One more cartoon for now. You can see the large version here along with the link to the high resolution printable version. There’s no charge if you want to print it out for the door / wall of the church office, but if you’d like to publish it in your church magazine or elsewhere I’d appreciate you buying a licence (for church use) or getting in touch. If that’s OK of course. Thank you!

I’ll post a few more soon. I have a new ftp programme (the one that enables me to upload things to the internet) and it has taken me half the day to tweak the dials, find the passwords, find the passwords which will enable me to find the passwords and work out whether it can make the tea and do the washing up.

Anyway, hello to anyone who is reading from a church office. Hope your day is going well. My advice would be to keep this page* open in another window in case the vicar comes in and finds you casually browsing cartoons when the noticesheet isn’t yet finished.

*Open invitation to bloggers: See whether you can fill that page.

Posted by Dave at 3:19 pm on October 1, 2008 and filed under Cartoons, Church.

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See a larger version of this cartoon here on CartoonChurch.com. I thought it was about time I uploaded a few more. This is another one from the first book, the Dave Walker Guide to the Church. Perhaps I’ll upload some from the new book before too long.

Posted by Dave at 3:07 pm on October 1, 2008 and filed under Cartoons, Church.

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The Diocese of Oxford has produced a document entitled ‘Welcoming those with Autism and Asperger Syndrome in our Churches and Communities’. The document includes some of my cartoons - they are existing ones with occasional minor modifications rather than new material. You can find the document as a downloadable .pdf via this page: Asperger Friendly Church?, which includes an interview with Ann Memmott, Advisor to the Oxford Diocese on autism and Asperger syndrome.

My understanding is that there are plans for guidelines for the Church of England as a whole. On a related note, from the Church Times earlier this year: Act on autism, Church urged.

As an aside: I am aware that there is a lack of crispness in the cartoons in the document. This is something I am aware of, and I’m hoping that it is something that can be addressed.

Posted by Dave at 10:03 am on September 30, 2008 and filed under Church, Cartooning.

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1. I was offered the opportunity to take part in 40 days of prayer for the bargain price of $9.98. For this much money I would get daily e-mail updates which I could forward on to my friends for free. They would not need to pay $9.98. I’m no businessman, but it seems to me that if you’re going to run a profitable 40 days of prayer you need to get everyone paying their $9.98.

2. A ‘wholly owned subsidiary’ of the Carphone Warehouse Group contacted me to say that they would be very happy to have a link to their site on my website, and in fact they would go as far as to write a whole page of information that I could post onto my site with a link to them. All for free. Unfortunately they “are not currently in the position of being able to exchange or return links”. Much as I’d enjoy participating in such an attempt to manipulate the search engines I have declined to respond to the unsolicited e-mail. Oddly enough I had thought, until now, that the Carphone Warehouse was a legitimate and above-board sort of company.

3. The Amazon internet company had a special offer whereby one could have a FREE trial of their ‘Amazon Prime’ service, which promises to send things out on a next-day-delivery basis. I can confirm the results of the trial based on a sample of one: The goods do not arrive the next day as promised, even if you wait in all day for them. Suffice to say it is not a service that one shall be continuing with.

Posted by Dave at 11:35 am on September 26, 2008 and filed under Mundane, Slightly grumpy.

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Thought I might do a diagram on the subject. If anyone who attends such occasions can help me via the comments (or via e-mail if you don’t want your comments published) that would be super. So, deanery chapter meetings:

• What happens?
• What subjects get talked about?
• What do you like and/or dislike about them?
• The chapter clerk: How are they chosen and what is their role?
• Any other comments

No need to answer all of these - just any that seem appropriate. Many thanks in advance.

Posted by Dave at 10:49 am on September 17, 2008 and filed under Ideas appeal.

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The Daily Mail under the editorship of Paul Dacre is the last popular stronghold of Christian Britain. … Dacre’s Mail is virtually the last friend Bible-believing Christians have got in Fleet Street.

An article on VirtueOnline that brought a smile to my face and a little bit of joy to my heart. I’m not linking to the site for religious reasons, so you’ll have to copy and paste:

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8967

Posted by Dave at 4:36 pm on September 10, 2008 and filed under Religion.

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Jon Birch has said kind things about the dullest blog in the world, a not-very-interesting project of mine from the 2003 era. Jon keeps a good blog over at the asbojesus with his cartoons and in-depth discussions and suchlike. He was talking about it all at Greenbelt but I unfortunately missed the talk owing to not remembering whether I knew about it or not.

A while or so ago I transferred the dullest blog to its own domain, the idea being that it would be easier to manage and I could get rid of all the spammy comments. I had planned to restart it, but lost interest. I have a whole suite (what a good word) of half-unstarted projects, of which this is one. Maybe, if I am struck by some sort of whim, I will restart it at some point.

Today I found that the dullest blog has its own group on Facebook. Good heavens. I thought everyone had forgotten about it. Anyway, I just joined the group.

So, I’m posting to tell you about a Facebook group I have joined. The dullest blog continues, just in a different form.

Posted by Dave at 11:12 pm on September 4, 2008 and filed under Mundane.

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Hello.

This is the return of the Cartoon Blog. Sorry once again for not writing anything here even though we got back from being away nearly a week ago. Dull explanation: I haven’t been 100% well all of the time, and my wife still had some time off so last week I was only really working on a part time basis meaning I had to prioritise certain tasks of which this blog was sadly not one.

