Memory Fish

This week was the launch of Over the Hills and Far Away, a bumper treasury of nursery rhymes from all around the world, collected by Elizabeth Hammill of Seven Stories Centre for Children’s Books.

Here’Memory fishs my page – first featuring escaping cutlery and crockery.

Then there was a strange rhyme about pulling fish out of one’s eye. Nursery rhymes are very weird and random. I just couldn’t find out what it was all about – was threescore and ten the years you might live? What are the fishes? Wishes? Golden riches? I had a vague memory that in a lecture once I had heard about fish being a symbol of remembering things – you’d hook a fish, but you wouldn’t pull up just one, because each fish would have another fish biting its tail, so you could pull out a great chain of fish. And in the days before google and books, remembering huge amounts of things was really useful.

But I still have the notes to the lecture (if was by Professor Bruce Brown) – and there’s no mention of memory fish.

So is my memory of memory fish a false memory?

I wish I hadn’t cried so much…

I’ve been doing a picture for Chapter 2 of Alice in Wonderland, for Dennis at Inky Parrot Press, who is creating a new and eclectically illustrated version of Alice. Drawing an Alice is quite a daunting task, in the shadow of Tenniel & all. But I like Alice – she is plucky and funny. Though she does seem to disgruntle every creature she meets through making tactless remarks.

Here’s Alice swimming around in a pool of her own tears, and about to meet a highly thin-skinned and easily offended mouse….Pool of Tears small

How to escape from Cake Space

Space Dog

You need a good map.

I’ve just finished the pictures for Space Dog, so here today is the sketch of Space Dog’s (all important) Space Map. In the first draft of the story he lost it, but now it just appears in the endpapers.

SpaceMapCoverSpaceMap

Journey to the centre of Cake Space

Here is the rotating tetrahedron of Cake Space. You can see some of the items that are there, but there are many many more. Including ones that are inside, where things get more cakey. Right at the very centre of Cake Space, where Sugar, Butter, Egg and Flour are completely equal quantites, lies that Holy Grail of cake –  the Victoria Sponge.

 

CAKESPACE