Oranges
Tag / tree
Christmas Tree
A merry Christmas to everyone everywhere.
Having established that that strip has a ‘giving’ tree, the opposite of Charlie Brown’s kite eating tree, it made sense for it to join in with the Christmas festivities.
If today’s strip is flashing in an alarmingly epileptic way (like it has been on my iPad) try reloading. That cured it for me.
Scrape scrape scrape
Jackpot
I haven’t eaten Kelloggs Corn Flakes for ages – is that still what the packet looks like?
Substitute
Harvest
When I was a kid I went to a Church of England primary school, and every autumn around this time we would celebrate harvest festival. It was the 1970s, and we were no longer the sons and daughters of farmers, so we thought milk magically appeared on doorsteps every morning and potatoes came in packets which you added water to. So when the call went out for charity donations from this autumn’s bounty to be given to ‘the old folk’ of the parish at a special service on a school day, the Reverend Ford invariably found himself with about 60 cans of baked beans and not much else.
That confusion of agriculture and supermarkets led me to this week’s set of strips. But first, a scene setter. We’ve seen this tree before, but last time Smith tried this trick it was an entire branch that fell on him.
Heccilopters
The seed pods from Sycamore trees have a fascinating aerodynamic profile which causes them to spin in a leisurely fashion down to the ground. I was sitting in on a park bench during my lunch break jotting down a couple of weeks with of strip ideas into my notebook when I noticed that I was sitting directly underneath one and was being bombarded by the things.
So how would Jones cope with one of these in her garden?
Going all Philip K Dick on your ass
One for all you comics philosophers out there: if only half a tree appears in a cartoon strip, does the rest of the tree actually exist? Is Smith’s home real or is it just set dressing that is assembled as required for each frame? By extension, how do we actually know the rest of the world beyond our vision is actually there, or is it a simulation assembled as required to give us the illusion of freedom? Happy Christmas.
I’d have some photos for you of Billy and Bella going bonkers in and around our Christmas Tree, but my camera’s run out of battery and I’ve left the charger in the States. (Assuming the States are really there, of course…) Bella’s favourite trick is to remove the tinsel while leaving all the ornaments undisturbed. That and playing with a particularly springy lower branch for hours on end.
Someone’s nicked the top half of the tree
We have some rather over enthusiastic tree surgeons here in Hastings. I have a conifer directly opposite my balcony, and I was warned that it was going to be trimmed by the management of our block of flats. Fair enough, I thought, it needs to be thinned down a little bit. What I wasn’t expecting to find when I got home one evening was this…
Seagulls now walk along the top of the tree, tormenting Bella with their succulent just-out-of-reachness, and the young tree just behind to the right has since toppled over in the gales earlier this year, providing the tree with a new top.