scandinavia? The Nordic countries?),the fox was brushing the snow with his brush and from the sparks and swirling snowflakes, the northern lights formed. It's going to be an interesting and challenging experiment, painting the northern lights with gouache! Maybe it'll be several such experiments...

modern ills

2008-07-19T13:20:00.002+01:00

unfinished business

2008-07-19T12:34:00.002+01:00

There's so much I haven't finished - sometimes haven't even started properly - that I'm going to post a load of it here just to keep the place ticking over while I head off to more northerly climes. I think it's a real problem of mine. I can make reasonable, decent, sometimes fantastic starts but I rarely see any of them through to any kind of meaningful, life progressing ends. Education, jobs, relationships, this blog, art projects, you name it I won't finish it, That might come across in a feeling sorry for myself way but it isn't meant to - it's just something I'm increasingly recognising and realising I must address if I'm not to feel perpetually frustrated and thwarted by my own shortcomings.

why i am immune to most of your spam

2008-07-18T14:45:00.003+01:00

2008-07-12T12:00:00.001+01:00

a lazaruse to jumpstart a braindeaded head and an ongoing inquiry into whether anything is better than nothing

2008-07-11T12:00:00.000+01:00

a lazaruse to jumpstart a braindeaded head and an ongoing inquiry into whether anything is better than nothing

2008-07-10T13:22:00.001+01:00

a lazaruse to jumpstart a braindeaded head and an ongoing inquiry into whether anything is better than nothing

While I was away...

2008-06-05T12:18:00.004+01:00

...I moved house. About half a mile away but no less stressful for that, especially as I would have been happy to stay in the old house forever except our friend need to sell.

...I moved operating system. Too many reasons to list all of them but mainly because the replacement operating system, Ubuntu Linux costs nowt and doesn't regard my 4 year old (but otherwise perfectly capable) hardware as obsolete. In real terms, however, this has meant about a month of fiddling, fucking up and reinstalling, but it's well worth it and I've learned loads.

...I broke the dog. Well, she broke herself. Twice. Once by falling UP some wet steps at Sefton Park, then by dancing on some broken glass a week later. Aw. And now I'm washing up at the vets for the foreseeable future.

Sneaky Preview...

2008-03-13T23:23:00.001Z

How Quickly They Come Around...

2008-02-20T04:33:00.002Z

kustom komik kit....

2007-12-27T10:51:00.000Z

Part of my daughter's Christmas present...

A Sneaky Preview of that now bean worked upon

2007-12-24T13:05:00.000Z

...well not actually worked upon right nah because I'm here typing this en I?

Can you tell what it is yet?

A civil war involving an exchange of friendly Zissous

2007-12-24T12:48:00.000Z

Only one of the images in this post is by me - the other two are by my brilliant friend Kate.

Because I'm late cottoning on to stuff, I only discovered how brilliant Wes Anderson is this year. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou quickly established itself as one of my favourite ever films and I became something of an Zissousian evangelist, telling all that they must see this quirkily wonderfully deep and light film. Kate was just about the only person who listened and soon fell in love with Zissou and Rushmore. Who wouldn't? Anyway, skip to my birthday back in August, in Finland, in somebody else's house checking my email and there's a card from Kate.

How great is that to stumble upon in a foreign Finland?

So when it was Kate's birthday, I thought I should do something similar for her in return. I'm not 100% sure of what I say but I think Kate's favourite person ever is Harpo Marx - if you text her out of the blue she'll tell you what colour eyes he has (and his brothers) even if she's out shopping and nowhere near a reference book. His eyes aren't blue. So I did this.

Of course being a card from me it was naturally very late what with all my excuses to maintain and what have yous. So blow me dahn if before I'm all done and dusted, some several months beyond the 30th in question, hasn't she gawn and done me another card along similar lines?

Yes she bloomin well has is the answer! And how more wonderful again what?

In other news, please spare a thought for Ms Suomi-Suolmate over there in a corner of a foreign Finland for the ollidaze and the worse nightmare imaginable for a foreign Finn has come to pass courtesy of the new GM sponsored climate - a black christmas, devoid of snow.

The Weir

2007-12-05T13:07:00.000Z

All performances £6/£4 concessions. Pay on door.

This is why I haven't done much around here, or anything at all with pencil/paint, over the last month or so - a hectic rehearsal schedule for The Weir which finally comes to its fruit bearing end with our first performance tonight. If you're in the area, please pop along and see us. I grew a moustache especially!

Quick Catch Up...

2007-12-04T09:44:00.000Z

(This is, roughly, a cut and paste of a comment reply to the previous post in lieu of a proper entry for the time being)

Blimey I've really let this slip haven't I. Sorry for that - blame a hectic rehearsal schedule for The Weir which goes up this week so I'll be done and dusted, home and hosed, finished and fed up by Saturday and will have more time to post here and stuff.

The main news about the competition:

Hearts and Minds is up at the Domino Gallery which is in the Green Fish Cafe just off the bottom of Renshaw Street - I forget the actual street name - for all scousers, mousers and woolybacks. I was never all that happy with this new gouache version of it and seeing it amongst the other competition entries only reinforces this. I have no gripes with the gallery or how it's displayed but I wonder if I might feel better if it was alongside other small scale cartoony/gouachey things and it's made me painfully aware of how producing art intended for page and screen can be markedly different from producing art for gallery wall.

Needless to say, I didn't win. As soon as I knew partner of friend Legofesto was in the competition, that was my favourite (I can't be bothered with links just now, will add them later, but just Google Legofesto and you'll see) and though it didn't win, it was one of the super-shortlisted runner-ups. For a list of all the winners, click on the art in liverpool link in my sidebar. I'll come back later, possibly at the weekend, and add links and gallery details but right now I have play related stuff to be doing and a busy day ahead.

W O O T !

2007-11-01T12:07:00.000Z

30 Oct 2007 12:12
Re: Fwd: alTURNERtive art prize submission

Heyup A/M

It said on the flyer for the competition that short listed artists would be notified 'after 26th October'. Perhaps it's not your policy to do so but to put myself out of misery and end the wait I'm wondering if, having heard nothing, it's safe to assume I'm not short listed?

Thanks

Dem

>31 Oct 2007 18:47
>Re: Fwd: alTURNERtive art prize submission

>Sorry for the delay, we have had 60 + artists contribute work which means we have been looking for extra galleries to display the work. Your work has been selected so please await further instructions... ! m

Winning The Battle For Hearts & Minds - alTURNERtive version

2007-10-27T21:02:00.001+01:00

SO I was in Jackson's art supplies shop buying a pair of kolinksy sable brushes. I have this almost-fetishy need to purchase art supplies on a regular basis whether I need them/can afford them or not. As the uber-helpful assistant turned away to retrieve the box of paintbrushes, I browsed the confusion of leaflets and fliers strewn along the counter. One instantly stood out. A bit of Guernica, Merseyside Stop the War Coalition, The alTURNERtive Art Prize, a Brecht quote about mirrors and hammers.

The Turner Prize is in Liverpool this year, a curtain raiser to 2008 and the CoC malarkey. At the same time, Merseyside Stop the War Coalition is running its own visual arts competition on the theme of 'War, Peace and Occupation'. I folded the flier away into my pocket and decided to enter hearts n minds. Especially as the rules didn't mention the usual condition that all entries must be created in the year of the competition.

Hearts n minds was scribbled into life in early 2004. A year into the invasion of Iraq and with the regime pretty much changed but the resistance still resisting, the phrase "winning the battle for hearts and minds" entered the stream of soundbiting propaganda issuing forth from the Coalition of the Wiley. And the moment I first heard the phrase it sounded so crass and dumb. Like if you really want to win over hearts and minds, maybe the last thing to do was make it a battle. Lo this cartoon was born, pretty much intact, in my brain-box from where it did squirm onto a sheet of typing paper with the help of some ink.

By the time I got home and dug the original cartoon out from its filing place, it seemed somewhat shabby and old compared to more recent stuff. So I had a crack at doing it again. The deadline was a few days off and I had a fair bit of other stuff going on so it was a rush job, but I reworked the original idea with ink using brushes and drip pens, then painted it with gouache watercolour using my new (and some old) kolinsky sable brushes. I'm not too sure what I think of it but it's submitted now and I should find out in the next day or two whether I've been shortlisted and of course I'll announce it here if I have. And if I haven't, we shall never speak of this again...

Bugger!

2007-10-16T22:37:00.000+01:00

Back in June, Swedish and a little bit French trio Svart Kaffe played a magical gig at the Swedish Seamen's Church on Park Lane, Liverpool. I'd just got a digital snappamajig with moving-picture-doohickys so I recorded a few of their songs and uploaded them to the interweb with their permission. It took me a while to realise (as in, I still sometimes haven't quite realised yet in the heat of the moment) that I can't turn the camera sideways to take a video like I can when taking pictures and so you have to lie down to watch the cow herding song video properly. Also, the space they were performing in, which is a nineteenth century scandinavian style swedish church and in all other ways an amazing space, was right in front of a window through which the almost-midsummer evening sunlight poured, turning the band into silhouettes. Still, it's a nice reminder of a fantastic evening.

So you can imagine how excited I was to learn, just the other day, that Louise Schultz, the superb vocalist and one third of Svart Kaffe, is playing at the church again next Tuesday. That's Tuesday 23 October, 7pm, at 138 Park Lane, Liverpool, tickets £5 including nibbles and wine/coffee/soft drinks. Yup I was over the moon. Until I realised that I'm out of town next Tuesday.

Bugger!

psychopathic episode

2007-10-05T11:15:00.000+01:00

Second test - watercolour paper, ink and gouache

2007-10-02T00:23:00.000+01:00

As mentioned previously, I'm restarting an old, almost abandoned long narrative project but I'm not sure how to do it so I'm trying out different styles etc to see which I like best. This is my second test, with watercolour paper, ink and gouache. In the last test I realised that drawing it on an A5 page was a little too cramped but I'd already laid this out by the time I sussed that so this doesn't have the benefit of that wee satori. Also, when I set it out and lettered it, my plan was to do most of it in grey (hence the line on the second page about a grey world) but when I got the paints out I thought I should experiment in some of the panels and so tried a sort of monochrome (it's not really monochrome because there's the white of the paper and the black of the ink in addition to the single colour gouache but you know what I mean) with various colours. The three options I had in mind when I embarked on the first of these tests was (1) black ink on bristol as per the previous test (2) grey gouache for the real world with multicolour gouache for dreams and astral plane and finally (3) all multicolour gouache. This is an altered on the fly/off the cuff rendition of that second test. I really don't like how the multicolour turned out to the extent that I'm abandoning that idea, but I'm not sure how to differentiate between reality and dream/astral. Do I have grey reality and another colour (purple? ochre?) for dream/astral? Or do I switch between blues, greys and ochres for reality depending on mood setting etc, and have different purples, reds and oranges for dream/astral? I remain undecided as I embark on my third test which will not, as originally envisaged, be multicolour. It will, however, be drawn and painted A4 then shrunk to A5 on screen with all the text added in Photoshop or InDesign or something Adobe anyway. Back to the drawing board...

sauna vihdan tekeminen

2007-09-26T20:57:00.000+01:00

Marja-Leena mentioned something about birch vihta or vasta in a post that mentioned sauna. It's difficult to get over just how important sauna is to Finnish people but it might help to explain that just about everybody has a sauna of some kind at home. Even in blocks of flats/apartments, there's often a shared sauna that people use according to a rota. Vihta (or vasta depending on what part of Finland you're from) is part of the sauna ritual. I've seen vihta translated as 'bath whisk' and that's sort of what it is, a whisk made of birch branches and leaves that you tap yourself - or get your partner to tap you - with while in the sauna. Some of Marja-Leena's readers seemed to get the wrong end of the stick, imagining vihta to be an instrument of self-flagellation. Joining in the discussion, I remembered that Ms Suomi-Suolmate's dad recorded some videos about making vihta before my first trip to Finland last year. So I edited them together, put on some text, and here it is.

