I’ve come up north to pick up my lovely Jess, and I had some time to kill so I thought I’d pop into the library and check my email. I didn’t have anything that needed a reply, so I thought the most sensible wheeze would be to toddle back to the car and have a nap, since we’re going to the theatre tonight* and will thus be driving back to Leicecesestershire rather late, and I’d rather avoid falling asleep at the wheel if at all possible.

The trouble with that is that there’s a brass band playing here, and it’s fun! I’m not sure whose idea it was to stick a brass band in a library - it seems like just about the worst possible combination of entertainment and location, really. Ooh, they’re doing the Blue Danube now.

Anyway, since I’m hanging around to listen to the lovely music, I thought I might as well blog. And now that I’ve spent three paragraphs telling you why I’m blogging, I’d better think of something to write about.

They’re onto another tune. I don’t know what this one is. It’s a bit rubbish.

I could tell you about my puzzlement as to why simongoodway.com doesn’t come higher in the listings when you google for something like cartoonist. Not that there’s any reason why you’d be interested in that, of course, but it’s got me jolly puzzled so I may as well spread my bafflement around a bit. The thing is that there are all sorts of things you can do to improve your ranking in Google, and there are certainly some I’m not doing as much as I could, but on the other hand there seem to be sites listed quite high in the results which are doing them even less than I am, and it stands to reason they must be doing something I’m not, but try as I might I can’t work out what it is. And since I spend about £200 a month on advertising, which I wouldn’t have to do if I was way up there on the first page instead of somewhere at the bottom of page five hundred trillion zillion gazillion, working out what it is is something I’m quite keen to do.

The rubbish tune’s finished. I hope the next one will be better. They’re just sitting there doing nothing at the minute.

I think they’re about to start the next one, one chap’s put his trumpet to his mouth. Oh yes, they’re off. It’s Ain’t Misbehavin’.

I really don’t have very much else to say, so I suppose I might as well stop writing now. Hang on, this isn’t Ain’t Misbehavin’. It definitely was when they started. Oh no, it is again now. Maybe they got confused. Yes, they seem to be sticking with the correct tune now.

Right, now that’s sorted I’d better go and find something else to do. Bye!

*She Stoops To Conquer. Which I know absolutely nothing about, so it might be rubbish.

Oh, hello! I got a bit distracted there. I thought I’d take up the suggestion Loretta made in the comments of my previous but one blog entry of doing a Golden Girls update, so I popped on over to the IMDB to see how things stand (they’re all still alive) and I got engrossed in reading Betty White’s biography. But you have my full attention now.

Today I’ve been busy once again working on the revamped simongoodway.com. When I originally set it up a year and a half ago, I’d never (well, hardly ever) done any drawing for money, and it showed - most of the drawings on the site were donkeys and hiccups. Since then, I’ve done scribblings for approximately sixty-five different people, and I thought it was about time my site reflected that, so when the new version is launched it will include trillions of pictures I’ve bashed out for all sorts of people, plus - and this, I thought, was a crucial part of the scheme if I want everyone who stumbles on my site to instantly throw their life savings at me and beg that I do them a quick doodle - a page of testimonials from former clients.

So today I emailed about forty of my most favouritest customers, asking if they’d be so good as to provide a few words describing what I was like to work with, and shortly thereafter the responses began to trickle in. And what I’ve discovered is this: sending out loads of emails saying “Please tell me that I’m really great” and then getting lots of emails back saying “You’re really great!” is an awfully satisfying way to spend an evening. You should try it some time.

I’m somewhat engrossed in work on my exciting new soon to be launched shinily revamped edition of simongoodway.com, but I thought I’d better drag myself away to bash out a quick blog. I should probably drag myself away to sleep too, seeing as how it’s half past three in the morning, but I’m quite enjoying myself so that might not happen.

I’m hoping to get the new site up and running pretty soonish, because I seem to be experiencing another of the cashflow problems that pop up with alarming regularity, and I’m rather banking on my new-look site to bring me lots of lovely work. How I’ll fit more work into my busy schedule isn’t entirely clear, but I’m trying not to think about that. There must be room for expansion - at present, no matter how hard at it I may be with my rightmost hand, there’s still one more hand and two feet doing nothing at all, which could presumably be roped in if necessary, increasing my throughput fourfold.

I really don’t know where all my money goes. Either I’m spending it, which seems highly improbable, or invisible goats keep squeezing under my bedroom door and eating it out of my wallet. If I can only earn a bit more, I reckon they’ll eat so much they can’t fit under the door any more and all my problems will be solved.

