I went to the gym

Spiders

Sept/Oct is that time of year when spiders appear in every corner of the house. With a heavy heart I find myself hoovering up whole families – mother and babies (100+). I love spiders but we can’t just have them multiplying exponentially no matter how many flies they catch. I imagine their demise is one of terror followed by a great sickness as they spin around and around in the Dyson cylinder. RIP spiders. 

Breakdancing frogs

It’s been a while since I posted but the acquisition of an iPad Pro has breathed new life into my cartooning.   Once I would sketch in pencil, then trace my sketch multiple times until I got it right, then I’d scan it into the computer for colouring and touching up.  It was a chore.  But now, I can do all of that with my iPad and an Apple Pencil and upload directly to all my social media channels.  It’s revolutionary (for me – I’m sure I’m a bit behind the times).

Don’t shoot the messenger

Sometimes working in communications feels like this:

Rain rain go away

When we moved to Wales, I thought people were overplaying the ‘Wet Wales’ remarks. It turns out they weren’t wrong.  Hardly a day has gone by in the last six months when we haven’t seen some form of rain whether it’s a fine mist that frizzes your hair, or torrential downpours that leave the river USK bursting at its banks.  It’s so bad, I’ve resorted to doing my own anti-rain dance.

A camel

Camels were the topic of conversation today so I thought I’d draw one.  My goodness, they are odd creatures and difficult to characterise.  This was my final attempt after several pages of failed squiggles.

Cotton mouth

Today I did a brief presentation to a small group of people. I knew most of them and was talking about a subject I was very familiar with.  I should mention that presenting is something I’m pretty comfortable with – for the most part.   I’ll admit I get a bit nervous before getting up to speak, but I usually manage to shake it off in the introductions. However, for some unknown reason, today I was caught completely off guard by a severe case of ‘cotton mouth’.

It was full on lips-stuck-to-gums, cheeks-stuck-to-teeth, tongue-turned-to-sandpaper, cotton mouth.  I don’t know if you’ve experienced this before, but once you notice the onset, unless you have water to hand, things very quickly go from bad to worse.    I felt like a crazed chimpanzee with bared gums, clicking like an African tribesman and choking on my own tongue.   Thank God for the brief interlude when a glass of water was handed to me and I felt my tongue revive like a piece of dried seaweed coming to life in the incoming tide. 

Twitching…

Working from home

I have the pleasure of working from home for a couple of days this week.  I’m relaxed, I have an endless supply of coffee, food and everything I need to carry out a productive day’s work.  Once in a while it’s a treat not to be distracted by office chit chat. I can focus on my work. We’ll just pretend I didn’t just get distracted for 5 minutes to post a blog item (it is lunchtime after all). However, I thought I would re-share a cartoon from 2012 when I’d been working from home for three years – the novelty soon wears off.  

 

Christmas jumper day

Today was Christmas Jumper day at work.   One may don a festive jumper so long as they give money to charity!   There were some notable differences in how people approached the day…