Category / Smith

by Andrew Pilcher

2015, at last…

smith-pilcher-740-141231Sorry this has been posted so late but I have an excuse. My wife and I got delayed on the way back from visiting her parents in New Mexico over Christmas. I’ve never encountered an ice storm before – they’re deceptively nasty and not at all like the snow storms we get in the UK. Maybe when we passed four overturned SUVs in the space of one mile on the way to the airport we should have realised something was up. Ice built up on the windscreen and was impervious to the windscreen wipers. Linda’s dad was driving and all it took was one slight tap on the brakes to send us spinning gracefully into the shallow ditch at the side of the road. Luckily no damage was done, and we rejoined the road and made it gingerly to the airport in time to discover that all the flights out had been cancelled for the day. Our next flight out was not to be until New Years Day – we were stuck in Lubbock for two days.

We found a hotel in North Lubbock – and as soon as we got there we realised we’d stranded ourselves in a building that was the sole occupant of a vacant lot with nothing around us for at least a mile in any direction. That’s not normally something I’d worry about, but these were not normal conditions. It was dark by the time we reached the hotel and all we could see out the window were the distant lights of a corner drug store on the horizon, with a vast expanse of flat whiteness between us and civilization.

The temperature the next day was -11ºC. We managed to make an expedition to a strip mall by foot in the afternoon and found supplies there.

To cut a long story short, we finally arrived in London at 12 noon on January 2nd, and drove back to Hastings that afternoon, collecting two very pissed off cats on the way home.

It’s taken 24 hours for the cats to forgive us, but they’ve now turned into a couple of cuddle bunnies and quite determined not to let us ever go off on holiday again. Don’t worry cats; after that journey back, I’m not planning to go again for a good while…

by Andrew Pilcher

Tat

Smith-Pilcher-739-141229Need I say more? To be fair I haven’t seen much England stuff around anywhere this year – the team’s performance in the World Cup was so abysmal that it’s been like an unspoken agreement between all Brits to never refer to it again. And with FIFA gradually drowning in sleaze and lots of European teams grumbling about the next two tournaments taking place in the obviously uncorrupt countries of Russia and Qatar, I can see the entire edifice of the World Cup crumbling to dust in the near future. Which is a good thing.

I own nothing with an England flag on it. That’s for footballists and UKIP supporters. I’m strictly a Union Jack man.

Wednesday’s strip may be late – as I write this the day before I fly off to spend time with Linda’s  family in New Mexico I haven’t drawn the New Year’s Eve strip yet. You may end up with a photo of a strip taken with an iPod. Normal service will be resumed on 2 Jan – I’ll be back by that point.

If I don’t get to say it to you on Wednesday, have a happy new year, everyone!

by Andrew Pilcher

Gimme dat ding

Smith-Pilcher-738-141226Happy Boxing Day, everyone. Don’t forget, this is but the 2nd day of Christmas, and you don’t actually have to pack your tree away until January 5th. It always depresses me to be in America and watch Christmas be dismantled with an unseemly haste as soon as the big day is over.

by Andrew Pilcher

Merry Christmas!

Smith-Pilcher-737-141224‘A Merry Christmas to all our readers’, as they say. May you have a great day, whether your with your families or with friends, and remember, Christmas is for all time, not just for Christmas. And may you recieve better presents than Smith and Jones did.

by Andrew Pilcher

Unclean!

Smith-Pilcher-736-141222Obviously, Jones thinks her new bell makes her a social leper.

by Andrew Pilcher

Bells

Smith-Pilcher-735-141219Words

by Andrew Pilcher

This year’s cat and Christmas tree strip

Smith-Pilcher-734-141217One of the traditions of this comic is the annual cat-and-Christmas-tree strip. Here for your consideration is this year’s variation on the theme.

The Christmas decorations have gone up in Hastings, and you can tell that the trees in the town centre have been decorated by people who own cats. There are a lot of pubs in that neighborhood and the wildlife you find roaming around there at 2am can be rather alarming. There’s a lot of shouting, fighting and falling over that happens, and to a drunk the low hanging fruit of a garland of fairylights can be all too tempting. Therefore the decorations don’t start until halfway up the tree, well out of reach of curious paws.

by Andrew Pilcher

Elf and safety

Smith-Pilcher-733-141215The Elf on the Shelf, a Christmas tradition stretching way back to about 2005, selling the idea of supernatural surveillance to those who are too young for full strength religion. It’s time to give the little sod a taste of his own medicine courtesy of The Cat That Stares at Stuff.

by Andrew Pilcher

Inspired by British Leyland

Smith-Pilcher-732-141212Teflon, the non stick stuff that somehow manages to stick to saucepans. And walls.

Today’s strip is actually inspired by a memory of a black Mini that used to drive around the neighbourhood when I was a kid. Most cars at that time would either have had a gloss paint finish or a vinyl roof that hadn’t started to peel yet. This one was customised with a deep iridescent metallic black paint jobs and the kind of tinted windows that nowadays would immediately say ‘this car is being driven by a drug dealer’. On the boot lid, next to the Austin Mini badges was a sticker. It said  ‘I’m Teflon Coated’.

As you read this I’ll be somewhere over the Atlantic again. It’s an even numbered year so it’s time to spend Christmas in New Mexico again. As ever, I’ll be taking my pens and paper and will be spending the holidays coming up with next year’s comics and drawing January’s batch ready for colouring as soon as I come home. I’ll be trying to get as many comics preloaded into the system as I can before I leave, and if I don’t quite make it, we’re going to find out at the end of the month how much cartooning can be done with a combination of an iPod Touch and an Android tablet…

by Andrew Pilcher

Thud

Smith-Pilcher-731-141210This happens more often than you’d think. My sister once had a pigeon fly into her back door. The back door and the pigeon both survived, but the oil on the pigeon’s feathers left a wonderful imprint on the glass. You have never seen a pigeon look so surprised in your life!

On the coast, we have to have toughened glass installed especially for moments like this.