Oh aye, in case it's not obvious, please don't take it too seriously...

(For some reason, the embed thingy doesn't seem to be showing up at the mo in which case, watch it here)

First test - ink and bristol board...

2007-09-22T18:46:00.000+01:00

As mentioned previously, I'm restarting an old, almost abandoned, long narrative project but I'm not sure how to do it. So I'm trying out different styles etc to see which I like best. This is my first test, with bristol board and ink. It's very rough and ready and should be regarded as a kind of swatch to help me rather than a part of the story. The main lesson I learned from this is that I shouldn't try and draw a page on an A5 sheet, even if that's how it's going to end up, because it's far too fiddly and just ends up looking really cramped. I was aiming for a slightly messy look but I don't like the cramped look of this. I suppose the photoshop constructed comic page I tried before avoids that but I'm not sure it's me. I am sure that it's very time consuming and unforgivably fiddly doing it all on-screen and I feel like RSI and eye-strain are creeping into my wrists and peepers every second of the way but then again I quite like the results. So the jury's still out on that one. Any lesson is important and valuable and makes the effort and exercise worthwhile. Now on to the next test...

A brief note on pronunciation/translation: the very last speech bubble, in the final panel, contains South Yorkshire dialect which may be vaguely familiar if you live in certain parts of the north or if you've watched and understood the movie Kes. In certain parts of South Yorkshire and northern counties generally you might encounter use of thee and thou for you. However, they're not used or pronounced in ways you might encounter in Shakespeare and thou is more likely to be pronounced tha (the a as in hat) and thee thi (the i as in him). For example, 'as tha got time on thi (have you got the time on you). Pronunciations can vary over relatively short distances however. For example, as a child I remember people from Sheffield being referred to as 'deedars', a reference to how they were perceived by us to pronounce thee and thou. Anyway, to translate: 'im - him; thi - thee/your; in't - isn't/is that not; rate - right; cock - a term of endearment similar to mate.

Tough

2007-09-17T13:09:00.000+01:00

Mighty

2007-08-25T21:12:00.000+01:00

awoooooooo blair row zzip

2007-08-04T17:02:00.000+01:00

Fontastic!

2007-07-31T11:49:00.000+01:00

You can download your own copy of Softy here. Some of the terms used - glyph, rasterize.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE scroll down to the bottom of my sidebar where I've added a survey/poll to try out the new blogger widget and so far I'm the only person who's voted.

MAGPIED

2007-07-25T20:14:00.000+01:00

How to illustrate! Part 2 - painting, cocking up, magic, cheating, being lazy.

2007-07-22T20:28:00.000+01:00

SO Ms Suomi-Suolmate has been doing this Scandinavian Heritage and Church Project, working as its Education Outreach Officer going into local schools to tell them about Vikings, sauna, Kimi Raikonen and meatballs. She's putting together a teaching pack so that the education side of it can continue when the project's funding runs out (about now) and decided she wanted elks (known t'other side of t'Atlantic as mooses) to be the ambassadors/motifs/presenters of Scandinavian culture to scouse schoolkids. And that's what I've been doing - sort of.

And seeing as I almost had enough forethought to think of it before I did it I decided to take pics during the process of painting one of the elks to show you all how it happens. Except I didn't have quite enough forethought to scan or photograph the unpainted picture to give you a starting point.

Anyway, I thought the best way of seeing it happen is by the magic of a slideshow. Before the slideshow, here's another unpainted elk to give you an idea of what an unpainted elk looks like in case you weren't sure. After the slideshow there's a chance to gaze upon a fully painted elk displaying plates of meatballs and lingonberries on the one hand, and herring on the other. Yum yum!

How to illustrate! Part 1 - doodling, drawing, magic, cheating, inking, being lazy

2007-06-22T13:35:00.000+01:00

On the one hand I don't feel like any kind of expert at anything at all and especially this. On another hand more than one person has expressed an interest in further 'how to...' type posts. On yet another hand entirely (it's a Yorkshire thing - ask anybody from one of the Non-Yorkshire British countries and they'll tell you the Tykes ain't human - probably ain't even terrestrial) it's an age since I posted anything at all and so I guess I should post this.

A friend asked me to do an illustration for a conference on teenage fiction. Possibly teenage literature, I can't remember now. Actually, she really asked me to do a logo but it didn't quite work out that way. The brief was vague. Possibly some hoodies and modern teentech (handheld consoles, iPods and the like). Maybe a teenage bedroom. Definitely a cat somewhere - that was the only definite part of the brief - there had to be a cat.

SO I snatched a handful of paper and some pencils and doodled around a few ideas. The teenager's bedroom seemed to spark the firmest visual idea so that was what I worked on. This is the best of the rough pencil doodles.

The figure out on the right was meant to be on the floor between the two back-to-back figures on the bed but I drew them first and pressed on to hard so it would have looked even scruffier than my tolerance for scruffy will allow to put her where she was meant to be so I put her then and moved her later using the magic of infirmation technololly. I then emailed these magically fiddled with images to my friend for her approval. So confident was I that all would be well (or so daftly hasty to press on without thinking) , I started work on the final image before my friend replied.

I'll be careful how I put this because I know from bitter experience that many will regard what I'm about to type as an admission of outright barefaced dishonest cheating. Because what I'm about to type is something about TRACING. After I'd magically fiddled the lone figure into the group, I printed out the magically fiddled with image so that I could roughly trace the image onto some nice watercolour paper for my final illustration. Just so that people know, TRACING isn't CHEATING. Well, I suppose there might be circumstances when tracing is cheating but that's not in BOLD ITALIC so it's less important and noticeable and is probably therefore less true. And anyway, I was tracing my own drawings so I certainly wasn't cheating.

Above is the magically fiddled etc, left is the print of it that I traced from, right the pencil drawing I traced, with some embellishments, additions etc. You can buy expensive lightboxes to help you cheat or you can just attach your blank sheet of paper to the image you want to trace (the blank sheet on top) with several paper clips (you can obtain paper clips free of charge from most offices) and hold it up to a window with daylight on the other side. If you have blinds, nets, curtains or anything similar, you might want to open these first. This could result in funny looks from neighbours and passers-by but ensures best results. Similarly, the bit about daylight. If you've got all those bits right then you should be able to see the original image beneath your blank paper and all you need to do is go over it with a pencil. Below is the traced drawing half inked with drip-pen and acrylic ink. I use drip-pens because I prefer the quality of line you get with them and just the feel of doing it. They're fiddly, inconsistent, messy, unreliable, lots of other negative-y type things, but I love em - not least because they're fiddly, inconsistent, messy and unreliable. I use acrylic ink because it's waterproof once it's dried on the page so it can be painted over without bleeding.

By the time I'd got this far with the inking, and specifically by the time I'd inked the horse, I received a reply from my friend saying everything was okay except it was a bit too symmetrical for her taste and she didn't like the horse. I made something up about the importance of symmetrical horses to the unity of the hole, an excuse that had nothing to do with me having already inked it and being too lazy to do it all again from scratch a symmetrically horseless.

When I'd finished inking it and the ink was dry, I rubbed out the pencil lines and painted it using some of these things and gouache watercolour until it looked exactly like the image below. I can't be arsed to explain how I painted it because 1) I didn't take any pictures of it as I was painting it so there's nothing to illustrate my explanation 2) I sort of explained about painting already here and you can see the painting in progress in this flickr photoset and 3) I've been doing this for hours and need a rest and some grub. After that I'm going to draw and paint some european elks which I'll hopefully remember to photograph as I paint them in order to show you how.

All Done?

2007-06-03T20:22:00.001+01:00

I finished painting the various widgety ghosty graphics before I went away on Tuesday but didn't find time to post them let alone use them. Here are the 'contact sheets' of all the images.

I did sort of say that I would do something of a how to post about this but I'm a bit stuck for anything else to say. I have an idea, eventually I get round to very roughly sketching that idea in pencil. I go over that roughly sketched idea with ink using a drip pen and, when the ink is dry, the original roughly sketched idea gets rubbed out. Which I always think is something of a pity because sometimes those roughly sketched ideas are lovely but hey ho. I was a bit obsessed with Jack Kerouac when I was a yoof and one of the myths attached to him is that he wrote things (as in creative things, not shopping lists, notes to the milkman) then fed them into the flame of a candle before photocopying was invented and so they were lost forever. There was supposed to be some zen-y reasoning behind it all but it was probably more to do with catholic guilt. Not that I've got owt against catholics - especially guilty ones. I was always too much of a chicken to feed owt I'd created into a candle flame so I guess rubbing out those roughly sketched ideas is as close as I get to that. I use several drip pens to draw the ink version of anything and the image below is one of them. I don't clean them as often as I should which is probably true of most things.

When the ink is properly dry and the pencil is properly rubbed out as it can be, I paint it. A lot of the time I don't start out with a definite and complete colour scheme in mind. I'll probably have a few fixed ideas about major areas of the paper but everything else I'll just see what goes best as I go along. Lately I've started a few things with the aim of using a very limited palette - like the three colour palette for the graphics - and then things often all follow once a decision has been made about the first colour. For instance with the graphics, I made decisions about what colour each element should be once and then just repeated the theme with every ghosty. And that's about it. I scan it at 300dpi and do minimal photoshopping - mainly scale and reducing it to something that won't take forever to load, the odd bit of cleaning up where I've made a mess. Hey presto, weblog artworks ahoy!

That's my palette. The screwed up toilet-paper is as close as you get to a rubber with watercolour so a very essential piece of kit. The strand of black is a doghair - they're pretty much everywhere these days!

Dem Bonez action figure...

2007-06-03T18:10:00.000+01:00

When I posted this entry earlier, I did so in great haste and completely neglected to do what the whole post was meant to do, say thank you for the wonderful action figure that a long time blog buddy sent me. So, thank you very very much doppleganger! He emailed me to say something was in the post but to not get too excited. Naturally it was impossible not to get at least a little excited but in the end any amount of excitement was entirely justified because this was surely the coolest present ever. Okay, joint coolest with the fantastic box of art supplies Natalie & Augustine sent me and the book that Betty sent me (sorry, can't do a link for Betty any more!).

