Robbers

Front cover for Communicators magazine on internet security (& a great excuse for PROPER robbers!) Things would be sooo much simpler if people dressed to type & animals ate what they're supposed to eat (bears - honey, elephants - buns etc.)

Guardian All Ears 28th November

During the drawing of this picture my computer crashed forcing me to have to draw those creepy twins from the X Factor twice - I can categorically state that I have never watched the wretched thing - horrible easy listening mush for all the family - but you can't escape seeing them everywhere - rant! rant! rant!

(Article by Michael Holden)
Years of satanic number crunching at my local train company appear to have finally yielded a system that enables them to deploy the absolute minimum of carriages no matter what time of day it is. So, off-peak travel – once one of the great perks of self employment – is now just a grotesque and scaled-down, Fisher-Price rush hour. The torment of others, which might ordinarily have been confined to an avoidable area, now closes in from every side.

Woman 1 (to my right, "waking up" having feigned sleep to stop people trying to sit next to her) "Give us that mag."

Woman 2 (opposite her, defending her own space with a bottle of partially drunk cola and a crescent of low-rent magazines, one of which she passed over) "That had me laughing out loud."

Woman 3 (directly opposite-reading from a paper to a husband who made faces but never replied) "That zero-carbon housing development is going ahead."

Man 1 (behind me - talking into his phone) "Theo! Theo! It's Mark. I've been in Sweden … and Hamburg … I'm on the train … I think the problem is with the gearboxes … yeah, it's a bad signal …"

Woman 2 "Did I tell you what happened at work? I only had the key for the top lock, and I asked her for the key to the bottom lock and she give me a load of grief."

Woman 1 (ignoring her, staring at her mobile) "I can't do that predictive text."

Man 1 "Theo … Theo can you hear me? Theo? Can you hear me?"

I put on some music before any of these crucial issues were resolved.

Fishy...

more fishy sketchbook nonsense

Elephant thing

crustacean coiffeur

Today has been...

Guardian All Ears 21st November

I've always wanted to include Pocari Sweat* in an illustration (* Japanese isotonic drink with amusing name) - figured a bottle of Metaxa for the Greek reference might be slightly over-egging things perhaps...

(article by Michael Holden)
You might think there are places you can eat in the world where the couple on the next table won’t turn out to be English. And you might think a Japanese restaurant, in Athens might be among them. And you’d be wrong. The man looked like he could have been in Right Said Fred, the woman looked like Naomi Campbell disguised as Casey Jones.

Woman (looking at the man as he sat down): “You look bigger in your photographs.”

Man: (not joking) “Yes. I am bigger.”

Woman (sitting) “Busy day?”

Man “Not really. Lots have people have to wear a suit to work but not me, not today. I was going to wear a tie, but my big meeting got changed till Monday morning.

Woman (looking dubiously at the menu, and then around the restaurant) “I'm not really sure about the meat…”

Man “They have chicken…you know what chicken is?”

Woman “Yes I like chicken. Maybe I can try salmon?”

Man “Have what you like. Eat what you feel…”

Woman “I have to go to the toilet, will you order for me?”

Man “Sure.”

Woman (back-after less than a minute) “It’s busy. I don't like waiting in toilets. You never know what germs are there. I'd rather wait in here.”

Eventually some food arrived.

Man “You’ve seen chopsticks before?”

Woman “Yes, once. In Leeds.”

Man (demonstrating) “These will be the same. You can do it the Japanese way or the Chinese way…”

Woman (regarding the tempura he was holding-which to be fair-did look quite phallic) “What’s that about then?”

They burst out laughing. Then she opened her mouth and he steered the crooked lump of batter between her lips while I prayed for the bill.

Skater-boy

No reason for this (but I must admit to rather enjoying watching kids continually fall off at the Southbank - does this make me a bad person?)

Boidy

Armchair Sinister Bird Theatre

I wish this completely fictitious made-up TV programme had existed for real, but alas...
I often think TV would be so much better if there were more made-up programmes

VET!!!

