Ever Increasing Collins – A Cartoon

Ever Increasing Collins – A Cartoon

Ever Increasing Collins

… A Surreal Trip Down Memory Lane…

Ever Increasing Collins by Rob Gregory Author

Ever Increasing Collins in all its glory!

Adolescence. It’s a funny old thing. Hormones sloshing wildly around a body which doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. Hair sprouting from funny places and a voice box that goes from bass-baritone to soprano at the most inconvenient of moments. And then there is Ever Increasing Collins, a blast from the past, which took me back to those terrible days of teenage longing, when I stumbled upon it, while sorting out some old papers a week or so ago.

Once upon a time, I was an adolescent and not a very good one at that. I found the whole process extremely troubling and in addition to all of the biological inconveniences alluded to above, I developed a social awkwardness, which took me decades to bring under control. In the end, I resorted to living in a cave, far from human scrutiny and mastered Zen Buddhism, which I now loathe with a passion. You can find out why, if you click here.

Anyway, I digress. Back then, when I still had hair on my head and a body that was more than the flabby, worn-out organ carrier that it is now, I used to doodle. Exercise books, A4 refill pads, postage stamps, nothing was sacred and that included the margins of any piece of paper I could lay my hands on. Most of the time it was stuff copied from whatever anarchistic, Indie publication I was reading at that particular moment.

Favourites included the wonderful ‘Bugs and Drugs’ and it’s predecessor ‘Skate Muties from the 5th Dimension’, as well as ‘Arnie’ and the ever so dark ‘Harpy’ by Nick Mackie, which, as far as I know only ran to two editions… a terrible shame, because it was shaping up to be a fantastic cartoon series of epic proportions.

However, on occasion, I would be assailed by brief flashes of surreal brilliance and pump out images and situations worthy of commentary by the world’s greatest sages. Ever Increasing Collins is not one of those.

Where it came from or why, I have no recollection, but I am glad that it has not seen the light of day until now, because if it had, then I would probably be writing this to myself from the safety of my very own padded cell and the only commentary it would have attracted would have been from criminal psychologists and the male nurses guarding my rubber-walled accommodation on a 24/7 basis.

Happily, I am now a recovered doodler and direct my creative urges towards writing, rather than drawing, so I will leave it up to you to interpret the meaning behind Ever Increasing Collins. A commentary on Shakespearian character definitions, a much loved, yet missing scene from Pride and Prejudice or just the ridiculous scratchings of a bored English student, you be the judge. I very much look forward to your replies.

*****

Note: Ever Increasing Collins will shortly be available as a limited edition print, with T-shirts, mugs and other useless paraphernalia following close behind. Please contact me directly should you wish to purchase the original artwork. Prices are negotiable, however, you will probably need a rich Nigerian uncle or a recently deceased foreign dictator to have left you some money beforehand, in which case, you can just leave me your bank details and PIN numbers and I will do the rest!

*****

While you are at it, here are some of the magazines referred to above. Enjoy!

Cover of Bugs and Drugs - Rob Gregory Author

Bugs and Drugs – Issue One.

 

Cover of Skate Muties From The Fifth Dimension - Rob Gregory Author

Skate Muties From The 5th Dimension – Issue Nine.

 

Harpy 1 & 2 by Nick Mackie - Rob Gregory Author

Harpy – Issues One and Two. Check out Nick’s latest stuff here.

 

Arnie - Rob Gregory Author

Arnie – Issue Five.

Fotherington-Tomas and the Mephostus Meeting

Fotherington-Tomas and the Mephostus Meeting

Fotherington-Tomas and the Mephostus Meeting

… Dark revelations abound at Haggrid’s Club for Gentleman…

Two besuited figures, one substantially larger than the other, sat in high, wing-backed, leather chairs, enjoying their glasses of brandy, as they watched the crackling flames dance in the fireplace before them.

Away to one side, squeezed rather uncomfortably into the far corner of the room, in fact, sat two other suited figures, both similarly mismatched in terms of their relative scale. The larger of the two cast a longing glance towards the two chairs and then turned to frostily regard his colleague over the top of his tumbler.

“Would’ve been nice to have sat by the fire on an evening like this,” he said, his voice rumbling like a troll gargling granite. “But someone had to go and have the last slice of apple pie, didn’t they?” he added somewhat petulantly.

