Words
Bells
Words
Riverfields 17 – coffee
There was just one kind of coffee you could get in a traditional transport caff – instant. If you were lucky it was Maxwell House. If you weren’t it was Happy Shopper brown water from the VG shop down the road. Some of the showier caffs would add froth, but under no circumstances should you ever ask what the froth actually was.
This year’s cat and Christmas tree strip
One 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.
Riverfields 16 – Going down the caff
Where America has the noble diner, a streamlined Formica and neon palace of hearty home cooking, Britain has the transport cafe, a shabby shed next to a lay-by offering chipped mugs of strong builder’s tea and bacon sarnies swimming in grease. I’ve made this one a converted Portakabin™ (I have to put the ™ in or Portakabin’s lawyers will write to me in a desperate attempt to protect their trademark) but they’re more likely to look something like this…
The traditional Transport Caff is starting to go upmarket, and several are turning into diners. I pass this one on the A21 at the hamlet of John’s Cross every day on the way to work. Of course, being on the main road to Hastings it calls itself the Route 1066 Diner and it does a roaring trade to passing truckers and bikers, especially on days like the Mayday bike run, or the day all the taxis come down from London to give kids with special needs and their carers a day by the seaside.
Yes, that sign does say ‘Get your chips at 1066’. And I’m glad to report that every table has a squeezy plastic tomato full of ketchup on it, just as God intended.
Elf and safety
The 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.
Inspired by British Leyland
Teflon, 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…
Riverfields 15 – Billy No-Mates
Autobiographical? I don’t know what you mean! Maybe up to panel two but I was never snogged by a bookshop. Not at that age.
Thud
This 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.
Riverfields 14 – Shop-shape
Stretch
Don’t you wish you could stretch like a cat? If I ever did it like that there would be bits of vertebrae pinging off in all directions!