A Note on a Rainy Night

  • Email subscriptions now via Jetpack rather than Mailpoet.

  • The end of the line in Austria, and a floating opera house.

  • Rare plants high up in the Alps.

  • Austria does charity shops right.

  • The home of Milka chocolate and spectacular views.

  • A pretty market town on the Czech border.

  • A paper on the connections between Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, and other literature.

  • A roundup of the books I read in 2023.

  • A recipe for salted caramel and chocolate brownies.

  • A preview of my travel writing book.

  • See the other thrills available in Reichenthal.

  • In which I venture through the infernal woods, protected by a tiny horse shoe.

  • A visit to the Kafka Museum in Prague.

  • The works of Czech Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha.

  • Prague in the winter of 2022 when there were no tourists.

  • A Baroque monastery in Upper Austria.

  • The Hanseatic merchant hometown of marzipan (and Thomas Mann).

  • The former last town in West Germany.

  • High up in the Kalkalpen National Park.

  • Austria isn’t an alpine utopia.

  • 2023 diaries now available.

  • 2023 calendars now available.

  • Goat comics for fans of Borges and Le Guin. Volume two is finally here.

  • No is a great word.

  • This is a tape that doesn’t exist.

  • The former Checkpoint Alpha between East and West Germany.

  • German supermarkets are wild places.

  • A small town on the old border with East Germany.

  • In and out through Alexanderplatz.

  • Bratislava after a long break.

  • In search of Heidi.

  • An idyllic time in the Austrian Alps.

  • October 2021 was the first time I returned to Vienna in 18 months as well. I was born and grew up in the UK, but have spent a chunk of…

  • A detour to the Kent countryside.

  • On my way home from Milan.

  • When I was doing the artwork last November for my 2022 calendar, I had two dreams of what the pages looked like. My brain was firm that the April artwork…

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

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • I recently did some more illustrations/cryptic symbolism for my friend’s band Dawnwalker. All to be revealed later.

  • 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.

  • 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…

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

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • (Palazzo Orsini in Italy photographed by Herbert List in the 1930s) The weather has turned sunny and hot, so here is a playlist of gloomy synthpop and darkwave (with a…

  • 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…

  • This is probably the end of the line for me making zines. There’s no big dramatic or bad reason, I just hadn’t been feeling it any more for quite a…

  • Another Dr Oetker cookbook from a charity shop in Austria, focusing on winter and Christmas treats this time. I don’t really have much to say about this one, I just…

  • Secrets! Mysteries! Forbidden powers of the forest!

  • 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.

  • In the UK we’ve been in pandemic lockdown since December. I’ve used the time to make a book of comics. It’s finally finished and I sent the files to the…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • I’ve been working on these comics for a while now, and the first collection is now available for pre-order. It has some older black and white comics redone in colour,…

  • My reading for January and February

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

  • I had dream that there was a craze for parmesan-infused mineral water, and everyone was obsessed with the stuff. I didn’t like it, and was considered extremely uncool.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • (Forbidden Books by Alexander Rossi) Every year I do the Goodreads Challenge. In 2020 my target was 52 books and I ended up reading 56. It looks like I won’t…

  • 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.

  • Happy Christmas, if you celebrate it. I was brought up unreligious, by unbelieving parents, in a not very religious country, and there are no young children in my immediate family,…