Can you tell that I’m tired?

I think I’ll go to bed. I can fiddle with my site some more in the morning.

D: Ah, Mr Goodway, come in, come in. How are you today?
S: Well, not too bad doctor, but -
D: Before we begin, I’ve got a student sitting in with me today. This is Alfonso.
S: Er, hello Alfonso. He’s a student doctor?
D: Oh good lord no, he’s doing woodwork. I thought he might be able to do something about my wonky table. You don’t mind him staying, do you?
S: Well, actually, it is a bit embarrassing.
D: Say no more, say no more. Alfonso, go and wash up the syringes, there’s a good chap. Use a double dose of Fairy Liquid, they’re supposed to be sterile. Now, Mr Goodway, what’s this embarrassing problem of yours?
S: Ah, well I’ve completely lost the ability to blog.
D: Oh my, as bad as that is it? How long has this been going on?
S: I haven’t been entirely regular since 2004, but the problem’s got gradually worse since the beginning of February. Nowadays I count myself lucky if I can force one out a couple of times a week.
D: Did you notice any other changes around that time? Mucus? Phlegm? Damp patches? Dry patches? Sticky patches? Runny nose? Warts? Verrucas? Rashes?
S: There is one thing. I’ve developed a girlfriend.
D: Whereabouts?
S: Lancashire, but it’s spreading.
D: That could certainly be the cause of a problem. Let’s have a look… oh my, that is a beauty, isn’t it! We could remove it, of course, but there’s be substantial scarring.
S: I’d rather not go down that route. Is there no other way you can cure my blogging malaise?
D: Well I’ll have to do some blood tests to confirm it, but I’d say the problem is that when you’re with your girlfriend, you’re having far too much fun to blog, and when you’re not, you’ve got so much work to catch up with that you just don’t have time.
S: That’s exactly it! And then when I do blog, I don’t have the time to do it properly. Take this entry - what we’ve got so far’s all very good, but I don’t know how it’s going to end, and it’s already ten past two in the morning, and I was hoping to draw two pages of a comic book before going to bed. That doesn’t leave me very long to come up with a hilarious punchline.
D: Oh, don’t worry about that, we’ll just rip off some ancient doctor joke, no one will notice. Now, here are some pills. Take two, three times a day before meals.
S: ‘Estrogen’? Won’t these turn me into a woman?
D: That’s the plan. If that doesn’t give you something to blog about, nothing will!
S: But -
D: Now, go and stand over by the window and stick your tongue out.
S: Are you going to take my temperature?
D: No, I don’t like the man who lives over the road.

I’ve been working jolly hard today. No, really. It does happen sometimes.

The morning was spent working on a comic book I’m doing for one of my customers - we’ll call them customer A - in between dealing with the ten trillion emails I seem to have received today. Once I’d finished the initial draft of the page I was drawing, I emailed it off for feedback and was about to commence work on the next page when I got another of the day’s many emails, this one from a new customer - we’ll call them customer B - saying “Could you please draw me a picture for X amount of money? I need it quite soon please.” So I emailed them back saying “How about we make it Y amount of money?” - Y being bigger than X, you see - to which they replied “You’ve got yourself a deal, daddy-o!” or words to that effect.

Since they needed it quickly, I abandoned customer A for the time being and drew customer B’s picture instead. But it didn’t take very long, and there was no way I could charge Y amount of money for something that I’d knocked up in twenty minutes without it looking like a total con. So I cunningly put it to one side for a couple of hours so they’d think it took longer, and then sent it off.

I then received an email from customer A saying “This is brilliant!", followed shortly by an email from customer B saying “This is brilliant too!". Which was nice.

And I’ve spent the rest of the day working on the soon-to-be-released revamped simongoodway.com. All in all, I reckon that’s a good day’s work.

Meanwhile, the reimagined dressing up game doesn’t look like being a great success. In the old days, when it lasted half an hour on Friday nights, there were usually at least a couple of entrants; the current contest’s been running for nearly a week, which means, if we’re to believe multiplication, there should be at least 336 entries by now, but how many are there? Just me, that’s how many. Honestly, you lot are useless. Well, I’m going to leave it running until someone else dresses up as Buzz Lightyear, however long it takes. So there.

I have a printer which sits on the floor beside my bed. The paper tray has a foldy-out bit on the end, which is usually folded out because there’s paper sitting in it. One of the cats discovered that this was an excellent step to ease jumping onto my bed.

