I spent a brilliant day earlier this week at Bitterne Park Infants in Southampton. The theme was ‘Monsters’ so I was a little out of my comfort zone as I couldn’t really do my usual routine with the classes. However, this didn’t turn out to be a problem at all, as the children’s enthusiasm and ingenuity spurred me on. I read them my New Forest Friends & The Litterbugs book where one of the characters imagines a giant insect monster, and then a poem I’ve written about a monster catcher. Finally the children invented monsters of their own by suggesting parts of animals for me to draw on large sheets of paper that slowly grew into hideous beasts. My thanks to everyone at the school for making me feel so welcome.

Funny looking man with funny looking cartoon

Last weekend I joined a splot of cartoonists in the lovely town of Witney for a social organised by the Cartoonists’ Club Of Great Britain. We’re made up of caricaturists, gag cartoonists, greetings card scribblers, character designers and a whole host in-between, but for a bunch who are, essentially, in competition with one another, we do seem to get on remarkably well. Saturday saw us enjoying a guided tour around the Wychwood Brewery, home to the delicious Hobgoblin, and as part of the event we’d been invited to submit gag cartoons around the subject of goblins and witches. Top prizes went to Richard Howell, Roger Penwill and Noel Ford and bloomin’ good they were too. Then that evening, after a scrumptious dinner at The Plough, we were all handed large sheets of paper and were told we had fifteen minutes to scribble a cartoon with the line “It’s Never Done That Before”. In a room largely populated by seasoned gag cartoonists I didn’t much fancy my chances, but to my surprise and pleasure I managed to clinch joint first place with Bren Romans. Chuffed to bits, I was.