“Sorry, FT,” said Maxwell, mopping up a lone droplet of cream hanging from the tip of his waxed moustache. “But you know how much I adore apple pie and it would have been a crime to have let it go to waste. And we did manage to get seats in the drawing room, unlike those poor chaps over there,” he continued, pointing to a glum group of ex-diners, huddled miserably over the Deluxe Scrabble and Cluedo boards in the Games Room.

FT and the Mephostus Meeting. Far end of the dining room at Haggrid's - Rob Gregory Author

The ‘slum’ end of the informal dining room at Haggrid’s.

“I just fancied warming my bones a bit, that’s all. I’m not getting any younger, you know. And in our line of work, you’ve got to learn to take your leisure whenever you can,” said Fotherington-Tomas, snapping his fingers to summon a passing butler to bring him another brandy.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, FT,” said Maxwell, regarding his long-time friend with concern. “I mean, it’s not like it’s the depths of midwinter and we’ve been here for most of the day, bathed in centrally-heated bliss, so I can’t really see how you’ve got any reason to be chilled, let alone so miserable.”

By here, Maxwell was referring to Haggrid’s, the oldest and most exclusive gentleman’s club in all of London Town. Founded in fourteen-forty-four, by the son of a Spanish whelk-peddler, it was steeped in history and more than a little mystery to boot. Rumour had it that the Lord Chief Mason kept a private room on the top floor of the building, for his mistress and her pet chinchilla, while others said that there was a fully functional, antique S&M dungeon located in the basement. Both were absolutely true, of course, and a lot more besides, but the only things that really mattered were that the male heirs of the Fotherington-Tomas clan were granted membership in perpetuity, because of a blood-debt owed to them from way back in the early fifteen-hundreds, and that the club was so catastrophically old-fashioned that it insisted on painting its blackballs white.

FT and the Mephostus Meeting. Lower drawing room at Haggrid's - Rob Gregory Author

The lesser drawing room at Haggrid’s.

“You wouldn’t understand, Maxwell. After all, you were only in your first term at Oxford, when it happened,” said Fotherington-Tomas morosely.

“When what happened, FT?” said Maxwell, his eyebrows lifting in anticipation at the thought of his beloved mentor sharing some rare and long-suppressed angst that was gnawing at his indomitable soul.

“Well, it is forty years to the very day, that I first met Doctor Mephostus, if you must know,” replied Fotherington-Tomas, with an unusually distant look about him.

“I never knew that Doctor Mephostus was at Oxford!” exclaimed Maxwell. “You never mentioned that before.”

“Like I said, you were only in your first year and studying History of Art, if I remember correctly, so there would have been little chance that your paths would have crossed,” said Fotherington-Tomas, taking a large swig of brandy from his glass, as if to gird his loins before beginning his confession.

“Ah, yes. History of Art. The noblest of all the academic pursuits,” said Maxwell fondly. “Two hours of lectures a week and a stipend that you could drown a rugby team on. I must admit that I don’t recall it too clearly these days, although I do believe that my initials are still to be found carved in a lintel above one of the cubbies in The Lamb and Flag.”

“That particular admission wouldn’t surprise me in the least, knowing what a rascally rapscallion you were back in those days,” answered Fotherington-Tomas, with a mixture of admonishment and admiration in his eyes.

FT and the Mephostus Meeting. Oxford colleges and meadow - Rob Gregory Author

Oxford University, as seen from the rear.

Fotherington-Tomas drained his glass and then indicated to the steward that he should bring him yet another and one more for Maxwell besides.

As the drinks were placed delicately down on the tiny oak table that separated them, Fotherington-Tomas continued:

“Yes, Mephostus was indeed an Oxford boy. An old Mortonian, like myself, in fact. We used to knock around together quite a bit back then. Along with old Aldo Passlington, the Yorkshire Yippmaster, don’t you know? He was studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the time. Aldo, that was, not Mephostus. We were quite the inseparable threesome, until Aldo’s tastes turned a bit too militant for my liking and he started drinking in The Three Goat’s Heads.”

“Another nugget of glimmering information that I was hitherto unapprised of,” said Maxwell, settling himself into his seat, as the story began to unfold.

