Cats, buses & harmonicas...

You know they talk about herding cats? Imagine driving a bus full of 'em?

(from an original idea from the great Bob Mortimer!)

Dinosaur on a bus

Olympics for TFL

Breaking all the health & safety rules known to man for TFL's in-house (station?) magazine (now will you PLEASE stop those annoying Boris announcements on the buses?!?)

How many elephants can you fit in a double decker?

...aahh you do the maths (math for my American readers)
Illustration from Cartoon Kid by Jeremy Strong which also features as July's calendar image for my agents Arena Illustration

The Guardian - Michael Holden's All Ears 2nd October

I seem to have been drawing a lot of animal / bus concoctions of late...must be something in the air...I research my demographics very thoroughly you know*
(*possibly a fib)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/oct/02/michael-holden-all-ears

(Article by Michael Holden)
At a bus stop around 5pm two women, acquainted by their journey home, were discussing the lateness of the previous day's transport, a trip that one of them had missed out on and whose details the other eagerly relayed.

Woman 1 "Well it was packed."

Woman 2 "Because of the delay?"

Woman 1 "Because of the delay, so I had to go upstairs."

Woman 2 "I can't get up there any more. My legs won't have it."

Woman 1 "Well I'm not keen, but of course, once you get up there, the view looks very different, you see all kinds of things."

Woman 2 (sceptical) "Maybe."

Woman 1 "Up by London Road, you can see into one of the gardens, and there's two Shetland ponies kept there!"

Woman 2 "No!"

Woman 1 "Just there in the garden."

Woman 2 "You'd think the RSPCA would get involved."

Woman 1 "Well you wonder. I wondered if maybe the person had some land somewhere and they were just resting them there, I don't know."

Woman 2 (having none of it) "You'd think the animal rights would be on to them."

The bus arrived.

Woman 1 "We can sit upstairs if you like, maybe they're still there."

Woman 2 (after due consideration) "No."

I went to the upper deck, scanned backyards for tiny horses and saw none. And by the time my stop came the women had gone, too. Still, I have my mission for the autumn now – find the ponies. Exactly the kind of futile obsession that makes life bearable.

Bus (slight return)

Note to self; when alluding to details of illustrations it helps if they're visible to the human eye (see 'Guardian All Ears 8th August' post)

PS I still despise Queen

Guardian All Ears 8th August

Couldn't resist the 'We Will Rock You' bus because of recently being obliged to walk past the hideous gold Freddy Mercury statue on Tottenham Court road & thinking that I'd rather have my teeth pulled or get gang raped by badgers rather that sit through that dross...*shudder*

(Article by Michael Holden)
Some people become so disposed to talk about themselves that even when they are discussing something else, what they’re really saying is about them. The mobile phone though has elevated self-referential drivel to a higher plane. Nowadays you hear people giving blow by blow commentary on the stupefying minutiae of their existence while-and this is the truly staggering part-someone on the other end of the phone pays attention. I was at a bus stop with a crowd of people the other day when a teenage girl started yelling into her phone while endeavouring to stare down the rest of the queue by sporting a look of complete hostility that suggested looking back at her might be a fatal mistake.

Girl “It’s the same argument. I go into the room and say something and she says something to me and then I walk out and then she calls after me and then I go back in there and tell her what I think and then she tells me to fuck off.”

She circled the bus stop like a foul-mouthed, polyester planet and when she passed me again she had moved on to the subject of exactly what was happening to her.

Girl “I’m at the bus stop. Waiting for the bus. I can feel the air on my face, the wind like, I don’t mind it. It ain’t too hot. I can’t see the bus. Oh God, I’m just waiting for the bus now, how long can it take for the bus to come? ”

She made another orbit and, as she returned, succeeded finally in catching someone’s eye.

Girl “Oh my God there’s a man looking at me, he’s fucking looking at me!”

This led to other people looking at her, a fact she effortlessly absorbed into her self-obsessed yodelling.

Girl “Now they’re all looking at me! What the fuck is wrong with people? Where’s the bus. The bus is coming! I’m gonna get on it. The bus is coming now!”

It came and she went upstairs. I stayed on the lower deck and felt old.