Tag / Riverfields

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 16 – Going down the caff

0016Where 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.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 13 – Eggy

0013This is the first and last time you get to see Nigel’s mum, once the mall opens the strip stays resolutely work-focused.

For the uninitiated, these are eggy soldiers. The soldiers are the toast strips which you dip them into the yolk of the soft-boiled egg. The very idea of a runny yolk seems to revolt Americans – Linda soft boils my eggs under protest – but trust me, they’re delicious. The image shows a soft-boiled goose egg; now that’s just showing off.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 8 – Millennium

0008This goes to show what sort of a protracted gestation period this strip had. These first strips were actually drawn sometime around 1999, so we’re looking at a world which was getting ready for a brand new century to begin. Bookstores were full of ‘millennium’ editions of pre-existing books. Millennium Bibles, Millennium dictionaries, Millennium books of Child Care, Millennium books of Princess Diana photos, Millennium survivalist manuals for when the Millennium Big caused the end of civilisation – you name it there, was an expensive violet and silver foil-blocked millennium edition of it…

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 7 – chairs

0007It’s early days so Peace’s surname hasn’t bedded in yet. It would later stabilise as McKenzie.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 6 – Margins

0006There are, of course, no time zones in the UK – everything runs on Greenwich Mean Time and the rest of the world’s time is subservient to us. We OWN time, do you hear me? OWN it. Nyah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

Introducing Margin’s bookstore, an obvious Borders knockoff. For the younger readers of our blog Borders was one of the first big warehouse bookshops with sofas and coffee. For the even younger readers, a bookshop is a sort of big room full of books you can buy and take away with you.

The bookshop’s manager is Peace McKenzie. Her name is what you get when you combine the names of Peace Anyiam-Osogwe, a magazine editor I knew in the 80s, and Precious McKenzie, the diminutive weightlifter who won gold medals for England and New Zealand in the Commonwealth Games in the 60s and 70s.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 5 – Sliiiiiide

0005August 11 2006

Admit it, you’ve always wanted to do this, haven’t you? Either that or Rollerblade around the mall – it’s a crime to waste all those lovely flat surfaces! A few years later the heelie was invented, and malls were full of kids essentially recreating this cartoon in real life.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 4 – Muzak

0004August 10 2006

Kenny G is huge in China, it appears. How they can tell the difference between any of his insipid tootlings is anyone’s guess. It was reported recently that there’s one tune of his in particular, ‘Going Home’, which is played in every Chinese shopping mall just before closing time, to let shoppers know it’s time to leave. That sounds about right. If I heard his music over the tannoy system I’d try to get as far away from it as possible.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 3 – Into the labyrinth

0003August 9 2006

The design of the mall was heavily influenced by Bluewater in Dartford. I’d made a trip up to the newly opened mall and somehow managed to run around the site with a camera taking reference photos without being apprehended by the security guards.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields 2 – Theseus

0002August 8 2006

I’ve found the original scans again, so the artwork I put up is going to be in higher definition than the original uploads to Comics Sherpa were. Just by 100 pixels, but every little helps, right?

Introducing Nigel Whelk, our main protagonist. He’s the one in the glasses.

And the analogy I was reaching for was the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.

by Andrew Pilcher

Riverfields

Riverfields 1Riverfields was the cartoon strip I originally drew for Comics Sherpa. It tells the story of a motley crew of people working in a newly opened out-of-town shopping centre, somewhere in England.

It’s a bit unusual for me as it’s about people rather than animals, and people invariably irritate me – even the ones that spring out of my own head. It eventually petered to a halt when an officious health and safety character annoyed me so much that I couldn’t bring myself to draw him any more. And then the economy collapsed and the imaginary mall went with it.

I’ll be posting Riverfields strips in this blog in the days between Smith strips, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please excuse their smallness – these date from 2006.

Here’s how introduced the strip on a defunct Riverfields blog I created to accompany the strip in the days before I realised you could combine words and pictures in a blog.

In the States, they’re called Malls – in the UK they’re called Shopping Centres. Whatever they are called, they’re ubiquitous and they’re taking over the world.

Riverfields is the largest Mall in Europe. It’s so large it straddles two time zones! It has 14 themed shopping experiences, including three so specialised not even the centre’s management understands what they are, but they looked really good in the PowerPoint presentation. It’s still being built, but there are 1,257 stores in phase one, including 50 anchor stores. It has air conditioning throughout, five climate zones and an atrium so large it creates its own rain. Just on the outskirts of both London and Manchester, it’s a mall so large that they had to build a second mall next door just for the people that work there.

Of course, it doesn’t exist in real life. It’s an amalgam of all the malls I’ve visited in the UK and the States. But if there are malls that can be considered to be Riverfields parents they are these:

Bluewater, Dartford, Kent. When it was built it was the largest mall in Europe, with a catchment area of most of Southern England. Architecturally, it’s stunning, with sculptures and carved inscriptions placed on any flat surface the architects could find. It occupies an abandoned chalk pit and is surrounded on three sides by floodlit chalk cliffs. It would be a great place to shop if it wasn’t so crowded all the time.

Royal Victoria Place, Tunbridge Wells. When I created the strip this was my local mall. In typical Tunbridge Wells fashion, it’s simultaneously very posh, and cheap looking at the same time. It doesn’t have a food court, it has a palm court. A palm court with a MacDonald’s. It was opened by the Patron Saint of Shopping, Princess Diana, in 1992.

Coronado Mall, Albuquerque. I always check this mall out when I’m visiting my wife’s folks. It’s a mature mall where every shop unit has changed hands a few times, so nothing fits the space it was built for any more. It’s a good example of a mall that’s having to be creative to attract a clientele that would otherwise go to the sexy new mall out on the Westside. I especially like the indoor blacklight minigolf course. And it has a mean Fudruckers.