Survival of the flattest
Added 2023-10-13 16:39:53 +0000 UTCANECDOTE
I used to post loads of fun sketches on Patreon, I was a sketchbook monster and trees feared me. Sadly, circumstances are not currently conducive to fun drawing. My train rides into London (where I would scrawl to kill 45 minutes) have vanished with my move north, and my new house is a mess of renovations, which make it a less than harmonious etching zone.
Should I tell you what happened when the chimney breast was opened up and decades of ancient soot fell out of it in a rolling house-wide cloud of grisly destruction? I'll tell you what happened: two days of solo cleaning and a week of solo wheezing. That's the price you pay for middle class aspirations of basic living room warmth. I've learned a lot about how you clean soot off various surfaces. Skirting boards, just-cured silicone, plant leaves, carpet, grout, rhino hide-like "landlord's special" vinyl flooring, architraves, light fittings, soft fabrics, I cleaned them all and I never want to have to do this again.
A few years ago I had an idea for a Giant Days spin-off that was about 50% about renovations. It turned out not to be a project I wanted to pursue. Let sleeping dogs lie was the end result of my project planning. But if I ever go the renovations comic route via some other path, I'll have a lot of new material for it. Any time anyone wants to talk about basement humidity, I'm here. I'm absolutely ready to do a tight ten on hydrostatic pressure. And never tell me to "tank it" because you'll find me vociferous in my opposition.
Perhaps I'd be sketching if, two months after I moved in, Northern Gas Networks hadn't closed my street for six weeks to put a new gas main in. Every day, infernal digging, manly shouting, and destruction of personal property. Day 1, they dug two huge holes in my garden.
Here's the lower hole. Trench 1. Pretty cool trench. Pretty cool colour blocked socks and plaggy Birkos Johnny!
This is the middle hole. I can't wait for them to replace that yellow pipe with another, seemingly identical yellow pipe.
The upper hole has yet to be dug but will require some grievous "prying up" of my paving stones. "We'll put them back," I was told, and as I looked into the eyes of the older man who told me this, I said, only to myself, "but not well."
There you are. I am beset on all sides by both self-inflicted domestic wounds and the ministrations of the "gas board" and their infernal desire to switch us over from town gas to natural gas. At least, I assume this is what they're doing, as the coke works doesn't seem to be chuffing out good black smoke like it used to.†
† Aside : town gas conversion actually ended in 1976, the year I was born. It is possible that I am the reincarnation of town gas. Think about that one.
ACTUAL NEWS
I am doing my best to maintain a skeleton service of business as usual. I have six pages left to draw of 'Maggie's Party' part 2. I finished writing the Great British Bump Off follow-up (a follow-up in the loosest sense, with a different approach altogether) and Max Sarin has begun to draw it. It remains top secret but I know I can trust you. I need a holiday but I am on enforced "light duties" right now and unlikely to crack up like a skydiving egg so long as duties remain light.
And I will be doing a few UK events at the end of the year to promote the Great British Bump Off book and the Giant Days Library. Thought Bubble Festival in Harrogate (Nov 11th/12th), an event at Leeds Library in conversation with my good friend Kristyna Baczynski on November 8th (tickets here), an event in London with Max Sarin (TBC) at the end of November and a Gosh Comics signing in Soho on Saturday December 9th. I am very much looking forward to seeing faces old and new.
It's not all soot, see?
Comments
I do not know, whether this is a consolation, but digging up and doing pointless road-work is all the same all over, even in Switzerland. We are now in the 6th months of a four-month road-construction. They announced that things would be 'back to normal' at the end of August (year not specified). 'Small delays on account of weather or other impedements might occur.' Part of their fun was digging up on lane of a road at a time and putting in three traffic lights on a four-way intersection - an interesting concept. The already intense traffic during rush-hour changed into a daily chaos for five months. But two weeks ago, they dug up one of the roads completely to change some of the piping. Thanks to that, we have no traffic at all anymore, because we are now living on a dead-end. And even pedestrians are being re-routed on a regular basis. So, I deeply sympathize with you. Gas ist still working, though.
2023-10-16 08:05:52 +0000 UTCYou have my undying sympathy. I feel I must recount the time I discovered, at 8:00pm on Christmas Eve, that when repairing my gas main (that another contractor working in the road had mistakenly severed) the gas company had accidentally dug through my sewer and then instead of repairing it had simply backfilled it with bricks and tarmacked over the top of it. The emergency contractors sent almost 100 miles by the gas board, at three hours to Christmas Day, to unblock it by hand and then repair it properly were not best pleased with their colleagues' work.
UsrBinPRL
2023-10-13 23:05:54 +0000 UTC