Anyway, click this link for the first solo outing of Dem Bonez, an explanation and links to his origins. This is his last adventure to date by his creator, Jeremy and this includes an earlier, theoretical Lego action figure that didn't get past the drawing board

2007-05-18T14:05:00.000+01:00

If you like what you see here and you think a piece of my art would look good on your mantelpiece/desk/toilet wall, or if you fancy having a set of bespoke hand-drawn/-painted graphics on your own blog/website/stationery/cell wall, please let me know. There's no price list and almost every piece of art/comic strip/doodle/scribble/stain you see here is up for grabs so just email me about the piece(s) you like, what you're prepared to pay (and you can pay me in goods/expertise if you like) and we'll work out a price between us. If you want something similar to, or a personalised copy of, something you've seen and admired here, or a customised special occasion/event card of your own, contact me. If you can afford a pc and an internet connection, you can afford a piece of my art so if that sounds appealing, get in touch and you can be the proud owner of a Dem/Guild of Ghostwriters original.

Email all orders/enquiries/offers to guildofghostwriters AT gmail DOT com

In the Midst of a Rev(olution?)amp

2007-05-14T11:38:00.000+01:00

If this isn't your first time here then you may notice something different about this blog I won't tell you - maybe you can tell me in my comments?

The new blogger template doohickey has inspired me to give the blog a bit of a visual makeoever and that's what I'm in the middle of right now (I mentioned it in reply to a comment yesterday). The origins of the makeover go back to last year if not earlier. While sitting at my pc in my old place on Catharine Street, I would often fill sheets of A4 with these strange ghosty figures, experimenting with different shapes, sizes and placement of facial features to see what emotions they could convey. I felt there might be a greater purpose to them (world peace? saving the hammers from relegation? regular funny strip?) but I wasn't sure what it was. Sadly, I can't find any of those sheets just now or I'd post some examples.

On Friday I switched to the new blogger template, all my template alterations and additions were lost, specifically the sidebar graphics, and I found myself having to learn how to make them happen newstyle as well as create some new graphics for the new features (well, one new feature - labels/topics). A ghosty suggested itself as perfect for the role. Then we had an idea, ghosty and I (well, we disagree about who had the idea first but compromised on 'we had an idea' ). I've always fancied having themed visuals - in terms of style, colour etc - for the blog but have always struggled to come up with a theme. Wouldn't this ghosty and his crew be the perfect theme for this place? Of course they would! So that's what I'm doing now - converting the place to a guild of ghosty gouache graphics. It also gives me an opportunity to experiment with a limited, three colour palette as I have wanted/planned to do for some time. The first example of the new theme is already installed on the blog. The rest will come as and when I complete them over the next week. Here are some half finished examples.

As with just about everything I do, the first stage is to roughly draw the image in 2H and 2B pencil, as above. After that, I go over the pencil ink using various sizes of drip-pen nib. When the ink is dry I rub out the pencil with a mouldable putty rubber.

It's usually necessary to touch up the ink drawing a little after the pencil has been rubbed out and once that ink is dry, I stretch the paper onto board with masking tape and paint it with designers' watercolour gouache paint and the odd touch of ordinary (non-gouache) artists' watercolour. The ghosty crew will all be painted with Windsor & Newton's Designers' Gouache Burnt Umber and Orange Lake Light, and Rowney Georgian Prussian Blue watercolour.

Ch ch ch changes...

2007-05-11T13:59:00.000+01:00

You may notice some changes around this place. This is because I bit the bullet and updated to the newfangled blogger template thingumabob in order to get a list of my labels in the sidebar. And in so doing lost pretty much all the template edits (such as graphics, blogroll etc). I'm slowly working out how to customise it to incorporate graphics again but my time on the pc is limited so that, and the reinstatement of my blogroll, may take some time...

parfum de merde de renard/l'eau de toilette

2007-05-11T11:12:00.000+01:00

In Calderstones Park. A woman with the sweetest wee King Charles Spaniel. She rests her head against your shin as you scratch her back and tummy. The spaniel that is, not the woman. Suddenly the spaniel darts for a patch of bare earth and rolls on her back frenziedly. Queen does likewise. "Must be where a fox goes to the toilet" she offers as an explanation. The woman that is, not the spaniel.

In Sefton Park. Near the folly streams where old leaves lie, rot and stink and mad dogs roll. Manage to steer Queen clear of the rotten leaves but she spots a labrador who also spots her and they run off to play together. Meanwhile, chat with labrador's human about the swans, their hatched and unhatched brood nearby, the intruder terrapin, and the stately heron. In the middle mischief distance, spot Queen and labrador rolling in something on the grass which later turns out to be sticky and stinky. "Ah" says the woman with the labrador "that's fox pooh. It's their perfume."

We retrieve our stinky canines and go our separate ways, me wondering how she can possibly know this.

The Point

2007-04-25T16:39:00.000+01:00

Two and a half years after fetching up here I still love Liverpool and am glad it was here I fetched up. I won't be here forever, hope to end up somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales, my favourite place in the whole universe, where I'll stride the moors daily with three or four collies skittering around my shins. For now though Liverpool will do.

For a city (and a vast city at that, irrespective of its modest population) there's an awful lot of nature reasonably close by. There are three parks - Sefton Park, Green Bank Park and Wavertree Mystery - within ten minutes walk of where I live and the jewel of them all, Calderstones Park, is maybe half an hour away on foot. But I've always lived near parks and woods and fields and the like. I've never before been so close to beaches, however.

Depending on what you fancy there are a number of beaches to select from. I've still to check out Gormley's Another Place at Crosby but I try and get over to West Kirby several times a year. Stride across the Dee estuary at low tide, blasted by warm Atlantic winds, to Hilbre Island where the seals aren't. There's a vast muddy wasteland with a desolate pier stretched across it and cut-throat razor shells scattered about at Southport and no improvement on the Old at New Brighton.

These photographs aren't from any of those places, however. These were taken (by my brilliant partner, Ms Suomi-Suolmate) on several visits to Formby Point, the only beach that Queen has visited so far. It can get very busy (the crowds, sadly, bringing and leaving their litter) during school holidays but it stretches off into forever, especially at low tide, so there's always peace and solitude to be found if you keep walking north and west.

Queen loves the beach. It's where we first saw her play. She loves to snuffle up starfish, bury her nose in the sand, charge off to the horizon and back again. And sometimes, she just loves to sniff and stroll.

(You can see all the photos of Queen I've scanned in so far here)

What I've Been Up To...

2007-04-25T11:36:00.000+01:00

I had intended to post something along these lines earlier but I've been otherwise engaged, as has the computer much of the time, and so I let it slip a day or two longer than I would have liked. Particularly as the play I was hoping to publicise here was performed for the first and (probably) last time last night.

So one of the things that has kept me away from here and all other blogs was the one act play Seagulls by Caryl Churchill which three of us performed last night as part of the Leverhulme Open Drama Festival at the Gladstone Theatre, Port Sunlight Village. The play is wonderful and, to our knowledge, one rarely if ever performed. The cast had bags of talent and two of us were very experienced but the dynamic wasn't always as focussed as it should have been and the process was often frustrating, probably setting us back a number of weeks. Nevertheless we made a strong and well received contribution to the competition and the adjudicator found little fault with our efforts and what criticisms he did make were levelled more at early production decisions (what he perceived as indecision about whether to produce it as a naturalist or a symbolic piece) than our execution. I had another peach of a part requiring me to relocate me voxbox somewhere in the southern united states (three of the last four plays I've done have involved throat migration, twice to the southern states and once to Ireland) and once I had mastered the speech sounds and rhythms and got a handle on my character (a slightly obsessive fan who might be something else) I thoroughly enjoyed losing myself in his twangy charm and disquieting recollections.

Just about the only little bits of art I've done in the past month or so have been various rough sketches for the publicity posters, flyers and programme which didn't in the end get used because my daughter did a much better job. I particularly love her seagulls, creatively copied from extensive flickr and google image searches one afternoon over the eostran holidays.

The only minor alteration I made to her artwork in the final poster was to copy, rescale and rotate various of her seagulls to increase the size of the flock. She was delighted to have beaten her old man although she rather self deprecatingly attributed her victory to my decision to not bother with a chinese hat on the man.

The other reason I haven't found much time for blogging and art is Queen, a seven month old border collie teenage girl who has come to live with me. She was living in a barn a few miles outside Harrogate but she lacked work ethic and preferred to make friends with rather than round up sheep so she said goodbye to the farm and the People's Republic of Yorkshire and wended her way to my Wavertree home. Now she is gradually being trained to lie down and be stroked on command and sleep between bouts of furious running. She is incredibly cute and affectionate. She's slowly coming to terms with all the people, noise and traffic of the suburbs and reckons she'll soon have us trained to walk at her pace and feel guilty whenever she looks at us. Please feel free to worship her image. Sorry my cronky old digital camera is so lousy, some old fashioned scanned analogue type photos should follow soon.

Mr Lumiukko riding pillion on a ski-doo (kind of finglish card?)

2007-04-03T22:56:00.000+01:00

Oops - I hadn't realised so much time had passed since last I posted. Many of my usual apologies. I'm busy rehearsing my next bout of hi-diddle-di-dee, a short one act play for a one act play competition/festival at the Gladstone Theatre over in Port Sunlight later this month.

This is my latest daubing and should bring a smidgeon of cheer to all those distressed by the colourless, suicidal adventures of Mr Lumiukko last Christmas (I almost typed 'the Christmas just passed' then but suddenly realised that a quarter of a year has elapsed since then - eep!) Now Mr Lumiukko gets to have fun on the back of a ski-doo, a thank you card to the bloke who scoured my head with icy winds and flung up snow on the back of his ski-doo back in February. Ta mate!

Shaggy Blog Stories

2007-03-16T11:09:00.000Z

And now you can buy the book - get Shaggy Blog Stories from Lulu.

Diva Does Red Nose Day (Elsewhere Stuff...)

2007-03-13T11:34:00.000Z

[Edit - The deadline for this closed yesterday (Tuesday 13th) at 6pm BUT everyone, whether a blighty blogger or not, can still participate by buying the book. Keep checking Troubled Diva for details. And apologies for cottoning on to this so late...]

Sadly I can't participate in this because I'm never funny without pictures, not in fewer than 1500 words anyway, but you can. What am I on about? Well, Mike is inviting all blighty bloggers to participate in Red Nose Day. It's all explained there but boils down to an anthology of funny blog writing published using lulu.com to raise money for charidy. Get over there and sign up if there's a funny bone in your body (or a humorous moment in your archives at least).

Ice-Hockey Teeth (another Finglish birthday card...)

2007-03-04T14:39:00.000Z

Sometimes thinking up one of these cards is really easy. The idea is just there in my head and I simply have to squish it out and splat it onto the scanner. Other times I think about stuff they like, stuff they do, what they are, and the idea assembles itself from bits n bobs of those thinks. Then I squish it out and splat it onto the scanner.

When it came to making this card for Aurora (Aukku for short), there was nothing in my head to squish out. Her name was a bit like half of the northern lights and I knew she was very independent, makes her own pack lunches but I couldn't assemble anything from those thinks. My scanner's belly rumbled for the want of something to splat.

Then I went to Finland and played ice-hockey with Aurora. Believe it or not, ice-hockey is more popular in Finland than either football or cricket and Finnish toddlers and little girls are easily capable of brutalising the average englishman into humiliating defeat. I'm just getting into ice-hockey and so I don't know much about it yet but I know a few facts. For instance, Sweden will always beat Finland in a final, even if the Finns are miles better. You can be as violent as you want to somebody as long as it's near the wall. In NHL (the American flavour), you must combine a game of ice-hockey with a boxing match, brawl or mini-riot for it to count. And most importantly of all, if you play ice-hockey and you've got any teeth left in the front of your face, you're just not trying hard enough!

