This is London and somewhere in Italy

This is the view from the roof of Walker Books, which is where I work. I'm not sure if you're allowed on the roof.

This is the view from the roof of 153 Petherton Road. You're not allowed on the roof.

This is East Croydon train station. I was waiting there to meet Arron and Greg to cycle down to Brighton (they didn't fancy the "South London shit bits").

This is the logo from a packet of IODAL Fino, which is an Italian salt brand. This tells us we are now in Italy.

This is the inside of our hired Fiat 500. Look at this picture whilst listening to Taylor Swift's Red on MAX VOL for the full experience.

This is the same scene drawn on a much rockier road, giving everything a charming Quentin Blake style wibble.

So that's nice.

Also: a Tumblr

As well as this blog, I have a Tumblr. A Tumblr is a microblog which means very small posts of very limited interest. I'll still use this blog for words and pictures, but jackdraws.tumblr.com is the place to go for scraps and previews of stuff of everything I'm working on - so a fair bit of stuff from my day job at Walker Books too, which is nice.

Argentina

Here are some sketches and bad photos from my fun but unremarkable trip to Argentina in March. Please look at it.

Fire in a Pet Shop

WorldService Project are a London PJF (punk-jazz-funk) group. I drew a fire in a pet shop for their second album, Fire in a Pet Shop, out later this month. Before I began the band supplied me with a long list of items to include in the artwork - pretty much everything shown is a reference to a lyric, a song title or some in-joke for the WSP superfan.

Those were the days

A while ago I did this drawing.

6-8 months later, this book arrived in the post.

 So that was nice.

Press round-up

Jack Noel cross-media penetration went up from zero to some back in January when I featured not only on a website but also in the national press. I was interviewed about my job for the Reading Agency and then quoted talking about book design in The Independent. And if you read the former you'll soon see how ill-qualified I was to do the latter.

You can read the interview here. Below is the original drawing. I have no idea if the back of my head actually looks like this, though I gather there's actually a lot less hair there than I've shown.

I'm buried in this short Independent article about the chick-lit-ish new cover for The Bell Jar.

Sadly my one "joke" was cut from the print edition, but somehow it did sneak in to the online version.

And, in case you still missed it, here's the punch line again. Because I may never see one of mine rendered in the proper press ever again.

Oh, go on then ... once more:

Eh? Eh? Geddit?

Jazzy, mully, lightyhousey

I was reading in the Barbican Centre and I must have reached a racy bit as I was engrossed long enough for a Jazz festival to be assembled around me (which will happen if you stop still in the Barbican Centre for too long). I ended up watching this French trio, Triphase, which was nice.

Just before Christmas we hosted a pop-up Mullery in our flat. It was like one of the staid mulled wine soirées our parents attend but with an almost imperceptible layer of wry self-awareness and just enough of a nod to the relevant, bloggable North London alt-restaurant scene for us to continue believing we are "with it".

This is the Red Lion & Sun in Highgate which may or may not serve Doom Bar.

And for reference, this is a pint of Doom Bar.

More recently, we went and stayed in this fine once-lighthouse now super-charming bed & breakfast.
Now that was nice.