So, I caught the Tour Series race in Oxford St Giles on ITV4 (the final televisual resting place of competitive cycling) and it is possible to imagine that a tiny purplish blur in the background as the riders whipped by (we'd got a good spot on the final sprint) is me! Hello ... er, Dad, probably. He's the cyclist. I only caught the men's race (having been stuck in a careers fair in Witney) but that did mean I was watching the fastest (the hour just flew by), the most dangerous (two tumbles on the nastiest of the hairpins) and the noisiest (the Eagle and Child were supplying pints in plastic cups and the sprints were signalled by a blast of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes). Marcel Six aced the sprints, Scott Thwaites took the race and Chris Opie waved his fist at the sky as he just missed the top three. Great stuff, but sad I missed the womens' race.

Also, I'm not sure that purple shirt is really me. It may have to go back to the clothes swap.

As a result of aggregating my audio files, I've ended up with some odd bits of found sound in my itunes library. A few have wormed their way into my May mix, so I ended up this week on my commute listening to the sound of waves on a beach in Mull plus a snippet of conversation with my Mum several years ago. While watching swallows and terns on the Thames. It was disorientating, but lovely nevertheless.

One of the slightly annoying thing about my new camera is how buried the audio record is. On the last one I just had to bash a button twice. This one needs to be in a particular mode, requires you to open a menu, then scroll to the bottom... I guess not so many people wanted to take sound photos after all.

Unrelated: Bompass and Parr to float Brunel's SS Great Britain on neon lime green jelly. Jelly!

Walking to work in the rain is particularly good at the moment. The swallows are fresh back in town and feeding, fighting and flirting over the water. Every morning is an avian air show of belly rolls, super-swoops and intense mid-air twitter fights. I've not seen our resident couple back yet (although timscience says he's heard some faint twittering in the eaves.

Speaking of timscience, it's been the first festival round of the year. Wittstock in Culham at the lovely Railway Inn, Music in the Park at Thame on the only sunny day in spring, among others. The time when I was going to festivals a lot was a bit of an odd time in my life, and when I'm back at one I feel myself dropping into that odd, alienated state of mind again; that sense of liking and not liking the situation. Thank goodness for carrying a camera.

Oxford Punt (marathon new bands multi-venue gig night) was this week and I managed a creditable 7 and a bit bands in 5 venues. New kids on the block include Deer Chicago, Dallas Don't, Secret Rivals, Tiger Mendoza and The Cellar Family. Good night all round -- interesting to see two new venues open up, too; the Junction, a roadworks-themed club in that dive opposite the registry office, and The Dukes Cut, which is now using its patio area as a stage (you can watch the traffic go by behind the performers through the huge glass doors). Nothing quite like watching the Number 5 bus sail by behind the band.

Had a dream the other day that a bunch of UK cartoonists got together and made a comic called Jubilee. I was doing a strip for it called "Britain needs more S.O.C.K.S." which (in case you hadn't guessed) was some sort of comedy spy pastiche -- the heroes were a gaggle of Hewlettesque caricatures -- Poppy Fiasco, Laititia, Mr Mod, etc. The muscle was a bluff spraytanned doorman-turned-trans(best to check with her), and there was a cheerful rotund professor whose name escapes me. Mr G.? It was rather New Avengers, to be honest, but I woke up with a smile on my face nevertheless. Odd thing is I'm sure that there was a comic called Jubilee. It wasn't the one that ran the BRITISH!!! type comics (like "The Striker wore Pink Knickers" -- a classic that should surely be resurrected and reprinted) but (I think) one of the sub-Dandy school-kid comics. But maybe I'm wrong. To the Googles! (no, google, not the X-Men character. Note to self -- check whether the comic that introduced Jubilee is worth anything, as it's in the longboxes... I feel OLD.)

Woke up this morning to the satisfying news from the French elections that the buffoon has been voted out and the politician voted in; maybe this is the beginning of something bigger, a bonfire of the buffoons. (Remembers the mayoral elections) (Maybe not) (Oh well) Speaking of which, Oxfordshire friends who have not yet done so should check out the results of our local elections; apart from the congratulations due to monkeyhands for a very creditable showing in one of Witney's many districts, there have been some... interesting results.