Greenbelt was marvellous, as ever. The Church Times had a tent in which some of my work was displayed and it was great to see people enjoying it. It was good to meet so many people including a number of readers of this blog.

Neil took a couple of pictures of me grinning inanely. I posted a few photos from Greenbelt on the Church Times blog and have since posted one or two cartoons.

Continued apologies to those who are still waiting for me to reply to an e-mail. I haven’t really recovered from pre-Lambeth, let alone the time I was at Lambeth, on holiday, Greenbelt, post-Greenbelt etc etc. I will aim to get on top of everything this week, but… we shall see. Sooner or later I think I may just have to admit defeat and resign from the internet.

Nevertheless I am starting September with high hopes. I plan, amongst other things, to do a bit more drawing on this blog as there has been a lack of it, and also make some long-overdue content updates to CartoonChurch.com. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Dave at 5:03 pm on September 1, 2008 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Mundane.

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The August Bank Holiday is of course the weekend of the very good Greenbelt Festival.

This year our plans have changed somewhat, as at the time of writing I’m still not feeling that great healthwise. For the first year since I started going (which was, I think, 1999) the campervan will be staying at home and we will not be going a day early to camp at a highly secret Gloucestershire location ready to queue up at 10am at Cheltenham Racecourse on Friday morning. We (that’s my wife and I) are still planning to go, but have decided that staying in a hotel would be a better option for someone who doesn’t quite know how much of the Festival he’s going to feel like going to.

Our traditional Wibsite meet will still be happening (latest info here) but not at the usual venue. The plan is currently the beer tent tiny tea tent at 4.30 on Saturday - hopefully word will get around if there is any change.

I hope to be in the Church Times tent for some time over the weekend. The tent is to host a cartoon exhibition featuring work by the different Church Times cartoonists. If, on the off-chance, you had any interest in ‘My Pew‘ and/or the 2009 calendar then it is rumoured that they will be available.

Also available in the tent will be the Church Times Guide to Greenbelt, a free… well… guide to Greenbelt. I don’t really know what will be in it, but it is just possible that it might include a map of the site in a style you might recognise.

All being well I will be writing about the Festival on the Church Times blog (link). I’ve even gone so far as to organise a press pass so that I can go and make use of an electrical socket in the press room as my super-duper miniature mobile festival-blogging laptop with-added-dongle has a battery life of about half an hour. This (CartoonChurch) blog may go fairly quiet until after the weekend as I will be concentrating my efforts on the Church Times one.

Of course my involvement is subject to my being up and about, which I really hope I will be as Greenbelt is usually the highlight of my year. I’m determined to be there for some of it even if I have to crawl around on hands and/or knees. I’ll look forward to seeing some of you there - do come and say hello if you see me loitering or indeed crawling around in the aforementioned manner.

Posted by Dave at 11:23 pm on August 20, 2008 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt.

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Another sign from the National Railway Museum. There’s not really anything funny about it, but I must admit that it has brought me mild joy during idle moments. The rest of the notice has been blanked out because I felt it didn’t really add anything to the first few sentences.

Posted by Dave at 10:29 pm on August 19, 2008 and filed under Photographs.

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Thank you for the splendidly creative answers given to my ‘holiday photograph 1′ conundrum. The suggestions given have, I’m sure, drawn many an admiring glance from other commenter-box attenders.

The signs are in fact from the interior of one of the ‘pods’ (or ‘capsules’, if you will) of the Yorkshire Wheel at the National Railway Museum in York. The notices, one assumes, illustrate the capsule-commandments: Thou shalt not kick, Thou shalt not punch, Thou shalt not lean. (I did in fact reverse the image as I think the leaning sign works best as the third, but anyone looking into a pod from the outside (from an aeroplane, for example) would indeed see the signs as I posted them.)

The Yorkshire Wheel is well worth going to see if you are in York with six spare pounds (the National Railway Museum is free which makes the combined experience very reasonable in my opinion). The wheel is apparently half the height of the London Eye but cost one tenth of the amount to build. It goes faster than the London one and (when we went at least) each group or couple got a pod to themselves meaning that there was ample space to kick, punch or lean had the signage not prohibited it.

I have put some of my Yorkshire Wheel photos into a smörgåsbord-like arrangement below, thereby disguising the fact that individually they are mostly some combination of a bit blurry, rather overcast and/or quite badly composed.

Pictures:
1. Car park from wheel
2. Wheel from car park
3. Looking up from a spot somewhere below
4. Unimpressive view of York Minster, but one that shows signage

Health update. Still feeling rather wiped out. Wandered out to the garage earlier, a distance of 25 meters, with a similar length of return journey. Nearly finished me off. Just hope I’m going to recover in time for Greenbelt.

Posted by Dave at 9:20 pm on August 19, 2008 and filed under Photographs.

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I have returned from holidaytime. As no-one really reads blogs in August I think I can afford to show you one or two of my holiday photographs without too much of an outcry.

This is photograph number one. If anyone can explain the meaning of the signage their prize will be the possibility of admiring glances from other frequenters of the comments page.

I have a slight virus so will not be doing any in-depth blogging or drawing work for a day or two. I will attempt to reply to some e-mails, but it might not be in an in-depth way.

Posted by Dave at 8:46 pm on August 18, 2008 and filed under Mundane, Photographs.

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