Have you been out today?

Devastated though I know everyone must be at Good Dog, Bad Dog: The Dogs' Dinner having ended in last Saturday's Guardian, tomorrow's edition will bring consolation that comfortably exceeds your loss in the form of a new strip, Donny Digits, from the mind, hand and pen of m'good friend Mr Woodrow Phoenix. I have been privileged to have had a sneak peek at some of the comicky goodness that Woods has in store for us all in the coming nine weeks and it looks just wonderful. Do not miss out.

Yesterday...

I am lunching, in very fine company, in Martin's Coffee House - the closest thing to a greasy spoon that we have left in Cambridge since the incomparable Athena on Norfolk St closed down some years ago. Spectacles are on my nose and my mind. After ten years, I feel I've had my money's worth out of my current frames and would like some new ones. This makes me notice the spectacles of others. In particular there was a pair of oval shaped plastic frames I saw on a chap a week or so ago. I believe something similar might suit me rather well but the current vogue is for the long thin rectangle ("media wanker glasses" as I believe Pete Ashton calls them) and so ovals are proving hard to find. I have a mouthful of bacon sarnie and I am staring at a man in the queue. Interesting frames. Not quite what I was thinking of but similar. Worth some thought. So I am staring at the man in the queue and I am staring at the man in the queue and I am considering his glasses. And then it occurs to me that I am in fact staring at Loyd Grossman. Bollocks! Now I look like the sort of person who is impressed by celebrity. I look like the sort of person who would stare at Loyd Grossman in a queue. Bollocks! Only, no, it's all right. It's not Loyd Grossman, just someone who looks a little like him. Not even all that much like him now I think of it. And surely if it were him then he'd be up the road in Brown's. He gets his order, sits down near the window and I do not see his spectacles again.

Some time passes. I forget all about the man and his glasses. Sandwiches and beverages are successfully consumed. We depart, and as we do so hear a truly unmistakable voice - American but unplaceably so, and with those bizarre vowel sounds - drifting up from a seat near the window.

Final episode of Good Dog, Bad Dog: The Dogs' Dinner in today's Guardian. It's actually quite good (though I say so myself - which longtime readers will know hardly ever happens) and stuff happens in this one rather than lots of characters just talking the whole time. For some reason The Guardian haven't put up online versions of the last three episodes so you will need to buy the paper or wait for the re-run in The DFC. Obviously if you read today's episode without having read the rest it may not make much sense. But don't worry, given my way with a plot you might easily have read all of it and still find it made no sense. Pretty though, I think.

Oh, incidentally, a plea: if anyone has a copy of The Comic section from the 20th September issue of The Guardian that they could spare me for my files then please get in touch. I managed not to get myself a copy that day (I was, as I recall, indoors drawing a later episode at the time). I could do with a spare of the October 11th one too for that matter. Cheers.