Ruby Tuesday the ailing Roomba just came back from her service with something of a makeover. The nine beeps + circle dance must be one of those oh-forget-it errors as they'd simply scooped out the inside and sent us back another Roomba inside Ruby's old faceplate. Of the original Ruby, only the bin and brushes remain. She's not even the same model; we've gone from a geriatric 560 to a nippy 581. But if the insides of your Roomba have been entirely changed is she still the same machine? Ehhhhh I'd say no, so we've rechristened her Ruby Wednesday. She never went cleaning on a Tuesday anyway.

First work in progress is up on the Strumpet blog -- from Kripa Joshi. Scripts, plans and ideas are coming tumbling in. I suppose we should kick off the Kickstarter soon... last year we waited until the bulk of the art was in but I reckon the extra months would pay out -- especially as we (and Kickstarter) will no longer have the benefits of novelty. One thing I'm not sure is that I'll be able to fit in a strip by me this time, which would make me cover/co-editor only, which makes me feel a bit ... oh, I don't know. I think of the women whose work has disappeared into editing the work of others and there's a bit of a cold panic. But I shouldn't forget that plenty come the other way, too and not fear the editorial function. Certainly it feels easier to advocate/promote/celebrate on behalf of somebody else. Oh, speaking of which, one of our contributors is looking for people to stay with in Europe as she's travelling as part of the writing process. If anyone fancies that/knows anyone who does, message me an email address and I'll send on more information and put you in touch with her -- I'm sure she'll make a lovely houseguest, put you in her graphic novel, etc.

...and I won't be at Comiket this weekend - I'm working - and if you're a bit bored of hearing that, think how I feel. But ellenlindner assures me that Strumpet will be on sale on the tozocomic table and you can of course buy Strumpet and Ink + Paper online too thanks again Dave :)

I should really buy a couple more Ink + Papers myself, actually. I've long since burned through my initial pile and The Amazing Calabroni Sisters is always the comic of mine I want to push under people's noses, although I really should be forgetting that and thinking about the next comic.

Embarrassingly had to duck out of a gig on Friday (four new songs from Space Heroes of the People including the delightful "How Satellites Work") after my stomach finally made a Decisive Action. I've been getting a bit of this lately (woozy head, weird stomach) and I'm getting sick of it. So I decided to institute Helen's Cure. Helen was a boss of mine at Oxfam some years ago, and like many people who worked for Oxfam with any seriousness (which inevitably involves periods overseas in non luxury-locations), had strong views about how to cure stomach woes. ( Read more... )

So duly on Saturday (having staggered around all Friday with something I thought was a hangover from Yuri's night, but on reflection may have been down to some dodgy hummous) I went for a long quiet sit down in the afternoon (and saw The Hunger Games -- which is great) and then headed down the pub for live beer, chips + mayo and a kiwi burger. Stomach sorted. Then I went home for another sit down (and saw Whip it -- also very good).

Here and there, dotted around among all of this, I was replying to Strumpet emails -- we're into active editorial phase now, and the interesting things (seeing lovely bits of work and sketches from people) and the boring ones (which will be familiar to anyone who's done any sort of all-female project) and hopefully, very soon, the first WIP over on the blog :D

...and so to 365 days of house ( Read more... )

Easter consisted of two main actions for me this year. One, strip wallpaper in stairs. Two, go to London to see a shark. The wallpaper was exciting, but we confirmed that we can, indeed, reach the top of the stairwell using the clever ladder. The woodchip wallpaper is defeated and only an interminable phase of cleaning, preparing, sanding, filling and finishing stands between us and the glorious white walls of the future.

And so, to the Shark. After briefly (and insanely) flirting with doing both, we settled on Damien Hirst rather than Gunther von Hagens. Just as well, it's a pretty big exhibition, even if you decide to skip the twenty-minute video of Hirst and a friend dressed as clowns describing car crashes and chain-smoking/parping a clown horn (we didn't).

