The plan was that I would take a week off and post some easy to draw cartoons. You know the ones – the kind that just involve eyes in darkness or a heavy fog. In this case, watching some dogs leaping around in the long grass surrounding the Wellington Rocks in Tunbridge Wells led to this week’s crop of strips, but I didn’t realise how time consuming long grass was going to be to colour and make look good enough. This was my first attempt and it wasn’t quite right – the grass is too green.

Lumps of sandstone are an important part of my creative process. Once a week (weather permitting) I’ll spend a lunch break up on these rocks on Tunbridge Wells common, and sit down with a notebook and write a week’s worth of strips (two if I hot a rich seam of comedy coal). The rocks overlook a clearing full of long grass, and a cricket pitch which occasionally has a game being played on it. Dog walkers exercise their hounds there, lovers carve their names in the soft rock, and during the school holidays, the rocks are crawling with children. Of course, being brought up in Tunbridge Wells, I spent a fair amount of my childhood there too, and have left behind a few initials. Near the summit can be found the cryptic word ‘Gnomefumbler’, the name of the grammar school comedy art-rock band I was a non-musician in back in 1980.

Hastings has its own sandstone outcrops, but as they form the cliff face underneath the castle I’ve never really taken to them. In Hastings my preferred writing spot is the pier, because they have tables there and you can get coffee.