This is the method I use. I have found it to fail without fail.

This has nothing to do with the fact that it is National ‘Do your tax form’ Week.

[You may repost this image on your blog if you put a link back here - thank you!]

Posted by Dave at 3:07 pm on January 28, 2008 and filed under Cartoons, Starting a Business, Slacking, Household hints.

12 Comments

Posted by Dave at 8:37 am on December 13, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints, Advent.

4 Comments

This is today’s Advent calendar image. I forgot to post it as I was so caught up in posting about the news of the day.

I make lists, but usually I get so overwhelmed by item one, which is invariably ‘Tidy office’, that I get disillusioned and give up on the rest.

For more cartoons about my shambolic general state see the ‘my failings‘ category on We Blog Cartoons.

Posted by Dave at 10:32 pm on December 4, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Slacking, Household hints, Advent.

3 Comments

This cartoon was created as part of my Cartoon Challenge Night. Thanks to Anne for the suggestion.

Phew. The others will probably not be so multi-drawinged. It was just that this topic leant itself to a more-than-one picture approach.

Right. Number 2.

Posted by Dave at 9:50 pm on October 3, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints.

3 Comments

We bought our first vegetable rack at the weekend.

A person’s life can be divided into the time they live pre-vegetable rack (P.V.R.) and the time they live post-vegetable rack (Also P.V.R, confusingly). Of course there will be some people who are not able to purchase a vegetable rack at any time of their lives, a fact I have not forgotten.

For us, the moment of vegetable rack need came during our mid thirties. I don’t know whether that is usual. In your twenties you feel able to live with vegetables just lying around the house here and there. In your early thirties you try and designate a ‘vegetable shelf’ or a ‘vegetable cupboard’ but deep inside in your heart of hearts you know that that isn’t really the answer.

Ours has four shelves. We felt that was the way to go. Other vegetable racks have three shelves - in fact you might notice the one I’ve drawn in the picture has three shelves - a ‘three shelver’, as they are known. Three shelf vegetable racks are very good vegetable racks, don’t get me wrong. We’ve found that the main advantage of the ‘four shelver’ over the ‘three shelver’ was quite simply that it had one extra shelf.

I thought I’d post this as there may be someone reading who has a sort of an empty feeling inside and doesn’t really know why. You’ve tried going out and having a good time. You’ve bought the latest gadgets. You’ve even been to the doctor. Perhaps, just perhaps, what you need is a good vegetable rack.

Do let us know in the comments at what stage in life you first started using a vegetable rack. Did you go out and buy it, or was it handed down through the generations? Do you use it only for vegetables, or does a bit of fruit get mingled in too? Perhaps you are a carnivore and don’t even eat vegetables. All perspectives welcome in the comments.

Posted by Dave at 11:17 pm on October 2, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, In-depth analysis, Household hints.

45 Comments

I have had cause to glue several pieces of wood together lately, so I thought I would keep you updated.

The budget dining room chair
This became broken because someone had been leaning back on it in the way that we were told not to do at school. I poured some wood glue into the holes and then put it back together. Unfortunately since my gluing the chair has one leg that is longer than the others so the chair wobbles when you sit on it or when a cat jumps on it. At the moment the short leg has a piece of folded-up newspaper underneath it which means that it is approximately level. As a longer term project I plan to cut a little bit off the other three legs (using my saw). This may need to be repeated so it is likely that the chair will become quite a bit lower than our other chairs. We will mainly use it for sitting at coffee tables or to take the humblest seat like it says in the Bible.

The budget two seater settee
This became broken during a particularly lively game of scrabble. One moment I was thinking of words using seven vowels, the next I was on the floor. I poured some wood glue into the holes and then put it back together. I plan to be a bit calmer when playing scrabble in the future.

The budget Argos lightbox
This became broken because it was not very well made in the first place. I use the lightbox to trace cartoons from one sheet of paper to another or to trace things I cannot draw, like horses. The lightbox had been broken for several months and broke into two pieces every time I picked it up to use it, which was a mild annoyance. I poured some wood glue into the holes and then put it back together. From now on I will be doing more cartoons about horses. Actually I do not think I have ever done a cartoon about horses.