“Indeed, but it is Mephostus that is the subject of my woes this evening,” said Fotherington-Tomas, swirling his brandy slowly around in his glass and watching the legs of alcohol, as they dribbled down the glass towards the dark, amber meniscus below. “At that time, he was a brilliant young chemistry student, indentured at the Dyson Perrins Workhouse for Boys, on South Parks Road. And when I say brilliant, he was far ahead of anyone else in his year, and well beyond most of the seasoned Dons who were tutoring him. At one point, they were actually fighting each other in the street, for the honour of having him do his doctoral thesis under them. How wrong that went in the end, especially when that poor organ grinder and his monkey came around the corner…” his voice dropping into silence, as he lost himself in the depths of his glass.

Maxwell took a sip of his own brandy, enjoying the warm smell of the time-aged liquor, as it hit his nose and wormed its way smoothly down his throat. He remained silent, watching Fotherington-Tomas, until the great man suddenly jerked himself from his personal reminiscence and carried on.

“We were the best of friends, old Mephostus and I, at Oxford. I was just finishing my first degree in Zoology and it was he who convinced me to contemplate the study of chemistry for my D.Phil. Well, not pure chemistry, to be absolutely precise about it. Rather the biology of chemistry… and not biochemistry, before you ask. No, we were going to open up a whole new field of human endeavour, Mephostus and I. We would have been Nobel Laureates, for sure, the pair of us. Were it not for the incident.”

FT and the Mephostus Meeting. Dyson Perrins Workhouse for Boys - Rob Gregory Author

The Dyson Perrins Workhouse for Boys. Allegedly modelled on a prison in the Alsace.

“Incident?” queried Maxwell, setting his empty glass down on the table as quietly as he could, so as not to disturb Fotherington-Tomas from his memories.

“Yes, the incident. And how very unfortunate it was for the both of us, upon reflection,” said Fotherington-Tomas, with uncharacteristic sadness in his voice. “We both played rugby for the College and bloody good we were, too. I was in the front row, while he was one of the most talented scrum-halves that I have ever seen on the field. You should have been there, Maxwell, we were truly something to behold. The way that he could run rings around men thrice the size of him was nothing short of amazing. He could have played for England, had his heart been in it, which for a short while, at least, I believe that it was.”

“Anyway, we were both in our final year, when the bi-annual Army versus Oxford rugby match was announced. Naturally, we were both selected for the team and never before, or since, for that matter, have two men trained so hard for an amateur sporting event.”

“So, it was an injury that did him in, was it?” asked Maxwell, daring for just a moment, to interrupt the human mammoth in his captivating monologue.

“No, nothing of the sort!” roared Fotherington-Tomas, causing several of the older members in the establishment to clutch their hands frantically to their chests, for fear of having another heart attack, and so soon after dinner too.

“No, Maxwell. We were both at the peak of physical fitness, when we took to the field that day. It was a glorious June afternoon and a sizeable portion of the University had turned out to watch us play, including, I should point out, most of the chemistry professors from Dyson Perrins. The Army team were predominantly from the Household Cavalry, with a few Royal Marines thrown in to bolster the back row, but what we didn’t know, was that there was a minor Royal, the nephew of one of the Princes or some other, playing on their side. It was a great game, with plenty of playful gouging going on, and a bit of harmless biting in the mauls, of course. Then, just after half-time, Mephostus was sent off for a high tackle on the Royal in question.”

“The rotter!” said Maxwell. “I knew that he was no good, even from the start. What a terrible thing for him to do and to a member of the Royal Family at that!”

FT and the Mephostus Meeting. Rugby jersey and players on the field - Rob Gregory Author

Rugby. A game played by men with odd-shaped balls.

“Far from it,” replied Fotherington-Tomas, darkly. “It was the referee’s fault. It was never a high tackle, not even close to being one, but the foolish fellow couldn’t bear the thought of impugning the good name of the Monarchy, so he castigated Mephostus in the only way that he knew how, with a red card held stiffly aloft, for all to see.”

“Two sides to every story, eh?” said Maxwell, summoning the waiter for another glass of brandy for the pair of them.

“Yes. And we were left without our best scrum-half in the process. We ended up losing the match because of that decision and from that day on, Mephostus swore to bring down the entire Royal Family. If the referee had only made the correct decision, then I wouldn’t be left where I am today, battling a nemesis of considerable guile, who was once my very best friend in the world.

