There is one vacuum cleaner cartoon above, one below the fold and another here. I drew all of these in 1997 whilst at Moorlands College. For reasons that need not be explained I had a lot to do with vacuum cleaners during that phase of my life. In hindsight the cartoons aren’t quite as good as I thought they were at the time.

I’ve dug these out because I’m having a clearout of cartoons on wibsite.com as we prepare to move to a new server and improve one or two things. I thought I’d post them just in case future generations decide that vacuum cleaner cartoons are one of the defining genres of the transition between the 20th and 21st centuries. I’ll probably post a few more of my older work of dubious quality over the next day or two.

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Posted by Dave at 2:26 pm on May 25, 2006 and filed under Cartoons.

2 Comments

Actually I only have one Pentecost resource, the Pentecost worksheet, but the plural sounds better and more impressive.

Some of you may have used this worksheet in your church last year, in which case I am afraid to report that it has not changed and it is the same as it was then. (I have not forgotten about my promise to do more new worksheets by the way.) I’m posting it again though as I know there are lots of readers who were not around a year ago. The worksheet would be ideal for use with a youthgroup, with a home group, as a discussion starter or printed on the back of your service sheet.

Like all my material I ask that you buy a licence if you choose to photocopy and use this worksheet. For non profit uses the licence costs £3 per item or £35 for a year for unlimited use of all the CartoonChurch cartoons and resources. As with all my cartoons the high resolution version isn’t passworded – I operate an ‘honesty box’ system so you can try printing it out to see how it looks before you pay.

Posted by Dave at 9:25 am on May 25, 2006 and filed under Worksheets.

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I’ve refrained from commenting on Anglican goings-on for a while as it has all been a bit tedious and all the commenters here on the blog have been getting along so well it seemed a shame to post anything controversial. This story would be laughable if (a) it wasn’t so sad and (b) it didn’t involve a curate who is a friend of mine.

My local Bishop, the Bishop of Chelmsford, and 20 curates are on a trip to Kenya. It emerges that the Bishop has become the patron of ‘Changing Attitude’, a society about which the Kenyan hosts are uncomfortable. Upon discovering this the Kenyan bishop and church has ‘withdrawn it’s hospitality’ from the group, leaving them stranded in some hotel in the middle of no-one-quite-knows-where. Ruth Gledhill has covered the story in the Times and on her blog (and also, incidentally, her Blogger blog). The local ‘Anglican Mainstream’ group have issued a statement saying that he jolly well deserves to be stranded in an obscure hotel in Africa and that he shouldn’t have been so silly in the first place (paraphrase).

Background and sundry information:
Thinking Anglicans: what is going on in Kenya?
Thinking Anglicans: more about Kenya and Chelmsford
The Bishop of Chelmsford, Right Reverend John Gladwin
Changing Attitude – Home Page
Changing Attitude – Patrons
BBC NEWS | England | Essex | Gay support bishop’s Kenya snub

Update: Cartoon added.

Further Update:Second cartoon added. Ruth adds: “I am assured that it is only the programme that has been cancellled, and that the Anglican church in Kenya is making sure that the bishop and his wife and curates are all being looked after and cared for properly for the rest of their visit.”

This is a relief. It perhaps means that my first cartoon goes a bit far. But I’ll leave it up so that anyone who wants to complain has a full and adequate opportunity to do so.

Posted by Dave at 12:27 pm on May 24, 2006 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Cartoons.

9 Comments

I normally steer clear of naming and shaming companies via my cartoons and an associated grumpy post, but I’ve now done so twice in a week. But seeing as I’m still sitting in a freezing* cold house with no heat or electricity being sued is not the first thing on my mind. I think I will try to stick to naming and shaming only one company per week from now on.

Anyway, tomorrow I am expecting the fifth visit from a British Gas engineer in a week. Every time there is some new part or new machine that is required to do the job, and every time a different engineer comes so that he (and they are all male) does not know what the previous one has done. In the meantime we cannot get the electricity fixed until we are sure that the boiler is not going to do any more leaking. As a result my entire life and business is being powered by the electricity socket next to the cooker and lots of extension leads, and I am staying elsewhere overnight as I have no fridge and no hot water (as far as I know – one can never be sure).

*Exaggeration. But 75% of British Gas engineers work with the front door open, so it has been a bit cold.

Posted by Dave at 10:24 am on May 24, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Essex Life, Slightly grumpy.

3 Comments

What happens when an ignoramus reads the Good Book?
David Plotz from Slate magazine is blogging the Bible. This introduction explains what looks like a very interesting project. Genesis chapter 1 starts here, whilst the latest entry (from Genesis chapter 25 at the time of writing) is here.

My goal is pretty simple. I want to find out what happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based… I’ll spend the next few weeks (or months) finding out. I’ll begin with “in the beginning” and see how far I get… I’m sure I’ll repeat obvious points made by thousands of biblical commentators before; I’ll misunderstand some passages and distort others—hey, that’ll be part of the fun.