Anyway, while we were playing ice-hockey for the second time, one of Aurora's teeth fell out. Not in a brutal, stick or elbow in the mush kind of way, just in that sweet little girl losing one of her milk teeth kind of way. And there was the idea for the card you see below. Upon my return I squished it out and it arrives in your browser freshly splatted this morning.

This is the front of the card. It roughly translates 'Aukku knows that ice-hockey is a tough sport that demands sacrifices...'

This is the punchline, such as it is, from inside the card. It (very loosely) translates '...like teeth'.

This is the photograph I used as reference. It was squished with drip-pen, then designers' watercolour gouache with a little bit of watercolour pencil for the face.

(Not Quite) Top of the World...

2007-03-04T13:39:00.000Z

This time last week I was in Finland. Mainly the same places I visited back in November except I didn't see Helsinki at all this time. As I type this I'm uploading a stack of digital photographs to flickr but there's loads of them and it's taking an age. The digital camera was borrowed and I have no real clue about digital photography generally or the borrowed camera specifically. Otherwise I would have done away with the date stamp.

This is my favourite of the ones I've uploaded so far. I don't know the correct spellings because there are no Finns around to ask just now but we're preparing food at the lavu, an outdoor eating and cooking area. [edit - I've just been advised that it's laavu and it was originally an outdoor sleeping area]. The temperature is about -20 degrees celsius but we don't really mind because we're properly dressed and we're sitting around an open cooking fire making (for want of the Finnish word or a proper translation) self-made stick-buns, sweet dough wrapped around a piece of wood and cooked over the fire. The best salmon I ever tasted was cooked over that fire.

If you want to see all of the photographs uploaded so far (there are some old fashioned shiny analogue snaps to follow), I've added them to the Finland set on flickr (if somebody buys me a flickr pro account I can make another set for them...).

Ranpa 1/2 (a kind of birthday card comic thing)

2007-02-20T23:28:00.000Z

Every year I put some kind of story together for my daughter's birthday. Previous years stories can be seen on the blog here and here and purchased here. This is her story for this year, a rip-off of her favourite comic, Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi. She recently declared herself gothic so that gets a reference too. The two characters, Petunia and Papa Petalbum, are from last year's book, which you simply must buy for a relatively small sum of money and well worth every penny. For those who don't know, the Wirral is a strange place across the water from here.

Robotti Vanhemmat (yet another Finglish birthday card)

2007-02-13T22:15:00.000Z

Translation:

suunitelma - plan/blueprint
robotti vanhemmat - robot parents
kauko-ohjain - remote control
liikuta - move
taskuraha - pocket money

A finglish birthday card for the son of friends in Finland. I've seen one or two artists on flickr using a limited palette to great effect so I wanted to try it out. At first I was just going with the blue on the blueprint, the yellow ochre of the hand, and purple and orange on the robots but it wasn't working so I added the green. I wasn't sure while I was doing it - in fact I didn't like it - but now it's done I'm relatively happy with it although it's not at all what I had in mind at the start.

This Has No Title Because I Can't Think One Up Except Possibly 'Losing My Stripes' Which Makes Little Sense In The Obscurest Possible Way...

2007-02-12T18:00:00.000Z

I'm still struggling for momentum (largely thanks to citalopram which might also be responsible for my will to live) but I managed this - my second go with bristol-board and a chance to try out some new drip-pen nibs and holders. I thought I was doing one thing but now I think I'm not and I'm going to let it take me to wherever it wants to go.

Otherwise, the good news is that long standing blog friend Coup De Vent has reappeared - yay! I'm hoping that the bad news is old news.

Oh, and seeing as it worked so well when Natalie tried it, if anybody fancies buying, mentioning and/or reviewing my book, I'll be very very grateful.

Finally, if you can explain the little sense 'Losing My Stripes' makes I might just give you a prize.

Cheerio...

Brilliant Stuff Elsewhere...

2007-02-02T16:05:00.000Z

I'm still struggling to do anything for all the same old reasons but don't go without - get this! Natalie's brilliantest, bestest and biggest delusion is now available in touchy, feely, order-it-over-the-internet form via Lulu. If you didn't read her wonderful Interviews with God when serialised on Blaugustine (the colourful blog she shares with Augustine, her cartoon soul who gets to interview God), now is your chance. And if you did, now is another chance. ORDER YOUR COPY NOW!

Goth Relationship Counselling

2007-01-11T16:08:00.000Z

Testing Bristol/Making Comics

2007-01-11T15:14:00.000Z

...and so I read a book that told me how! Or something like that anyway.

Actually this (and the preceding/following, depending on whether you read this top to bottom or oldest to newest) was just some messing around with a pad bristol board I just got. For the ignorant (which tends to include me), bristol board is a rigid, shiny art paper. I've tended to use typing paper for most of my unpainted stuff but it's not really suited to it - it doesn't always agree with the drip-pen nib, it creases up when I rub out the pencil beneath/behind the final inking and sometimes it just won't sit still and flat on the scanner. Also, anything remotely wet like felt-tip buckles it so that it's even less likely to sit on the scanner. The rigidity of bristol board makes it less likely to buckle and crease as a result of rubbing out and other vigorous, drawing related activities. So far it seems okay with slight dampness from felt-tips, water colour pencils and ink. It's on very good terms with drip-pen nibs. Crucially, it seems to be the paper of choice for comic makers the world over.

The one universal truth I have found about creativity is that momentum is the key. If you have it then keeping going, writing the next chapter, drawing the next panel, learning the next speech, is as easy as sliding down a steep and icy slope. But lose the momentum for whatever reason and starting again can be as tough as pushing a heavy sled up the same slope while wearing flippers. And since the end of the play back in October I have lost, lacked and totally failed to regain all creative momentum for a variety of reasons and none. And worse, various attempts to shove that sled back up that slope have failed so far.

I got some great comics for Christmas, all of which make me want to make comics. Luckily for me, one of the books I got is all about making comics. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics blew me away when I first read it well over a decade ago. A comic about comics that told me more about comics than I thought it was possible to know, opened my mind and eyes and, most importantly, was a fantastic read. So when I stumbled upon some reference to a new book by him called Making Comics at the arse end of last year I was excited. And I had an answer to the next person who asked me what I wanted for Christmas (me mum, as it goes).

Anyway, in an attempt to get some of that vital momentum back in my life and art, I'm going to read the book and do one of the exercises from the end of each chapter then post the result to this blog. The first exercise I'm attempting is to tell the story of a favourite movie in 16 panels. My first stumbling block is deciding which movie...

the new pestament: gobspill of st germ

2007-01-03T15:55:00.000Z

Crafty Skinflint

2006-12-23T18:44:00.000Z

Least said soonest mended? Actually I'm promising nothing - no more than this. Let's wait and see what happens.

Also actually, my words came back to haunt me just now because I couldn't sign in. It got stuck in a loop of redirecting somewhere and eternally coming back to the same place. It seems to be okay now that I added the appropriate url to the cookie exceptions thingy in firefox but I'm sure I did that last time this happened so I'm counting no chickens/turkeys/geese/nutloaves. Whatever happens, I guess it just serves me right for chucking me toys out the pram.

Anyway, I have not been making art or feeling much like making art. I have, with the help of Ms Suomi-Suolmate (who is currently suomi-side) making home-made wrapping paper. It's really easy - potato-prints onto broken-crown mending brown paper. I cut all the shapes onto the potatoes and we both participated in the printing. We used Ms Suomi-Suolmate's gouache paint - I don't think it's watercolour. My favourite is the pig and gift pattern - pigs are part of the Xmas imagery over in Finland in case you're wondering, as I was, presumably because they tend to eat them (joulu kinkku - I roasted one last year).

This angel and star print didn't scan too well which is a pity because it looks really good with the naked eye. Kind of delicate, subtle, classy. Classy in the way that angels with batman wings can be classy.

This is the first one we printed. The first one is always a bit dodgy because it takes a while to work out how much paint and pressure the printing requires. I think the inconsistencies are part of the charm though.

This last one is a scan of the first time I attempted groan-up potato printed wrapping paper a couple of years ago. I can't remember if I used this on the old blog but I know it hasn't appeared here before.

Home-made wrapping paper is part of an ancient Yorkshire tradition (I don't currently reside in the Republic but I am a naturalised Yorkshireman having languished there for long sentences of my life) known as thrift, or tightarsedness. If you think I'm unkindly invoking negative and inappropriate stereotypes then I'll remind you of the Yorkshireman's oath:

Hear all, see all and say nowt
Eat all, sup all and pay nowt
If thy ever does owt for nowt, do it for thee sen

Happy Whatever to all who pass by here and read this far down. And indeed to all who don't read a word, and to those who don't pass by here either for that matter. Just Happy Whatever to One and All.

What Would Jesus Do? (Last Rites/Wrapping It All Up In Time For Xmas)

2006-12-08T15:22:00.000Z

The comic strip that tops and tails this is where it all started in at least two ways. Sick and broke in the lead up to Christmas 1997, and increasingly obsessed with comics (pretty much my only reading matter at the time, especially if you discount offical government forms designed to disprove sickness, and my only encounters with narrative of any kind), I scribbled this with the intention of scanning it, copying it, posting it to family and the last of my dwindling, disappearing friends as a form of homemade Christmas card. Of course this is me I'm writing about so all I actually got round to was drawing it and scanning it then leaving it to gather virtual and real dust on hard drive and shelf. I drew several other comics over the next year or so and then stopped. There was no blog then to for me to post them on and no other bloggers around to spoon feed me the bitterly false nectar of encouragement and belief. Prior to drawing this comic I hadn't drawn anything for about 12 years, except the odd daydreamy doodle.

Six years later I received a Christmas email from a blogger, attached to which was a drawn-and-scanned cartoony card. The friend was Natalie, an artist and cartoonist whose brilliant work adorned her (then) fairly new blog and who I was growing to admire as a creative talent and even more as a warm and interesting new friend, albeit of the disembodied online kind. Feeling that I should reciprocate somehow, I sent Natalie the comic. Soon after, Natalie replied saying that she liked the comic, that I should make more of them, perhaps put them on my blog (then even newer than Natalie's and strictly textual). Flattered by this encouragement from an artist I admired, I followed Natalie's advice and posted several old doodles, including the Jesus comic. Natalie's only criticism were a couple of references to the Jesus' small nob. She liked Jesus and always imagined him with a big nob - any suggestion otherwise was offensive to her. So I censored and amended the original to remove all references to god's little manhood.

I soon ran out of old doodles and started making new ones. When I expressed frustration with my limited and inappropriate tools, Natalie bundled up a boxful of her old artgear and sent it to me, a fledgling artist's survival kit. And so me as groan-up comic mangler, and guild of ghostwriters as doodle blog, both owe their existence to this scruffy old strip about Jesus, his little nob, and me.

The few who have been visiting this (and the old and gone) place for a long time (and I know of at least one who has been linking/clicking here since the first week of my original blog) will know one or two things about me by now. You're probably aware that I'm often sick, have been for a long time and probably always will be. You'll know that I have something of an obsession with crucifying things. I have crucified Santa, the easter bunny, jesus and mostly I have crucified me. You will probably also know that I get the Xian holidays confused and usually end up crucifying most things for Xmas rather than easter. So for my final doodle and post I'll continue the habit of a blogtime and unseasonably crucify myself.