I tried to remonstrate with him in the changing rooms after the match. Mephostus, that was, not the referee, but the damage was done. I don’t mind admitting that he frightened me to the very core, such was the bitterness with which he took the referee’s decision. I have never heard such vehemence from the lips of an Englishman in all my life and that is God’s honest truth. It changed my opinion of him in an instant. You know me, Maxwell, old boy. I stand for Queen and Country, no matter what the cost. And to hear the blasphemous slander that was issuing from his lips on that day, with only an Egyptian cotton towel wrapped around his waist, turned my heart into stone. I remember slamming his bony frame against the wall of the changing room, as I left the building, and never again did I spare even the most-paltry word of acknowledgement for his existence as a man born of English parents.”

“I understand your position completely, FT. But, you did indeed make a mortal enemy of him on that day. And the problem with Doctor Mephostus, as you know only too well, is that you can never predict where he is going to strike next.”

“Indeed, Maxwell. Indeed. He’s proven to be as slippery an eel off the pitch, as he was on it,” said Fotherington-Tomas, draining his glass with a single gargantuan gulp.

“What was that, FT? I didn’t say anything,” replied Maxwell, reaching for his glass.

He was but inches away from the table, when Fotherington-Tomas’ suddenly dashed his glass onto the floor and began scrabbling at his bow tie.

FT and the Mephostus Meeting. Poison box from The Prodigy - Rob Gregory Author

I’ve got the poison… I’ve got the remedy! RIP Keith Flint of The Prodigy (1969-2019).

“Poison, Maxwell! Don’t touch it!” he gasped, as his round, moon-like face began to redden, and his eyes bulged alarmingly from their sockets.

“The waiter! It must have been Doctor Mephostus in disguise!” cried Maxwell, scanning the room for any sign of the ancient, grey-haired manservant, who had delivered their drinks.

Fotherington-Tomas started to tremble, as Maxwell watched on in horror, his face as pale as his dear friend’s was red. With every passing second, the trembling grew more and more fitful, until Fotherington-Tomas was jerking around in his seat, like a condemned man riding the blue-limned lightning of the electric chair.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the shaking stopped, and Fotherington-Tomas sat bolt upright in his chair, his eyes staring fixedly ahead, as his breathing slowed almost to a stop. Maxwell watched on, transfixed, as beads of perspiration broke out on Fotherington-Tomas’ forehead and began running down his face. Very soon, a small pool of sweat appeared beneath the vast man and Maxwell became aware of an extremely unpleasant odour hanging in the air between them.

Casting his eyes around the room, to see if any of the more antiquated members had passed wind and not admitted it, he noticed that the hubbub, which had accompanied his mentor’s initial shocked outburst had died away, to be replaced by an almost reverential silence, as every pair of eyes in the room fixed themselves on the pair of them.

After what seemed like an age, Fotherington-Tomas’ glassy-eyed stare faded, and his breathing returned to something approaching normality. Rolling his shoulders in displeasure at finding his clothes soaked through with sweat, he shook himself and rose from his chair.

“Are you alright, FT?” asked Maxwell, his voice sounding like a bomb going off in the wood-damped silence of the oak-panelled drawing room.

FT and the Mephostus Meeting. Morton College, Oxford - Rob Gregory Author

Morton College, Oxford. Home to both Fotherington-Tomas and evil Doctor Mephostus.

“Had a close call there, Maxwell,” said Fotherington-Tomas, trying unsuccessfully, to mop his face dry with his sodden handkerchief. “But thankfully, I was able to force the poison out through my pores, before it could attack my nervous system.”

“Another victory for the training of Abbot Victor Falangies, eh?” said Maxwell, handing his own, unspoiled handkerchief, to the dripping form before him.

Before Fotherington-Tomas could reply, the room erupted into a cacophony of cheering and rampant applause, as the assembled members of Haggrid’s rose to their feet, to give their most celebrated brother a standing ovation, in honour of the magnificent show of mind over matter that they had just witnessed.

“Enough. Enough!” boomed Fotherington-Tomas, waving a shovel-sized hand in the air to silence the crowd. “Thank you, my dear fellows. Thank you. But it was really nothing, nothing at all. Now, if you will excuse me, Maxwell and I have a villain to apprehend.”

