Fight!!

As Harry Hill would say: "Dave the swan and Smudge the cat - but which one is the best? There's only one way to find out... FIIIIIIGGGGHHHTTTTT!

Well swum swan

If you've been paying attention to this and the previous three titles, you'll notice that I've been reciting the world's easiest tongue twister.

Take a swan out of float mode, and it becomes a rather ungainly beast.

Millie Week 38, Mon 27 - Sat 1 June 1991

Time for some pro-bike propaganda. I was a non-driving lycra lout at the time. I don't cycle as much as I'd like to any more, but I still make sure I give cyclists the space they require on the road, and if it annoys the more neanderthal car drivers amongst us (usually an impatient twat in an Audi), then that's all the better.

Swan swim back again

As I said earlier, swans are vicious bastards. I was chased out of the Slimbridge wildfowl centre once by one. I've had them grab at my camera when I was trying to take a photo of them. Swans have definite anger management issues.

Swim, swan, swim

Swans look great but they're vicious bastards. Dave is based on a swan that used to be on the pond by the food court at Bluewater shopping centre. It shared the pond with some ducks and moorhens, but would really have preferred to have been alone, so he could hoover up all the discarded fast food by himself. He spent so much time chasing everyone out of his pond that he never noticed that the ducks and moorhens had worked out a system where two waterfowl would keep him busy while all the others toddled over to the picnic tables and gorged themselves on leftovers.

Swan swim out to sea

Look, the pond has tripled in size over the weekend! I blame this supposed drought we've been having. The powers that be announced a hosepipe ban in the South East of England just before Easter, and it's been raining non-stop ever since. However, it appears to be special non-reservoir filling rain, as there's no sign of the ban being rescinded.

This strip is a rewrite of a Millie one - so don't be surprised if you see something very similar appear on the blog on a Saturday in the future.

Millie Week 37, Mon 20 - Sat 25 May 1991

I'd just become a born again cyclist and was riding my shiny new Peugeot hybrid all over Kent and Sussex. Cue three weeks of bike related strips.

Room for a little one?

You'll see a lot of this swan in the future.

The inland seagull

This is more a memory of my Tunbridge Wells days, waking up in the morning and finding an overcast sky and a back garden awash with seagulls. When they turn up thirty miles inland then you know you're in trouble.

Waterhole

Essentially setting up the locale for the next few strips. Watch as the pond gets bigger and smaller as the strip demands...

Millie Week 36, Mon 13 - Sat 18 May 1991

This weeks prop is the phone.

0898 numbers in those days were 'premium rate services', which is as good a euphemism as as for sex lines I suppose.

Brian Shark is an amalgam of two radio hosts who were the nearest thing we had to shock jocks in the 1990s.

Brian Hayes worked for LBC, and was famed for his short temper with people who called and then just spouted received opinion. He was on a crusade against lazy thinking. In that way he was actually the exact opposite of todays talk show hosts, who will mercilessly punish anyone who calls in with ideas that disagree with their own narrow opinions. James Whale, on the other hand, was a harbinger of exactly that kind of radio host. He's mellowed over the years, but is no less populist.  

The ten second delay allowed the phone-in host time to deploy the profanity button if anyone swore on air.

The final strip was a private joke - just me saying hello to my friends at the time. But it was also a jab at the kind of people who would ring up the station and reel out an endless list of names on air, inevitably closing with 'and anyone else that knows me.'

So that would be me then.

Scrape scrape scrape

This appears to be a male cat thing. My female cats have done their business and covered their doings with a couple of scrapes of litter. However, the male cats, once they've scraped the litter, get out of the tray and start scraping at the floor, the walls, the doors, anything they can get their paws on. And they don't seem to know when to stop.

Crank crank crank

Do I detect a running joke starting here?

Jack in the Green

Permit me a local in-joke every now and then. As older readers may remember, this strip is set in Hastings, a tatty but lively resort town on the south coast of England. Today is the May Bank Holiday - and on that day two things happen.

1) The Jack in the Green festival. This is an excuse for hippies, folkies, pagans, morris dancers and other rather wonderful misfits to get together on Castle Hill and celebrate the coming of the new Spring. They do this by covering themselves in green dye and symbolically slaying a garlanded figure called The Jack in Hastings Castle, in order to release the spirit of the new summer. Then they find a Christian to burn in a wicker man. Imagine a renaissance fair with more ritual violence.

2) The Hastings Bike Run. Simultaneously, Hastings is invaded by 20,000 motorcyclists riding down the A21 on all manner of bikes. The seafront becomes a three mile long cycle rack filled with all kinds of motorbike. You'll find fantastic customised bikes, spotless Harleys, classic Triumphs and Nortons, some scary looking (but very friendly) greasers on terrifying looking trikes and a very few obnoxious tosspots on Kawasakis and Ducattis roaring up and down the promenade.

So, on the top of the hill we have the faerie folk in their green dyed hemp clothing, and on the bottom of the hill we have the bikers in their black leathers. And you know what? They get along fine. An Old Town pub in the early evening is likely to be a sea of green wafty gauze and black leather, with everyone having a fine old time.

I couldn't imagine this sort of thing being tolerated in Tunbridge Wells. They have by-laws about it.

Millie Week 35, Mon 6 - Sat 11 May 1991

I'm not a natural gardener, and the first strip explains why pretty succinctly - I just don't have the patience for it.

The big novelty gift item of 1991 was the dancing flower in a pot - an artificial robotic plant that jerked in response to rhythmic noises. It seemed that there were dodgy geezers selling these things from suitcases every five paces along Oxford Street that summer.

Finally, meet Des. I wasn't allowed to put a cat in this strip, despite my best attempts to, so instead I gave Richard a pet weed in his window box. Des became a useful supporting character who would appear every spring. Note the dynamic of the relationship between Richard and Des. Richard thinks Des is a miracle of nature - Des thinks Richard is a twat. I've just noticed that something very similar is going to occur between Jones and a new character in some strips which are going to appear in the next few weeks. There are some themes that it seems I keep on returning to.

New Age music - pan pipes played by whales. You know the stuff.

The Farm were a band that made one album, had one huge hit and then seemingly disappeared completely. I'm sure there was more to them than that (in fact there was), but to the casual observer, they appeared fully formed with 'All Together Now', an anti-war song that was essentially a rewrite of Pachelbel's Canon, and then vanished again.

May the fourth be with you

The weak pun above is the main reason why this strip is here. It's Star Wars day, folks, and if George Lucas hasn't selected today to release his completely unnecessary 3-D retooling of The Phantom Menace I shall want to know why. Besides, isn't Jar-Jar Binks the very antithesis of a three dimensional character?

Not my best, but at least I got to give Jones some Leia buns.

Bonnnnnggggg!

This is the sound my Mac makes when it starts up.