It was odd how many of the pieces felt like old friends; away from the flock with its cheeky ovine smirk, the familiar parade of spots and pills, the rotting cow's head seeping suppurating juices into the floor, people queueing up to process through mother and child divided. But I'd paid little attention to the bling and butterflies phase, so was quite unprepared for the strangeness of the bright white butterfly room -- where two minutes observation is allowed for beautiful expensive tropical butterflies hatching, eating, flapping, sleeping, dying and decaying in their bright white room in the Tate. It was beautiful and horrible and indulgent and decadent and absolutely indefinably wrong, gilded filth of a civilization past its peak, now folding and dissolving back into black mud like some slow black rice paper origami self-folding action of infinite and ultimate decadence. There are other highlights; an ashtray jacuzzi, walls of diamonds, his own black sheep, the "pretty" shark, a vast black sun made of dead flies ... and I would suggest going when it's crowded, as nothing adds to a Hirst like listening to parents explaining it to small children.

I should probably say a few words about the Relic of Bling. You don't need a ticket for that, just half an hour (probably less at quiet times). There's a big black strongbox in the Turbine Hall, a long queue (we fell between a family group with a wheelchair and young doctors) and at the end of the queue a man who performs a bag-check, waves a ceremonial metal detector, and allows you into a velvet lined box containing an exquisitely-lit, diamond encrusted skull. If you're very lucky (as we were) the people behind you will strike up with impromptu choral music, the woman with a wheelchair will run over the security guard's toes and a young doctor will say, in a loud voice, "It's tiny!" and her friend will reply, "It's the size of a head."

Last night Harlequin brought me a tiny dead mouse, with a sprig of small leaves, like a salad garnish.

In other news, I have finally cracked and bought that camera (alternatively, its price finally hit my spend limit). I've been exploring its menus ever since but have yet to discover Miss World Queen, which I guess must have gone in the upgrade. It does audio recording, focuses well at distance and can really get in close, though -- and has a "sketch" setting which makes everything look like an old Aha video, which I'm already quite fond of. It also has a "document" setting, which I tried out on the sketch-a-day sketch book. Tim's been on at me for a while to set up a tumblr or something for these, but I think he's only really interested in this page being online:

Some crazy dreams brought in the beginning of April. One of note involved participating in a Top Gear Special about car sharing and reducing car use which involved me driving the cast and crew to the studio in one of our minibuses. It was of course quite noisy in the minibus what with all their objections to this scheme (though I note that my subconscious shielded from the true horror of ever staring directly at Jeremy Clarkson, like a gardener sheltering a tender seedling). My job was to earnestly and calmly advocate car-sharing, taking the bus, car clubs, walking, vehicle rental schemes and to be very polite, caring and professional, while driving a minibus. Thankfully this multitasking nightmare came to a rapid end as Richard Hammond insisted on driving, and a series of alarming set pieces ensued where we drove over picnic furniture, through flowerbeds, towards pets, etc. Fortunately our minibuses have bucket seats (a little tight on the larger gentleman, but very safe) and very secure seatbelts. Mercifully I woke up before we had to Flip the Minibus (which was going to be the finale), at which point they would cut back to the studio (and probably joke about how I'd tragically died).

Shock News of the morning is that Nelson has been nominated for an Eisner. Under "best anthology", in case you can't spot us. Yes, I know LOTS of people have been nominated. I don't care. Eisner!

My digital camera's screen has started doing the b&w wibbly wobbly thing, like it's about to start showing me pictures from beyond the grave, so I have regretfully bought another cheapish compact camera with skills beyond its size to replace it. It occurs to me that I've been walking around with a compact camera in my pocket since I was about 10 -- a 110 I got by collecting coupons off the back of a cereal packet -- [quite a few] years of snapping. I'll be sad to wave off the old camera as it's the one bought for me by all of my lovely friends after I was mugged, not to mention the co-author of Miss World Queen but with a little careful coddling and retirement from my pocket, I should be able to bring it out for special occasions for a few years yet.

In other news, Peonies. Good idea, or bad idea?