Bird scarer

One of these things has appeared in my neighbourhood. It’s essentially a kite in the shape of a bird of prey (or a kite in the shape of a kite if you like) tethered to a pole. It’s made out of polythene so it’s very light and it only takes the lightest of breezes to send it aloft, and as it’s tethered it rises and then swoops down suddenly like stooping buzzard. The combination of the silhouete and the movement keeps nesting seagulls away. This summer we haven’t had any seagulls on our roof.

However, it does also look like a very large cat toy.

To Battle

Let’s get this straight. The Battle of Hastings didn’t take place at Hastings – it took place at Battle. Of course, battle was’t called Battle then, that came later, after the battle. Before the battle it was a field on the side of Senlac Hill. After the battle, William the Conqueror founded an abbey on the site, called Battle Abbey and the town of Battle grew around it. Hastings was where William and his troops stayed for the week before the battle, while Harold, the English king, was trying to get his troops back down from Yorkshire where he had just had to fight another battle against some opportunistic Vikings.

Chumley gets to play the humble local.

Lynch mob

Reflecting the new meaner small-minded mood towards newcomers that had manifested itself after the Brexit vote. If anyone’s going to be the reactionary in the group its going to be Smudge. Luckily her brother is a bit more Zen about things.

Nine nine nine

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And this one is a lot of story threads being joined together and becoming something else entirely. Obviously this is a left over from the Olympics, but it was also going to be used to herald a big change to the strip as well, which has now been postponed until after the millennial celebrations of Strip 1,000 on Monday.

Don’t worry, it’s not a big fundamental change like what has been happening to Girth over the past few weeks. Instead I’ll be making a popular occasional character a regular, something I’ve been working up to for a couple of years now…

All will be revelaed in a couple of weeks’ time…

Peek at you

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This week is very much made up of left over gags from other weeks, being used as filler while the counter in the corner of the top right frame ticks its way up to the big 1,000. So here’s a gag from the long grass series that was too good to waste. Originally a kangaroo was going to appear in the penultimate panel, but in between the writing and the drawing of this strip, Pokemon Go took off, so I replaced the Roo with a Pikachu, and the gag became about ten times better.

Fencing

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As they say on the game show Catchphrase, say what you see.

Now trending…

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Well, the box is there. Who can resist jumping into it?

Denizens

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Hmm. Beard? Check. Mad hair? Check. Zany shirt? Check. ‘Interesting’ spectacles? Check. Hat? Check. That’s me, that is!

The main floor of the Observer Building doesn’t have a catwalk, so excuse the artistic licence, I’ve added one so the cats can observe, without being observed themselves. It also helps convey the post-industrial vibe of the place.

Gotham

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This is the back of the Observer Building. You can reach it by either driving half a mile from the front door in a circuitous route that takes you from the top of the cliff to the bottom – or you can walk down a set of stone stairs at the side of the building. The graffiti strewn fire-escape bedecked space at the back is known as Gotham Alley, and is often used for street festivals.

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I’d better explain some of Chumley’s incantations. Open Seame and Abracadabra are obvious enough, but Izzy wizzy let’s get busy is the catchphrase of Sooty, a beloved glove puppet of a bear that has been entertaining children since 1948. I used to watch Sooty avidly on the telly and he gave me my first taste of the stage when I was a child, when I was invited to go up on stage to meet him and Harry Corbett during a live show in Tunbridge Wells.

Alaam kazaar (as I remember it) was the incanation of Fareik the Magician in Hanna Barbera’s Arabian Knights, an animated segment of the Banana Splits show.

Of course, in Britain, the magic words that will get you into any house party is ‘We’re friends of Dave‘ as there’s guaranteed to be a Dave there. A party isn’t a party without a certified Dave present.

The referendum was still a week away. And that particular incanation is more likely to make doors slam in your face than anything else.

Note that Smith has noticed the window in the second frame, and it’s there, open, in plain sight in the penultimate frame. And aren’t the colours lovely? This is one of those strips where everything worked.

The Observer Building

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I took some reference photos to get the backgrounds right for this strip. The backgrounds to frames 1 and 3 are of the stuccoed fronts of Cornwallis Gardens, a Victorian development of grand houses around a triangular green space that has now sadly gone to seed. It’s got that combination of grandeur and squalour which is very Hastings. If you look very hard at the trees in the background you’ll be able to see a wino shouting at an empty can of Special Brew.

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Turn 180 degrees and you’ll see this glazed tiled pile – another example of derelict grandeur – The Observer Building.

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Once upon a time it was the home of the local paper, Hastings Observer, with the offices you see here on the street level at the front. The building was built on the edge of a cliff, so it drops away two further levels at the back, which was where the printing presses used to be. It’s now being used as a multi-purpose arts space, high on quirk and character but severely lacking as a performance space in my opinion. It’s a great space for a party or a ‘happening’ though, and I’ve used its coffee shop a few times when I’m working on Smith scripts.

Here’s the website for it. Caution: it may contain toxic levels of whimsy.

Why the crowd outside? They’re all waiting for a fashion show to open.