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One of those Kurt Vonnegut quotes popped up on Twitter the other day that caught my eye. I have always been a bit suspicious of the way social media has used Vonnegut as the sort of sage uncle we always wanted (not the one who "does his own research" on Facebook). The kind of person to put a metaphorical arm around your shoulder, impart some wise words, give you a cigar, shake your hand and leave you feeling better about yourself.

He experienced the Second World War, the Dresden firebombing, he wrote Slaughterhouse-Five and witnessed the worst of what humanity could do to itself. He also gave wry, wise and uplifting graduation speeches. In other words, one helluva guy.

Anyway, the quote was the familiar one about going on an archeological dig at 15 and bemoaning the fact that although he did lots of activities, he wasn't any good at any of them.

It's traditional at this time of year to glance back at the previous twelve months, take stock and try and make some sort of sense of it. I did one last year cheerily titled Horrible Annus. And what an annus it was.

Well, I can't say I am capable of putting 2021 into some sort of order. It took my re-reading of my own archives to jog my memory of what had even happened, nevermind mould it into some sort of thematic shape. Some things I had completely forgotten. Some I still have clear memories of, such as sitting in an architect's holiday home following lockdown and enjoying the silence.

In place of trying to bring order to a chaotic world, take this summary of the year as a series of vignettes. A kaleidoscopic snapshot of stuff that happened, if you will.

Here is my year in numbers:

Time is a circle. Or a flat lozenge. Or is that the earth? Hard to keep up with the onslaught of daily irrationality. Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time. Plus ça change and all that rot. Have I ticked all the cliches yet? Another: the more things change etc etc.

Why, it was only a year ago that I was blathering on about Christmas. To quote myself, we have grown our very own mutant strain of coronavirus. This year it's Omicron's turn for fifteen minutes in the spotlight, or will that be fifteen weeks? Nobody quite seems to know yet.

Staying true to newly minted Christmas tradition, our daughter is home from uni, Alan is in the kitchen, a classic has been watched, the tree is up and the decision to stay home again this year appears to have been wise (at time of typing).

That was going to be the subject of this column (and a dozen more) before I pitched the idea to her. Unfortunately she shot it down in no uncertain terms. I have been censored. In my own newsletter.

Now I find, on reflection, with Phil standing over my shoulder with her arms crossed and the sound of her grinding her molars, that his would not be a fruitful line for me to follow as she is perfect and free from every vice.

Except for one: Beers of the World.

Autumn, the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and birthdays. For whatever reason we have a bunch of family birthdays squeezed into a roughly four week period at this time of year. It's a month or so of frantic present buying, cake baking and dinners.

This year also happens to be another birthday, dearer to me than all those family members who have enjoyed countless birthdays and cakes (I jest, family members who read this newsletter). This birthday is special as it is a first. A celebration of one year of life.

The baby can't sit, gurgle, cruise, stand and has a concerning lack of interest in everyday objects. It doesn't drool or giggle or refuse to go to sleep when it is tired. It doesn't wake up in the middle of the night, in fact it just lies there doing nothing. The only upside is that I don't have to change its nappies. Should I be worried?

No, of course not, because my baby is a book. The apple of my eye. The fruit of my...never mind. It is supposed to just lie there. Hopefully not in a pile of remainders with a badly creased spine, but on the bookshelf of a reader of taste and discernment (such as yourself). There it will stay, an asset to the wit, good looks and charm of the owner. Occasionally, as when the owner has guests over, the book will be taken down from the shelf and placed on a coffee table in order to impress friends, family and other freeloaders. It will spark conversation and inspire compliments as to the keen intelligence, fragrant allure and magnetic charm of the owner.

Way back when I was at junior school we had a weekly school assembly. We were led in by our teachers, class by class, and sat cross-legged in rows on the gritty wooden floorboards of the assembly hall.

There was a disturbance in the discourse on Twitter recently and I found myself drawn to it like a moth to flame. Generally I avoid such temptations as I am laser-focused on working and I am in no way itching for a distraction. Any distraction from the flashing cursor.

I don't think anyone has said this before but writing is hard. I know, I'm breaking new ground here. Alas, it is true.

You may not believe me if you have read one of my newsletters but these lovingly-lathed sentences do not travel in a straight line from my thought brain, through my fingers onto the keyboard and sparkle, diamond bright, on the screen. They are the result of being rewritten at least once. If not for spelling and grammar (I do honestly aspire to be within spitting distance of The Elements of Style) then for basic comprehension. You would think using a modest vocabulary to relate a boring anecdote about going to the shops would be easy to get over in less than five hundred words. Not so. Not for me, anyway.