The problem with this was that it snapped it. The cat didn’t seem to bothered by this, but I was, so I paid a visit to Hewlett Packard’s website and ordered a replacement, which was duly delivered.

Unfortunately, our doorbell’s broken, so people have to knock on the door, and from my bedroom way up on the 276th floor of the house I can’t hear such knockings. So instead of leaving my package, they posted a card telling me that they’d tried to deliver but no one was in, and that I’d have to call to arrange redelivery.

I called them on Wednesday and arranged redelivery for Thursday.

On Wednesday night I made the impromptu decision to go up north for the weekend a day early. This did mean that unless my parcel was delivered first thing in the morning, I wouldn’t be around when it arrived. And since I was only allowed to get them to redeliver it once, that would mean having to collect it from the depot.

So on Thursday morning at 10 o’clock - having first checked that no cards were poking through the letter box telling me that they’d tried to deliver it earlier in the day - I phoned the delivery people and explained this. They said that if I made a note on the card authorising them to leave the package on the doorstep, they would.

I made such a note and left it on my desk for an hour while I messed about on the computer.

At 11 o’clock I went downstairs to put the card on the doorstep.

There was another card poking through the letter box telling me that they’d tried to deliver it while I was messing about on the computer.

So now I’ve got to go to Castle Donington.

I have customers from all around the world. I’ve done a logo type jobby for an Italian, book illustrations for an American, and, ooh, lots of other things that aren’t on the web. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, working for clients halfway around the world is just as easy as if they lived over the road - I work mostly by email, with the occasional phone call when it can’t be avoided. I have had a few real life meetings with clients, but there was really only one that was useful. So really distance doesn’t matter at all.

But not everyone sees it that way, and I’ve had at least one potential job that was cruelly snatched away from me when they found out where I live. And a lot of my customers were apparently looking for a local artist, because their Google searches are often things like “cartoonist in Melbourne", or “children’s book illustrator on Mars", or “artist who lives within walking distance of 72 John F Kennedy Drive, Weaselvomit, Iowa". The keywords pertaining to my job trigger my ads, they assume that every result Google presents them with fits their search criteria perfectly, and they click on the link.

And it doesn’t matter that I don’t live within walking distance of 72 John F Kennedy Drive, Weaselvomit, Iowa, but they might be one of the people who’s put off by the thought that they’re working with someone more than two streets away, so I do my best not to reveal my location lest I scare them off. That means quoting them in their local currency - and with PayPal, they can pay in it too, never knowing that their money’s travelling abroad via an electronic Bureau de Change - which means I have to work out where they live. And that’s where it gets interesting.

I can usually find out from my logs what people were searching for when they came to my site. If it was “cartoonist in Melbourne” then no more detective work is needed. Failing that, I can see what version of Google they were using - if it’s google.com, they’re probably American; google.to means they’re in Tonga; google.va means it’s the pope.

But sometimes all I have to go on is the contents of their email, and I have to scan through it for words like “color” (which comes up quite a lot in emails to cartoonists) or “faucet” (which doesn’t). Sometimes I have to go by phraseology - I have before now charged someone in dollars on the strength of the phrase “I watched your pirate animation and it was totally cool!".

By these methods, I find that it’s nearly always possible to determine what part of the world a client hails from, at least with sufficient accuracy to know if I should be quoting them in US, Canadian or Australian dollars, pounds or euros, which on the whole are the only ones that come up. I don’t know how many of those jobs I would have lost if they’d cottoned on to my location, but I bet it’s more than one.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

The dressing up game is back! After a long period of not happening very often because I’m never here on Friday nights any more, I’ve reworked it so it lasts all week long! You’ve got until next Wednesday to dress up as Buzz Lightyear, take a picture, then toddle along to the dressing up game and upload it. And now that you can do it at any time during the course of the week, you’ve got absolutely no excuse not to play! So you jolly well better had.

A few days ago, I went to put on a pair of trousers. Most of the ones I wear on a regular basis were in the wash, and I was forced to resort to an old pair from the days when I used to work in an office which I haven’t worn for several years*. I was slightly less unhealthy then than I am now, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that I could barely get them on, but I was surprised, and what’s more I was dismayed. Evidently my girth is greater than once it was, and I was a bit on the podgy side to begin with, so that’s probably a bad thing. So that was me: surprised, dismayed, and fat. There was no avoiding the truth: if you can barely get into your trousers, it’s time to lose weight.