At that moment, there was a polite tug on his arm and Fotherington-Tomas span around to find himself face to face with a butler bearing a small silver tray. For a second, Maxwell thought that his mighty colleague was going to strike the man, but he regained his immaculate composure, when the terrified fellow managed to stammer out: “Telegram for you, Mister Fotherington-Tomas, Sir.”

“Thank you,” said Fotherington-Tomas in a perfunctory tone, as he lifted the small, yellow envelope from the tray and opened it.

Once again, the drawing room of Haggrid’s fell silent, as Fotherington-Tomas’ eyes scanned the narrow type printed on the telegram. Then, placing the missive back down on the silver tray, he turned to Maxwell and said: “My friend. I am afraid that capturing Doctor Mephostus will have to wait for another day. It would appear that we have been summoned by Her Majesty to make all haste to Paris and from there, to Mont Blanc.”

“Mont Blanc. Whatever for, FT?” asked Maxwell, still glancing around the room for any possible sign of Doctor Mephostus in amongst the servants.

“She didn’t say. But for us, my dear fellow, ‘all haste’ can mean only one thing. And that’s a trip on the Eurostar, followed by the Orient Express!”

 

THE END

*****

Will Fotherington-Tomas get to the Orient Express on time, especially seeing as Network Rail has reported fresh leaves on the line? What hideous peril awaits the brave duo at Mont Blanc? And what of Doctor Mephostus? Will he ever be apprehended, and the safety of The Realm assured? Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of, The Adventures of Fotherington-Tomas… whenever that might be!

Do chickens have faces?

Do chickens have faces?

Forget about them crossing the road, this is the big one, folks!

A semi-serious anecdote from a former student of poultry behaviour…

The rise of facial recognition technology

Today, we live in a world dominated by technology, one particular part of which is facial recognition. Whether we are passing through an airport, walking down a city street or simply unlocking our mobile phones, our faces are being captured and used to identify us.

Facial recognition technology is based on using the geometry of the face, i.e. the relationship between features such as the distance between your eyes or where your nose sits in relation to your ears, to build a unique map, which can be used to identify you.

But it wasn’t always like this. Back in the late 1990s, facial recognition, the way we know it today, was a dream. Pure science fiction. In fact, it wasn’t until 1999 that a commercially viable product using iris recognition was available on the market.

Now, turn your attention to a young scientist, working towards his doctoral degree at Oxford University at around the same time. Poor fellow. He was investigating social discrimination in laying hens, which in plain English means: how the heck do chickens recognise each other? This might seem like something of an unusual pastime, not to mention use of taxpayer’s money, but it did have a serious point…

 

Cover of my doctoral thesis on chickens - Rob Gregory Author

My doctoral thesis. Yes, I did complete it and am still rather proud of it.

 

Facial recognition and the pecking order

Chickens have long been believed to have a strong pecking order. Indeed, the very phrase ‘peck order’ comes from work done by a Norwegian scientist, Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, back at the turn of the twentieth century. I have my own thoughts on the validity of a strongly linear pecking order, i.e. one where the top dog dominates all those below it, the second in command dominates all but the top dog and so on, as indeed did Schjelderup-Ebbe, but I’ll save that for a future blog.

Suffice to say that scientists have long believed that the way chickens recognise their place in the pecking order is through the comb on their heads and to a lesser degree, the wattles that hang from their throats. The question I was grappling with, because it was indeed me who was that poor young scientist, was whether chickens used individual recognition or what was known as a ‘badge of status’. Think about a sergeant’s stripes and you’ll get the idea. You don’t need to know a sergeant individually, to know how to behave around them!

 

Head of a chicken showing the comb and wattles - Rob Gregory Author

Traditional wisdom says that the comb and wattles are what chickens use to recognise each other.

 

Where it gets serious, at least from an animal welfare point of view, is when you look at commercial flocks of hens, which can number in the tens of thousands. If chickens have to rely on individual recognition, then the cost of trying to remember several thousand one-on-one relationships just isn’t worth it and is likely to be highly stressful, which is not good for poor old Chicken-Licken. On the other hand, if they can switch to badges of status, then everything should be hunky-dory, and we can all sleep soundly at night, thank you very much.