This was underlined (in red ink) when I received a copyedited script of my next graphic novel. It was an uncomfortable experience knowing that my silly fantasy story had been pored over in detail by a grown up professional. They had read my dumb jokes and cast their eye over my doubtful punctuation. They must think I'm a complete idiot.

Saturday and Phil begins packing food for our daughter's return to university. From where I am sitting all I can see is a huge jar of Nutella and several bottles of wine.

I was absentmindedly gazing out of our holiday let window in Devon when my eye was caught by a family promenading along the seafront opposite. That man looks a lot like Keir Starmer, leader of , I said to myself. Of course it couldn't be. My mind was befuddled by an excess of sea air and ice cream.

Have you ever met someone for the first time and disliked them for no reason whatsoever? They can be lovely people, kind to goldfish, promptly pay their library fines, replace loo roll the right way (over, not under) but despite all that there is something about them that irks you?

It’s not them. It’s you.

But it might be them.

My daughter is freshly, or not so freshly, returned from a music festival (where a negative Covid test was necessary). I can second hand report that the surfer boys are hot, the toilets are cleaned three times a day in the VIP section (the section she wasn’t in), the Lidl pop-up shop selling vegan hot dogs with a glass of prosecco is a bargain and that Gorillaz played a two hour set.

I was also told, in the offhand hand way that teenagers slip a dagger of ice into your heart, that Gorillaz were music for . A burn on par with the student .

For three days in a row the auction house has called me up demanding to know when I will be paying for and collecting my watercolours. This comes as a surprise to me as I haven’t bid on any watercolours. In fact I have never bid on anything at an auction house in my life.

The first and third times the woman on the other end has something approaching a phone manner. The enquiry is firm but polite. The second time the voice of a different woman is blunt and, to my ears, sinister. I fear Miss Trunchbull will appear at my home without warning, pound on the front door, take me by the shoulders and shake me violently until my debit card falls out of my pocket. At which point I will be pulled by the ear to the nearest cashpoint and made to pay up on the spot, watercolours thrown at my feet on the dirty pavement.

Unlike my ultra-masculine alter-ego Wolf Watson I don’t hunt. No shooting or fishing for me. Killing things is not really my bag. Eating them is another matter. I eat fish. Just none that I have caught myself. I will leave that to the nets, trawlers and environmentally destructive industrial processes far away from my delicate, hypocritical sensibilities.

Indulge me while I wallow in a bit of self-promotion. The Book Tour has been nominated for Book of The Year by the Harvey awards. The Harveys are named after Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) an American cartoonist and editor famous for creating MAD magazine. One of the best to ever do it.

Football. There’s a lot of it about. Before you stop reading I will not be boring you silly about my lifelong passion for ‘the beautiful game’, childhood dreams of playing in the ‘top flight’ or the disappointment of being picked last for the school team (still too raw to probe that psychological wound). Neither will I rant at length about how much I despise the national pastime.

Growing up and living in England means you are surrounded by the game. It permeates the culture. Loving or hating it must be exhausting. It would be like loving or hating air. Or grass. Or the royal family.

The regular season lasts most of the year, then there are the domestic cups and trophies, rosettes, commemorative plates and invitationals. Much talk of silverware. There are the international leagues, friendlies and competitions. And then there’s the world stage. Did you know the World Cup is only a year and a half away? It’s a lot

To be fully invested, one way or another, is a job of work. I don’t have the energy. I already have a labour intensive, low reward ‘career’ that consumes much of my time.

The security gate swung open on its creaking hinges to let them in. A steady stream entered empty-handed and staggered out carrying boxes, family-sized bags of untouched dried pasta and trailing bedding. The parents were back for the great migration. The weekend when university students leave the secure confines of their halls of residence for the mean streets of shared housing.

The academic year had ended on something of a whimper after a fellow student in my daughter’s flat pinged for Covid which required all the occupants to self-isolate for ten days. Quarantine was over when we parked outside and began lugging boxes on a muggy Saturday morning.

We packed the car and drove not very far to our daughter’s new home. Like many student areas it is a little rough around the edges but does have the advantage of being close to Aldi. I was tasked with cutting back some of the ivy that was patiently working its way into the door frame. There’s a point where cottagecore has to take a back seat to basic security measures.

