Remembrance

A maroon is set off at 11am in Hastings to signal the start of the two minutes silence. Or it may just be two minutes deafness - it's hard to tell.

We remember the fallen with sorrow and gratitude. We remember, but we never learn.

Bonfire

I've always felt uneasy about the practice of burning the guy. OK, it's the effigy of a man who tried to blow up the Palace of Westminster 400 years ago (or was he just the fall-guy?) but even so, it strikes me as a bit medievel.

Here in Sussex, we take our bonfire celebrations seriously. There are bonfires that take place throughout October and November. Hastings times its fireworks night to take place on the Saturday after 14 October, the date of a little skirmish that happened near here in 1066. A huge pile of wooden palettes is built on the seafront, about ten yards high, and a guy is placed on top. The bonfire is set alight on the night, and a torchlight procession of bonfire societies from all over Sussex parades through the town - one so long it takes an hour to go past any single point. Then the fireworks start. I won't try to describe how big the fireworks are - I'll just say that a few years ago they were visible in Dieppe and the French coastguard scrambled their lifeboats as they thought they were distress flares from a ship in trouble.

The finale is the burning of this years' special effigy. This is where a hated national or local figure is burned in effigy on it's own special bonfire. This is the scary bit. Two years ago the Jerwood Art Gallery was burned. Last year bankers got the treatment. This year it was effigies of hoodies and the underclass who got the blame for this summers riots.

All good clean fun? Probably. But add a few burning crosses or swastikas to the scene and then see what you think.

Semaphore

I like the night time effect I've achieved in this series if strips. It's been done by colouring the strip in the normal way (you may have noticed that it's changed to its winter colour scheme) and then adding an extra night time layer over the top, setting it to multiply and then cutting out the eyes and the white space.

I just liked the idea of Jones using tail signals.

Millie Week 10; Pt 2 8th - 10th Nov

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Coronation Street was (and still is) one of the Big Two evening soaps in the UK. EastEnders is on the BBC, is set in London, and is as miserable as sin - Coronation Street is on ITV, set in Manchester, and was as the time quite comic.

Equity is the actors union.

Millie Week 10 Pt 1; Mon 5th - Weds 7th Nov

Click to enlarge

Twenty years ago I was living in Tunbridge Wells. Its main shopping street, Calverley Road had just been pedestrianised and a new shopping Mall had been built adjacent to it. This provided a perfect breeding ground for people with clipboards - a narrow area full of people and very few means of escape. In those days you would just get accosted by people doing surveys. Nowadays, the precinct is awash with Chuggers (short for Charity Muggers - those people who stop you in the street and try to get you to sign up to a charity for a commission), so much so that the local paper had a headline on its front page this summer warning about 'The Chugger Menace'.

That's where the first strip came from. As for the questions: At the time Whiskas cat food had the slogan '8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas', a phrase so famous there is now a comedy panel show about statistics (sounds unlikely, I know) called '8 out of 10 cats'. Then, sometime in the 90s, someone realised that no-one had ever consulted the cats. The slogan is now the less snappy '8 out of 10 owner say their cats prefer it'. The mintiest lager is, for the record, Special Brew. And Sky TV was just starting up - a satellite dish outside your home was at that time a pretty good signifier of being one of the lower orders. I don't know why but TV technology is subject to some rather strange inverted snobbery - my Dad was proud that our family still only had a black and white TV in 1977!

...and now we return you to our main story...

Trench warfare

I'm tying together Guy Fawkes and the upcoming Remembrance day (11th November) this year. The thought occurred to me that animals would consider the fireworks to be like missiles and guns going off, and this led to this series of first world war related strips, with the cats hiding in a trench while the explosions go on around them...

Corporal Jones is a reference to Dad's Army. I'd like to dedicate this strip to David Croft who has just died.

Gunpowder Treason and Plot

I've ignored Halloween this year in order to move straight on to Guy Fawkes night. I'm invoking a nursery rhyme here:

Remember remember
the fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot,
I see no reason why
Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

That reason is, of course, never explained. If the gunpowder plot is a new bit of British history to you here is that reason...