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

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, Environment, Household hints.

16 Comments

How do you organise your drawers?

Posted by Dave at 5:12 pm on January 28, 2007 and filed under Art, Essex Life, Household hints, Mundane.

22 Comments

It is important when writing a weblog to write about the things that people are interested in. I have had a look at the search engines queries that people have used to find this website and have discoved that in January two people have typed in bedside tables free download. There is obviously a need out there for bedside tables that can be downloaded from the internet, or failing that instructions on how to make bedside tables. I have therefore produced the following worksheet:

[Click on the image to see it from a closer vantage point]

You can download a large printable version here (right click on link and choose ‘save as’ or something).

I must warn you that it is not very good. To be honest I do not know very much about making bedside tables, but it is what the public wants and if I was to stick to things I know a lot about then I would not write or draw very often. Also I did it in 5 minutes and did not take much care.

Feel free to print out and republish this worksheet. Please resist the temptation to sell it to someone.

Posted by Dave at 7:52 pm on January 14, 2007 and filed under Design, Household hints, Technical, Utter nonsense, Worksheets.

3 Comments

We have a huge number of jobs to do around the house. The whole place is a shambles.

So we have decided to spend the afternoon making chutney.

It is all a bit stressful though, as the similarity between us and people who know what they are doing is minimal. This is despite the fact that we have a recipe from my Mum for apple chutney and also despite the fact that my wife is a domestic goddess. Causes for concern:

• Will the jars be sterilised properly?
• Can ordinary jars withstand the heady heights of one hundred degrees centigrade?
• Is the whole mixture too liquiddy?
• How long does chutney keep anyway?
• Will the greaseproof paper make a proper seal at the top of the jars?
• Did we really need that much ginger?
• Will dinner be ready before Midsomer murders?
• “David, will you come and help please rather than sitting there writing on your blog?”

If this recipe works I may post it on the internet (if my Mum agrees). We might auction a jar on eBay. If not this will probably be the last you hear about it. Unless I give it away in a competition.

Posted by Dave at 7:57 pm on September 17, 2006 and filed under Essex Life, Household hints.

9 Comments

I am hoping that by posting this image I may become one of the leading authorities on lost keys. Not that I have any experience in the matter. It is just that I feel there may be those out there who have lost a key (a garage key or similar) and who have checked everywhere and nearly pulled the house to pieces searching for the key, and then phoned the locksmith who has come out to change the lock at a cost of around £70, after which the key has then been discovered in (say) a pair of trousers that the owner cannot really recall wearing and had checked numerous times.

I’m not saying that there are any such people out there, and even if they are they are idiots and do not deserve to be helped, but in case there are any deserving cases in their midst I am releasing this picture for their future benefit and because if we do not help undeserving idiots then who will?

For those who require further help in finding lost objects I recommend How to Find Lost Objects by Professor Solomon. I quite liked some of his tips, such as “It’s Not Lost—You Are” and the fact that seaching for a lost item can be accomplished from your armchair whilst having “a cup of tea, perhaps, or a stick of gum, or pipeful of tobacco”. Not to mention:

Occasionally, our distress is such that not only do we overlook an object—we forget what we’re looking for! To avoid this, repeatedly murmur the name of the object. (“Potholder, potholder, potholder.”)

Garage key, garage key, garage key. No wonder I couldn’t find… the thing I have already explained that I didn’t lose. I wasn’t murmuring properly.

Posted by Dave at 3:42 pm on July 5, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints.

11 Comments

This cartoon is available on CartoonChurch.com for republication in your church publications. A very reasonably-priced licence is required.

This cartoons is also available at We Blog Cartoons for free republication on your blog.

Posted by Dave at 4:58 pm on June 8, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints, New CartoonChurch cartoons, New Weblogcartoons cartoons.

3 Comments

I’m a hoarder. I keep everything and then have a grand throwing-away session every now and then. I’m doing some of that this week so that I find the floor and so get on with some really important tasks (like sending out your greetings cards – thanks to the people who have ordered in the last week – they’ll go in the post tomorrow all being well) as well as preparing to move in the summer.