Mid-afternoon is the sweet spot for hitting the post office. Sandwiched between lunch hour and school pick up is quietest. I have finely calibrated my visits to take as little time as possible.

Once there I sidestep the queue and go to the terminals where I mail six packages to overseas destinations. Each parcel requires the address and post code to be typed in one letter at a time via a touch screen. A customs form is then filled out and a barcode sticker applied. Every part of the customs form must be filled in accurately in block capitals. I am warned parcels are now being sent back if the forms aren’t correctly completed.

At the end of this laborious process the machine declines my card. Then it declines it three more times. I breathe deeply, put the parcels back in my bag and go to the bank. My card works perfectly and I take out fifty pounds from the cash machine. The notes feel waxy and unfamiliar in my hand.

At the post office I repeat the process at a different terminal. Taking a gamble I tap my card on the reader and smile as I see the payment is accepted. My satisfaction is short-lived as the terminal crashes. No stamps are printed, no receipts are disgorged. There is no proof I have just spent forty pounds on postage.

It was several weeks ago that Phil and I were woken early by a loud POK. In different circumstances it might have been the beginnings of an intriguing mystery or the subject of idle speculation. Unfortunately, as home owners, it lead to panicked wails of, “What’s gone wrong now?” and, “How much is it going to cost this time?” Houses, unlike Wolverine, don’t heal themselves .

We set off in different directions in search of POK. It sounded to me like a lightbulb going out. I checked the cupboard under the stairs where there’s no room for a boy wizard amongst the embarrassing amount of clutter. One day the stepladder will topple over the Henry hoover and smash the lightbulb. Not that morning. The bulb remained intact. Curiouser and curiouser.

Eventually I opened the front door to find an unsliced wholemeal loaf, a pint of semi-skimmed milk and two halves of a housebrick. Padding out in bare feet I look up to see a brick from the decorative row over the bedroom window has fallen out.

The reviews are in and according to my family last week’s newsletter was “a lot of boring stuff about comics”. I am shocked, saddened, and frankly surprised at their judgement. I worry they’ll be eviserating me on Goodreads next. Don’t they realise that at least 50% of my existence is “a lot of boring stuff about comics”? What do they think I do in the studio all day. Nap? Well, that accounts for the other 45% of my existence. The remaining 5% is family life.

Who, I ask, doesn’t want to hear me whine about how boring scanning artwork is? That is relatable content to the 1% of people to whom it is relatable. In order to prove that my life does not entirely revolve around them, the 5% part anyway, I am going to touch on a subject close to all our hearts: .

It wasn’t so long ago while attending Angoulême that I was pompously telling a fellow cartoonist that I could never work completely digitally as it lacked the tactile qualities of applying pencil and pen to paper. Those traditional tools were a link to my love of drawing as a child, lying on my stomach on the living room carpet with lined paper and a fistful of felt tips scratching out X-Wing battles. There was no pleasure in tapping a stylus on glass, I blathered on at length. The fellow cartoonist smiled, recognising a kindred spirit. We shook hands and exchanged brush pen recommendations. We were brothers bonded by ink and white out, calouses and paper cuts. The proud, the few.

I was obliviously typing away on a completely different and mostly irrelevant topic (no surprise if you have been here before) for this week’s newsletter when it suddenly dawned on me that this thing, whatever it is, is one year old! Hurrah! Happy birthday! Three cheers!

Where are my presents?

Think back to the significant date of May 11th 2020 that is forever etched in your psyche when I launched this weekly gobbet of nonsense. Back then we were in the early months of the pandemic. In England on May 10th the “PM announces a conditional plan for lifting lockdown, and says that people who cannot work from home should return to the workplace but avoid public transport.” So the Earth has taken another laborious 365 day orbit around the sun and arrived right back where it started?

Yes and no.

Restrictions having eased enough to allow self-catering stays in places away from home, Phil and I finally treat ourselves to one of those mini-breaks empty-nesters are supposed to indulge in. Not abroad and not in a rush of impetuous spontaneity but within England and prepped with meticulous detail by my better half. We are going to briefly swap our overfamiliar four walls for unfamilar ones.

Our route takes us around any covid hotspots and stops at a Swiss garden with an aeroplane collection. An unlikely combination which provides varied diversions. The view over the ornamental pond with a pair of feuding peacocks on a miniature island is overlooked by aircraft hangars painted sporting green. The collection is kept behind closed doors but we poke our heads into a hangar and see carefully restored aircraft have been polished until they sparkle. The sun shines. Cake is eaten. A timed ticket means the place is blissfully free of crowds.