So, there you have it. Took a long time to explain, but at least you now know why I was spending an unhealthy amount of time in the company of poultry. And as an enquiring young researcher, I had a question and it annoyed me…

 

How do chickens recognise faces?

At the time that the peck order is being formed, the comb and wattles are in a juvenile stage, i.e. they are still growing. And growing rapidly. The effect is like trying to remember your place when everyone around you, including yourself, has a new haircut each day. Of course, you could argue that on a day-to-day basis, the change is gradual and so the chickens don’t notice it, but as you can see from the images below, over a seven-week period, when all of the peck order action is happening, the change is really quite substantial.

 

Picture of a chickens head at different ages - Rob Gregory Author

The same chicken before and after puberty. Look how the comb changes but the other main features do not.

 

An alternative idea is that the size of the comb and wattles reflects the amount of testosterone the chicken has and so the bird ‘knows’ how strong it is without ever having to see its own features. But that doesn’t really work because there are diseases that cause the comb and wattles to enlarge and change colour, even when the amount of circulating testosterone is low.

And that’s another thing, the placement of the comb and wattles means that a chicken can almost certainly never see its own! It’s like that card game where you slap a card on your forehead and then try to guess what it is, based on what the other players tell you. I’m sorry, but there has to be a better explanation than: chickens use something that they can’t see, and which is changing rapidly, as the basis for settling all of their future arguments about food, water, access to mates etc. After all, if God doesn’t play dice with the universe, why should chickens play cards with their social status?

So, I set out to investigate, taking lots of photographs of chickens as they progressed through puberty and measuring various facial features with a ruler. No particle accelerators or whizz-bang tomfoolery here… just belt and braces British science at its best. And what did I find?

 

Schematic of a chickens head showing measurements made - Rob Gregory Author

Back then I was a brilliant artist as well!

 

Chickens have individual and distinct faces

Lo and behold, chickens have faces! Things like the diameter of the eye, the length of the nostril, the length of the ear feathers and beak length changed, on average, less than a millimetre during puberty, in contrast to the comb and wattles, which increased by several orders of magnitude during the same period. Furthermore, after puberty, the same facial features that I had measured essentially stayed the same, giving the animal a consistent set of cues with which to recognise other individuals as they progressed through life.

While this in itself, is not absolute proof that chickens are using those features to recognise other individuals, or indeed, even using individual recognition, it certainly called into question the use of the comb and wattles alone for recognition, which was good enough for me.

And of course, I took it one step further, which is where the link to modern-day facial recognition technology comes in. Consider the following paragraph lifted from my thesis:

Excerpt of text from the doctoral thesis of Rob Gregory Author

Perhaps I was ahead of my time for once? This was written in late 1999.

 

Unfortunately, I never did that particular piece of follow up research. If I had, then possibly I wouldn’t be sitting here today, writing this blog for you. But nonetheless, I can still get some small satisfaction out of the knowledge that my hypothesis, made on the basis of looking at the humble chicken, has since proven to be validated on a far more complex animal – us!

 

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If you enjoyed this blog, please feel free to share it. And while you’re here, why not have a look at some of my other blogs and books?

 

Thank you!

Lost Consonants – A tribute to Graham Rawle

Lost Consonants – A tribute to Graham Rawle

Lost Consonants

… a tribute to the genius of Graham Rawle (still alive)…

Many years ago, I used to be an avid weekend reader of the Guardian newspaper. Every Saturday, I would trek down to the local newsagent (usually with a hangover from the night before) and pick up a copy of the bumper Saturday edition. Among the myriad of various pull-out supplements was the obligatory magazine, somewhat uninspiringly called Weekend. Despite this, the actual missive itself was packed full of highly entertaining content (much like my blog, in fact) and I would curl up on the sofa (back at home, not in the newsagent’s you understand) with a cup of tea and a packet of Fox’s Classic biscuits and lose myself for a good hour or so within its many pages.

Folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

Lovely Lost Consonants!

Among my favourites were the regular contributors. David Stafford wrote a column called Staffordshire Bull, which contained humorous anecdotes and far-fetched tales rooted in real-life and I was delighted to discover that you can still read a selection of these on the website that he shares with his wife, Caroline. I can’t imagine what it’s like to share a website with your wife, it must be rather cramped, a bit like living in a council bedsit, but from the photos at least, they seem to be making a fairly good job of it.

