Balcony

I'm essentially drawing the balcony to my flat here. Smudge adores the balcony - she loves going out there and getting some sun in her fur. Gizmo, on the other hand, likes to poke his head through the railings and miaow plaintively at anything four legged that walks past. No-one ever pays any attention to him. Bless.

Dirty ears

How do lop eared rabbits survive in the wild? Those ears must get in the way so much. This brings a whole to meaning to that query of mothers the world over: 'have you washed behind your ears?'

Millie Week 13 Pt 2: Thu 29 Nov - Sat 1 Dec 1990

Just like real Amateur Dramatics, Millie and company have been rehearsing their show for the past ten weeks or so, and then it's all over in three panels.

However, the storyline for the next two weeks is set up on Friday...

Millie Week 13 Pt 1: Mon 26 - Wed 28 Nov

Story's nearly over. Just one more day to go and we'll be onto a new story... or will it just be something that continues from this one. I must admit I was quite getting into the more soapy aspects of the strip, as stories and relationships grew organically from what came before.

The second strip illustrates a perennial problem of backstage life - bladder synchronisation. This becomes especially important if you have a quick changes between scenes and have to cope with it by wearing three sets of clothes in the first scene, gradually shedding layers as the act progresses. You do not want to have a sudden need to pee when you're dressed in three sets of trousers...

Thirty days to go...

Strange to think there was once such a concept as Shopping Days Before Christmas. Now shops are open seven days a week, and Tescos are open 24 hours a day that doesn't mean anything any more. However, like cars and new roads, shopping expands to fill the amount of time available to it, and you'll still find a queue at Tescos at 3am in the morning the week before Christmas. That's probably because the shops all shut on Christmas day, and that tends to induce panic buying in Brits for some reason - like they think rationing is about to be reimposed or something...

Stairs

When I was a kid I had stairs but no slinky. Now I am an adult I have a slinky but no stairs. One day they will coincide. One day...

Mmmhmmmmmm

I wish seagulls did just hum. They make wonderfully evocative noise when you're just a visitor to the seaside - a noise that conjures up memories of sun sand and sea. But when they choose to roost on the roof of your house during the summer, and they tend to join in with the dawn chorus in a most raucous manner, that's another matter.

PS. Happy Birthday to me. I am now officially old enough to know better.

Millie Week 12: Thu 22 - Sat 24 Nov 1990

That first night is slowly but inexorably getting closer and closer... and nothing will stop it

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Millie Week 12; Mon 19- Wed 21 Nov 1990

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The Monday strip is surprisingly prophetic. Back in 1990 we all knew about cold calling, but the automated junk phone call was unknown. About three months ago I was plagued by them. No I haven't been involved in an accident that wasn't my fault. No I don't want to claim compensation for credit card insurance I never took out. And don't put me on f***ing hold as soon as I pick up the receiver!
If you're plagued by junk calls, may I recommend the telephone preference service - the UK's official opt out list. I joined it for free a couple of months ago and the unwanted phone calls now have dried up completely.

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html

The other two strips are more examples of direct experience. In the Tuesday one, I am that foot crushing dancer - Richard c'est moi. My apologies to anyone who has had to be my dance partner.

The second is based on the stage at the Royal Victoria Hall, Southborough, a theatre I spent a lot of my youth performing at. Stages are supposed to have a bit of a rake on them so everyone in the stalls can see what's going on - but the Royal Vic is like the north face of the Eiger. Any scenery put on that stage has to be securely wedged and blocked into position or it will start traveling slowly towards the orchestra pit. Anything on wheels is doomed - which is why no-one's ever dared to do Starlight Express there.

So that explains upstage and downstage. Stage left and stage right are more problematic - I have enough difficulty telling my left from my right anyway, so introducing directions that can change depending on the way you're facing is going to lead to disaster. I prefer the terms Prompt-side and off-prompt, or, nowadays in the White Rock, Hastings-end and Bexhill-end.

Pudsey

First of all - mea culpa! I have used the wrong form of 'its' in the last frame. Normally the apostrophe denotes the use of the possessive, except in the case of 'it's' where it is an abbreviated form of 'it is'. Chumley's also using a remarkably Northern turn of phrase as well. 'That's as maybe'. Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs, our kid!

As any of my UK readers will tell you, Pudsey Bear is the mascot of the BBC's annual charity telethon Children in Need. Bank managers will be sitting in bathtubs full of baked beans in windy shopping centres all over the country to show how wacky they can be while raising money for a worthy cause.

You can find out more and maybe even donate at http://www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey/. I'll be watching tonight - at least as far as the traditional Doctor Who mini-episode.

Pudsey's injury is unspecified, but whatever it is, it hasn't healed in thirty years...

Too much information

Maybe I pine for the days when there were only three channels on the TV and four on the radio. The sheer ubiquity and abundance of the media today is somehow numbing - it's hard to find the time to fit it all in while simultaneously living your own life.

iPad

I don't have an iPad yet. In fact, just to be contrary, if I do get a tablet I may get an android one instead. Apple is starting to get a monolithic stranglehold on the distribution of new media and I think buying a competitor may be a small contribution to keeping the ecosystem of e-commerce healthily diverse.

