Safe

We had dinner with Joad Raymond yesterday. It was good to see him as always and we always get well fed - Joad is a very good cook.

When I saw Paul yesterday we talked about the issue of the government register for visiting authors. This controversy blew up just before I headed off to the Lakes. I was interested to hear what Paul had to say, given that he is a teacher as well as an author.

Paul's view was - and I hope I'm not misrepresenting him here - that it seems unreasonable to expect other people working with children to be checked and not authors. As you may have read, Philip Pullman led the charge of authors outraged that they were having to pay to prove that they were not paedophiles. I have sympathy with both points of view.

I have been a governor at two primary schools here in the UK and there is a requirement that governors are CRB checked - basically a police check to make sure you do not have a criminal record. If I remember rightly, the school pays for this check.

Governors actually have little or no unsupervised access to children, but you can imagine the outcry if it turned out that a person with a precious conviction for a sex crime had been accepted onto a school governing body. It seems only prudent to check. Ditto with parent helpers (who do have significant access to children) and those who work in the kitchens or school office or as caretakers.

However, an author visit is very different. Schools are completely in control of how much access a visiting author has to the children. In most visits they are talking to a large group - sometimes very large indeed. Even then, there are staff present. On the odd occasions I have been left alone with children, there have always been a large group of them. And in any case, most authors - and I am certainly one of them - would ideally rather never be left alone with children. I prefer my visits to be about exciting an interest in writing and illustration and this is best done if teachers do the disciplining. If a school does not want a visitor to have unsupervised access to its children, then they are perfectly well able to prevent it.

The only one-to-one access I ever have with children is during a book signing when some children will take the opportunity to have a chat while you sign their book. This is one of the joys of going into a school because let's face it, if you don't like children you shouldn't be writing for them and hearing what they have to say is not only fun but vital, I think. But this is invariably in a crowded hall and the child I am speaking to is in (hopefully) a long line and there are staff around and a table between us.

Actually, there is one other one-to-one scenario. Often - almost every time in fact - when I go to a school, a child will wander over to me as the event is breaking up and the children are leaving and tell me about something they are doing. It might be about a story they are writing, but it might just as easily be about a band they are in or a movie they've just scene. These brief - and they are always brief - conversations are a big part of why I go into schools.

Paul is perhaps right that it seems inevitable that all visitors to schools will have to be checked in future. But will that include builders working on site - it certainly didn't when I was a governor. Will this list make children any safer? No it won't. Not one tiny little bit. Making the wearing of cycle helmets compulsory - that would make children safer.

I agree with Philip Pullman that there isn't something odious about having to prove yourself innocent - particularly of such a vile crime and one that seems so utterly at odds with the urge to write for children. When I watched the news and heard a parent saying, 'If they haven't got anything to hide, then why are they bothered?' I agreed with him even more. If all of this results in fewer authors visiting schools it will be a tragedy.

Lunch with Paul May

I saw my old friend Paul May for lunch yesterday. Paul came up to Cambridge for the day from his home in rural Suffolk and we yakked on for hours in the Michaelhouse Cafe about all sorts of things, but mainly - of course - writing.

Writing is an essentially solitary occupation, and I have always found writers to be eager to talk about what they are doing, how they work, books they have enjoyed and so on. It is a release, I suppose, for all those hours spent alone with our own thoughts. It is also an acknowledgement that only other writers know what it is like to be a writer.

Writers can be cagey with each other of course. No one wants to go into too much detail about what they are doing. Not for fear that someone will rip them off, but because as much as writers often present themselves as world-weary old cynics, we all know deep down that there is a kind of magic to the process and we don't want the spell to be broken.

A painter friend of mine once said that he did not like to talk about plans and hopes too much, in case the very act of talking about them would make them disappear - as if the gods of good fortune would take them away to teach you a lesson for being so presumptuous. Neither of us were superstitious people and yet I knew exactly what he meant.

Paul May and I used to share an agent and a publisher and so used to meet at least once a year at the Random House Christmas Party. Now we have to make more of an effort.

And I am particularly bad at that kind of thing.

I'm up on the 11th floor. . .

