A Little Bit of Very Minor Catching Up.

Here we are on the 24th of October 2019 and I am presenting before you days seven and eight of Inktober. I have completed one other inking and several other pencils, but none of them are ready for public viewing yet. They ARE on their way, honest Guv! It's just that some of my ideas are out of sequence and I want to upload them in proper chronological order. A couple of them are also quite ambitious and will take time to get right. So, if I carry on drawing Inktober 2019 pictures into November, is it really going to matter? I do not think so. Just doing it when I get the time is fine with me. No guilt, no shame, just enjoyment

A Cold Day in Hell.

Freeze a  jolly good fellow, Freeze a jolly good fellow, Freeze a jolly good fellow and so say all of us.

Look, if puns were good enough for Shakespeare, then who am I to argue against their use?

Here we are on day ten of Inktober and I have just completed days four, five and six. Why am I so late? It is because I spent an extraordinary amount of time on the scribble above (day four and "Freeze" was the prompt word). Far too much time actually, but I am pleased with the result. I experimented with two different pen nibs. One is a Gillot for very fine lines and the other is, um, not. The not Gillot is a heavier line, but I like them both.

You ought to be able to see days five and six below, but with Blogger who can say?

Inktober catchup

This, as I write, is day six of Inktober 2019 and I have completed three  ink drawings and the pencils for a fourth. So, I'm three days behind already. This year I am determined to beat last year's effort of four drawings. Fingers crossed.

The Moon is NOT a Balloon, Niven, You Div.

This is a post about the Apollo Eleven Moon Landing and my small, but significant connection to it.
Okay, cards on the table. I do not now, or at any time up to this point, have ever considered the actor David Niven to be a div. I thought it would be a thigh-slappingly hilarious heading for this post as it alludes directly to the title of his first book of memoirs The Moon's a Balloon. I bought my Coronet paperback copy in the mid-seventies and I have it still - along with the follow up,
Bring On the Empty Horses. The title is a quote from an e e cummings poem (my copy styles the poet as E. E. Cummings which is only right and proper, so well done Coronet). I just thought it would be funny to rail against a poetic metaphor. How wrong I was!
 When the late Barry Norman (I removed a plaster cast from his wife's leg, you know. Diana Norman, author and all round nice human being) was collecting material for his book, The Hollywood Greats, he could not find anybody to say a bad word against David Niven, which is probably a good mark by which to measure the man.
Why all this pre-amble? The Best Wife on the Planet thought the title of this piece was unkind to the actor, so it was beholden on me to set matters straight.
Blimey! It was only a joke!
Now then, my connection to the first Moon Landing. Both my parents were Dubliners and my dad was an engineer. He worked for English Electric in Luton before we all upped sticks and moved to Stevenage when English Electric became part of the British Aircraft Corporation. As a little boy I had absolutely no interest in engineering, despite being bought what must have been, a rathe expensive Meccano kit.
Enny whey. My parents split up in the mid-sixties and my dad went to work as an engineer in the New World. Canada, initially and ending up in California. In the very early seventies (I think 1970 or 1971) he came back to see me in Stevenage. This did not go down well with my mother, but she allowed him to take me to the London Planetarium and Madame Tussauds, next door. There was a life-size replica of the Lunar Module (the LM or LEM. Not Len, pay attention.) and my dad pointed out that one of the details on the leg was wrong. How did he know? Because, he had worked on it! I don't know in what capacity he worked on the first craft to land on the moon, but he wouldn't have just been a nut and bolt tightener. All I know is that he worked in the Tool Engineering Department of a NASA sub-contracted company.
Four months after the first men walked on the moon, my dad received a commemorative medallion to mark the event that took place fifty years ago today and I present the evidence below, m'lud.

An Addendum to Starless.

When the best wife on the planet bought two tickets to see King Crimson celebrating their 50th anniversary at the Royal Albert Hall, I was a little worried that said best wife would have a miserable evening. The best wife on the planet has never been a great lover of King Crimson and if she happened upon me listening to Mr. Fripp and co. would politely request that we listen to something else. It has to be said that King Crimson have never been purveyors of easy-listening (Just Easy Money - ha ha!) and so I have always complied with the best wife's wishes, turned off the music and slammed every door in the house (paradoxically, the best wife on the planet is married to the worst husband on the planet).

As I stated in the previous post, In The Court of the Crimson King was released in October 1969. I was introduced to King Crimson by a late schoolfriend, George Russell (still sorely missed) and I bought my copy of their first album on 19th August 1974. So, as you can see I came late to the party. By the time I had made my purchase, they had already released Larks' Tongue in Aspic and in October 1974 would release Red, their last studio album, or so I thought. With a somewhat heavy heart, my last King Crimson album was U.S.A. and it actually had R.I.P. on the sleeve.

To cut a long story short a new King Crimson arose in the early eighties and I hadn't heard any of these new recordings. Prior to the Albert Hall gig of 20th June 2019, I thought that I had better listen to some of this new-fangled music and picked out a few unfamiliar pieces from the previous two nights' set lists. I liked what I heard.

The best wife on the planet sat side by side with her as-excited-as-a-teenager-again husband and waited for the evening's performance to begin. Performance. It was fan-bloody-tastic. An exhibition of joyful musicianship exploded from the stage. That's right, joyful. Even the best wife on the planet was caught up in the whole evening and even downloaded a particular song that she had enjoyed. All three evenings at the Albert Hall ended with 21st Century Schizoid Man as an encore. During our evening's performance the saxophonist, Mel Collins, slipped in a sly little reference to Take the A-Train and the drummer (one of three!), Gavin Harrison slipped in a nod to Colonel Bogey.

It was a brilliant, magical evening and I cannot thank the best wife on the planet enough.

Starless

I have no idea how this text will relate to the image because, as I type, the cursor has taken on a life of its own.

Oh well. What you can see (wherever the hell it is) on this entry is a bit of Brendini juvenilia. Now, it could be argued that my artistic endeavours have not moved on over the passing decades. Indeed, it could well be argued that they have, in fact, degenerated. Well. Don't care! So, nyerr!

This is a watercolour what I did in February 1975. I can be that precise because I writted it on the back. It is called "Starless" and I know that because I also writted that on the back too. I also writted, in a different coloured ink the following legend: Based on a track from the album "Red" by King Crimson. 

Red was released in October 1974. The final track on the B side of the vinyl platter which I had excitedly purchased, was called "Starless". See how it all starts to add up?

King Crimson released their first album, In The Court of the Crimson King, in October 1969 and they are currently on tour supposedly playing fifty gigs in celebration of their fiftieth anniversary (They are actually playing fifty one, but never mind). 

The  reason for the ancient painting being posted here? I'M ONLY GOING TO BLOODY SEE THEM AT THE BLOODY ROYAL ALBERT BLOODY HALL!

It's an early birthday present from the best wife on the planet. I have never seen them live and for the first time in my life I am going to see Robert Fripp perform live and in the flesh and all. I am so excited, I feel like a teenager again!