Posted by Dave at 11:39 pm on August 17, 2007 and filed under In-depth analysis, Household hints, Utter nonsense.

7 Comments

Today was a day for attending to the woeful state of the garden, which has been allowed to fall into rack, ruin and disrepair because because we have been busy with getting cats and doing all the travelling we could manage in the six weeks before getting cats.

I assembled a mini greenhouse. The above illustration is meant to give you a taste of the sort of complexities involved. It was not easy I tell you. I do not know how these things are designed and made, but it seems to me that there are no testing stages between a mini greenhouse design leaving the drawing board and the boxes being shipped off in bulk to Argos. They do not make them with the intention that you should actually be able to put them together.

We also went to the garden centre to buy some plants. I bought a melon seedling. It is very unlikely that we will successfully harvest very many melons given that everything we will grow will be in plastic pots in a mini greenhouse, but for 99 pence it is worth a try. Failure brings no shame, but success will mean I am the talk of the gardeners of Basildon. Such a prize is worth striving towards.

Oddly enough Katie on the Wibsite assembled a mini greenhouse today too. I’ll ask you the same question I asked her, which is as follows: Can the sun’s rays penetrate through the plastic cover of a mini greenhouse, or do I have to take the cover off every day? It is a seethough plastic, but quite thick as seethough plastic goes. If you can advise on this or anything else I would be grateful.

Posted by Dave at 10:59 pm on April 21, 2007 and filed under Essex Life, Household hints, Environment.

7 Comments

Sometimes the best way to achieve your goal is to stop trying.

Please do not take that as me saying you can have a break from your paperwork, essay, chores or other laboursome toil.

Feel free to repost this:

<img src="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cb/insomnia.gif" alt="cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com" />
<p>Cartoon by <a href="http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/">Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/">We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>


Posted by Dave at 3:40 pm on March 7, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints.

5 Comments

I drew this because I quite often get into a bit of a pickle when I am leaving the house owing to the immense number of things that must be remembered. I thought it would be good to have a handy informational sheet to refer to. I am sure I have left things out: for instance one quite often needs ‘the tools of ones trade’, but I have not included them.

This is a free download that you can print off or do what you want with as long as you do not sell it or publish it in a commercial publication. I’ve no idea whether this will be useful to anyone else of course. Perhaps it is only me that suffers from ‘pre-leaving-the-house panic syndrome’.

The high resolution of the image file is here or you can download a pdf file via this link (right click and select ’save target as’ or ’save link as’).

Special note for Bloggers: You are most welcome to republish the small version (but not the download version) of the file above as long as you put a link here. I’ve included handy code below. Please link to this post and not directly to the download locations as they may change and also it important that people see the terms and conditions. Thank you kindly!

<img src="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cb/leaving-the-house.gif" alt="cartoon from www.cartoonchurch.com" />
<p>Cartoon by <a href="http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/">Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/">We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>

Posted by Dave at 12:46 pm on March 2, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Mundane, Household hints.

8 Comments

This one can be used on your own blog too. Simply go to We Blog Cartoons and find the secret code. The code will be one of the first things you see, so it is not really that secret.

Posted by Dave at 10:47 am on February 27, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints, New Weblogcartoons cartoons.

14 Comments

Posted by Dave at 11:07 am on February 24, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Mundane, Household hints.

3 Comments

This came about as a result of my thinking about cutting down on energy use.

Thanks for all the comments, thoughts and e-mails following on from my ‘responding to climate change‘ post. I’m still thinking about some of the issues but I think I will be going ahead with the environmental cartoons website. Someone suggested making it possible to send a cartoon to your MP, which sounds like an interesting idea and one that I’ve been thinking about.

I think it is worth taking in this advice on writetothem.com, that sending lots of identical or similar letters that have obviously been generated by some sort of orchestrated campaign is often counterproductive.

Any advice from people who know about this sort of thing would be appreciated.

[You can post this cartoon on your blog by copying this code:]


<img src="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cb/stop-ironing.gif" alt="cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com" />
<p>Cartoon by <a href="http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/">Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/">We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>


Posted by Dave at 1:16 pm on February 6, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints, Environment.

16 Comments