The Great Days…

 

Let It Snow Cartoon Exhibition

 

My cartoon on display at The Duke of Greenwich Pub in their latest exhibition of fabulous cartoons until the end of January 2025.

Like TV “Christmas Specials” , I drew and submitted this in the early Autumn , and although the gag still makes sense to UK audiences , where the cold weather and loss of pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance are still topical , I reworked the caption for a possibly wider Christmas audience as part of my Advent Calendar series of cartoons on Social Media. 

Accordingly , I reprint it here , and offer Season’s Greetings to my readers, wherever you may be.

May 2025 bring Health and Prosperity

Merry Christmas One and All

 

Wild Man

Wild Man

 

I see them regularly, but the lingering light of summer evenings draws the eye and their almost silent passing still leaves a Mexican Wave of branches across the road.

 

They are taxis, and they are both state of the art and deplorable. Calling them city cabs might add a certain raciness for the occupants, but for me they will always be home too soon.

 

I am usually here until the small hours. Never earlier than ten but always until after the witching hour. Drinking beer I can’t afford in the pub and listening to my vast collection of music CDs on a battered player with massive cans.

 

The headphones serve two purposes. They have reinvigorated my love of stereo and they prevent passers by asking what I am up to. 

 

What I am up to is preserving the night. 

 

It started with the lockdowns. In the unlamented early days, it was more of a training regime. I thought it would be a short lived folly so I would leave the house around ten pm and walk up to my local and touch the wall , then walk back again and drink a couple of cans of lager on my front door steps.

 

As these are behind a gate they both satisfied my need to be out of the house , but kept me on the right side of whatever that week’s law turned out to be.

 

Week followed,dreary, week,but I managed to maintain my motivation and by the summer , a kind of normal returned , and so did I.

 

I reluctantly accepted the socially distanced tables and the perspex screens , but the ten p.m. curfew was a step too far. 

 

Against my better nature, and  at my wife’s suggestion, I tried going out at eight … 

 

Inside the pub , once I had signed in and caught the eye of a barmaid to bring a pint to my table , the atmosphere was pretty much the same.

 

Somehow , though , returning home before News At Ten had finished , while gentler souls were taking their dogs out for constitutionals seemed completely alien to me.

 

Luckily , I only had to do it once. For reasons I can’t quite remember , the North agreed to enter the second Lockdown in October 2020 and pubs were closed to all for a full six months before steadily returning with a lacklustre drizzle of further restrictions…

 

For a longtime, enthusiastic consumer of the night economy, the blow was almost physical. 

My earlier training regime became my focus.

 

I set out to replicate , as closely as possible , the things which were most important to me about a night out. This was not just about beer. It was about music and ,very importantly, about time.

 

I didn’t realise at that moment , but each of these weighed more heavily on me than the actual closure of the pubs.

 

The element you might think was missing from my mix above was idle chatter…but I soon found that the mixture of beer and music led to all sorts of idle thoughts in my mind , particularly when I introduced the Saturday Disco Light…

 

The decade prior to the pandemic, had seen a huge erosion in the quality of the pub experience for me. 

 

In the wake of Tony Blair’s shake up of the Licensing Laws in 2005 , my local could serve until midnight most of the week and 2am on Friday and Saturday. Other pubs in the area had similar opening times and a lot of people enjoyed some very late nights.

 

It started to go pear shaped around 2010. Landlords came and went , and each new broom curtailed the hours a little more. Disco’s finished earlier and Jukebox music began to be turned down after eleven o’clock.

 

By late 2020 , my doorstep disco running from 10pm to 1am was starting to look like the raciest gig in town… For a few silent lockdown months , I think it really was.

 

But I’m still here. 

Perhaps now, those quiet taxis look at me in passing and think I’m weird.

To me though ,changing CDs and opening another Bud around midnight is not weird.

 

It’s wild, man.

My Cartoon Award

 

Pleased to say I entered a Cartoon Competition , and came in last…

There was no prize for the winner as it was just for fun , but anyone who got no votes was awarded a virtual Crackerjack pencil.

People of a certain age , and older may remember Fridays at five to five for the compendium of comedy, music and games that was BBC tv’s “ Crackerjack” which ran from the late 1950s to sometime in the Seventies ( I think) with hosts including Eamonn Andrews , Leslie Crowther and Ed “Stewpot” Stewart.

I think Stu “Crush a Grape” Francis was part of the ensemble in the later years…

Anyhow , along with all sorts of exciting prizes kids could win like tennis rackets , train sets , cabbages etc everyone got  a Crackerjack Pencil.

Alongside Blue Peter Badges , these seemed to be the most desirable trophies of my formative years.

Unfortunately , I was far too lazy to win either in the natural way , so it pleases me more than I can say to be the recipient of this overdue , but virtual award.

There are so many people I ought to thank , but the kettle is boiling…

Summer Lovin’ Cartoon Exhibition London June 2024

Just some of the brilliant cartoons on display at The Duke of Greenwich from June 6th.

This is a brand new collection following on from the very well received exhibition in the new year.

I’m very honoured to be sharing space with some of the best known names in the business.

Close up of my two entries can be seen below , but do take the time to see the rest if possible , and perhaps enjoy a meal and a drink in very convivial surroundings…

 

It’s Not The Horse’s Mouth

 When I filled in the Careers teacher’s card , I specifically said NO to two things … factories and farm work. The rest of it was open ended. Don’t Really Know… But Life had other ideas…

 

Loraine and me hadn't been together long. I knew she had history . 

 

Years spent on a remote farmstead on top of the Pennines as a child. Herding cattle at four years of age in tiny wellies. Sheep in the kitchen , sort of stuff … but that was long ago.

 

Her dad kept ducks and geese on an allotment , and a goat , and an old yellow Morris,but Loraine had left the countryside for a flat in nearby Doncaster and was training to be a Registered General Nurse .

 

Her urban lifestyle of late night movies and nightclubbing was like a magnet to me , although the only midnight movie we went to together , I managed to sleep through…It's the concept that counts though…isn’t it ?

 

Anyway , we had several blissful months like this , without a whiff of country air ... 

 

It was the early eighties . All over the place people were suddenly buying houses instead of renting. A new age of owner occupation had begun. Loraine bought a house.

 

Along with the house came the usual set up costs. Decoration, furnishing and in this case central heating. It was the latter that Life had been hiding behind.

 

Loraine had to travel to Wakefield to settle a bill connected with the central heating.  

When she returned in the evening she said to me , matter of factly “ I’ve got you a present ... a horse” … Life chuckled ethereally and drew a fat line through my list of life preferences.

 

Did I mention , by the way , that tucked away with the ducks and the geese and the old yellow Morris there was another horse ? 

 

With her dad’s help , Loraine had also acquired a young foal which she called Beauty.

I had so far had very little (i.e. nothing) , to do with horses or livestock of any variety , and I knew even less about old yellow Morris vehicles.

 

Suddenly we were a two horse family. 

 

My new horse , a strawberry roan called Rowdy , was already considered elderly at 22 years of age.Loraine had seen a card in a Wakefield shop window searching for a new home for him. New home or no home . There was no alternative.

 

Loraine rescued Rowdy,as we have since  rescued many other animals. 

I think even she thought he would be an old plodder, a bit like me . The truth was quite different. 

 

Rowdy lived to the ripe old age of 37. His ability to escape from secure stables and fields made him a local legend. Beauty lived another ten years after that.

 

Within a year my urban dream was sandwiched between slices of hay and straw , pockets full of twine and wellington boots became my must have accessories …

 

I was also working in a factory

This version first appeared in The Daily Mirror in January 2023