Naked lady and comic ladeez

Today, at a life drawing class with Sean and Sally Anne, I made some nice pictures of a lady with no clothes on. After years of pleasing yourself, it makes a sobering change to have someone look over your work and suggest how you might improve your technique. Certainly inspires you to up your game.
Last night I finally made it to the monthly Ladeez Do Comics evening at the Rag Factory. The theme was comics of a medical bent. Philippa Perry presented her excellent and acclaimed Couch Fiction, I got to meet her at last and she is as witty as her book. She was followed by Thom Ferrier who was very amusing about the pressures of being a GP in a remote Welsh valley, and proceedings wound up with a cheerful look at cancer in comics.

From Gay Paree to A&E by way of Bristol

Returned from Paris on Thursday night after a couple of days visiting the folks. A spot of stapling on Friday night after work and I was set for my first ever Bristol Expo.



My day trip turned out just fine. The company was fab and I made the right call for once and dressed appropriately as it was somewhat oven-like in the convention hall.

Digging the nerdfest... Above: David and Jake; below: Oli, Sean, David and Oliver



Managed not to miss my train and got there in time to meet up with the LUC gang and their hangovers for kick-off. There was a massive queue waiting to get in even before it opened with a large sprinkling of daft buggers in superhero garb – those stormtroopers and Darth Vaders must have been cooking inside their costumes. Or maybe it was some kind of sponsored slimathon...
The stall was heavily manned with seven or eight of us sharing the two chairs in rotation. Did a fair bit of circulating around the hall and bumped in to a few familiar faces. And I dared Sean to steal an apple at the Ramada. We're so rock'n'roll.
By the end of the day my feet were killing me and Richy and I managed to lose Jake on our quest for food with the help of Sean's crap excuse for a map.
It all turned out OK. We eventually stumbled upon the Weatherspoon by accident and everyone gradually drifted there including, finally, Jake who was most pleased to have found not only a branch of Subway in his wanderings, but also the car he had lost earlier that morning.
Had to leave before the Eagle Awards to get my train back to town.
I arrived home at midnight just in time for a whole other drama to unfold.
Suffice to say that not a lot of sleep was had as I fielded calls from Nick from the hospital until he got home at 6am. I brought Lucy home on Sunday afternoon, thankfully with no lasting damage, but we were all pretty shaken by the incident.
And so relieved that I had decided to only go for the day.
Everything happens for a reason.