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.

Big

There were a variety of cartoon candidates amongst this week’s Westmorland Gazette stories. Two in particular exerted a strange, cartoony pull.

In the first, it has been announced that the law has been modified, allowing personal locator beacons (PLBs) to be carried by walkers. Previously restricted for use by those at sea or in the air, this opens up exciting possibilities. Chief amongst them is yet more call outs for Mountain Rescue Teams who have to go recover hapless dolts who have set out into the mountains in shorts and flipflops but who bought a PLB as the latest must-have gadget touted by the outdoor magazines. They already think a battery-operated GPS and mobile phone is a valid substitute for a map and a brain, so I can’t see PLBs improving the situation.

The second story is about a family. No ordinary family but one which is about to appear in a TV documentary. Even that is ordinary these days but this family is appearing in a documentary about big families; they have 15 children. Clearly someone gave them a book entitled the Birds and the Swarm at an early stage in their marriage. Laudably, they are taking part in the documentary to correct the standard Daily Mail impression that all large families are on welfare benefits. 

During the course of the afternoon’s cartooning, I sketched away at ideas but always had one particular drawing in the back of my mind. Unfortunately I didn’t have a caption for it. A few generous souls on Twitter offered to crowd source a caption, which was noble but impractical; it would have meant revealing the story on Twitter where it could be snatched away by the Gazette’s perfidious rivals.

I left the drawing until last and, as is often the case, the act of drawing it caused a caption to happen. You can see all the sketches below and click here to discover which one won the prized position on the front page of the Gazette.

“Being the youngest of 15 means all the hand-me-downs have disintegrated by the time I get them.”

“It’s disgraceful, the way these TV companies sponge off large families.”

“It’s a personal locator beacon, so my wife can find me in the supermarket.”

“Mountain rescue? Can you send someone to find my personal locator beacon?”

“We liked the idea of David Cameron’s Big Society so much we decided to start our own.”

A Pressing Concern

We’ve all done it.

We’ve picked up the remote control, fiddled around and pressed the wrong button. 

Before we know it, the video has turned off halfway through a recording, the neighbour’s garage door has opened or we’ve launched a major air-sea search-and-rescue incident.

This is exactly what happened to a gentleman on Ullswater last week. He was on his boat, demonstrating his radio to his grandchildren. Unfortunately he pressed the Mayday button and sent a signal to Liverpool coast guards.

They in turn triggered rescue boats from Ullswater Outward Bound Centre, a nine man team from Patterdale Mountain Rescue and crews aboard the Ullswater Steamers.

The man was eventually found, three hours later, at a local marina, blissfully unaware of the havoc he’d caused and, probably by this stage, introducing his grandkids to the delights of Werther’s Originals.

The leader of the Mountain Rescue Team commented, with commendable restraint: “I wouldn’t implore his intention of checking his equipment although I would query how well he actually did it.”

This, clearly, is ideal stuff for a newspaper cartoon. Below you can see the pencil sketches submitted to the editor. It’s really one idea plus four variations; it sort of grew on me.

To see which one adorns the front of Thursday’s Westmorland Gazette, rush over to my website urgently!