I hope it was sufficiently clear that I was joking when I mentioned Chris Riddell a couple of posts back. I am enormously grateful to Chris. In fact when he came to the launch of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror, I was so intent on acknowledging his generosity to me over the years that I clean forgot to mention David Roberts.

My six-year stint at The Economist started in 1990 when I sat in for Chris when he was on holiday. When he came back it was felt that there was enough work for three - Chris, Dave Simonds and myself. Actually there was also Kevin Kallaugher who works as KAL, submitting from the States (something he still does) and Bobby, the pocket cartoonist.

Anyway, cue many drawings of Sadam Hussein, George Bush Snr, Helmut Kohl, John Major, Boris Yeltsin etc etc and heated debates about 70s rock bands, football, old TV programmes and goodness knows what. I do miss the camaraderie, if not the actual work. It was a bit like sitting at a bar all day. Without the booze. And with the stress of trying to get Bill Clinton's nose right. So not like a bar at all really.

I had worked for The Economist on and off for years (and for Penny Garret, the art director there, at The Listener before that) but this was the beginning of a weekly attachment to the paper and (hopefully) a life-long attachment to Chris and Dave.

It was Chris who suggested I write a children's book one evening while we were sitting in a row up on the 11th floor at The Economist. It was Chris who took the book I eventually wrote and handed it to Annie Eaton at Transworld and in so doing, it was Chris who effectively kickstarted my career as a writer.

A sneak preview

The page proofs of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth turned up today, complete with David Roberts' illustrations in position. It gets exciting at this stage because it is getting so close to the finished item. Not long to wait now before my advance copies of the books will arrive (and however many books you've had published, that first printed copy is always a thrill, believe me).

They will be in the shops in October (along with the paperback of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship). Personally, I think Tunnel's Mouth is the best of the three Tales of Terror books.

But of course you'll just have to read it when it comes out to see if you agree.

Sex scenes and strips

And speaking of Chris Riddell, I spoke to him yesterday. He and Paul Stewart had been up in the Lakes at the same time we were, but there was no phone in the cottage and no mobile coverage. I actually received a text from Chris as I was half way up Dove Crag. We must have walked into a tiny sliver of reception and out again. It was Chris's first time in the Lakes and it sounds like he had an energetic introduction thanks to Paul who is a keen walker.

We talked about what we were up to. Chris was in the middle of writing a sex scene. At least, I hope that was what he said. I haven't had much to do with sex scenes. My books have not strayed into that area at all.

Yet.

Thank goodness.

I should perhaps have finished off talking about strips by saying how linked my strips have been to Chris Riddell. As I said last time, Bestiary was done in partnership with Chris, at a time when Chris did the political cartoon on the Independent on Sunday. When Chris left to go to The Observer I was to take over as political cartoonist at The Independent on Sunday.

However Chris persuaded me to move to The Observer with him. I was to do a portrait each week for their profile page and I came up with another strip called Babel. Babel was inspired by the wonderful Feiffer strips that used to grace The Observer.

I met the then editor of The Observer, the charmless Andrew Jaspan, who tapped a David Hughes drawing with his biro, and said, 'This is the kind of thing I don't want to see in my paper.' David Hughes was about the only decent thing in the magazine at that point (and they could actually do with something of that quality now). I should have seen it as a sign.

Things didn't work out. Having said that he hated the standard big head on a little body caricatures you always get in newspapers, Jaspan now decided that was just what he wanted. I was dropped from the profile pages and the only satisfaction is that I outlived him at the paper. The strip too was eventually dropped by the then editor Will Hutton not long after he took over as editor.

I was working at The Economist all through this period (along with Chris and Dave Simonds) and it was an ex-Economist journo - Andrew Marr - who called me in to work at The Independent (where Chris had also done the Monday political cartoon). Andrew was now editor of the paper. So I left The Economist and moved to The Independent.

I had worked for The Independent for years as an illustrator, but Andrew wanted me to do more. He had the idea that as well as doing comment page illustrations I should also do illustrations to news items when he felt it was right. These often appeared on the front page.