I had planned to paint it but I've put my paints away. I don't have the wound in my side because I'm worried that I'll put it on the wrong side and offend somebody. Which, all things considered, is quite funny really.

I've not been making art - or doing anything of value to me or the world - for ages. I keep trying but it isn't happening. So I'm going to stop trying. I don't plan to start trying again but a part of me hopes the pressure and depression will pass and I'll feel the need to pick up pen again. Part of me hopes I can move on from all that because in the long run it makes me feel worse, hammers home what a failure I am. This place is the same. Stats are a terrible thing because they show that if I ignore the googlers googling for drugs, magic mushrooms, pussy and blakean then I'm left with a very few loyal visitors. Most of whom, I can't help thinking, only come here out of pity. That's not say I don't appreciate your pity, support, praise and all but also I see my need for it as part of my sickness that I shouldn't indulge. And really, I don't deserve readers anyway because I don't do any reading myself. I indulge in the occasional manic bout of blogreading but only out of guilt. I can't help thinking that the original blog died just when it was getting known and that this new blog never carried forward the momentum and popularity of the old place. Momentum is everything in creativity and I lack the means or will to generate it anew. I missed my chance. I lack the self promotion gene, the take a chance and risk failing gene, the happiness gene, the will to live gene.

I'll leave all this here for the time being so that those who like stuff can make copies of their favourite bits. If I'm not making new stuff by easter I'll crucify it proper at the right time of year. Thanks to all those who helped make this place good when it was good.

The Guild of Ghostwriters Number Ninety-Six

2006-12-08T14:42:00.002Z

(This short story, hastily scribbled out during a few consecutive moments of near competence back in 2003, is where the name of this blog comes from. Sorry it's longer than what passes for a blog post, especially here. A prize to anybody who can prove to me that they actually read the whole thing...)

Far be it from me to ignore criticism – contrary to one current of criticism, I am very interested in perceived weaknesses in my work. It’s just that I have tended to limit my interest to those weaknesses I perceive myself. Surmounting as I do, however, a long and rampant lineage which has always regarded any perception of weakness in the self as a weakness, it is nigh on impossible for me to perceive any weakness in myself and on the rare occasions that I have I generally go on to regard and condemn myself as weakly worthless and a sore chagrin to the long line of proud and weaknessless ancestors that manifest in the form of a community of chimps foraging between my shoulder blades. And far be it from me to bury my head in the sand either, residing as I do in a landlocked and desert-free country, I sought counsel on these matters of perceived and actual weakness.

My counsellor, a perpetually nervous and hesitant man, suggested that if I were to cease regarding my work as an extension of myself, I could perceive weaknesses within it, were there any to be perceived, without that amounting to a disastrously perceived weakness of the self. The trouble with that is the impossibility of perceiving the fruits of creative endeavour as anything but an extension of the self, born as they are of ideas formed deep within the most solitary of intimacies. To regard a creative work, a work of passion and sweat, a work of sleepless concern, as an extension of the self is as inevitable and unavoidable as regarding one’s children in the same way. In fact, it is more easily accounted for, a creative work being far more likely to submit to one’s authority than an offspring.

The perceived weaknesses of my counsellor’s argument aside, I did perceive enough merit in it to give it a go. I tried many different methods of attempting to regard a poem, say, or a skit as I imagined one might regard a recently painted picket fence or baked and decorated cake, but to no avail. The closest I came was by pretending somebody else wrote it whereupon I either hated it or despised him for so blatantly, shamelessly plagiarising my work. Many a time I had to retreat in embarrassment after a lambasting in Court had been punctured by the riposte that of course the work in question was a blatant rip off of my style, my form, my genre and my specialised subject matter because the rip off had in fact been perpetrated by we, meaning myself, me, I. My counsellor carefully suggested that this might be if not a weakness then a flaw in my strategy, one that I had been unable to perceive for the obvious reasons, but if I were to identify the strengths and eradicate the weaknesses I might find a viable solution.

I suppose when it comes to finding solutions I am fortunate to enjoy the privileges and command the resources that I do. Since my grandfather, Kevin I (or Kick-Arse Kev), seized South Yorkshire and the Peak District from the English Crown in the early twenties, our family has been privy to the juiciest suppressed facts, investigations and intelligence service secrets the world has to offer. A weekly newsletter containing all the goss is circulated around the world leaders in a re-usable envelope. Anyone who has ever worked in the British civil service will know the sort of thing, gridded with consecutively numbered boxes for each successive recipient. It always comes to me after the English Monarch – a misordering that will perturb me until it’s put right – and they get it after the Indian Premier has had a browse. I’ve already called it a privilege but often it’s a chore, largely consisting of, let us say, fortean investigations, the kind of thing that would kill the Roswellian cults with a line and most of it dull as their speculations. No, we’re not engineered, visited or controlled by aliens, twelve foot jewish lizards or clones of Emperor Gates. Yes there is a god – or was until the mid-twentieth-century; he lived at Maralinga you see, until the tests. Anyway, I digress from my point in explaining all of this which is that it was in one of those circulation envelopes that I chanced upon the solution to my problem.

A report on certain cults referred to an investigation into Transcendental Mediation and Astral Projection that was carried out by the CIA in the late twentieth-century. Using my Global Top Secret Library ticket, I was able to procure and peruse the CIA’s investigation files (it was idle curiosity that led me to do so – I am often idle and always curious). The initial CIA investigation was sparked by a rumour that members of the British Monster Raving Loony Party were using Astral Projection (AP) to ‘possess’ and covertly control various world leaders. The CIA were able to prove that this was happening although their initial suspicion, that Ronald Reagan was so ‘possessed’, proved unfounded. It later transpired that Reagan had in fact projected himself in the late 1970s at one of Nancy’s marijuana smoking parties but had been unable to find his way back. The investigation had actually discovered – and the file went on to explain – the secret of AP. It’s pretty easy actually. All you need are some valves, batteries, capacitors, paperclips, marijuana and a specially adapted old-fashioned commode. Or am I mixing it up with my homemade electric chair? Anyway, it was a simple enough and easily replicated experiment, even by a technical know-nothing such as I.

It wasn’t merely a matter of discovering the secret of AP. Finding an appropriate person to project into and possess was the hardest part of all. Perhaps I should explain in a little more detail. Working on the premise that everyone has at least one book in them, I took to possessing young men for the night and stealing that book. I didn’t initially exclude women for any of the traditional reasons men employ to keep women at bay but for reasons of practicality and accountability. To be perfectly frank I prefer entering women but the books I stole from them were invariably written in a more feminine register than I am capable of and displayed such sensitivity and humanity that none of the critics believed I could have written them. Excluding women was not all I had to do to get it right, however. I had to refine my methods by the usual process of trial and error.

At first I would leave my body and roam, in an astral state, the surrounding locale of whichever official residence I was then occupying. Roaming in an astral state is a bit like staggering home from the laundry maids’ quarters when drunk. Because of the unusual sensation of body-mass (or in the case of AP, the absence of it), perambulation is an awkward, haphazard, clumsy business. One frequently overestimates the force required to realise movement and consequent collisions with inanimate objects such as walls and hard furnishings are unavoidable. And just like when drunk, such collisions are painless at the time. When drunk, one doesn’t feel the edge of the table that has just attacked one’s shin; in the astral state, the table edge doesn’t feel one’s shin. When one awakes from such a drunken trek, one is instantly aware of the hazardous route one has taken a day or two before, mapped as it is in bruises and cuts about one’s body, and AP again is similar. The astral form remembers all the collisions and reminds the physical form of where it ought to hurt upon their reunion and accordingly the physical form hurts in all those places. Sadly, these injuries are not supported by any physical evidence at all; no bruises, grazes, chafes or cuts. Consequently Nanny won’t allow one time off from making laws and starting wars.

So, in my astral state, lurching and staggering like a drunkard around the astral plane, I would wander the benighted streets of Conisboro and Matlock (my two principal residences) until I clocked a garret window still lit even at that godless hour. Then I would enter the house – passing through walls or doors at first, later finding an open window, door or cat flap where possible to minimise the later pain – and ascend to the bare but enlightened room. In that room I would inevitably find a desk with some form of writing instrument or equipment, a small and dirty mattress nearby and a single ergonomically unsound chair with a young writer languishing in an ecstasy of near-starvation and existentialist angst. Entering and possessing somebody is so easy to describe it’s impossible to do so. Basically, it’s whatever one imagines it to be. For instance, the CIA files suggested imagining oneself at the console of a forklift truck and I did try that but I can’t drive a forklift. I tried imagining myself at a computer, typing instructions and that worked but in the end I settled for picturing myself at Court, shouting orders at everyone present and waving a huge gun – that’s the way I possess and control a country so why should it not work in a person? Of course it did work.

Once inside and in control, it was just a matter of getting him to type. That was always the easiest part of the process and completely painless. Even if he had been typing furiously for hours, to the point where his fingers were bloodied stumps hardly recognisable as human digits, such injuries would neither hurt me nor hinder his efforts. The problems started when the manuscript was complete. At first I would evacuate my host immediately, whereupon he, overcome by fatigue and pain no doubt (having just typed a 100,000 word plus manuscript in around five hours without pause), would subside into a moaning and groaning faint at the keyboard. Then the problem – how to manipulate matter such as a paper manuscript or floppy disk with an astral form which physical matter, indeed the whole of the physical plane, did not acknowledge or respond to. I can’t describe the pain of the countless, non-existent paper cuts that first attempt caused. It simply wasn’t possible to pick up and take home that first manuscript. After several hours of trying, I quit and went home, intending to raid the place later, seize the writing as seditious, execute the prole and publish under my own nom-de-plum. Unfortunately, during my absence the prole had been discovered dead by his doting landlady and she had already posted his great last work off to a publisher. A London publisher at that so not one I could raid. Worse, the work was accepted and lauded beyond my borders as a stinging parody and indictment of me, the final act of defiance from an already cruelly crushed subject. My work was lost to me – how could I reveal my authorship of it? – and worst of all, the critics didn’t perceive a single weakness in it.

I concluded my next couple of attempts by making my host address and post the manuscript or disk to me before evacuating him. Sadly, the manuscript was too bloodstained to be legible, or the disk too sticky with blood for any computer to read it, so those attempts were also futile. Next time out I remained in my host long enough for him to walk to my residence and attempt to deliver the work in person. I did not, however, account for the zeal of my Royal Housecarls who despatched the suspected assassin with flamethrowers as was their wont. I was fortunate enough to get out unsinged, the manuscript was not so lucky. I thought about lifting the ban on internet use amongst my subjects so that I could email the manuscript back but that was too drastic a measure, and I’ve never been good with the internet anyway – I’ve always had servants send my emails for me, my tendency with my electronic communications being, as with my country, to dictate and have others do.

That near-singing was the point that I came closest to giving up, in that petulant way overwhelming frustration prevents a considered, thoughtful approach to the problem. Pretty soon, of course, the answer was obvious.

