Have you been out today?

Bit quiet here last week due, in part, to spending a couple of days in smelly London. Although actually Forest Hill, where I was visiting the excellent Mr Mark Stevenson and his good lady, Vic, is far enough out of the centre to be barely smelly at all. Mr S was a most fabulous host and Vic was amazingly indulgent of the racket we were making much of the time with various instruments and voices, especially considering that she was, at the time, busy writing a play. Our attempts to create innovative new musics met with, I think it is safe to say, limited success (though enjoyably so) but Mark bakes a darn fine cake and we came joint third in the pub quiz down the boozer in the evening so a good time was still very much had by all (except, conceivably, the neighbours). The quiz, incidentally, was hosted by Stephen Frost (cue an argument toward the end of the evening about the name of his ex-comedy and lager-advertising partner - it was Mark Arden, I was right. Hah!) and was to have featured an appearance from Johnny Vegas but he'd decided to have a quiet night in instead. Shame.

The next day I stopped off in the smelly centre of smelly London to visit the recently opened Cartoon Museum which was well worth a look. Happy, also, to find a book of Sherriffs film star caricatures for a tenner in the shop there. My mate Jonathan Edwards introduced me to his work some years back and sent me a few jpegs but I'd seldom seen anything of his in print before. Lovely work, economical and yet lush at the same time.