[Found via Andii: Slate blogs the Bible]

Posted by Dave at 7:33 pm on May 23, 2006 and filed under Blogging, Spirituality.

2 Comments

The ‘how to make church brilliant‘ cartoon is, as I think I’ve mentioned, available on a postcard. The postcards are A5 with the picture on the front and space to write on the back along with the CartoonChurch.com web address and a small promotional sentence or two about the site. There is even a space for a stamp. The postcards do have an ever so slightly glossy surface both sides, so you might need to choose the pen you use with care.

I’ve got lots of postcards to give away to readers of this blog. Postage to the UK costs very little, so I’ll send them to as many UK people as want them until I close this offer. I don’t have unlimited funds to post them outside the UK, but I will send them to the first ten readers outside the UK to respond. I hope that is fair. Here’s how to get yours:

Send an e-mail to me at dave (at) cartoonchurch.com with the subject ‘Cartoon postcards’. Please include a postal address in the e-mail, even if I already have your address (it just makes the whole process quicker for me).

I’ll send you 5 postcards unless you particularly ask me for more. If you (for example) have lots of vicar friends or church magazine editor buddies you can send them to then I’ll be very happy to provide you with more. If you can send one to someone who might conceivably be interested in signing up for one of my licences then that would be highly appreciated, but the postcards are yours to do as you wish with.

I won’t pass your postal or e-mail address on to anyone else and I won’t send you junk mail. I will assume though that if you are happy for me to send you postcards on this occasion you would be happy for me to send you something similar in the future, so if for instance I was to produce a different postcard next year you wouldn’t mind being sent one. If you are adamant that you never want to hear from me ever again please say so (nicely) in the e-mail. Thank you!

Update: Thanks for all the e-mails and kind comments contained therein. At the time of writing (21:25 BST on Tuesday) I’ve had 29 e-mails and only 5 of them non-UK ones, so more are welcome.

Posted by Dave at 10:08 am on May 23, 2006 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Cartoons.

6 Comments

Thanks to everyone for your generosity in ‘favoriting‘ my blog. At the time of writing I have reached the dizzy heights of No 52 in the international favoriting rankings, which really is quite astounding. My reputation has emerged relatively unscathed from the whole sordid business, with only one or two well-deserved accusations of ‘soliciting for additions’ and the like.

As a result of your generosity I have decided to devote my life to the doing of good, the linking to sites I quite like and the giving away of free postcards. But I think I’ll start a new post about that so as not to confuse matters.

Posted by Dave at 9:35 am on May 23, 2006 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Sundry posts.

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This post is here for highly secret and yet deeply uninteresting testing purposes only and should be ignored.

I am not going to stop you commenting, but I must warn you that you will not find inner fulfilment by commenting on this post.

Equally I have never been one to discourage linking to this blog, but I must warn you that this post really does not merit a link and any readers clicking the link and arriving at this post will undoubtedly be disappointed.

Indeed, even by reading this post you are using valuable time which you could far more more usefully have spent elsewhere.

Move along now. Nothing to see.

Testing. One Two. One two one.

That should do it.

Update: There are no interesting developments to report on this topic.

Posted by Dave at 1:38 pm on May 22, 2006 and filed under CartoonChurch.com newsletter, Mundane.

8 Comments

Posted by Dave at 8:40 am on May 22, 2006 and filed under Cartoons.

1 Comment

There are so many issues to campaign about these days. How do you decide which ones to concentrate on? I am a half hearted campaigner on lots of issues. Perhaps it would be better to concentrate on one and do it properly.

NO to the bypass.

Posted by Dave at 8:00 am on May 22, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Make Poverty History.

3 Comments

To be fair, which this cartoon blatantly isn’t of course, the internet connection at Maddie_C’s is now beginning to sort itself out. It has been on a lot more than it has been off over this weekend. But it has been a difficult week with a lot of phonecalls, plugging things in and unplugging them, turning things on and off, checking to see whether the wind had changed direction etc etc. I must also say in defence of BT that you can always get to speak to a human being on a local rate call within a couple of minutes when you call their broadband support, which is more than you can say for just about any other large company I have had dealings with.

But I’m still not sure whether (a) BT is a bad choice for broadband (b) Wireless internet is a problematic technology or (c) Broadband is often very unreliable for the first few days while the line ‘checks its speed’ and generally gets used to the fact of its own existence. I’d like to think it is (b) or (c), not least because BT dialup is in my experience superbly reliable, so it’s hard to see how they could get one thing so right and another so wrong.

I have a question for those of you who have broadband. Do you leave the blessed thing on night and day? If so do you find yourself checking your spam and moderating comments at moments when you should be doing something more useful? Or do you turn it off except when you are using it? We are a bit reluctant to turn off the connection here in case it never comes back again.

Posted by Dave at 3:37 pm on May 21, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Technical.

17 Comments

Thanks to my good friend and Wibcolleague Chris Taylor for this picture. The ‘Go Sin’ Chinese takeaway is in Oldham, UK.

Posted by Dave at 6:00 pm on May 20, 2006 and filed under Sundry posts.

1 Comment