These (full colour) drawings were done at such speed (an hour was not unusual) that it was often a struggle to make sure they were merely competent. There wasn't a lot of time to do anything particularly creative. Though I was grateful for the opportunity to have such incredible exposure, and I never lost my affection for Andrew, I began to feel as though I was being given the chance to play in front of thousands, but they weren't really my tunes and I'd had no time to rehearse.

I wanted to do the political cartoon spot, and Andrew gave me my chance. I took my inspiration from American cartoonists more than British ones (or at least living ones). I get very tired of the seaside postcard nonsense of British Political cartoons. But I think I'm in a minority.

The strip I did for the Indie was a daily strip was called 7.30 for 8.00 and was a perpetual dinner party. It was a good idea, I think, and one I may return to. As with everything I did for the Indie it was done far too quickly and without enough planning. It took a little while to find a stable form and by that time it was dropped. Andrew had been dispensed with and I knew I would follow. I wasn't actually fired, but things had run their course. They made it easy for me to go. My very short career as a political cartoonist had come to an end.

Andrew moved on to a very successful career in television. Chris is still political cartoonist on The Observer (several editors later). Dave Simonds is still at The Economist and also does the political cartoon on the New Statesman. I have no idea what Andrew Jaspan is doing.

I had a baby son and I was happy to put the stress of doing a daily cartoon behind me. Well - 'happy' is probably not the right word. It did hurt. I had worked as an illustrator in newspapers for twenty years - for the pre-Murdoch Times when it was still in Grays Inn Road, for The Independent when it was in City Road, for The Telegraph when it was still in its Deco building in Fleet Street, The Guardian, the F T. I had been lucky enough to work with some great old school art directors - David Case at the F T, David Driver at the Times, Michael McGuinness at The Independent and Graeme Murdoch at The Telegraph. Newspapers had paid my rent for many years. But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It gave me a break and I could stand back for the first time in ages and see what I wanted to do.

And it turned out that what I wanted to do most of all was write.

Chris Riddell popped up again in my strip-writing career, though. He had been brought into the New Statesman and had been asked to help get some decent cartoons into the paper. He asked me if I wanted to do a strip, and hey presto, Payne's Grey was born.

Coventry Inspiration Book Award

I came back to a mass of emails. And some good and bad news.

The good news was that Sarah Odedina had been in touch to say that Uncle Montague's Tale's of Terror has been nominated for the 2010 Coventry Inspiration Book Awards under the Read It or Else category. Thanks to the good people of Coventry for selecting my book from the crowd.

The bad news was that my New Statesman strip - Payne's Grey - is about to fall victim to that curse of the strip cartoonist: the 'redesign'. Magazines seem to redesign themselves every couple of months these days, in the same way that shops move everything around every now and then to make us feel like we are in a new and exciting place. Actually we all know we are in the same old shop, its just that now we can't find the pasta.

But Payne's Grey has survived for many years so I have no complaints. It was my last contact with the world of newspapers and it will feel weird not to do it when it comes to an end in September. Maybe this will be the spur to do another strip elsewhere. Or maybe it is a reason to stop doing them altogether.

I have done a few now. My first was with my good friend Chris Riddell in the Independent on Sunday some years ago. I came up with the idea and wrote the strips; Chris did a brilliant job with the pics. It was called Bestiary and was an extended riff on the fun to be had with inventing animals on the back of awful puns. Like, oh - I don't know - The Unwanted Hare, for instance. Or the Sole of Discretion. Or the Maiden Ants. Or the Cricket Bat. You get the idea. It amused us, anyway.

We did the strip for many years and it could have gone on, but for Chris moving to The Observer. In fact Chris is still shamelessly mining this particular seam in a pocket cartoon he does for the Literary Review, published as The Da Vinci Cod. . .


Some of us are fated to come up with original ideas; some of us are fated to steal our friends ideas and pass them off as our own. T'was ever thus.

More me

We are back in Cambridge after a week in the Lake District. I have moved around so much in my life that I do not have any one place I consider 'home', but though I have never lived in the Lakes, driving along Ullswater into Patterdale does seem like a homecoming every time I do it. I don't pretend that I have any real ownership of that place, but I do have a real attachment to it. I feel more 'me' when I'm there.