Loud Story

Open publication

Loud Story was a book idea I was developing a while ago which pretty quickly ran out of steam. It plays with the neat kind of accidents that can occur when predictive text goes wrong: when pint accidentally becomes riot, kiss becomes lips, baker becomes cakes and all that stuff. Textonyms, these words are apparently called.

Nowadays of course anyone with any self-respect has an iPhone - or at the very least a Blackberry- and so uses a miniature QWERTY keyboard, making the whole idea redundant. Which is a shame.

Daily Draw: 22.07 - 18.08

A load of Daily Drawings, and a couple of blank pages too- because it is the holiday season after all. I'm allowed to relax for five minutes, right?



I barely drew "for fun" all of this week in fact, because I was swamped, flooded and festooned with work. Mainly with completing 60+ colour illustrations for a pair of books coming out on Mothers Day and Fathers Day next year, which is quite exciting. Probably worth getting pregnant for now, if you're not a parent already, just so you can legitimately enjoy them (or one of them, at least).






I had to get a number of jobs completed before I left for a fortnights jaunt - split between Croatia and Italy - and as my departure date loomed I was working very long days indeed. I was at the desk still at 1am on the Monday morning, and we had to leave at 3am. That is what they call "the joy of freelance".



We stayed in Razanj, a little village about an hours drive up the Croatian coast from Split. In Croatia beaches as you and I know them are yet to be invented: instead they have concrete shelves built into and over the rocky shores. They are almost better though because you can jump off the shelves and impress girls and you don't get sand kicked in your face by bigger boys.


It was just me and Charlotte. We've never really done a couples holiday before. We went to Morocco last year, but then we were too busy fearing for our lives to allow for any romance.


It was pretty boring until we bought a pack of playing cards.


At the end of the week we went back down to Split and took an overnight ferry to Ancona (that's in Italy). I was led to believe this would be the glamour-high-point of the trip, but once we'd finished our warm pre-made bottle gin and tonic on the top deck it was a case of trying to sleep curled up on the floor of the engine room on a bed of towels, which wasn't all that fun.


The Italy chapter, in which we joined Charlotte's whole family and our friends Jess and Sophie, was all based around food: specifically those tomato, mozzarella and basil salads covered with balsamic. BBMTs, the Italians probably call them.


The two weeks were quite different. Croatia was so relaxed we were almost completely still for the whole time. In Italy there were ten of us, almost all teenage girls, and so was lots and lots of fast-talking and high-screaming and sobbing and general drama. There were probably more words machine-gunned out in any given minute of week two than the total that were uttered by me and Char combined in week one.

Ballad of Britain

Have you seen this book on Amazon?

Yes?
Well you know that guitar/tree thing?
I drew that.
Yes.
Really, I did.
Look:

It's about music and that. Jarvis Cocker is something to do with it, I think. I'm not really sure.
There's a CD too.
There's more information here.

Here are two also rans for my contribution:

Daily Draw: 17.05 - 21.07

My friends own percolators, my friends are sophisticated

The Apprentice was like a religion in our house, even though it's over-rated

Adam Buxton showed us all the youtubes he enjoys

Charlotte has need to hold on to all her childhood toys

People who live in little villages still get iPods and Apple Macs

I might have a small beer on a small Thursday, to relax

In May there was nothing to do, nothing but barbecue

I am reading proper books, or at least I'm starting to

At Charlotte's house we have to watch Desperate Housewives

At our house we watch what we're told to watch by Guardian Guides

The Apprentice was like a religion in our house, even though it's over-rated

We bought and we watched Twilight just to keep ourselves updated

Eternal Sunshine is not so new when you remember Total Recall

Riddles round the bonfire with stranger gastro-hippy people

I ordered risotto but what I meant was: ravioli

A Jarvis Cocker concert is just slightly rock and rolly

We need a British Simpsons because Homer is not ours

Sunday is for BNP Wives and then it's for guitars

You should always cheer the screen if you're perched on Henman Hill

And cheer the screen if your town's on it, like Bristol in Psychoville

On a Friday we make gnocchi because we are sophisticated

Washing up is part of cooking, so my mum has always stated

Greg moved in and there's always room, even though he's very tall

At Anova they've a ping-pong table in the entrance hall

Venus tells Serena that "the ball is in your court"

Petroleum spirit, highly inflammable: poem of the forecourt

Riding on a tube's like being the prize inside a cracker

To celebrate nothing at all we had lunch out, in Wahaca

I saw a pro-pirate lecture from "Mr. Twitter", Stephen Fry

I saw my housemates watch a film they'd bought called Eagle Eye

At Latitude we saw poets and I thought I could do what they did

My friends own percolators, my friends are sophisticated

The Apprentice was like a religion in our house, even though it's over-rated