As I've mentioned before - Smith and Jones were real cats who lived next door to me when I was a kid growing up in Tunbridge Wells. I had a friend, Eric, who lived directly opposite my house on the other side of the road. We both liked cats and all the cats in the street knew us. As kids do, we made up stories about the cats, developing a sort of mythology where the human race had vanished overnight in some unexplained but very convenient apocalypse and the cats were now in charge. Smith was effectively king, and Jones was his queen. We were kids, these things don't have to make sense.
Eric's dad was a trombone player with a Trad Jazz outfit The Expedient Jazz Band, based in the unimaginably distant and exotic town of Hastings. Their house had a wonderful battered stand up piano in the dining room, and on top of the piano was a mound of old sheet music from the days of ragtime and boogie boogie. In our stories, this piano was given to Jones, and the image of Jones playing it has stayed with me ever since.
Here are the Expedients playing at the Rye Jazz festival. The personnel may have changed but they're still a proper New-Orleans style street band.
This is the strip where I crystallised the whole premise of the comic: what do cats do when they're not being observed?
This is also the point at which Smith and Jones' house turned into my own one. The Ikea sofa, the fireplace full of ornaments, the TV, the stand and the boxes underneath are all essentially drawn from life. The wall colour is not as grotty, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment