If the previous post has encouraged you to buy a television set then you would have normally needed to subscribe to the TV listings magazine Radio Times. This BBC-biased publication was once host to the cream of British illustrators (and even in the 90's included John Peel as a columnist) but is sadly now dumbed down to pitiful levels of Soap coverage. This cover (featuring good old Sid James) is from the Radio Times heyday.

Autumn Viewing: now that the nights are drawing in perhaps you are thinking of purchasing a television set for your sitting room? To help you make up your mind I have here illustrated all the latest information about this clever broadcasting invention.

Do your brogues need heeling, Sir?

Here's the back cover drawing from my Bushels Of Coalsmoke chap-book of 2005 and a photograph of an old-fashioned Cobbler Shop automaton which originally gave me the idea. I took the photo during a Sunday morning stroll around Morpeth, Northumberland. I've been told the derivation of the town name Morpeth means 'path of death' (mort/peth) but don't know why it was given this chilling title....

John Betjeman famously travelled by train through the London suburbs in Metroland. Before I learned to drive I used to like travelling by bus. It was the ideal way to become acquainted with the northern pit villages which I now love so much. Sadly you can't take in much detail of a Primitive Methodist Chapel when you have to concentrate on your steering.

Here's a detail from an as yet unfinished comic strip called Bus Stop Philosophers.

Hurrah for Betjeman! The current media frenzy concerning the centenary of John Betjeman's birth is heartily welcome here at Bagnall's Retreat. In particular the broadcasting of some of his witty, evocative and elegiac BBC documentaries from the 50s to the 70s was easily the TV highlight of last month.

The late great Poet Laureate also collaborated with some of my all-time favourite British illustrators on quite a few travel and architecture books. Above is a beaut by the great Edward Bawden from the Shell Guide to Cornwall (1964.)

September has arrived so here is a 'back to school' Disappearing Phrase.

Bought Carry On Girls on DVD yesterday, one of my favourites. I suppose Talbot Rothwell's saucy screenplay can get a bit tiresome but most of the appeal for me in watching these non-historical Carry On films is enjoying the quiet drabness of the locations. Girls is set in (the fictional) Fircombe-On-Sea resort which boasts record rainfall and wonderfully shabby seafront hotels.

Brought to you by the makers of The Sound Projector is a great new book called Vinyl Viands. As you might guess all the articles within are dedicated to the pleasures of buying and listening to records. The cover boasts coverage of "Old Vinyl! Rockin Vinyl! New Vinyl! Art Vinyl! Weird Vinyl!Noisy Vinyl" and pretty much any other aspect of those black wax artefacts we love. No collector snobbery is in evidence here or trainspotter stuff about matrix numbers, the writing is fresh, funny and original. I contributed a two page comic strip. Above is a detail from it, specially coloured for this blog.

I'm a dedicated admirer of the vanishing art of hand-painted signs and actually make part of my living from doing sign-writing. These lovely examples were found today on a drive in North Yorkshire. You'd think the wide availability of computer technology would have made effective sign communication open to everyone but sadly this hasn't happened. Both of these hand painted signs display a naive elegance and colourful charm which wasn't evident on the virtually unreadable PC produced A4 black & white roadside notices for village fetes which I also spotted while out and about today....

Talking of the MoCCA Arts Festival, it's now just over a month since I got back from a New York trip which included sharing a table at the fest with Ed Pinsent, Marc Baines of Kingly Books, and from Boston, Pshaw. With hardly a superhero comic in sight this annual comic art convention has no British equivalent (sadly) and this year displayed a staggering explosion of comic activity. Much of it highly ambitious - gone are the days of shoddy xeroxed mini-comics it seems. Lots of talks, panels and interviews also...but we missed most of those as we dutifully promoted our wares from the Kingly table in Room B.

Here's a New York snapshot from the MoCCA trip. L to R: Jeremy Novak (of band Dymaxion), Ed Pinsent, Marc Baines and Pshaw at an amazing exhibition of new paintings by Gary Panter.

Here's the cover of Bagnall's Dailies, the companion comic to Knitting For Whitsun. The fold goes horizontally across the middle of the cover, making a narrow landscape format mag suited to the four panel newspaper style strips inside. Don't know if the format is much of a winner though: I had both Knitting For Whitsun and Bagnall's Dailies on sale at last month's MoCCA Art Festival in New York and sold plenty of Knitting.... but only about three of these!

This is the front of my newest self-published chap-book, Knitting For Whitsun. I'm fairly pleased with this sober looking cover. The "knitted" sections feature musty mugshots of a few characters to be found in its twenty A5 size pages, including a pub landlord with his over-sized glass eye (based on a true story!)