At our new temporary residence posh biscuits and a bottle of red wine are waiting for us on the kitchen island. The house is an architect’s holiday home and has the clean lines, white walls and exposing windows you might expect. Saarinen are positioned around the table. The kitchen drawers silently close themselves.

The observation that the days of the week have lost all meaning is hardly a unique one. The repetition of eat, sleep, work in lockdown has only emphasised the Groundhog Day nature of my life. This is particularly true of work. I am currently wading my way through the writing/thumbnail stage of a new project.

They don’t look like much but they are a vital phase in the making of a book. The words and scribbled drawings are placeholders for the final pages but the hundreds of small choices I make now will dictate if the book will work in its completed form. It’s hard on the ol’ noggin.

It should hardly be news to me, a grizzled veteran of over a dozen books, that making a graphic novel is a lot of work and yet I am continually surprised by how much work it is. Several months into this part of the process and, not being a patient person by nature, I am frustrated by just how long it takes to sketch out even the rudiments of a page or a scene, never mind an entire story.

It doesn’t help that when I am writing I can’t listen to podcasts, my usual method of creating the illusion I share my creative space with friends. The friends might have a worrying obsession with examining murders in grisly detail or discussing I have no interest in, but I prefer planning the perfect murder/Scottish Presbytarianism to my tinnitus.

The phone sits within reach of my chair. If it rings it can only be one of two things. A family emergency or a nusiance call. Fortunately it is the latter.

A robot voice offers to clean my oven. This is disturbing as it suggests a spy has crept into our kitchen and seen the the state of our oven. It really would benefit from a thorough scrub. If it was a genuine robot service I would book my appointment immediately. I wouldn’t feel the same sense of shame if an artificial life form had it’s head in the oven to apply a chemical peel treatment.

The next time I pick up it’s a disembodied voice warning me that a six hundred pound payment has been placed overseas on my Mastercard credit card. A brief moment of panic subsides as I recall I don’t have a Mastercard credit card. Almost had me there.

My next caller struggles to make himself heard over the background clamour of a noisy call centre. It’s a Google security technician warning me of something dire. I take a moment to consider why Google, all-powerful global tech giant, is calling me on the old dog and bone. I decline their services but the security technician is persistent, he really is concerned about the security of my search engine. If only Google would hire someone as diligent as this to beef up their own .

Out of breath I put on my mask, press the door bell then stand back two meters and wait. I check my phone. I don’t want to be too early or late. Like Goldilocks I am just right. The door opens to reveal a masked face. I’m invited inside. I haven’t stepped over the threshold of anywhere but my own home in weeks.

Directed to a mat, I stand on it and am squirted with hand sanitiser. After being peppered with questions a white plastic gun is pointed at my forehead. I imagine the red tracer jittering over my damp skin. Will I trigger an alarm and be pinned to the ground by burly men in aviators and wearing earpieces? No. I’m waved through.

In another time this would be the cold open for an espionage thriller and I would tear off my face to reveal I am actually Tom Cruise. Fortunately I am not Tom Cruise. I am taller and I am not here to download secrets to my thumbdrive while evading security.

I am at the dentists for the second time in several weeks.

I might be unusual in that I’m a cartoonist who didn’t grow up with comics as my dream job. For some bizarre reason I wanted to be a car mechanic. Somewhere around the time I started at my bog standard comprehensive it gradually dawned one me that I had zero interest in cars, engines or anything practical.

It truly was my dream job, I could dream about it but I would never do it.

The only thing I was any good at and had a passion for was drawing. Maybe I should pursue that. Maybe. But how? I didn’t know anyone in my small Yorkshire town who had a job in the arts. Arty stuff was for others, not working class kids like me. The only way to find a job ‘doing art’ appeared to be studying it at college. With a degree, or whatever you earned after going to university (the sphere of further education was entirely foreign to me) the world would open up to a myriad of artistic opportunities. To do that I would need to clear the hurdle of passing my A-levels. I didn’t seem to think this would be a problem despite my being a C-grade student on a good day with the wind behind me and a generous marking scheme.