It was all thanks to the UN and the English. I’d been keeping several thousand English as pets in a concentration camp called Doncaster – English captured the last time they’d tried a coup – and the UN told me it was time to give them back. I wanted to ignore them but Nanny said it would be better in the long run and there are always fresh stocks of POWs to replace them with if I missed them that much. So all of a sudden I was bereft of a pastime and with an empty concentration camp to restock. It was a flash of divine inspiration, the kind of inspired flash only a truly genius writer such as I, with the additional benefit of the divine right to rule, gets to experience. I turned the concentration camp into a battery writery. Every young man in the kingdom with literary pretensions or aspirations received a heavy, officious knock on their door one morning. Upon answering it they were greeted gruffly by two armed and vaguely uniformed men who, without ceremony, presented the young man with a sealed letter, dictated personally by me. Congratulations, there is a vacancy for a writer in residence at Doncatraz and you have been selected to fill it. Despite their calling they were rarely pleased with the delivery, some of them denying a literary bent, denying literacy even, but my postmen calmed them down and moved them in. I didn’t change much of the décor – just made sure there was nothing for them to write with or on. The UN didn’t like it (Amnesty had given up on me by that time) but the US vetoed the resolution as there was no oil or threat to Israel involved. Every night a single writer would be escorted from the camp to my nearby residence at Conisboro where they were taken to my specially constructed study.

My study is a long narrow room without windows, without natural illumination of any kind – the ‘writing’ took place at night in any event. At one end of the room, a typical office chair was sat at a grey office desk on which a computer hummed so that that the beaker of pills beside it rattled. The other end of the room was dominated by my astral projector, humming in harmony, ominously, and into which I was already strapped as my young, confused subject was pushed in through the study door which locked shut behind him. I invited him to sit. ‘Thank you, your Highness’ he inevitably replied, seating himself at the desk so that, for a moment, he and his King were face to face. Whereupon, as far as he was concerned, his King, HRH The King of South Yorkshire and the Peak District, would faint, slumping into his strange chair, his chin resting on his chest.

It would take a few minutes for me, in my astral form with my body hardly breathing behind me, to stagger the length of the study, around the desk and into my ghostwriter host. During that time his initial astonishment would briefly become a panic which in turn would begin to calm into something like a contemplation of the possibility of escape or (forgive him) regicide. At that point all thought of flight or murder, all thought, all plans would end as I arrived and stepped into his body to take possession. He was my ghostwriter then and I made him ghostwrite for me. He wrote for hours, ceaselessly, until the work was complete. Then, as soon as he had finished the spellcheck and clicked save, he necked the pills and I got out quick, just in time to witness the beginning of his slow and painful death.

Simple – the manuscript where I needed it and the ghostwriter already a ghost, unable to contest authorship.

I did that most nights. I like to keep Sundays special and have always left them free for carousing, cavorting and callously casual cruelties but otherwise I was at it six nights a week. In just over a decade I cleansed my kingdom of 3,000 odd worthless wordsmiths, extracting the one book in each of them into the bargain. Not all of them were publishable – not every would-be writer has talent to support the contention – but I published more than 2,000 original works in that decade and cared not a jot what the critics said. Even if my counsellor seemed less so, I was satisfied with the solution and its results.

But, you know, satisfaction is like those fairy dandelion-clock seeds drifting around one’s head in a confusion of warm summer evening breezes; not easy to catch and when caught, as soon as one opens the imprisoning hand to have a proper ganders at this satisfaction, it’s off again, up and away on the next puff of breeze. It’s no different when one is a King with divine rights and all.

I opened my hand on my satisfaction for a moment to enquire into its nature and it was gone. What was the use of my writing, even putting aside the suspicion that I might have cheated, what was the point? All that came to mind then were 3,000 odd corpses but besides those, what of any note had my writing ever accomplished? It seemed to me that my only readers were foreign critics – all native critics having been redeployed or disappeared – who had abandoned Marxism, Feminism, New-Historicism, Reader-Responsism or New-Criticism in favour of perceiving and tabulating weaknesses in the written works of the King of South Yorkshire and the Peak District-ism. In keeping with my kingly generosity I gave each of my subjects a copy of each book as it was published, in lieu of wages, but I think they mainly functioned as doorstops or extra-fuel on the bitterest winter nights. Even I didn’t read them – so what was the point?

The point was the sharp end of dissatisfaction prodding and disturbing my sense of well-being. Once I had experienced that I could write no more – not in that way at least (I’d used up all the ghostwriters for one thing) – so I quit and found myself bereft of worthwhile, meaningful occupation.

I returned to my old bad ways after that, my old sources of satisfaction, and took once more to spending nights in the quiet, cramped quarters of my castle reserved for laundry maids. I say laundry maids but my favourite consort had always been one of the cleaning staff. It’s not the done thing for a king with a full complement of laundry maids, consorting with cleaners, so I didn’t like to confess it before. Now I must – for a story can never be partially told – and so you know; my rolls were tinged with the aroma of Pledge.

I had consorted with Sal Seamless for as long as I’d been able to consort. Since first I saw her, I a precocious young prince coveting my father’s throne, she an aspiring servant girl polishing it, I knew our destinies were entwined, indivisible. Of course, then I thought our destinies were entwined because I was a royal with castles to clean and she an enslaved domestic capable of cleaning them. I had no way of knowing at the time that the intersections of our lives would prove more significant, more meaningful.

In the years immediately following the end of my career as writing royal, I spent every night with Sal, sneaking to her quarters as night fell and staggering back to my own bunk drunk at sunrise.

How can I describe Sal? She is worthy of so much more than a shape and an occupation, a few splashes of colour in varying shades. Sal is a woman who could rule the world. She was always smart – almost as smart as me – and that’s why I gave her the promotion, created a job specially for her and at her suggestion too; Cleaner of the Royal Computers. Prior to that she had been a common scrubber. Even after her promotion she was worthy of a higher post, a loftier calling. ‘In a different world you’d be much more than a cleaner – you’d be a typist, or work in a shop’ I used to tell her. But Sal was modest too and uttered never a word of agreement or otherwise. And in all the years I have known her and despite all the things she has done for me she only ever asked me for one gift – a specially adapted, old-fashioned commode.

Whatever little disagreements we may have suffered since, the main reason Sal will always be so dear to me is our conversation. It may be a strange thing to hear said, you who have done it all – small-talked, chin-wagged, chewed-the-breeze, bantered, rowed, heart-to-hearted – but conversation, beyond small-talk, beyond received obsequy and issued diktat, is an unheard of commodity to a king. Everybody is eager to listen but there’s only so much one feels one can generally say – and everyone is too afraid to say anything of weight or consequence themselves. Everyone except Sal. Yes I could open up to my counsellor – not that he instilled me with any confidence in him, I just knew that he was too afraid for his life to ever betray my confidence – but he seemed more intent on closing me back down again than drawing me out. To be honest, from very early on the only value in our weekly appointment was the pleasure I took from watching him squirm. And even that was a poor second, an unfilling appetiser, compared to watching him really squirm in his own blood and shit in my Funroom-cum-Torture Chamber. That’s another thing I liked about Sal – she made an effort to take an interest in my interests. In fact it was her suggestion to have fun with the counsellor when she found out that he was the only other person – except Sal and me – who knew all the secrets of my writing career, and what went on in my study.

That’s what I mean about conversation – I talked to Sal about everything and it was always the best thing in the world to do at the time, drunk on gin and stoned on her premium homegrown marijuana. I don’t know how we got talking about AP – she’d been cleaning the computer in my study for years and the Astral Projector was still there, lurking cold and silent beneath a dust sheet – perhaps she was just curious about the hidden secret. But I kept no secrets from Sal – once I knew about conversations I just wanted to say all there was to be said and that’s what I did – so Sally heard all there was to hear. And as I mentioned before, she always showed an interest so I wasn’t surprised when she asked me to demonstrate AP.

There was something of childhood mischief about it, the way we crept along the darkened corridors of my castle wedging doors open as we passed, the way we tip-toed past Nanny’s door, avoiding the squeaking floor-board, just as I had done as a bored teenage prince on my way to the cells to finish off father’s favourite political prisoner that he’d been saving for himself. The spirit of youth mingled in with the gin as my fingers, trembling with excitement, fumbled the key into the lock of my study door, Sal behind me with her hand on my shoulder.

I didn’t really want to do it – so many unpleasant memories of weakness and failure were manufactured into that machine, languishing at the end of the study beneath a dust sheet like a giant misshapen ghost – and wouldn’t have done it but for Sal’s insistence. I didn’t expect it to work either, hoped those years of neglect or some dodgy valves had rendered it inoperable but I whipped off the dustsheet to find the thing gleaming as new. And when I flicked the switch to start it, it began to hum just like it had forgotten the tune for a moment that had lasted years and was now picking it up again after a memory-refreshing pause. Sal strapped me in and perhaps it was because it was my last physical contact with her – my last physical contact – but when I look back on it now I warm to my very shallow depths; it was reminiscent of my mother tucking me in at bedtime and perhaps it’s just fancy elaborated from that idea but I swear now that Sal even planted a light kiss on my forehead when she’d done, just as mother used to do when she’d finished our na-night rituals and before she turned out the lights.

We agreed beforehand exactly what I’d do – or I thought we’d agreed. I insisted that I wasn’t doing anything unless Sal allowed me to enter and possess her. Of course she was reluctant, steadfastly refused in fact until she realised that I really wouldn’t do it at all unless she let me. I’d had so few chances to enter a woman and I enjoyed it so much – entering a man was a trial and a torment – that I was never going to pass up this chance. In the end she consented – and Sal was the only man or woman I wouldn’t have entered without consent – and, briefly as agreed, the first thing I did was to enter and possess her.

There’s definitely something different about entering and possessing a woman. Their softness is so much more unashamed and uninhibited than a man’s could ever be, the fire of their passion more ferocious and unrestrained. Of course – even with my scant experience – being in Sal Seamless was my best go at entering a woman and I would have stayed forever had Sal not reminded me my possession was supposed to be brief. I don’t know why that – like so many things before it, but that above all else – didn’t rouse some suspicion within me, that she was able to retain sufficient sense of herself during my possession to be able to tell me it was time to go. I suppose at the time I was so elated, so enamoured with this wonderful woman I was, it didn’t cross my mind to suspect and I must have put it down to the closeness of our connection. Anyway, remind me she did, after five or so minutes of self-grooming and -exploration, and then I left her and moved on to the next stage of my demonstration.

That was my first go at AP after a skin-full of gin and I was surprised to discover that it rectified the inertia problem so that motion is almost as it is in physical form, if not slightly easier. I proceeded out of the castle – Conisboro castle, rebuilt as a Ludwigian monstrosity fit to grace the royalest Bayerisch landscape – along the route we had prepared earlier by wedging all the doors ajar. Once outside I was supposed to possess a lumpen-prole and perform some unspecified, verifiable mischief that only the king would dare to perform. It took me a good hour to find a suitable subject – plenty of time for Sal to do her bit – and then I got him to graffiti SAL RULES OK on the castle’s perimeter wall, round back near the secret entrance. It was the first true thing I’d ever written up to that point in my worthless life, though I didn’t know it at the time. My masterpiece complete, I left my prole by his handiwork and headed back to my study,

Getting back in was a whole lot harder than getting out had been; someone had removed all the wedges and closed all the doors and after giving it a certain amount of thought I realised that I had no option but to suffer the invisible physical injuries that would come with forcing my astral form through physical objects. I was wrong. I haven’t yet suffered those pains; although Sal assures me I’ll get the chance one day. Upon arrival at my study door I found it, as with all the others, shut against me; and again as with all the others I was forced to force myself through it. As much as I wasn’t looking forward to resuming possession of my own body, and specifically possession of my own senses that I knew were just aching to tell me how much pain I was in after all those doors, I was not in the least bit pleased by the sight that greeted me within.

