Oh, the irony

They've missed their lift so it looks like Smith and Jones are going to be finding their own way home. Stay tuned for Smith and Jones, the Incredible Journey…

Peng

'Peng!' just seemed to be the right sound for a wire mesh fence gradually coming apart, wires snapping one by one, but I was sure I'd seen it somewhere before. It turns out it was from a Swiss revolutionary comic from the 1968 student protests, 'The Deadly Finger'. It's the sound of the reader being shot by a revolutionary for being too bourgeois. And the last frame of the comic was also used by Stereolab as the logo for Peng Records, the indie label they released their first few albums on...

Run

Shelf

Dig

Have you noticed that every Prisoner of War movie ever made contains a character called Ginger? Were they actually based on catteries?

The Bide-a-Wee Cattery

I always feel guilty about us leaving the cats at the cattery whenever we go off on holiday. This series is me addressing the sense of guilt.

To be fair, the cattery I always send my cats to is nothing like as basic as the bide-a-wee cattery Smith goes to. It has central heating and perching shelves on several levels and a window to look out of and an external run to play in. However, it still has that florescent-lit central corridor which gives it that forbidding jailhouse atmosphere. And sometimes there's that one cat at the end of the corridor in the Hannibal Lecter mask...