Catsan

Originally published 14 July 2010

The background’s a bit unsuccessful here - it was an attempt to show the sandstone cliffs at Hastings, but it was done without any photographic reference, so it’s ended up looking all wrong. Those cliffs should be at least 60 feet high - but they look more like the banks of a dried up river.

Meet the beach

Originally published 12 July 2010

Some cats and a beach. All I need now is a balding bloke in a bow tie and I would have had the premise to Buzza Wuzza, but no, I missed that chance and decided to start in a ghost and blue quadrilateral doctor-free universe.

The strip is set in my home town of Hastings, and Hastings has a beach (though we don’t like to tell anyone it’s entirely made out to pebbles until they have made the journey here), so it would be a waste not to use it. . So once a year Smith and Jones make the mile-long trek to the sea.

I think at this point we have a generic beach, hence the sand - the strip would gradually become more geographically accurate as the story went on.

In strict tempo

The music Jones is playing in frame one is Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer', true to her roots in boogie woogie and ragtime. In the last frame she's playing Bach's 'Well Tempered Clavier'.

The World Cup Final, 2010

Originally published 9 July

A rewrite of one of my original strips from 1982, where the subject Smith was avoiding was the Royal Wedding between Charles and Diana. That turned out well, didn’t it?

Spain won, apparently. I just had to look it up. It was that memorable to me. England, as ever, got thrashed by Germany 4-1, not even getting to the quarter finals.

As I write, the England team has somehow managed to scrape into the finals again, to be played next summer in Brazil. So we have the usual cycle of hype, bragging, false hope and inevitable disappointment to look forward to again…

Fall

Originally published 7 July

The relentless cycling of the seasons is a theme that I keep returning to, something that was especially true in this first year. This was published on the 9th of July, so we’d just passed over the hump of the year, and the nights were very slowly starting to draw in. There are some people who can’t just live in the moment though - the dog days of high summer are just a harbinger of the chill winds of winter to cone. Some people call it Autumn, other just see the Fall.

Bubblegum

Originally published 5 July

This is why you never see a cat chewing bubblegum. Obviously. The colour schemes were improving at this point. I was marrying the background with the main accent colour, in this case a minty green to go with the Pepto-Bismol pink.

Heccilopter

Originally published 2 July 2010

Putting Smudge’s powerful swipe to other uses.