We don't want to have to stitch it back on, do we?

I went to the closing party for Heffers in the Grafton Centre in Cambridge last night. There were lots of people there, which was great, but it was a bit sad to see all those empty shelves as they sell their stock off. It is their last day tomorrow. Kate Johnson received a well-deserved round of applause. But maybe we should all have bought more books there instead of just coming to the events!

I had a long chat to Peter Kirkham about music and mentioned that I had a bit of a thing about New York bands - which I do. He suggested I do a blog about that. Hmmm. Maybe. He also claimed to be amazed at the coincidence of meeting Will Hill - this from a man who I met by chance (at Heffers come to think of it) and who turned out to have gone to my school in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (though much later)

I had another trip to the dentist this morning. The hygienist gave me an anaesthetic jab in the lower jaw, which numbs the gums (a bit) and the tongue. Because you lose sensation in the tongue for a few hours you have to be careful not to bite it (we don't want to have to stitch it back on do we?). She said, 'If you find yourself choking....'

Then she just trailed off. I never did discover what to do if I find myself cho..k...k..ack....klaah...

The Smugglers of Mourne

I scanned in some of my old illustrations today. These are from The Smugglers of Mourne by Martin Waddell.

(The angels wanna wear my) red shoes

Boxes full of Death and the Arrows arrived this morning, saved from the pulper by their soft-hearted author. These are the first editions with my illustration on the cover and I will gift them to a couple of schools I know. I would rather see them in a school library than destroyed (sob).

I got a lovely surprise a couple of days ago when I got an email from my agent saying that an old friend - Andrew Ellis - had been in touch, trying to track me down. I first met Andrew when he was on the Foundation Course at Manchester Polytechnic and I was in my first year - this would have been 1977 I suppose. Good grief! I am an old man.

Andrew went on to do Graphic Design at LCP in London while I stayed in Manchester for another couple of years before moving to London myself, where we shared studio space in a dingy basement opposite the British Museum.

The weird thing is, I seemed to have conjured him up. I sold all my records before we moved (though it causes me actual physical pain to recall it now) and I keep thinking about playing something and realising I no longer have it. So for some reason I was singing (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes - with the great lines: I said I'm so happy I could die; she said drop dead then left with another guy - and I thought about going to see Elvis with Andrew at Rafters club in Manchester all those years ago.

I can see him now - a weird, twitchy and sweaty, gap-toothed geek. That's Elvis Costello by the way - not Andrew.

Come on you 'U's

I went to Wembley today to watch Cambridge United play Exeter City in the play-offs to decide who went up. I went with my son, my friend Clive and his sons. On the way in we spotted Will Hill who is head of the Typography MA at Anglia Ruskin University, who was there with his son. We had a chat and split up to go our different ways as we entered the stadium to be frisked (I almost had my bicycle clips confiscated as an offensive weapon). We took our seats to discover Will was sitting next to Clive. What are the chances?

The game was not, it has to be said, of the highest quality though some of the flair was provided by Matt Gill, who played for Exeter (boo, hiss etc). Mattie was my tennis partner many moons ago when I lived in Norfolk and was coached by his brother, Darren, who was also a talented footballer before he turned to tennis coaching.

The stadium was the best thing about the day. The experience of being in such a huge crowd - even a less than capacity one - was fantastic. There was a man a couple of rows behind offering an X-rated commentary on the game and occasionally cheering 'Come on you 'U's'. I thought he was saying 'ewes' as in sheep, but it appears Cambridge United seem to have a capital letter as a nickname.

There were so many incidents off the pitch: a man receiving first aid on the way, having collapsed before he'd got to the entrance, a man being arrested after the game, the stern faced policeman on horseback, a family split up on the tube when one half wasn't quick enough to get off. There was even - much to the boys delight - a streaker. Well - an attempted streaker. He was grabbed by the stewards (if you see what I mean) as he stepped onto the grass and led away looking very crestfallen. There can be few sadder sights than a disappointed streaker.

The woman in white

I have started to re-read Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White and I'm already hooked, just as I was when I first read it twenty-odd years ago. My son bought it for me for my birthday last year and I find that it helps to read a Victorian novel when I am writing my Victorian/Edwardian-set creepy stories. I read David Copperfield when I was writing Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror.


At the moment I am writing a book that has the working title of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. Like Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and Tales from the Black Ship, it will feature a storyteller who tells (hopefully) sleep-disturbing stories.


I am working my way through several stories, not all of which will necessarily make it into the final book. I still have stories left over from Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and the Black Ship, that I felt did not quite make or the grade, or that were waiting on that certain something to lift them out of just being OK. If a story is not quite right, the best thing to do is put it to one side if you can and see what happens when you next read it. Often it becomes very clear what needs to be done once you stop staring at it so closely.

It is amazing the difference a small change will make to a short story, and particularly stories such as these where you want to make sure that the reader is going just where you want them to go and nowhere else. I want to be sure that I have set everything up in the best possible way. It is rather like a magician and misdirection. A lot of the work is in not letting the reader anticipate the ending, or in encouraging them to anticipate a different ending. And just as with a magician, this effort should not be apparent. It should all seem effortless and inevitable. It should be the swan and not the paddling feet they remember.

Proofs and roughs

I got a call from my editor, Helen Szirtes, today. She was ringing to go through my notes on the proofs for Tales of Terror from the Black Ship and to point out yet more anomalies and errors we had not spotted earlier.


This really was the last conversation we are going to have about changes to the text until it goes into paperback. The fine tuning on a book is so important, but that is exactly why I find it so exhausting and stressful. Writing a book is like walking down an endlessly forking path: it is as much about dismissing options as it is about choosing them. If you are not careful you can begin to doubt those decisions you made early on to go down one path and not another.


At the end of the day Helen sent me a batch of roughs from David Roberts of illustrations for the book. I can't show you them - it isn't really fair on David to show his roughs - so you will just have to take my word for it that they are looking great.

Spooky stories

I cycled over to the studio today, riding past the areas I had photographed in winter and am busy basing paintings on. They look so incredibly different now, with waist high nettles and misty drifts of cow parsley.

Again, I was painting over work I had done the day before. This may seem crazy written down, but it hopefully makes sense visually. I want the process I have gone through to show in the finished piece. I want the ghost of the previous versions to come through. The subject matter is not completely inconsequential - it should read as a particular kind of landscape - but it's all about the paint and the painting (the act of painting that is). For me anyway. It is a world away from illustration.

Speaking of which. . .

I got an email from Rachel Boden at Egmont today. I illustrated a book by Gillian Cross some time ago - The Monster from Underground - and it is being re-issued with a couple of other stories under the provisional title of Spooky Stories. She had been trying to contact me at my previous address and is going to send me a copy of the cover when she has it. It is out in September. Below is one of my illustrations.