CAN'T STANZA BLUES

In a recent family poll I swept all aside and came top as 'busiest illustrator in my house'.

This little boy in the picture above is trying to cheer his mum up by giving her breakfast in bed. In the touching poem by Natalia Perry, the boy's mum suffers from severe depression.

When I was first asked to provide a couple of drawings for it I was worried that a poem about depression might get a bit Sylvia Plath, ending in a sad death, but it doesn't and all works out well in an uplifting finish.

FIREFIGHTER FRED SAID...

...that he's alive, all coloured in and about to feature in his own book for the Kent Fire and Rescue Service once I've finished drawing it today or tomorrow. Or Wednesday.

BETTER LATTE THAN NEVER

Woah! Who's this slick guy wiping the latte froth from his chops? I'd like to say that it's just some poor sap embarrassing himself over a drink he couldn't handle. I'd like to say that but I can't.

Say hello to my agent Duncan who kindly bought me lunch today in just about the butchest restaurant in Rochester. Duncan was awoken too early this morning by his new baby, had to travel two hours by train from Brighton to meet me (arriving 20 minutes late) and was clearly in no position to take on a latte in such a ridiculous glass.

And I just bet he left that v. important contract we were discussing on the train when he got back to Brighton.

THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED DUD

Above my head, on the ceiling in the room where I work, a curious red stain has mysteriously appeared. And if I lean back in my chair and squint at it I can clearly make out the face of Dudley Moore. I've no idea why cuddly Dudley should suddenly appear to me like this but he's not causing any real offence. In the wee small hours I sometimes talk to it for company and sometimes it answers, often it doesn't; it's a bit surly for a stain.

But luckily enough I've a rubber plant in the hall that looks like Peter Cook and I just can't shut that up at all. So what I'm going to do is move my drawing stuff to the hall and carry the rubber plant upstairs to the room with the Dudley stain, close the door and leave them to it.

I know the Arthur Lowe pattern in the hall carpet's just itching to bother me though.