Within, the study was almost bare; no desk, chair, computer, no humming astral-projector with my body slumped in it, just a small unfamiliar device attached to the wall near the door, humming just like the projector, and a long, hand written letter on the floor where half a king and a specially adapted commode should have been. Ignoring the letter – I don’t like reading – I set off at pace in search of Sal. Or I tried, for I could not pass through the door, just bounced back off it and fell to the floor. Likewise, the walls: however I approached it, I could not exit the room.

After another hour of frantic and no doubt eventually excruciating escape attempts, I stopped to gather my thoughts and once again noticed the letter.

It was from Sal. I know because she signed it, I did not recognise her hand. Until then I was ignorant of her literacy.

Dear H, (it started: H, short for HRH, was how she addressed her King)

You’re probably wondering what’s become of your body. Before you panic, rest assured it’s safe. I promise I have no intention of harming it; I just need to use it for a little while. Well, maybe a long while but I will, in time, hand it back to you, and in one piece.

Before I explain why I need your body, I have a slight confession to make: I know all about Astral Projection. I know a lot more about it than you do. AP technology has come on leaps and bounds since that old CIA report you read and it’s all on the net if you’d only bothered to look. You’d need to look hard mind, and know a few backdoors like I do, but all of it is out there. For instance, I knew that a skin-full of gin would help your movement. Only gin will do it, some unexplained property of sloe. I also know a few secrets I’m not going to reveal, not now anyway, like the secret of barring the astral way. That’s what that device on the wall is, a one-way astral gate that I invented. It will allow astral forms in but not out again. I’m wearing a similar device around my – your – waist, so that neither you nor anybody else can possess your body. My own body is similarly protected. I also know how to keep my wits about me should somebody possess me – not that it matters now – which is how I was able to tell you it was time to go earlier. I didn’t want to tell you to go, I liked you being inside me as much as you did and wished we could have had longer together, but I had a strict timetable to keep to. There are many more secrets, some of which I may let you in on later, once my work is done.

I’m sorry I had to do it this way. If I didn’t love you as I do I would possess your body with you inside and not care a jot but I do care – I care so much more than a jot – and after possessing you once or twice in your sleep I realised I could never do what I have to do with you still around so this was the only way. Please forgive me, H, and know that I love you with all my mind, all my soul, all your body.

That’s as far as I read right then. That was all I needed to know. Sal Seamless loved me – Sal Seamless loves me – and no other fact in the whole universe carries any weight with me now.

That was all four years ago this coming August and a lot has happened since. Not so much for me – my astral form has left my study on just three occasions in all that time while my body has only entered it twice, and both occasions brief. The first time she came was a month or so after I got here. She wanted to leave it a while so I’d calm down, but she didn’t need to; love is a very calming influence on a tyrannical king, even one incarcerated in an empty study away from his body. She bought Nanny along to see me too, not that either of them could see me. The door opened (still the one-way astral gate wouldn’t let me out) and in I came, with my ceremonial broadsword unsheathed and Nanny a pace behind me. ‘I’ve come to show the King how one does away with the most troublesome person in the kingdom’ I said.

‘What are you blathering on about you idiotic ….’ Nanny started, but I interrupted her, something I’d never dared to do myself.

‘Okay then, in language you understand – I’ve come to show the King how to kill his Nanny’.

I didn’t know it could be done before then or I’d have done it myself years ago but Nanny always told me that the divine right of a king’s Nanny is stronger than the divine right of kings. ‘Cromwell never lopped off no Nanny’s head now, did he?’ Nanny always told me, just as she told me then.

‘Good call,’ I said, in a sinister tone I could never convincingly muster myself, ‘I was wondering how I’d do it.’ Then I hacked off Nanny’s head with a single side-swept blow. I’d been getting myself fit and strong in my absence.

I didn’t hang around much longer and to be honest I was relieved. I love my Sal, love to spend time with her and don’t begrudge her commandeering of my temporals at all – she takes better care of me than I ever did – but I’m sure you’ll understand that there’s something disturbing about seeing oneself as a third person one cannot feel, one cannot control, something nightmarish. In my own case all made worse by the suspicion that my frame – however handsome – was hiding away what I really wanted to see. Sal feels something similar – says speaking to the air makes her feel uncomfortable and stupid, especially knowing that everybodyless else is listening in. On that occasion there was nobody else to hear though, not that she could have known either way, and it was just the awkwardness of the situation that made things a strain. She told me she loved me – longed to be with me – but for now she had work to do. I understood and gave her my blessing, not that it was ever in my power to withhold it, or in hers to know it was given. Nanny’s abbreviated neck was still pumping spurts of claret when the King left the room, so short was my stay.

Sal is doing well. Her first act as King was to order my graffiti scrubbed, like an embarrassingly accurate prophecy, and since then she’s been dabbling in politics. As well as reforming the country, she is at the forefront of AP research and invention. I’ve helped her with that, at last doing something useful with my life. Our first discovery came shortly after Nanny’s death, a week later at most, when the first of the ghostwriters turned up. I had taken up pacing to and fro as a hobby and one morning I found myself joined in my walk. ‘You’re not dead,’ it said, ‘what’s going on?’ I explained as best I could, just grateful to have someone who could see and hear me at last. I must have babbled like first-time cokehead without a thought for a single word I was saying until, after about six hours of monologue, the ghostwriter raised a finger and interrupted. ‘Hold on – I’m dead – I don’t have to do as you say no more so you can shove it!’ and commenced to sulk because I’d killed him. For the next three months, each day bought it’s own ghostwriter and every single one of them determined to sulk just because I’d deprived them of life. They didn’t sulk for long though. You see, death had done them a favour in a way because if there’s one good book in every living person, there are literally thousands of them in every dead one. All of them had wandered the world since their death cooking up these great books in their heads and unable to tell a soul. Now stuck together, that’s all they talked about and an informal but highly successful 24/7 writing workshop was spontaneously in progress. Except it was more of a speaking workshop because there was nothing any of us could write with. I say us because I joined in, and I didn’t need to steal this time. Just being around so many gifted ghostwriters inspired me and I guess some of their gifts must have rubbed off on me because soon I too was producing beautiful, moving works of spoken art. Great artists don’t go unforgiven for long and soon they let me join their workshop and the past was a lost ha’penny we never knew we had. And more to the point, I had my first proper buddies – an ever-growing mutual appreciation society of ghostwriters.

Sal deduced from the ghostwriters that astral projections are not far off identical to ghosts – AP amounting to a day release for one’s ghost ahead of that crucial parole hearing, death. Or put another way, ghosts are astral bodies without living physical bodies of their own to go home to. So when all the ghostwriters showed up, mercifully in dribs and drabs over the next two years rather than all in one go, I could see them and they could see me. They’re governed by the same rules as a living astral projection like me so the one-way astral gate means they can’t escape and I’m stuck with em. Ghosts can’t usually possess a living person, however: all interfaces between the astral and physical body are deemed redundant and stripped out once the physical body has died. Apparently – and this is anecdotal from the ghost-writers until Sal works out how to verify it – the unsheathed astral form of a killer acts as some kind of homing beacon to all his or her victims so they can easily find their dealer of death and torment them if they so wish, which is how they all found me. I didn’t kill Reagan of course, he just saw all the astrals gathered together, thought there might be a marijuana smoking party going down and came along to see if Nancy was here with his body. And of course, thanks to that astral gate, once he arrived he was here to stay. It took us a while to explain that his body – and Nancy – had died a long time ago and this was his lot now; a study full of 3,000 odd ghostwriters with one body – and that out on indefinite loan – between us. Since Ronnie has settled here though he’s been a diamond, and he writes like Kerouac with a sense of structure and no chip on his shoulder.

As well as making discoveries and instituting the world’s first socialist monarchy, Sal has been busy inventing things. Mainly things to keep us all entertained – like television and video remotes, and game console control-pads that ghostwriters and astral projections can manipulate and use. We really wanted astral computers and laptops so we could get some of our writing written but Sal was having none of that. Apparently it’s possible to surf the internet astrally – that’s how you find the backdoors she mentioned – and the astral gate wouldn’t stop me escaping down the connection so she didn’t get round to inventing our computers for ages.

At first this socialism business worried me. It seemed a bit soft and ruthful for my taste and reputation. Then I saw that my subjects were happy, healthy, and smart, and loved me like a god and, for a while, I was severely depressed. Sal talks about hating the evangelists of consumerism, the forces of capitalism and imperialism and unleashing our anger against them, making those our enemies but I just thought that I wouldn’t be able to torture abstract nouns or genocide market-theories. A little later I was somewhat cheered to discover that even my Sal is suspect to a little realpolitik hypocrisy, mobilising my now happy, healthy, smart and ferociously loyal subjects in preparation for a little imperialism of her own. She denies it of course and calls it liberation. She liberated the rest of Yorkshire into my Kingdom in three days. Derbyshire fell soon after and Lancashire opted to liberate itself by surrendering without a fight. Nottinghamshire will fall soon, and I’m sure Sal already has something else lined up to keep her busy when it does. The biggest relief is her plan for the crown – she has no plan. I was worried that she’d cave in to the pressures of fashion and western piety and move towards democracy but Sal has no time for that. ‘What’s the point in democracy? People just vote with their greed and build systems that leave ninety-percent of the population poor and powerless. They don’t know what’s good for them, but I do!’ as Sal had me tell the UN. Still, I am softening to the idea of democracy, but only if it means I get to see more of Sal.

We – meaning me and all the ghostwriters who now love Sal just as much as I do – get to see her being me on telly everyday. As I said before, after that first time Sal only visited me as me one more time – and that was the day she came to install and demonstrate our astral computers (not connected to the net sadly but it means we write instead of playing online word games and mah jong). The ghostwriters didn’t like it, seeing their killer in stereo freaked them out a bit but they all said I was looking good. Ronnie just laughed. ‘Who needs grass, Nancy?’ he chuckled to himself. That’s not all I see of her though. By the way, since we got the computers every last one of us has been published in some form or genre. Published on merit too, by reputable foreign imprints. At first we weren’t sure what to do about nom-de-plumes. I wanted the ghostwriters published posthumously under their lifetime names but they didn’t agree, wanted something reflecting our mutual support, the collectivisation of the process. So we’re all publish as Guild of Ghostwriters number whatever – I’m Guild of Ghostwriters Number 96 – the number reflecting the order in which we joined the Guild. Critics are speechless and – because all the manuscripts are posted from Conisboro – suspect that I have a hand in it. ‘He must be using ghostwriters’ is the nearest they get to finding any weakness in our work. We all look forward to having a laugh at our latest reviews. But that’s not the thing I look forward to most.