Detail of folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

Lost Consonants: Roy used his new paint prayer to change the colour of his car.

Another, more serious contributor, was John Diamond, who chronicled his battle with cancer, week by week, up until his untimely death in March 2001. His column was a forerunner to today’s modern blog and I found myself immersed in his writing, as he detailed the various ups and downs of his illness against the hum-drum background of his day-to-day life. Although I never knew him personally, I remember feeling genuinely saddened when his column abruptly ended and I realised that he had sadly lost his fight with the terrible disease.

Detail of folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

Lost Consonants: His doctor had recommended foods with a high fire content.

But it is Graham Rawle, creator of the wonderful Lost Consonants series, who I want to focus on today. Every week for fifteen years, a one-pane collage, complete with ‘cut out and keep’ scissor marks around it, would appear near the beginning of the magazine and have me in stitches with its sheer brilliance. The idea was simple, remove a single consonant from a phrase and give it a totally different meaning. Thus we had gems such as, ‘It had always been his ambition to pay for Aston Villa’, complete with a grinning John Fashanu in the background and ‘The Wilsons had gone out leaving their baby with a child miner.’

Detail of folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

Lost Consonants: It had always been his dream to pay for Aston Villa.

I don’t know why, maybe it was those subliminal scissor marks, but I began to religiously cut out and keep each week’s Lost Consonant, until the point where I’d built up a fairly sizeable collection of them. Not really being the scrapbooking type, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with my collection, until I found a fitting solution and covered a couple of old loose-leaf folders in them, preserving the images for posterity beneath transparent book sealing film, where they remain to this day. Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology (actually just my mobile phone and a micro-USB cable) I’m able to share them with you here. So, strap yourself in tightly and prepare to enter an outrageous world of ‘cardboard ox’s’, ‘Paris priests’ and ‘a few kid words’!

Detail of folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

Lost Consonants: Butch looked vicious but he’d never do them any ham.

Happily, Graham Rawle is still alive and most definitely productive. His latest novel, Overland, is based on the true story of the extreme camouflaging of the Lockheed Aircraft factory in Burbank, California, during the second world war and he also lectures extensively around the world on design and illustration.

Detail of folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

Lost Consonants: Whenever he felt a draught, Frank would lose the window.

If my collection of Lost Consonants hasn’t satiated your appetite then thankfully, you can view more of them on Graham Rawle’s website, here.

Folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

More Lost Consonants: There must be a whole alphabet of them in here!

 

Detail of folder covered in Lost Consonants by Graham Rawle. Rob Gregory Author

Lost Consonants: It wasn’t the first time Colin had been caught heating.

Space, the final frontier – 1960’s style

Space, the final frontier – 1960’s style

Space, the final frontier – 1960’s style

A couple of weeks ago, I published a blog called ‘London Lost’, about how I’d found a box of old slides from the 1950’s and 60’s and spent a very pleasant hour or so flicking through them to see what secrets they held. While most of them were family photos, some were of London and others were part of a collection about space, including the Apollo 11 moon landing and one of the first ever spacewalks. At the time, I promised to share those with you in a future blog and so, not being one to dilly-dally, here they are.

Unlike the slides in ‘London Lost’, which had suffered the ravages of time, albeit in a way that I think greatly enhanced them, most of the space slides haven’t done quite as badly and retain more of their original and in my view, fabulous 1960’s colour palette… which you just don’t get with today’s ultra-clear, high definition images. Okay, so they are a little grainy, but then what do you expect for pictures taken almost fifty years ago?

So, once again, grab yourself a cup of something warm (or cool, depending on where you’re from), sit back somewhere comfortable and lose yourself in a pictorial journey through time and space.

Starting from the beginning, we’ve got a few general images of the Earth from space, just to help set the scene and let you know where you are… or where you should be if you’re currently somewhere else.

Space - Earth from Apollo 12. Rob Gregory Author

Unless you are ET, this is your home. Abuse it at your peril!

 

Space - Earth from 160,000 miles. Rob Gregory Author

Earth from 160,000 miles. I can see your house from here!

Then we have a few slides of the Gemini missions, namely Gemini 4 and 7, which preceded the Apollo missions that ultimately placed a man on the moon, back in 1969. The Gemini missions were important because they allowed key techniques and manoeuvres to be perfected before the Apollo missions were launched.