Of course, if I ever get to replace my ageing iMac, I'll be sticking to Apple there. Their stuff just works. Trying to get a Windows machineto do something simple after being used to Apple's OS is like trying to coax a slightly backwards child to do differential calculus

Millie Week 11; Thu 14 - Sat 16 Nov 1990

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Millie Week 11; Mon 12- Wed 14 Nov 1990

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Not much to say about this week's set of cartoons - it's a self contained storyline. However, the hole-in-the- wall tuck shop seen in Wednesday's strip is a direct copy of the one in my old school, Skinners in Tunbridge Wells. I drew a diagram so that Roger could get it perfectly right, intending to use it in a storyline in the new year.

The main thing I remember about that tuck shop was the perfectly round indentations in the brickwork all around it - the results of generations of schoolchildren grinding their coins into the Victorian stonework.

Remembrance

A maroon is set off at 11am in Hastings to signal the start of the two minutes silence. Or it may just be two minutes deafness - it's hard to tell.

We remember the fallen with sorrow and gratitude. We remember, but we never learn.

Bonfire

I've always felt uneasy about the practice of burning the guy. OK, it's the effigy of a man who tried to blow up the Palace of Westminster 400 years ago (or was he just the fall-guy?) but even so, it strikes me as a bit medievel.

Here in Sussex, we take our bonfire celebrations seriously. There are bonfires that take place throughout October and November. Hastings times its fireworks night to take place on the Saturday after 14 October, the date of a little skirmish that happened near here in 1066. A huge pile of wooden palettes is built on the seafront, about ten yards high, and a guy is placed on top. The bonfire is set alight on the night, and a torchlight procession of bonfire societies from all over Sussex parades through the town - one so long it takes an hour to go past any single point. Then the fireworks start. I won't try to describe how big the fireworks are - I'll just say that a few years ago they were visible in Dieppe and the French coastguard scrambled their lifeboats as they thought they were distress flares from a ship in trouble.

The finale is the burning of this years' special effigy. This is where a hated national or local figure is burned in effigy on it's own special bonfire. This is the scary bit. Two years ago the Jerwood Art Gallery was burned. Last year bankers got the treatment. This year it was effigies of hoodies and the underclass who got the blame for this summers riots.

All good clean fun? Probably. But add a few burning crosses or swastikas to the scene and then see what you think.

Semaphore

I like the night time effect I've achieved in this series if strips. It's been done by colouring the strip in the normal way (you may have noticed that it's changed to its winter colour scheme) and then adding an extra night time layer over the top, setting it to multiply and then cutting out the eyes and the white space.

I just liked the idea of Jones using tail signals.

Millie Week 10; Pt 2 8th - 10th Nov

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Coronation Street was (and still is) one of the Big Two evening soaps in the UK. EastEnders is on the BBC, is set in London, and is as miserable as sin - Coronation Street is on ITV, set in Manchester, and was as the time quite comic.

Equity is the actors union.

Millie Week 10 Pt 1; Mon 5th - Weds 7th Nov

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Twenty years ago I was living in Tunbridge Wells. Its main shopping street, Calverley Road had just been pedestrianised and a new shopping Mall had been built adjacent to it. This provided a perfect breeding ground for people with clipboards - a narrow area full of people and very few means of escape. In those days you would just get accosted by people doing surveys. Nowadays, the precinct is awash with Chuggers (short for Charity Muggers - those people who stop you in the street and try to get you to sign up to a charity for a commission), so much so that the local paper had a headline on its front page this summer warning about 'The Chugger Menace'.

That's where the first strip came from. As for the questions: At the time Whiskas cat food had the slogan '8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas', a phrase so famous there is now a comedy panel show about statistics (sounds unlikely, I know) called '8 out of 10 cats'. Then, sometime in the 90s, someone realised that no-one had ever consulted the cats. The slogan is now the less snappy '8 out of 10 owner say their cats prefer it'. The mintiest lager is, for the record, Special Brew. And Sky TV was just starting up - a satellite dish outside your home was at that time a pretty good signifier of being one of the lower orders. I don't know why but TV technology is subject to some rather strange inverted snobbery - my Dad was proud that our family still only had a black and white TV in 1977!

...and now we return you to our main story...

Trench warfare

I'm tying together Guy Fawkes and the upcoming Remembrance day (11th November) this year. The thought occurred to me that animals would consider the fireworks to be like missiles and guns going off, and this led to this series of first world war related strips, with the cats hiding in a trench while the explosions go on around them...

Corporal Jones is a reference to Dad's Army. I'd like to dedicate this strip to David Croft who has just died.

Gunpowder Treason and Plot

I've ignored Halloween this year in order to move straight on to Guy Fawkes night. I'm invoking a nursery rhyme here:

Remember remember
the fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot,
I see no reason why
Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

That reason is, of course, never explained. If the gunpowder plot is a new bit of British history to you here is that reason...