I'm off to the beach for the afternoon after hearing that summer is ending tomorrow when the temperature gets slashed by a half and were back in the gloom. Bummer



Now, this is an absolute factoid, it was Benyon who first used the term 'Th'Lone Striker' in a gag long before it was used by 'football people' as they like to call themselves. It was a single cartoon with a masked footballer, well looking like exactly like the Groover running with ball towards the goal. Someon eon the side of the pitch was exclaiming 'Far out, it's Th'Lone Striker". I can't find it anywhere, but with luck it may turn up.

I'm getting back into the swing of scanning, although when I climb up the ladder and get into the archive I spend too much time going through the sheets of cards and files and I drift away in thought. So, yesterday I took the train up to town and checked out the Hockney exhibition with a friend and was impressed by his large landscapes and his i pad drawings. Most of the other paintings were sketch book ideas being worked out.

We had a meal in the Chelsea Arts Club bar and I lurched back to the coast on the last train and somehow all the activity has re-aligned me with the changed hour. I woke refreshed and moderately pleased to be alive. Of course it could all be to do with the tropical weather.

Another very early strip which is weird and rather like talking to Benyon late at night with a bottle or two and he would go off on a flight of fancy about the meaning of life and it would end up with some extended surreal monologue. I asked him once why his characters never looked alike from one week to the next and he looked at me  as though I was mad. "I'm not Walt Bloody Disney". He had a low boredom threshold and just like to shake it up all the time. He thought  it was all about the joke and the drawing got in the way, but as time went on he obviously got into the drawing more.

Well, I finally dragged myself into the archive to scan some gags and this one has to be very early if not one of the earliest. The hat is weird and the reference to the Lone Ranger is the only one I've ever found. I'm afraid people my age have their roots in westerns and can actually remember the Lone Ranger in black and white on the TV along with Kit Carson and Hopalong Cassidy etc and Benyon was a big western fan. Hi HO!

I'm also staggered that th'Groover's first codpiece was a horses head which makes cowboy sense. The rat does make an appearance bottom right. But then in Britain you're never more than five yards from a rat, so they say.

Thanks Derek, you've shaken me out of this weird stupour I've been stuck in over the past couple of weeks. By the time I've rolled off my futon in the late morning the sun has been streaming through the window. So, I sit outside drinking coffee, taking in the rays and suddenly the pub is open. A stroll along the beach,  a liquid lunch, a read of a newspaper and before you know it I'm sitting in front of the box watching Lovejoy, although I did notice Peter Gabriel is on the Beeb tonight. Finally I scratch away making notes on several projects I'll never finsh and the days over. Winter is a great deal more invigorating as the elements cut up rough and you can stand out on the headland playing air guitar with surf and storm full in the face. Christ, I must get up to town next week and see who is still alive enough to spend time with. Anyway, the plan is to start scanning tomorrow!

Apologies. I got dragged away last week by some old fiends who had been reading this blog and turned up to discuss my lost night in the caravan of mystery. Well, we went back to try and find it but failed and then decided to see if it was on any other sites we knew of by which time we were a long way from my place but close to a  farm where a friend in common lives. I've known him since he was selling funny tobacco in Camden Town many years ago and much altered by a variety of chemicals he went off to write songs in the country and mutated into a smallholder with the usual pigs and chickens. Over the years he acquired an extended family including some outstanding bronzed and muscular daughters who could wrestle bison. It was a delight to watch them at work, lifting barns onto their backs and placing them elsewhere in the fields.

Anyway, the weather was excellent and we spent our time chatting over drinks, including cider produced by a neighbour which could fuel an aircraft carrier but left me disturbingly clear headed the morning and ready for more. Oddly enough the farmer remembered staying at Benyon's flat when he first went to London where he met someone called Wally who broke into the gas meter and took  him to the Isle of White for the megga festival with Dylan headlining, after which life was hazy for several years. He had no idea what happened to Wally who had left taking his leather coat while he slept but several years later he bumped into Benyon in Soho who demanded his gas money back but accepted the two albums in his bag in exchange.

So, I returned to my place yesterday and the sun was beating down so I went down to beach, found my favourite spot between rocks and spent the afternoon with a chilled white wine, imagining how well the farmer's daughters would surf. They would probably ride the surf in a controlled bronzed and muscular pyramid, dismounting the boards effortlessly as they touched the beach
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I shall scan some drawings today as the sun seems to have given up on us.

The thing is I went down to the pub a few days ago and the next thing I remember was waking up in a caravan on some dreadful site attached to what is best described as Cold Comfort Farm. I have no idea who owned the caravan but my instinct told me to get the hell out so I waded across fields of slurry and onto a road until I came to a petrol station with a Little Chef. Fortunately I managed to get coffee with the loose change in my pocket, I hate cards, and information about where I was which turned out to be closer to an old mate of mine than to my place, about thirty miles away. His lady wife wasn't to impressed to see me but he seemed happy enough so I stayed there for a few days. He has a big place all paid for by royalties from his one hit so we spent most of time I was there in his studio playing tapes and chilling.

Anyway, he eventually drove me back to my place and I was surprised to discover that no one even remembered me being in the pub the night I was kidnapped let alone who I was with. I still have no idea who the caravan belongs to.  Maybe female or maybe a serial killer, probably Danish, who was just about to hang me from a hook over the pig sty.

I can now resume my responsibilities and start blogging again