Space - Gemini 4 spacewalk. Rob Gregory Author

Gemini 4 spacewalk – Not quite walking on the moon, but not bad nontheless!

 

Space - Gemini spacewalk close up. Rob Gregory Author

Only the second ever spacewalk and already the tape player has packed up!

 

Space - Gemini 7. Rob Gregory Author

Gemini 7 from Gemini 6 – Please engage reverse… now!

Moving on, we’re now right up there with the big boys, starting with Apollo 9, which saw the first successful test of the complete Apollo spacecraft, including the famous Lunar Module, or ‘LEM’.

Space - Apollo 9. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 9 in orbit above Earth, just in case you were wondering.

 

Space - Apollo 9 and LEM. Rob Gregory Author

The LEM… not to be confused with Lemmy from Motorhead. Do so at your peril!

Then, it’s the main event. The one that everyone (or almost everyone these days) knows about, Apollo 11. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, the first two men on the moon and poor old Michael Collins, who piloted the command module alone while his colleagues were bouncing around on the lunar surface. Some people get all the luck!

Space - Apollo 11 Launch. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 11 – Are we there yet?

 

Space - Aldrin descending the LEM. Rob Gregory Author

This is a bad time to be scared of heights, Buzz!

 

Space - Aldrin on the moon. Rob Gregory Author

Now, which camera do you want me to look at, Mister Kubrick?

 

Space - erecting Apollo 11's solar sheet. Rob Gregory Author

Neil, what was this bit for again? Erecting the solar wind sheet during the Apollo 11 mission.

 

Space - Looking at the LEM. Rob Gregory Author

Inspecting the LEM foot pad – Looks OK to me. In fact, it looks amazing!

In lieu of a brief interlude after all that excitement, here are a couple of calming images of our nearest celestial neighbour, the moon. Beautiful, alluring and sitting a mere 252,000 or so miles away, completely beyond the reach of most of us!

Space - the moon. Rob Gregory Author

The Moon – Your next holiday destination?

 

Space - The moom in close up. Rob Gregory Author

Some nice looking craters on the lunar farside, but watch out for Clangers!

Following that, we’re on to some of the less well-known Apollo missions, namely Apollo 12 and 14. Funnily enough, there aren’t any pictures of the Apollo 13 mission, which saw Captain James Lovell and his crew stuck in space for six days, following an accident, until they made a heroic and successful re-entry into the Pacific Ocean, on 17 April 1970. Arguably, because of the Apollo 13 film by Ron Howard, starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise and the now sadly departed, Bill Paxton, the Apollo 13 mission is probably NASA’s best-known space mission, even though it didn’t achieve its original objective.

Space - Apollo 12. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 12 – One good launch deserves another!

 

Space - Apollo 12 astronauts. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 12 astronauts – Just for information, you need to put these guys inside, before you launch the rocket!

 

Space - Apollo 12 descent. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 12 descent. Hang on, if there’s no one there, how come the camera is still running?

 

Space - Apollo 12 splashdown. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 12 spalshdown… or down to earth with a bump if you get it wrong!

 

Space - Apollo 14 rocket. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 14 – Saturn 5 rocket. I built one when I was a kid; a model one that is.

 

Space - Apollo 14 firing room. Rob Gregory Author

Apollo 14 firing room – When I push this button…

Finally, to wrap things up, we gaze outward, as man has done ever since he first looked at the heavens to see some of the most iconic astronomical groupings in space, including the Orion Nebula and the ever-dazzling Pleiades, or Seven Sisters as they are also known.

Space - Orion nebula. Rob Gregory Author

The Orion nebula – A great big, but very pretty, cloud of gas.

 

Space - The Andromeda Galaxy. Rob Gregory Author

The Andromeda galaxy. Home to the ‘Andromeda Strain’, so don’t even think of visiting!

 

Space - The Pleiades in Taurus. Rob Gregory Author

The Pleiades in Taurus. If only all stars looked like this.

Note: Originally, all of these images would have come from NASA, but seeing as they were part of a commercially available collection that was intended for sale, I don’t think that they’ll mind me dusting them off and sharing them with you just this once. I hope that you enjoyed them!

If you liked this blog, then please check out ‘London Lost’, as well as my other blogs. And please do feel free to share more widely!