Once a year, on my birthday, May 1st, Sal comes and collects me. I say collects me – she (in her own body, a rare treat for The Guild of Ghostwriters) comes in with a special astral body transporter, another of her inventions, which I climb into so that I can pass through the one-way astral gate. She takes me to another gated room where she takes a hell of a risk and evacuates her body. We spend the day together – all twenty-four hours of it – just having conversations, making plans for when we both have our own bodies again, and getting it together five or six times over the course of the day. By getting it together I mean we place our astral apparitions in close proximity so that they merge in the right place. It’s strange because no physical sensation accompanies the visuals at all but the visuals are sufficient to stir up so many memories of physical sensation that it’s the best sex I’ve ever had – but then again, as Sal points out, it’s the only sex I’ve ever had sober.

All that time our bodies are nearby, slumped in their commodes like a couple of royal drunks in his and hers thrones, and there’s nothing to stop me stepping back into me and resuming my rule. Maybe Sal wants me to, so she can forget about ruling and take up something worthwhile. Maybe one day I will, if I ever get bored of ghostwriting.

Another Snowman Suicide

2006-12-01T14:19:00.000Z

I'm really struggling to get going with anything just now but I did most of this when I did the other two so, in response to pushy Mr Inconsequential's pushy comments here's another suicidal snowman to keep up the seasonal spirits...

Christmas Card Sneaky Preview - Mr Lumiukko Hates Christmas: the snowman suicides

2006-11-26T18:45:00.000Z

It's been a long time since I made some art of my own, let alone posted any on this blog, so I thought I'd swiftly erase the unpleasant memory of my arse (sorry dopp!) with what I spent sunday doing...

I could waffle on pretentiously about how they're a comment on xmas being the loneliest time of the year when depression and suicides soar with the prices of overpackaged food and confectionary but really I just had the idea and decided to run with it. There should be maybe 5 or 6 of them when I'm done, give or take, drip-pen painted with gouache in my usual stylee. No arses or anything.

Oh aye - Lumiukko is wot finnish people (and presumably other finnish snowmen) call snowmen...

Mad Dogs & English Men...

2006-11-23T22:09:00.000Z

...and Finns too, apparently.

It's been an awful long time since I found out first hand but apparently this is what you do on your holidays. After drinking a variety of local intoxicants, end the night sitting naked in a lovely little wooden house alongside your partner's dad who is hitting you about the torso with a vihta, a 'bath whisk' made from birch branches and leaves. Nearby, birchwood burns in an oven heating a load of rocks over which water is poured. As a consequence, the little wooden house becomes very very hot. This is the height of civilisation. You sit like that until you feel the time has come to leave then stumble outside, taking care not to slip and cook yourself on the oven and stones as you pass them. Outside the snow should be fresh and virginal. Preferably a beer or two will have nested in the snow in preparation for this moment. You dive into the snow. It's the silliest thing you've ever done but it feels great. Better than the alternative - cutting a hole in the ice and swimming in the lake. You'd have to be MAD to do something like that. Lie back in the snow - which would be horrible and rough if it were old snow - and let the locals take photographs. Sadly the snow melted away soon after so this was the only chance I got to do this. Until next time...

The red lines on my torso are marks left by the vihta. There was a very good reason for beating people in this way but that reason was explained to me when I was drunk and in a foreign language so the logic behind it escapes me now. The photographs were taken on a borrowed digital camera that neither myself nor Ms Suomi-Suolmate (who took the pictures of me) really knew how to use so apologies for the variable quality and the datestamp. If you want to see more, I've made a set of the better ones over at flickr.

Okay, so my bum looked big in that ski-suit - what about out of it?

Suksi suomi!*

2006-11-22T23:40:00.000Z

I'm just a few hours off the plane from Tampere. It'll be a while before I get some of my art on here but in the meantime there'll be some very bad holiday snaps starting with this short vid of me skiing at Ms Suomi-Suolmate's family's summer cottage at Saarijärvi, near Loppi, Finland. Oh, and I fell over because the person with the camera only went and stood in my bleeding path. I mean, it was maim him or fall over. I'll bleeding maim him next time. If you look in the background at the end you'll see a contraption where Herra Lohi** is smoking so he can become my dinner later. Does my bum look big in that ski-suit?

* suksi suomi = ski finland!
** Herra Lohi = Mr Salmon

More colouring in

2006-11-01T17:04:00.000Z

To keep the eyeballs candied up, here's the second of the Pat Robertson Colouring Book things wot I did, and the one they used. You can see all promotional colourings in at the powell's website here. Have a browse through all of them - this is my favourite. I think it'll all disappear in about a fortnight so if you're clicking these links and they don't work it's because you're from a future I can only contemplate with trepidation...

Pinch punch first of the month...

2006-11-01T16:37:00.000Z

Well the play is now dimly distantly past and I struggle to pull myself out of the momentumless gloom brought on by the abrupt withdrawal of adrenalin and luvvie adulation. It's a sad reflection of my character, nature and big head (or maybe just the fact that I'm such a great actor), but I think it's the absence of people saying, and me nightly giving them reason to say, that I'm so great and very Irish that has caused this gloom more than all the other reasons. Whatever, gloom descends. Unless I'm getting drunk with my fellow luvvies and finding reason and cause to crow-bar in segments of the script. "B'jaysus, he must be comin via the friggin alps then!". "I mean, what is she, a friggin cowboy or something?" Like that - no reason to say them but crow-barred them in nevertheless.

Anyway, I had a wonderful part in a wonderful play and together we produced a very good show that everybody enjoyed, even if they felt a little depressed and teary by the time we took our bows. Too soon it was all over and there's nothing to show except posters, liver damage, memories. Oh, and this - a cartoon of Joe and Georgie by the very talented illustrator, best and calmest ever backstage person and good friend Kate. I'll do some new drawing here as soon as I remember how to use my dip-pens and imagination.

Poor Beast in the Rain

2006-10-11T12:38:00.000+01:00

I spent a lot of yesterday and this morning working on the poster and flyer for Poor Beast in the Rain, the play I'm in just now, so I thought I'd stick the fruits of my labours up here. Kind of a dual purpose thing - I haven't been doing a whole lot of (any) art apart from (and largely because of) the play so these posters will keep this place from looking like I've dropped off the edge of the planet and advertise what will be a cracking play to all of you who are going to come and see it...

The design of the poster, and especially the wonderful idea of a crumpled betting slip with the title scribbled on it as if it were a doped nag, were not down to me but I'm really chuffed with the end result because it was my amateur, unschooled Photoshop dabbling that arrived at the image above from the photograph you see here. The photograph was taken using a mobile phone belonging to one of the cast in the makeshift studio and dodgy light of the director's kitchen. As you can see, I had to purge an earlier attempt at writing the title, as well as the director's bike, clothes horse and kitchen floor, change the colour and add the name of the bookies where the play takes place.

There's an official launch do for the Irish Festival at the Philharmonic Hall tonight and we're performing a 'rehearsed reading' of the opening scene to whet appetites and drum up some business. I don't suppose that many 'local' people read this and even fewer of those that do will be at the 'invitation only' launch but please say hello to the bloke playing Joe if you are at the launch tonight and you've read this. When it comes to the actually performances though I don't care how far from local you are, you're coming or else!

Those links from the poster in clickable form: Liverpool Network Theatre and Liverpool Irish Festival 2006.

The colourful comments of Pat Robertson and his conservative chums...

2006-10-06T22:28:00.000+01:00

How long? Ooh about a month back, I reckon, I received a message in flickr:

garrett county press (www.gcpress.com) is publishing a coloring book in the fall. the coloring book is about the rhetoric of Pat Robertson and his conservative friends. to celebrate its release I'm asking favorite artists to "color in" panels from the book. the results will be displayed on powells.com. are you interested in participating?

best,
gk darby
gcpress.com

For those not from America and therefore ignorant, such as I, Powells is an independent bookshop and Pat Robertson is a twat. The colouring book is a selection of quotes by Pat and his chums with accompanying illustrations to colour in.

Anyway, I said yes and 'coloured in' a couple of pages for them. The one below is the one they decided not to use - I'll post the one they did use in a few weeks. We were told to interpret 'colouring in' however we wanted and to use as much or as little (indeed nothing if we wanted) of the page we were 'colouring in'.

I messed around with traditional and modern cutting and pasting, coloured in with pencils the old fashioned way and drew my very own Dubya Chimp to be Tinky's Civil Partner using pigment liners (not to mention the body of the fetish vicar).

My payment is fame and glory via the Powells website, a sneaky preview of all the other wonderful colouring in from around the world (the urls of which I've had to promise, on pain of death, not to divulge - I think I'll be allowed to link to my faves once it's all public though) and a copy of the book itself would yeh believe through the old fashioned post.

Meantime I'm rehearsing, avoiding banks, starting a psycho dynamic therapy group and generally feeling rather shite.

Roll on summer sez I!

Take a cat...

2006-09-24T15:39:00.000+01:00

The words in this are by Mikle. I found them on his blog, Unbearable, and knew straight away that I would make some kind of strip of them (with Mikle's permission) although I wasn't sure exactly what until I started it. And, pretty much as soon as I started it, Mikle's blog disappeared from the wwworld which is why I'm unable to link to it and the specific entry. Thankfully not all of Mikle's writing disappeared with his blog.

Oh, and I hope I don't have to point out that you shouldn't take this literally. Both Mikle and myself have had many dealings with cats and on no occasion have any cats, people or other creatures (except possibly wasps and ants in my case I'm sorry to confess) ended up flat.

UPDATE: I've just heard that Mikle has started another blog now,.... Also, this is up on Mikle's website.

HALT FRAID LADIP! follow up the first - Popular

2006-09-16T14:27:00.000+01:00

I was about to type 'a short while ago' but I actually checked and it was actually July so... Back in July when I posted HALTFRAIDLADIP!, I solicited suggestion for further moods, feelings, thoughts, conditions, states of mind etc where it's best to avoid momentous decisions. Me auld bloggin segotia doppleganger was the first to chip in with popular and this is my attempt at turning his inchip into a doodle. I am slowly getting around to all the suggestions I promise! Please feel free to re-read the original post and make your own suggestions for moods and acronyms for me to doodlerize.

Nothing New Here - More Stuff Elsewhere

2006-09-10T20:55:00.000+01:00

I'm sorry that I haven't done anything to show off here but there is something of mine up at Jeremy Dennis' The Weekly Strip, which popped into me head one morning while I was struggling to wake up and which, once it made it from ead to page, I call This Is Your Life..?. Jeremy's stuff is ace so if you go look at my thing, have a lengthy browse of all her wonderful stuff too while you're over there.

Other than that and raging at the ignorant heartless errors of red-tape all I've done lately is learn lines in bad oirish and struggle to find an example of the Wexford accent online. (So, like, if you know of one please show me where...)

2006-09-03T23:28:00.000+01:00

Like the guesty stuff I posted recently on the twin T & As, I've no idea where this came from. It was a silly rhyme that popped into me head and got scribbled onto scrap paper while watching my daughter draw her wonderful comics and I was dead set on turning it into a gouache and drip pen thingummy as soon as I got back to drip pen, paints, etc. Now I've done that it isn't quite the thingummy I had in mind when in my mind is all it was. Hey ho!

I'm in a play once again, stressed out beyond the bounds of good health and struggling to fit everything (everything being learning lines, eating and the like) in so please forgive me if this place ain't exactly humming with activity for the next wee while.

Ta!