Have you been out today?

I'm at the checkout in Sainsbury's. It takes me a while to sort through all the coupons I got last time to find the one that's relevant today (60p off!) The checkout girl takes my payment and prints out my receipt and a new epic batch of coupons, but then the last one only gets halfway out of the printer before the roll of paper runs out. She opens up the printer and wrenches it free but it's only half printed.

"Don't worry about it. I'm not bothered," I say.

"Are you sure?" she says.

"Yeah, really."

She squints at the demi-coupon.

"Bonus Nectar points if you spend more than four pounds on hair products," she says.

I remove my hat. She notes the state of my pate.

"No, fair enough," she says, smiling and binning the coupon.

John Purcell Paper A5(ish) sketchbook number 4, begun Septemberish 2002





Ha! On the right is evidence of my ongoing struggle to draw cars convincingly - in this case in the cause of depicting a scene of gangsterish mayhem for the cover of the Horrible Histories Collection magazine - the source of most of my work and income around this time. That cover was perhaps the worst one I did for that magazine. I remember being in the bar at a comic convention a while later when someone else was showing his own work in the issue to a girl he knew. "I did that cover," I said, casually, in an effort to impress. "Look at me! It's not actual comics but, you know, I am a published illustrator. Pretty impressive, huh?" went the not very deeply buried subtext. Her reply was a look of commiseration. "Oh well," she said.

By contrast, the text on the left hand page relates to an early (perhaps the first?) depiction of my bird and bear characters Edwin and Molly, of whom I remain very fond.

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John Purcell Paper A5(ish) sketchbook number 4, begun Septemberish 2002





So that's a Charles Burns sketch on page 39 there. (And my inferior variation on it on page 40).

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