A Likely Tail

Usually my blog posts are a finely-crafted thing, I'm sure you'll agree. 

The blog gathers together the disparate elements of the week's Westmorland Gazette stories, honing them into a coherent story and presenting the resulting cartoons in a diverting web-sized nugget of opinion and humour.

On other weeks, it's a mishmash of stories and random jokes.

This is one of them weeks.

A rare albino mole is spotted in South Lakeland, Windermere businesses bewail the lack of fibre-optic broadband, Furness General appears to be trying to infect or electrocute (yes really) visitors to its A & E and a pair of lemurs have gone missing from a local zoo.

Now you're up to speed, here are the ideas pitched to my steamed editor. He exercised his astute editorial judgment and picked one for the front page. 

But which would you have chose? Add your comments below (not on Facebook, Twitter or a nearby toilet wall, if you don't mind) and then shimmy off to my website to see if you got it right.

Sketchbook - 30 April 2013

It's always a bad idea to let a cartoonist wander around the local shopping experience armed with a sketchbook and time on his hands.


It's not only the burgers in here which are not what they seem …

PC World: "Can I help you? Please? If I don't meet my target I get back to Shop Assistant Rescue."

And background muzak; "You're listening to Lakeland Radio where Phil Collins is still considered hip … in the operation sense."

Incidentally, apologies for the intrusive copyright log on these drawings. You can blame Our Dear Government for that - follow this link for a letter from David Bailey about what the blighters have been up to now. When you've done that, go sign the ePetition against it.

The Unkindest Cut (Again)

I am a big fan of the National Health Service in general and the local Trust in particular. Over many years, it has provided a healthy diet of stories for my cartoon in The Westmorland Gazette.

This week it has served up another front page story with news that it is cutting 230 jobs in the coming months, in a bid to reduce its deficit (which was in turn the due to the combined efforts of managers, our glorious government and its predecessor).

A couple of other stories also drifted past the Cartoon Desk. 

The first is that passengers alighting at the railway station known as OXENHOLMETHELAKEDISTRICT are often distraught to discover that the nearest lake is 11 miles away.

The other story is that the recent visit to great Tower Scout Camp by the Duchess of Cambridge has caused a recruitment surge …

You can see all six ideas below. These were subjected to the stern gaze of my steamed editor. 

But which did he pick for the front page?

More to the point, which would you pick? 

Add your comments below and then hobble over to my website to see if morphic resonance has worked its magic.

A plague of second homes

This week’s Westmorland Gazette front page story is about second homes in the Lake District. Again.

A report from the Cumbria Rural Housing Trust has identified a number of Lakeland villages which are in danger of becoming overwhelmed by second homes. Elterwater consists of 80% holiday homes, Skelwith Bridge 70% and many more are around the 50% mark. 

As house prices are forced up by second home ownership, and the number of young couples who can afford them decline, the Lake District is in danger of becoming a kid-free zone. 

And it is not unique to the Lake District, other areas like Devon and Cornwall are similarly affected. 

Second homes artificially inflate houses, lead to a reduction in local services, shops and schools and drive local people from the area. 

Now, I may have tackled this once or twice in my cartoon in the past. (At one point I was banned from doing cartoons about the subject.) But the story keeps coming round and I still have things to say about it.

Below are six sketches I pitched to my editor. In addition, there’s an idea which combines a local story (electricity cables being dug up and stolen), a national news story (you may have heard of it) and an element of bad taste.

Which, dear reader, do you think was the editor choice for today’s front page? 

Place your vote in the comments box below. Then take a trip to my website to see if you were right.

Doom Robes and Snow Globes

Last weekend Cumbria was hit by the worst snow storm since 1950. 

There were drifts up to twenty feet deep, 70 motorists were snowed in and had to stay for two nights in the local school, electricity cables came down and there was general chaos, as you can see in these BBC pictures.

The snow has continued all week. In fact, there are flakes falling as I type this. It’s like we’re in a giant snow globe and someone keeps shaking it up.

Or a giant doom robe, as autocorrect insisted on calling it when I tried to tweet that remark this morning. (After some debate, my Twitter followers and I decided that a doom robe was Voldemort’s dressing gown.)

My garden shed decided to put on a particularly fetching display of shedcicles.

(Photographs © Pam Grant)

No prize for guessing the subject of this week’s front page Westmorland Gazette cartoon. The three ideas below were all pitched to my steamed editor - but which one would YOU have chosen? 

Vote in the comments box below, then put on your skis and swoosh across to my website to see if the editor agreed with you.

Falling Down

A cartoonist’s working life has an uneven rhythm. A fixed point of mine, for twenty-odd years, has been the front page cartoon for The Westmorland Gazette. The afternoon before press day, between 2.00 and 5.00, I know exactly what I’ll be doing - even if I don’t know the stories I’ll be working on until I start.

Within that three hours, there is another set of rhythms. The first hour is looking at stories, exploring ideas, the second is coming up with sketches to pitch to the editor - usually four - and the final hour is finishing the artwork, scanning it, manipulating it in Photoshop and firing it off to the sub-editors in Blackburn.

This week went slightly awry.It doesn’t happen often but when it does, it gets more exciting than usual.

The story I was concentrating on was about mountain rescue, increases in fatal accidents, the unpreparedness of walkers. As a walk book writer, it’s close to my heart and I wanted to comment on it.

First four cartoons (including one on another story) didn’t quite get there. The ‘brain’ cartoon was a bit too pointed given there had been fatalities. The UFO one …well, there had been a group of UFO-spotters rescued but it was buried on page 2 of the paper.

So try again. And numbers 5 and 6 didn’t work either.

By now, my normal, carefully-composed schedule had gone out the window and it was 4.35, with the deadline still fixed at 5.00.

Fired off cartoon 7. Hm … editor runs it past one or two others. Bit of debate as it isn’t, strictly speaking, a joke (newspaper cartoons don’t have to be, they’re allowed to make a point - ask Gerald Scarfe). 

4.50 and number7 it is, giving me … ooh, ten minutes to finish it off. In the event, I was able to do this because it was drawn on the computer and needed little additional work before sending to print.

So, now you know which one got in. You can see it here on my website. And here are the seven candidates in full.

Health Scare

Your health is important. My health is important. I’d argue that my health is more important than your health but I think we’ve established the principle that, generally speaking, health is pretty important.

That’s probably why it appears in the news so often. And because politicians, administrators, managers and other unimaginative fiddlers keep interfering with it.

Morecambe Bay Primary Care University Hospitals Trust (re-arrange those words into whichever order they’re using them this month) has announced that it has a £30m shortfall in its budget. So it has announced economy measures. These include booting patients out at night, employing boy scouts as anesthetists and switching off computers at bedtime (only one of those is invented).

I have a long history of drawing cartoons about the Health Trust for The Westmorland Gazette. I’ve done most of the obvious ones - “it’s condition is critical” - so don’t react with total glee when the Trust features as the front page story. 

But there are always more jokes to be mined and here are seven of them.

You - yes, you, ill or not - can say which you think should have gone on the front page by adding a comment below.

Then take up your crutches and hobble over to my website to see if the Gazette’s editor agreed with you.

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