I’m woken from a dream by the sound of birds. It’s a multi-levelled effect, with blackbirds and starlings in the background, the odd heron (or is a goose?) flying around aimlessly but by far the most dominant noise is seagulls. It could be thousands of seagulls. Or maybe just four or five – they’re extrovert birds, after all. I’m being kind – they’re fucking annoying and very loud. I drift in and out of sleep for a while, washing back to holidays on the pebbled beaches of South Devon in the early 1970s, the sea pulling against the stones and the seagulls overhead. I try to imagine the sound of traffic is like the sea. Then I remember that film with Rock Hudson or was it Cary Grant where he’s blindfold and thinks he’s at a party but it’s just the sounds of birds at a lake.

Not too far away from here there were filter beds for Thames Water which were developed into a housing estate in the late 1990s. No-one has told the birds that. As far as they are concerned is is still an unofficial nature reserve.

This is what I see out of my study, looking WNW. When I’m procrastinating or in need of help, I try to tap into the creative vibe of the Arsenal Tavern, the largish Victorian building towards the middle of the picture (with three big upstairs windows). It used to be home to small groups of clever Irish pensioners who would cluster around the bar and discuss football tactics/formations/horseracing/poetry. To the right of the frame are the trees of Finsbury Park. Moving left, and hidden behind the block of flats, is the mast of Alexandra Palace. Then it’s Highgate and far off to the left hand corner, Hampstead. If I added a soundtrack to this pic it would possibly be the low rumble of Seven Sisters Road, countless police sirens and the occasional police helicopter. But often it is just quiet.

First installment of my Tactics Masterclass videos.

Due to popular demand* my wang-eyed pop folk art paintings will be showing for another month at Blackstock Road’s famous** Cinnamon 2 gallery***. Included in this mini-exhibition are paintings of German footballers, dead flowers, old men, know-it-all deities and people I’ve bumped into on the tube.

* ie. They haven’t forced me at gunpoint to take it all down.

** Actually, not famous.

*** Well OK it’s more of a cafe with big walls.

I’ve done the illustration for two business books by Alison Branagan that have come out in the last month or so.  The Pocket Business Guide for Artists and Designers: 100 Things You Need to Know and The Essential Guide to Business for Artists and Designers (both published by A&C Black).

Here’s an article I did for The Guardian about home filing systems – the printed version had lots of illustrations with it. Don’t think I’ll be asked to write a productivity manual any time soon.

Some expert ideas… .

My article about kids listening to old records has been published in The Guardian Family section. See here.

What my kids think aboyt my old vinyl record collection.

Buy the T-shirt

At the moment I’m looking for my NME C81 cassette. I’m sure I saw it quite recently – say, around 1989 (I put it on a table in Walthamstow).

In Small Town England, nearly all the names have been changed. For the highly charged section called ‘Lincolnshire Love Rectangle’, the names have been double-changed then put through a special filter of Enigma Code complexity, so that it’s unbreakable. That said, there will be forty-somethhing couples sitting down to relax in the evening, reading copies of the book, and the bloke will splutter “Lips like cherries, thighs like California redwoods, brought up in Lincolnshire – my God, Gladys, he’s writing about you.”

Sometimes you just can’t disguise a character.