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.

A Damp New Year

Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope you have your wellington boots handy - it’s going to be a wet start.

2012 has gone down as the wettest year in Cumbria since records began in 1910. Given that the Lakes already has a reputation for rain (it’s how we keep the lakes topped up, you know), visitors decided they’d had enough and stayed away in droves over the Christmas period. The tourism industry wasn’t too happy about that.

This became the main story in this week’s Westmorland Gazette and, as it is becoming a novelty to tackle a page one story, this is the one I concentrated on for the cartoon.

Below are the four ideasI pitched to my editor. The final one of the four is my favourite. Sadly, this also proved to be controversial; the Gazette’s editorial team felt that flooded hotels were too recent a memory to be popular with our readers.

Now you know which one didn’t get in … so which would you have chosen for the front page?

Cast your vote in the comments box below, then paddle across to my website to see if you were right.

Making Plans for Brockhole

Brockhole is the Lake District National Park Authority visitor centre and is justly famous. It's a Victorian mansion which stands in Thomas Mawson-designed grounds on the shore of England's largest lake.

It's a lovely old building in a superb setting. I'm quite fond of it.

But over the years it has suffered at the hands of consultants, planners and a number of folk who wanted to improve it, maximise it's visitor potential or chop bits down. As the Park has gradually withdrawn from servicing visitors - closing down many of its tourist information centres, for example - Brockhole is looking increasingly out on a limb, exposed to the cruel ravages of the UK recession and political whim.

Now we have yet another Masterplan. Yes, they've been making plans for Brockhole so that it can boldly go into the 21st century. This was reported yesterday in the Cumbria media, including my own Westmorland Gazette. Not unnaturally, I wanted to tackle it in my front page cartoon.

You can see the results below. My first batch was rejected as a little too aggressive. I submitted a second selection and … we went for a cartoon about Crooklands village constantly losing its electricity supply, whilst the rest of Cumbria gets superfast broadband.

What do you think? Was the right choice? Comments welcome below.

(The musical links in this week's blog are entirely gratuitous. I needed cheering up.)

Grit, Crabs & Blobs

This week’s newspaper stories consisted of grit, crabs and blobs - with an added dash of Vikings.

Grit first. Having been marooned in the frozen wastes two winters ago, Troutbeck residents have got together and bought their own gritting machine. It seems everyone is anticipating a harsh winter. Good topic, but I pitched a grit cartoon last week and didn’t have anything new to say. Moving on …

Another Viking horde of gold and precious stones has been found locally by a metal detector enthusiast. (Aside: There must be a better word for them than metal detectorists, which is becoming prevalent. Detectoraks?). Again, I’ve tackled a similar story not so long ago, so only had one idea to pitch for this.

An alien crab has been found in the Duddon Estuary. The Chinese Mitten Crab is apparently a menace and highly invasive. Keep a look out in case you see one scuttling down a river near you.

And finally … the blobs. Walkers in Patterdale spotted these glutinous invaders, took some pics, wrote a blob blog and the story went global. The UK tabloids speculated that it might be an alien life form, brought here by meteorites (this is because UK tabloids assume their readers have the intellectual capacity of a fern). After testing, the blobs turned out to contain stag semen. So either the aliens are humping the local wildlife or the explanation is more prosiac.

Below you can see the ideas I pitched to my esteemed editor. Only one made it to the front page. I think you can all guess which one didn’t. To see which did, rush out and buy a copy of The Westmorland Gazette or visit my website from Friday morning.

1300 Cartoons (and counting)

1984 was an interesting year. Spandau Ballet was the biggest band in the UK. Big Brother was still 16 years away. I had been freelance for six months and was surprised to find I could still afford to eat. And a small, single column cartoon appeared on the front page of The Westmorland Gazette, the UK's top regional weekly newspaper.

Okay, I exaggerate. Madonna was much bigger than the Kemp brothers. But the cartoon was a new departure and I'm mildly astonished to find it continuing to sit on the front page, twenty five years later.

It's sobering to reflect that the cartoon is now older than some of the Gazette's reporters. It’s attempts to appear hip and trendy manifest as an online colour version. There it can even be viewed on an iPhone. It has yet to Twitter, Digg or Spotify but it's been on TV and even inspired a theatre set.

Looking back, I can see that the drawing style has changed dramatically over the years. This is partly due to deadline. In the old days, I took a day to do the cartoon. Now I get three hours from seeing the story to finished artwork. This includes at least four preliminary sketches for the editor to choose - or, if he hates all of them, up to ten. Then the finished cartoon is scanned into my Powerbook, a grey wash added in Photoshop and the electronic file is sent to the sub-editors in Blackburn. All of which takes only twice as long than the old fashioned method.

The subject matter of some of the jokes haven’t changed much. For example, I've been 'doing' Sellafield for almost the entire career of the cartoon. Other recurring topics include Windermere power boats, low flying aircraft, Kendal's bewildering traffic system, second homes and the local hospital. When I began, the Gazette's editor had me campaigning to have the hospital built. Fast forward 25 years and the cartoon is campaigning to prevent it being closed.

I still have most of the 1300 original cartoons and 5200 preliminary sketches. Occasionally originals get sold or are given away to much-loved and highly valued friends - who promptly hang them in the loo. The rest are carefully filed away against the day when Tate Modern gives up on Brit Art installations and decides to have an exhibition of something more amusing (and, let's be frank, more baffling to anyone outside Cumbria).

[This originally appeared on thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk but a recent redesign has lost track of my posts. I'll reprinting the less libellous ones here. In BBC terms, think of it as "a second chance to see ..."]