Korea Move

My little nephew will be taking a couple of days break from being naughty round his own house next week to come and be naughty round mine. Elliot takes a little too much pleasure in playing tricks and winding me up and with Elodie's help he always gets the better of me. He's six years old, he's brighter than me (top of his class at reading and writing etc) and it'll take all my cunning and guile to avenge myself in a chess-like tactical battle of wits from which there can be only one winner.


Anyway, my chums at b small publishing kindly sent me Korean versions of four Science Around You books through the post today. I illustrated these books last year for them and although my Korean's a bit rusty, I reckon Elliot probably hasn't even seen the Korean alphabet before.


So when he's round I'm going to ask how he's getting on at school, to which he'll tell me he's top of his class. I'll then give him one of the Korean Science Around You books to look at and when he tells me he can't read it because the writing's 'funny', I'm going to convince him he's dyslexic!


Check...and mate.

Frankfurter Buchmesse 2008

In previous years I have been tempted to try the 'pair of sausages - Frankfurter style' for lunch. They aren't good. This year I ate sandwiches instead and thought I'd make use of the "Illustration Machine" to illustrate quite how unappealling the sausages are. This is the machine's interpretation of my request - not exactly representative of boiled sausages, dry bread roll and blob of mustard.

Fortunately nicer food was to be had in the evenings and the Fair was as expected a good chance to meet customers and promote our services to publishers.

You'll be pleased to hear that most of the publishers I spoke to were sounding positive in spite of the tough economic times we are told are imminent... Fingers crossed then!

Name Drops Keep Falling On My Head

When I was five Tom Baker was Doctor Who on the telly and he was my hero. His companion was Sarah and she was played by Elisabeth Sladen and she was my first crush. I loved Sarah and although my adoration was deep and true, I was pleased it was her facing monsters every Saturday teatime instead of me.

But Sarah left the series and I grew up (sort of) and my feelings remained hidden until 1992 when the twenty one year old me found out Elisabeth Sladen would be doing an autograph signing session in London. So the portrait above is one of two exact portraits I did of her (taken from a photo in the second Doctor Who Monster Book, fact fans). I kept one which she signed and I gave her the other and she was lovely about it. She accepted the drawing, put her arm round me and kissed me on the cheek in front of a load of other Doctor Who anoraks. And in that moment I was five years old again.

Now, quite rightly, Elisabeth's back on telly and fighting the monsters once more in the brilliant Sarah Jane Adventures and, quite rightly, my little girl's a fan too. Our Sarah Jane x.