I say wysteria, you say wisteria

The Chelsea Flower Show is happening this week, so I thought I'd use it as the peg to hang the next batch of cartoons from.

I like a nice garden but I wouldn't know a hollyhock from a sweet pea - whenever we're in the park and Linda asks me what a particular flower is, I can only answer 'That's a plant'. If pressed I can narrow it down to 'a blue one' or 'a red one'.

Wysteria can be spelled 'Wysteria', 'Wisteria' or even 'wistaria', but I'm sticking with the first one, because I'm the kind of guy who spells 'Colour' with a U.

Wasp on a wall

I love Chumley. He's such a gentle soul, and his laid back live-and-let-live approach to life is one I try my best to emulate. Sadly, his lack of internal or external conflict makes him very hard to write for, which is why he doesn't appear as much as I'd like.

Chumley is Smudge's brother - which is why he's the only other creature alive that is allowed to sit on Smudge's sacred wall. Not that he sees why a wall has to be sacred anyway.

Big hand

Panel two is an attempt to draw sarcasm. I'm not sure the heavily lidded eyes work with Smith's markings, but it was worth a try.

The paw of doom

One of the odd things about 'Smith' is that it makes no sense to anyone reading it in black and white. Jones and Smudge look exactly the same as one another before the colouring is added, and there are a few strips that rely on the colour renderingbefore the joke appears. In this case the shadow of Smudge's paw doesn't appear in the original artwork.

I saw Bella playing with a wasp today, and she got stung on her paw before I could stop her. She licked her paw a couple of times and then went back to her game of bashing the wasp, letting it go and bashing it again. She's hardcore.

Jasper

Time for some Smudge and Chumley strips I think - we haven't seen them for a while.

Billie and Bella are turning into an efficient bug killing team. No moth, fly or wasp that dares to enter our house gets out again alive. Especially the wasps, which somehow they are able to pluck out of the air without getting stung. A trick which Smudge hasn't learned yet, alas.

Heccilopter

Originally published 2 July 2010

Putting Smudge’s powerful swipe to other uses.

The other side of the wall

Originally published 30 April 2010

It's never been explained what the wall is doing in Smith's garden. I rationalise that once upon a time there was a big Victorian house with a big perimeter war, but it got bombed in an incendiary attack during the war. After the war, the house and its grounds were razed and Smith's housing estate got built on top of it, planned with a big communal garden in a typically optimistic post-war sort of way. Somehow, the wall survived all this, and it has been jealously guarded by generations of British Blue cats ever since, the most recent one of which is Smudge.

Actually, it's a transplant from Tunbridge Wells. This was the wall that divided the front gardens of the houses two doors away from me - and you would always find a cat called Perdi sitting on it. It's another hangover from those stories Eric and I made up when we were kids.

Lucy's football

Originally published 28 April 2010

It has been pointed out that Smudge's wall is Smith's equivalent of Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy's football. And yes, I'll go along with that - though I do allow Smudge to be the fall guy occasionally.

Introducing Smudge

Originally Published 26 April 2010

Here's the prototype Smudge. along with the first appearance of her wall. Smudge in this strip still sports the smudge of blue on her nose which gave her her name - but that was removed after a few strips to give her face more clarity. You'll notice I've also carefully drawn in where the blue bits of her coat start and finish, which is why she looks a bit strange.

Can you handle the cute?

 I've found some old photos of Smudge and Cholmondely from when they were kittens. I'd put them at about four months old here. Here they are running around my old flat in Tunbridge Wells, around April and May of 1996. By law kittens have to pose for photos in baskets, and Smudge and Cholmondeley don't disappoint...

Last of the sparkles

The animated sparkles seem to have gone down really well, which is good. They were well worth the extra effort it took to create them.

The tech specs are quite simple - this is an animated GIF with three frames set to loop endlessly. As most of the strip remains the same in each frame, with just the sparkles (created with a random scatter brush in Photoshop) different, there isn't much of a size overhead. I'll do this more often, whenever I can come up with a gag that warrants it...

Fluff!

Further to my musings about the obviousness of verbal jokes, here's it's opposite. It doesn't matter what the gag is, if the drawing makes you laugh, you know you're onto a winner.

Obvious?

I think this joke is too obvious and and slightly ashamed of it. However, whenever I post whatever I consider to be a sub-par gag, I usually find the reaction that comes back is more appreciative than for the jokes I'm actually proud of. Maybe I'm a gag snob - forever producing tartes aux citron when I should be serving up custard pies.

Pssscht!

One of those observational strips, based on the real Cholmondeley who would always run out of the room whenever a carbonated drink was opened too near him. It took us a while to realise that what he was frightened of was the noise, which sounds like a hostile cat spitting.

I note I've used the word 'soda' here. This is what happens when you live with an American for too long, you start adopting their vocabulary. There's no such thing as a 'soda' here - it's a soft drink or a fizzy drink. Soda is what you bake with.

Nap attack!

Yes, it's the real Smudge! I've been trying to get a photo of her asleep in this position for ages but up to now she's always woken up as soon as she hears a camera approaching.

Bean bag

Smudge's bean bag is getting like this, but that's how she likes it...

It's Ideal!

I got a Mouse Trap Game for Christmas around 1970. I think I played the actual game just once, that was really dull, but assembling the wonderfully Heath Robinson-esque trap and seeing it operate gave me many hours of enjoyment.

For the uninitiated, this was how it worked. Turning crank A cause cog B to rotate. A tab on the cog caused a stop sign on a lever tensioned with a rubber band to move backwards. Once the tab released the lever, the stop sign sprang forwards, propelling an old boot hanging from a lamp post into a bucket, which tipped over, releasing a ball bearing. This tumbled down a flight of stairs, and then into a sinuous drainpipe, at the bottom of which it barreled into a spring loaded pole with a hand on top. A bowling ball is balanced precariously on top of a crazy complex of plumbing - this is disturbed by the hand on the pole and guided through a thing-ma-jig (that's what they called it), dropping down into a bath tub and then down onto a seesaw. A diver is perched on the other end of the see saw - he is propelled into a hot tub and the vibrations caused by his landing causes the cage balanced on top of a serrated pole to fall down onto the space where the mouse used to be. The mouse is now in the next county.

I'm shocked to discover that MB Games have redesigned the mouse trap. Is nothing sacred? I mean, what is going on here? There's a toilet on top, for heavens sake!

Day of the Seagull

One day I will write a horror book called 'Day of the Seagull'. Paperback only, published by New English Library, in a pre-thumbed edition that falls open at the most violent bits. A bit like those schlocky pulp novels like The Rats and Night of The Crabs that were so popular in the 70s. Though it must be said, this seagull looks a bit too friendly and gormless to be really frightening.

Mew!

It's time to bring Smudge and Chumley into the strip a bit more now. I'm being a bit unfair on the real Smudge here, but in our house she's definitely the cat that likes to rule the roost. She used to rule her brother with an iron claw, despite his being twice the size and having twice the strength of her. In the next couple of months we're going to see more of Smudge's sense of self importance and Chumley's gentle nature.

Ahem!

Have you quite finished with that Blog yet? I demand some attention and I'm going to sit in front of your screen until I get it.

Just be thankful I'm on your old folder of Millie scripts and not sitting on your keyboard.

Incidentally, have you seen what Gizmo's up to in the front room? I've seen this happen before with neutered toms - one snip and they turn into John Barrowman....

I am what I am
I am my own special creation...

...oops.