Tern­berg OÖ

Tern­berg is a small town in Ober­ös­ter­reich, very near Weyer where I went a few years ago.

Return to Öz

I think people get the idea I go to some kind of Alpine Scand­inavi­an utopia, by look­ing at the scenery and maybe an mental image of some long ago ski holi­day or week­end break in Vienna.

Milan Cathed­ral

While in Milan, I also bought a tick­et to the cathed­ral and attached museum.

San Donato Milanese

When you say to people “I’m going to Italy for work” they think you’re going to go to some sun-kissed medi­ev­al tour­ist spot to live la bella vita, when the real­ity is often more like San Donato Milanese.

Milan 2021

In Septem­ber 2021 I returned to teach­ing EFL abroad. I had come home from Austria in March 2020, and then not taught at all for 18 months. It was a last minute trip, because the Itali­an govern­ment had suddenly decided to allow school visits

Janu­ary Read­ing pt 1

My goal this year is to read 100 books, but also regu­larly write small reviews of them. Here’s the first instal­ment, with Alan Garner, Seanan McGuire and Matt Weso­lowski.

Published
Categorised as Books

Nine Times Nine Pictures to Dispel the Cold

I was read­ing about a Chinese tradi­tion simil­ar to an advent calen­dar that starts on this day. It’s 81 days until the Spring, and that makes a neat grid of 9×9, lead­ing to the tradi­tion of Nine Times Nine Pictures to Dispel the Cold- draw or colour a picture every day to get you through the winter. 

2022 calen­dar

My 2022 calen­dar is now ready – you can order calen­dars and prints of the artwork here.

Vinyl stick­ers redux

I got some vinyl stick­ers of my artwork prin­ted up (after some long twists and turns with print­ing compan­ies and the current goods/​delivery short­ages in the UK). £1.75 each (inc uk post­age), or bundles avail­able.

I miss the inter­net when it was weird

Some­thing I have been think­ing about recently is how much the inter­net itself has changed in the past few years, possibly not for the better. I like the conveni­ence of modern services like Google Maps or inter­net bank­ing, but I actu­ally think the level of inter­est­ing content on the inter­net has gone down­hill.

Margate Activ­ity Books

I’ve made a children’s activ­ity book about vari­ous loca­tions in Margate, with open-ended draw­ing and writ­ing activ­it­ies that encour­age obser­va­tion, explor­a­tion and creativ­ity, with very clear layouts and instruc­tions. Suit­able for age 7+.

The Ulti­mate Bubble

I’ve been tired and busy lately. Here’s a great bubble gum advert from the 80s with a Kraft­werk-meets-Eurythmics soundtrack, and some odds and ends of inter­est­ing links.

Inter­view with Sajan Rai

A short inter­view with my friend, illus­trat­or Sajan Rai. I first met Sajan when we were assigned adjoin­ing tables at a zine fair, and he was offer­ing to draw people as sloths for £5. This clearly being a sign that he was the right kind of person, we became friends.

Assor­ted dreams

If I remem­ber my dreams I try to write them down in a note­book, to use for later inspir­a­tion. The one I’ve been using suddenly fell apart yester­day. I tried to stick the pages back in, but the spine was completely disin­teg­rated. I think I’ll just start a new one and copy the old entries over. Here’s some vari­ous bits from it.

March Read­ing I

In the Bonesetter’s Wait­ing Room, The Making of Home and Woman on the Edge of Time. Indi­an medi­cine, social history, the brutal­ity of psychi­at­ric hospit­als and ecofem­in­ist utopi­as.

Published
Categorised as Books

Axolotls

After multiple people asked me, I did a print design of everyone’s favour­ite neoten­ous, cute but some­what canni­bal­ist­ic Mexic­an sala­man­der.

90s Veget­ari­an Food

I haven’t eaten meat since the late 90s. Veget­ari­an­ism was on the rise at the time in the UK, but the selec­tion of meat-free products was very poor compared with the current day, and many of them had to be bought in the health food shop.

Wack­en Earth

I got this post­card from a super­mar­ket in a small town in NW Germany near where the fest­iv­al is held. I hope it has genu­ine Rammstein tears in the soil sample, or I’ll ask for my €3 back

Windows (18)95

The build­ing I live in was built in the 1870s, and still has the origin­al wooden windows. Well-looked after origin­al examples are highly prized in the UK. Unfor­tu­nately mine were not well looked after by owners in the recent past.

Sew A Dino­saur (1992)

I was given this book as a gift as a child. I never made anything from it because it’s defin­itely much too diffi­cult for chil­dren, I just admired the projects.

Green­cheeks

Ruth had a dream that you could buy tins of some­thing called “Green­cheeks” that seemed to be tinned Kermit meat. I had to make this a real­ity in Photoshop using a stock can mockup template.

2021 Calen­dar pre-orders

I’m finish­ing off my 2021 calen­dar artwork – I’ve put pre-orders up.

Calen­dars are £8.50 inc UK post­age and you can also get prints of the artwork

Halloween print

I don’t normally do season­al stuff, but on a whim today I decided to do a halloween themed thing, make the A4 prints cheap­er than usual at £8.50 (uk post­age included) and only do 25 of them.

Australi­an Radio Playl­ist

Here’s a playl­ist I made while I was in Melbourne of (mostly current) Australi­an stuff I heard played in vari­ous shops and cafes. Daytime Australi­an radio is where cock rock goes to die, and keeps Midnight Oil forever living off royal­ties, but I defin­itely didn’t go there with this playl­ist.

Sydney Sealife

On my last day in Australia, I had a few hours to waste in between check­ing out of the hotel and getting the train to the airport. I was stay­ing right next to the Aquar­i­um, so I went there. I didn’t visit the local zoo, because it looks grim, and I’m gener­ally against city zoos with large anim­als who don’t have enough space to roam. The aquar­i­um isn’t the cruel kind with large sea mammals, so I felt ok about going there. It’s mostly small fish and coral, with some rays, sharks and small penguins.

The Inner West of Sydney

While in Sydney I met up with my friend Emma David­son who runs Take Care zine distro, and we had a wander round Newtown (not far from where she grew up) and had some dinner. Newtown is the area of Sydney next to the univer­sity, full of old houses and narrow lanes. It used to be very cheap- full of hippies and students and LGBQT bars and book­shops, but is now extremely expens­ive.

Cent­ral Sydney

To be honest I wasn’t fussed about the centre of Sydney. I was stay­ing close to the harbour, but it all felt very bland and glossy, like living in a West­field shop­ping centre. I was there to visit friends more than anything.

Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania

MONA was one of my main reas­ons for visit­ing Tasmania. It’s basic­ally in an under­ground bunker like a Bond villain’s lair, and requires a boat ride to get to. The owner David Walsh, is the richest man in Tasmania and a very strange char­ac­ter in his own right- he grew up in a rough area of Hobart, and made his fortune by using maths to outsmart the gambling industry, and then spent it on this museum. He’s simul­tan­eously “math­em­at­ic­al geni­us” and “13 year old edgelord”.

Hobart, Tasmania

Hobart is the capit­al of Tasmania, and one of the oldest cities in Australia- lots of old build­ings. Even by Australi­an stand­ards it has a really grim history of geno­cide and massacres against the origin­al local people, with lots of explan­at­ory plaques and signs around as memori­als.

Sandy Bay and Battery Point, Tasmania

Here’s Australia contin­ued- my trip to Tasmania and the pretty seaside town of Sandy Bay, homet­own of Errol Flyn. If you have any idea from the cartoon that Tasmania is a hot desert place, it’s not think. Think more New Zeal­and.

Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne

Fitzroy Gardens is a park in the centre of Melbourne with a model village, lovely botan­ic­al conser­vat­ory and some fairly strange sculp­tures and tree carvings.

Sticky Insti­tute

Sticky Insti­tute is a Melbourne insti­tu­tion- a zine shop in the base­ment of Flinders Street train station that’s been there since 2001

Assor­ted Melbourne I

Here’s some photos from around Melbourne in Sept 2018 (yes, it has taken me that long to sort them out), they’re mostly phone photos taken as I wandered around. Melbourne is a mix of Victori­an terraces very simil­ar to those in the UK (with the addi­tion of sunporches), gleam­ing new blocks, and wild west saloon type streets like this.

St Kilda, Melbourne

Here’s a few photos from St Kilda in Melbourne. It’s a fancy coastal suburb of Melbourne filled with inter­war bunga­lows, with a pier and esplanade. In the 1960s it was run down and where all the hippies lived, but is now back to being fancy. I went there because there are wild penguins living on the pier and I hoped to see some. Unfor­tu­nately I didn’t manage to spot any that day.

Singa­pore

Last year I went on a trip to Australia, with a stop-off in Singa­pore along the way. I’ve finally star­ted sort­ing out the photos and writ­ing a zine about the trip. Here’s some photos from Singa­pore- they’re all phone photos as I left my suit­case at the airport for conveni­ence as I had to fly to Melbourne the next day and I real­ised the battery char­ger for my camera was in it too late.

I stepped out onto the midway

I meant to do a lot today but ended up napping on the sofa, so I went for an early even­ing walk along the beach to see the sunset and get some fresh air. The funfair was in town but there was almost nobody there on a Saturday night. Surreal.

Louisi­ana Art Museum, Denmark

I was tidy­ing up some old photos and found some from my trip to Denmark in 2015 that I never posted. These are of the Louisi­ana Art Museum. It’s a modern art museum and sculp­ture park just up the coast from Copen­ha­gen.

You Get Used to an Empty Room- playl­ist

Everything has been grim- the world, polit­ics, more person­al matters. Here is a short playl­ist of a certain mood of corrus­cat­ing bleak­ness.

Published
Categorised as Music

Some ideas and resources for arguing against common racist comments in the UK

At the time of writ­ing in June 2020, we’re going through a dramat­ic shift in public conscious­ness in many coun­tries about racism, the prob­lems with current soci­ety, and nasty histor­ies that have been brushed over and ignored. A lot of my friends are arguing with family members and acquaint­ances, or discov­er­ing that friends are much less well-informed than they’d hoped. Here’s a resource page of response ideas and links to resources.

How to spot fake Twit­ter accounts and misin­form­a­tion

The main way to keep up to date with what’s happen­ing on the ground with the Black Lives Matter Protests is via social media (and Twit­ter in partic­u­lar).

It’s really confus­ing though, because there are a lot of people and organ­isa­tions acting in bad faith and delib­er­ately making commu­nic­a­tion and fact-check­ing diffi­cult, and using manip­u­la­tion strategies to drown out the real inform­a­tion about what’s happen­ing on the ground.