Have you been out today?

Detail from another (nearly complete) page of doodles.

Had an email from a chap in Houston, Texas on Monday which mentioned, almost in passing, that this picture of the bear...



...from off this blog had become this picture of the bear...




...on his skin.

I'm finding this a bit odd but choosing to take it as a compliment.


Ooh, apparently this is my 300th post. Happy tricentennial (or something).

For no good reason at all. More words and better pictures later in the week I hope.

And talking of fabulous new websites, that master of cartooning, triple jumping and Calvinist theology, Mr Jonathan Edwards, finally has a proper one.

Blimey, first Will, now Jonathan... we just need Woodrow Phoenix to finally sort out a site and we'll have the set.

Yay!

Tip top cartoonist, retro design guru and connoisseur of beautiful ladies, Mr Will Kane, has a new blog, Mondo Kane, featuring his own work (in addition to his already established World of Kane blog featuring other people's stuff). Feast your eyes and feed your brains therein.

...hopefully

Big page of doodles number two is now complete.



Click here for bigger.

Click here for biggest.

Yellow courgette fried in olive oil with some cherry tomatoes and garlic. Quite nice but not spectacular. Suspect the courgettes should have been picked earlier as they're a bit thick-skinned.

Fascinating stuff I'm sure you'll agree.

A few monsters culled from another large page of doodles which may or may not be sold to a nice man in Vienna when it's complete...



...and in other news: another disastrous cricket match on Saturday saw me take forever to score 2 before my captain ran me out (accidentally, I think). But I did have a bowl for the first time this year and that went okay (2 overs, no wickets, 3 runs). And a blueberry-powered squash game yesterday went a lot better than expected (still lost but that's a given) so it's not all bad news.

Oh, and I harvested 3 healthy-looking yellow courgettes from my much neglected allotment the other day. Now I just need to find out whether I cook them like ordinary courgettes or need to do anything fancy with them. Hopefully I can find some advice online that's more helpful than that received from one of the old Italian ladies down at the allotments ("My mother feeds them to the animals"). I also harvested a few lettuces without realising that a snail was attached to one of them. Said gastropod thus spent a chilly night in the fridge before I discovered it and sent it back outside. Oops. At least it didn't go for a wander inside the fridge overnight.

Strange dream last night featuring a coach trip through a desert, gazing out at some kind of fortress bathed, in a swearingly beautiful fashion, in ghostly golden light. I suspect that recent exposure to various Flickr sets of photographs of Burkina Faso may have had some influence on this. Though they don't in any way explain the castle, nor why my travelling companion seemed to be Phil Look, an old schoolfriend with whom I have had no contact for about 20 years.

You are cordially invited to keep your Freudian analyses (analysises? Whatever) to yourselves. But if anyone knows what Phil's up to these days I'd be happy to hear it.

I've been working on a sample comic strip featuring monsters lately (in an attempt to play to my strengths) which I shan't be showing you in full anytime soon but here's a sample panel:



And in sports news it is becoming apparent that a winter spent practising cricket in weekly indoor net sessions has done no good whatsoever as Sunday saw my third score of nought in five innings (and the other two scores were two and three). This is not good. Furthermore, it transpires that using ones knees to field is somewhat inadvisable. I am rubbish. If only I didn't love it so much.

My squash playing has turned rubbish too though that's probably something to do with going almost three months without playing (a bit of back trouble, a bit of knee trouble - specifically a Baker's Cyst, probably - and then just failing to organise anything for a while). Oh well, at least the rounders* season is going okay so far.


* "That game that girls play at school" - Pete Ashton