I got an iPad for Christmas. Yes, I am one of those people now. In a different time you might have spotted me in a cafe showily opening and closing the protective case while sipping a cappuccino and ‘working’. You might also have seen me muttering obscenities under my breath while unpeeling and re-peeling the protective screen to access the home button after I bought the wrong size screen protector. You may have considered sitting at the next table, thought better of it and moved to a booth out of earshot.

It has been suggested that this newsletter has become something of a burden. Not to me, the one who sweats over these witty and incisive sentences about one of the *world’s foremost cartoonists, but to my family. It has been whispered that I have become demanding. Something of a prima donna. A diva. My ego inflated to such an extent that I demand they read this newsletter in my presence and for there to be frequent snorts, chuckles, sniggers, and, if it’s not too much to ask, a guffaw or two.

I then require that I be present when the work of nationally syndicated columnists is read by family members and I take note of the snorts, chuckles, sniggers, and guffaws that work elicits. It is rumoured I then make a tally in a small notebook I keep for this purpose where I judge the success of any given column. In this way I compare myself to the people who do this for a living.

I would like to put it on the record that this is a libellous mischaracterisation. I only demand that they read it. I have always said that a feigned humourous reaction is appreciated but it is not a requirement. It’s not as though I don’t do stairs.

As we approach the end of the year it is traditonally the time to look back, take stock and consider what a dumpster fire the previous twelve months have been. And hoo-boy, 2020 was a vintage example of the annus horribilis.

The highlight, I’m sure you’ll all agree, is that I started this newsletter back in May just after the first lockdown restrictions were being eased in the UK. The celebrations quickly swept across the nation. I am certain it wasn’t a coincidence.

What was supposed to be a brief weekly paragraph of shameless self promotion thoughtlessly punted into the void has developed into a task I labour over (hard to believe from reading it) for little identifiable reward. In that way it has mirrored my career in comics.

The initial plan for my wife’s significant birthday (significant being a euphemisim for one where the cake can no longer take the strain of the number of candles) was for a trip abroad to a country with a warm climate and many opportunities for cultural visits. Circumstances reduced that ambition to a trip within the UK. Then it was a trip within England. Then it was a trip to the back garden. Now there will be no trip.

We will have to settle for a take-out.

We are back in lockdown in England. Wales has just come out of a two week long firebreak. Scotland has a five tier system and I am not certain what Northern Ireland is up to. The UK is engaged in a form of hokey-cokey, the nations taking turns to jump in or out of some form of restriction. This will continue until we feel collectively bilious enough to sit on the floor and groan. At some point we may all synchronise our efforts and be miserable together, possibly at Christmas. For now we will be sulky and resentful in our seperate nations.

It’s frustrating because we live not too far from the Welsh border. Over yonder hills there be dragons, restaurant meals and book shops in . We could sidle right up to the border at (checks map) and pop into the Pet and Garden centre perfectly legally. We could saunter out again to take the air, look both ways up the road, whistle innocently and when the coast is clear leg it over the border blaming an innocent map reading error or an opportunity to . It would be entirely our own fault if we were gunned down by over zealous border guards like some re-enactment of a tragic incident at .

The man from the breakdown service eyes me sceptically. I am telling the tale of how the problem with our car is not related to neglect but a more complex fault resulting in a drain on the charge. He nods sympathetically as if I have just confided in him in a whisper that the car is haunted. He is not going to argue with a delusional person, that is breakdown service engineer 101.

He has a tablet, complex software, a van full of gear and years of experience. I have a vague hunch awkwardly expressed with no knowledge of automobiles whatsoever. Cars are basically magical horses with wheels as far as I am concerned. You put in fuel and they go. Until they don’t and then it’s because they are bewitched.

I make my case again and he nods. I think it has something to do with the alternator. I use the word alternator uncertainly with a rising inflection that turns it into more of a question. I think an alternator is something that helps a car go but it could also be a relative of Galadriel who hails from Lothlórien. I know I am out of my depth but continue in the face of the service engineer’s clear disdain.

It’s almost my birthday so we are taking Alan up to live with our daughter at university. Alan has recently separated from his family. They suffered considerable neglect over lockdown, becoming dehydrated, limp and a bit dusty.

Alan is an aloe plant.

The neglect came as a consequence of being Phil’s office plant and there being few opportunites for her to visit the office earlier in the year. The aloe family were eventually brought home and after a stay in the pot plant ICU (the end of the worktop nearest the window in the kitchen) they made a full recovery and thrived to such an extent that Alan could leave home and start a new life in a pot of his own.