Creationism made simple

Ahh! So THAT explains it! Why let scientific evidence get in the way?

Rabbit sketches

Some sketchbook nonsense based around my 'Rabbits' short

http://stevemaystuff.blogspot.com/2008/06/rabbits.html

Guardian All Ears 14th November

For me medical waiting rooms always beg a kid with a chamber pot stuck on it's head but I had to resist the temptation this week...might just go & draw a random one now!

(article by Micheal Holden)
I was stuck on a plane for an hour recently while the airport authorities searched for a bus to take us to the terminal. As codas to already unpleasant journeys go, it sucked. I did however get to find out all about my fellow traveller’s toenail.

Man 1 “I literally hobbled in there. You could see it was the foot place-there were a lot of people in sandals. Lot’s of toes in big white cocoons of bandages-the sort of thing you might see a silk moth fly out of.”

Man 2 “Like a sort of Carry On bandage?”

Man 1 “Exactly. So they ask me what’s up and I tell them it’s an ingrown toenail. I can’t walk, and in the end it’s got so bad I can hardly sleep. So they sit me down in this massive queue.

Man 2 (eager for details of institutional inefficiency) “And how long did that take?”

Man 1 “Maybe half an hour.”

Man 2 (disappointed) “Oh.”

Man 1 “In the end this bloke turns up-quite serious looking, like a sort of gangster almost, He takes a look and says, ‘that is bad, mate.’ He says, ‘we’ll operate on Tuesday. We’ll take that bit off, we’ll destroy the root with chemicals and it’ll never grow again.”

Man 2 “Pretty brutal.”

Man 1 “ Apparently it’s that or a vicious circle of antibiotics. Anyway I’ve asked him if there’s anything they can do now and he sort of looked about to see if anyone was looking. Asked me if I was squeamish-I said no. Made me promise not to kick him-I said fine. And he just dug half the nail out with a scalpel there and then. I felt like screaming but I tell you what I walked out of there better than I walked in!”

Man 2 “And you still had the operation?”

Man 1 “Yeah, but they seemed a bit put out that the other guy had sorted me out first. One doctor said, ‘we don’t do that field hospital stuff here anymore-did he put a bit of wood in your mouth?’ I said, ‘No, but it was a bit Medieval.’ And then the other doctor says, ‘Well, he is West Ham.’ I said I don’t care who he is, it worked.”

Thoughtless for the day

Stupid dogs

café

Guardian All Ears 7th November

(Thought I'd put the original rough up because I'm not so happy with the colours on this one)

(Article by Michael Holden)
Outside a café I sat near a set of identical twins, women in their mid sixties, dressed alike and gearing themselves up for a duet of synchronized complaining that, had it been a piece of music, might have been eligible for some sort of prize.
Twin 1 (surveying the mild autumn sky) “This is my kind of weather…”
Twin 2 (staring moodily at the waiting staff) “What’s wrong with these people?”
Twin 1 “Did you ask for more jam?”
Twin 2 “Yes but she didn’t understand me.”
I looked at their table. They were eating scones and had what seemed to me to be an adequate amount of jam to be going on with.
Twin 1 (stopping a waitress) “We need more jam!”
The waitress smiled and walked inside.
Twin 2 “She won’t speak English. It’s the same in Waitrose.”
Another waitress appeared and gave them more jam.
Twin 1 (looking angrily at the tiny jars) “These have the lids on!”
Twin 2 “The others had the lids off!”
Twin 1 “It’s the inconsistency…”
She stopped a waitress and held out a jar.
Twin 2 “Can you open this?”
Twin 1 “It’s no good. They can’t understand you.”
The waitress took the jam and opened it.
Twin 2 “This is different jam altogether.”
Twin 1 “It’s the wrong jam!”
They now had no scones and a surplus of jam. A problem they surmounted by spooning it directly into the mouths while looking beadily about for trouble, like human wasps.

thoughtless for the day