The Green Man

Last week the Wakefield Express ran an article on my book with the headline 'The Rough with the Smooth' and a picture (right) of me and my new book, surrounded by the branches of our crab apple, which are currently dripping with yellow fruits.

Today John Welding e-mailed me this portrait of the author lurching alarmingly out of the undergrowth.

'Have got a huge deadline looming,' John explains, 'so was only able to get side tracked by doing the picture, left. I was inspired by your photy in the Horbury Wakefield Express, it reminded me of Green Man mythology.... the black and white photograph is better, more atmospheric.'

Didn't I say the other day that that man is working too hard? John is the man who can look at a tomato top and see an alien entity bent on world domination (see 7th October), so I guess I shouldn't worry too much if he sees me like this. I look a bit like Spike Milligan playing the crazed castaway Ben Gunn in the Mermaid Theatre production of Treasure Island. Come to think of, I look like that in the photograph too!

Weinstein's Theory

More like one of the characters in Waiting for Godot than a castaway pirate, these drawings, by Dan Weinstein were based on a photograph I used on my home page last year. Dan, a professor of English at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, keeps an illustrated weblog (see link below).

Am I really so waywardly lugubrious?

No, don't answer that question, it was meant to be rhetorical!

I could imagine this character coming to life in a cartoon animation. Like Estragon in Godot, he'd probably moan:

'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!'