It’s difficult to know how much to keep though. I’ve activated another poll (top left) to find out what you do. I think really I should be really really ruthless, but I don’t find it easy.

I am finding some good cartoons though, and also finding inspiration for others. So hopefully there will be a reasonable number in the next few days and weeks.

Survey results
How many mementos do you keep?
* I keep everything. My entire house is packed with boxes of stuff from my past.: 20% (13)
* I keep a lot. I don’t like to throw things away.: 36% (23)
* I keep a few boxes but I’m quite good at throwing things away.: 25% (16)
* I keep a small selection of the things that remind me of important events.: 17% (11)
* I have a few old photos but that’s it.: 0% (0)
* I keep no keepsakes.: 2% (1)

Posted by Dave at 7:59 pm on June 7, 2006 and filed under Household hints.

10 Comments

Posted by Dave at 9:05 am on May 31, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints.

1 Comment

For some reason I’ve been drawing gardening cartoons today. I don’t know why.

Posted by Dave at 7:41 pm on May 29, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Household hints.

1 Comment

Here in the UK it is the Bank Holiday, which means all of a sudden all the Cartoon Blog readers who normally tune in for hastily drawn cartoons, weighty analysis on the latest Anglican goings-on and in-depth reflections on campervanning and bicycling suddenly have an urge to know what I have been doing in the garden. Which is lucky, because that is what I am going to blog about.

Since we last talked about the garden I have been trying out various anti-slug remedies and assessing their effectiveness. Here are the results of my findings:

Copper coins: Rubbish. The slugs just walk over them.
Eggshell: Useless. The slugs just stride straight past.
Small traps filled with cheap beer. Semi-effective. But although they catch a lot of slugs there are still more slugs that they didn’t catch. I also now have a lot of Tesco value 2% lager hanging around the place. It tastes like bad shandy. Any takers?
Slug pellets. These were the ones that are harmless to animals and pets. I think they may be harmless to slugs too. One snail did get caught.
Stamping on them. Effective if you can devote your life to watching your plants on a 24 hour-a-day basis.

The latest plan is to put the few surviving plants on a plastic table. The top of the legs of the table have been coated in WD40 household oil, thereby meaning that any slugs who climb up get to a certain level and then fall to their deaths from a great height. I shall report back. Any slugs who want these plants are going to have to resort to James Bond-like antics. Which they probably will.

In other gardening news: Do giant thistles have no predators?

Enjoy your Bank Holiday if you have one. Garden well my friends.

Posted by Dave at 6:50 pm on May 28, 2006 and filed under Essex Life, Household hints.

6 Comments

This is a second consecutive post about gardening as it has been the Bank Holiday and I am sure that is the subject that everyone is interested in on a Bank Holiday. I mean, look at this chart!

These are the copper tuppences and wuppences (singular of tuppence) placed around our pepper plants. This was done before I read the comments on the previous post. It is worth a try even though some of the commenters raised their metaphorical eyebrows at the suggestion.

Note: We did not grow these pepper plants from seed but bought them in pre-prepared plant form. I thought you should know. The label which has been stuck in the growbag shows the different colours of peppers we will be harvesting in a week or two.

Any of the neighbours looking out of the window may not realise the technical basis behind the copper coin method and may have thought it is some sort of a new-age hippy ritual. But it does have a clear technical basis involving electricity because I read it on the internet. The next idea I will try will be a great big sign saying ‘no slugs’. This will make it clearer to the neighbours, and hopefully the slugs.

We have also planted various floral seeds willy nilly around the garden. Some of them fell on the patio because I am not very good at the scattering. Some of them fell in the area where the cat goes to the toilet. These may not do well as she does random digging. Others fell in the pots with the dubious-looking soil which have held other unsucessful plants (The soil has whitey-blue bits which might be ant powder or perhaps some other sort of soil lurgi, and also lots of dead roots). Other seeds fell into the other pots, and hopefully some of them will do OK and end up looking nice and floral.

Make of this what you will.

Posted by Dave at 8:27 pm on May 1, 2006 and filed under Household hints, Mundane.

1 Comment