So I got on with my day, and as time went by I became more and more uncomfortable. The tightness of my trousers was bad enough, but there was something in the back of them digging into me in a most unpleasant manner. It seemed to be the label, so Jess grabbed a pair of scissors and hacked it off, somehow managing not to stab me in the process, but that didn’t really help.

Several hours later, standing in the middle of a shopping centre, I decided that it was far too uncomfortable and if I kept those trousers on for another five minutes I would have to kill myself. Rather than just removing them there and then, which would have been my preference but probably have got me beaten up by security guards, I cunningly went into a shop, purchased some jeans, changed into them in a toilet cubicle, and deposited my old pair in a bin.

I was so relieved to be free of discomfort, I didn’t realise until much later that the new trousers I bought are actually a bit too big for me, and keep trying to fall down. So now I’m going to have to put on weight.

*The trousers, not the office. Though I haven’t worn that for several years either.

Having promised to resume normal bloggage - whatever that is these days - I find myself with nothing to tell you that’s even remotely interesting. Today has been spent working, in a feeble attempt to make up for the fact that I’ve not done anything productive since about April, with occasional breaks to consume ice cream in a battle to combat the considerable heatitude, and that’s more or less it. I could tell you about one of the ten trillion things I alluded to yesterday, of course, but I seem to have forgotten them all now.

Instead I will respond to a comment left on my blog by the splendid loretta way back on the 25th of May. She asked why I’m bothering to buy a new car instead of putting up with a big dent and saving a few quids, an excellent question and one which had probably crossed the mind of anyone who knows me. But, you see, I’m a changed man.

There was a time, it’s true, when my car looked like something from Scrapheap Challenge, my attire like something from the black lagoon, and my general demeanour such that tramps thrust crisp fivers into my palm as I walked down the street. But no more! Since that time, I’ve somehow managed to acquire the most wonderfullest girlfriend in the whole wide world, and it wouldn’t do to subject her to the version of me that looks like it’s just woken up in a skip, now would it?

Not all that many weeks ago, when I still had my old car with the big dent, Jess and I were sat in said vehicle, in the driveway of her family pile, going through the early stages of a manoeuvre to turn it around such that we could leave the grounds of the residence and set a course for Leicesesecestershire. Her mum was standing in the doorway waving, and as I manoeuvred, a horrible thought occurred to us.

“Oh no!” we thought, simultaneously. “When I/you have completed this manoeuvre, your/my mum will be presented with the other side of the car, which bears a great big dent, and she’ll leap to the entirely erronous/accurate and unjust/just conclusion that I’m/you’re a rubbish driver who smashes into things as a matter of course, and that by spending a significant amount of time in my/your car, you/I will be dicing with death! In view of this conclusion she will insist that you/I never see me/you again, and when you/I refuse to do as she bids, she’ll hire a hitman to assassinate me/you and I/you will have my/your brain/sawdust blown away! This is the worst thing ever and an absolute disaster and it might mean the end of civilisation as we know it and oh hang on she’s gone inside.”

It was a close call, and I wouldn’t like to put myself through it again. But I’m pleased to report that I’ve had my new car for over a fortnight now, and it still hadn’t got any big dents in it! This is an excellent start, and I’m going to see if I can keep it that way for a whole month.

Meanwhile, in the course of writing this I remembered a story about my trousers. I’ll tell you that tomorrow.

It’s me again! I’ve been enjessificated since Wednesday, but she’s deserted me until Friday and so I’m free once more to dote on my long neglected mistress wot is the internet.

Approximately ten trillion things have happened that I’ve been meaning to tell you about. I was going to tell you about how, preparatory to going to CenterParcs on the 30th inst., we purchased bathing costumes with a view to going swimming, neither of us previously owning such garments having not engaged in that activity for several years, and how, when we went back to CenterParcs on the 1st inst., we forgot to take them with us and had to buy some more, so we now both own two such costumes and probably won’t go swimming again for another five hundred years. I was going to tell you about how we purchased an enormous pirate flag with a view to affixing it to my bedroom wall, except we can’t figure out a way of hanging it up such that it doesn’t fall down, so at present it’s sitting in a crumpled heap on my desk. I was going to tell you about how we went to the pub for dinner, but by the time we’d finished perusing the menu and were ready to order, they’d stopped serving food for the night, so instead we decided to drive to Asda and buy something yummy, but once we got there we realised it isn’t a 24 hour one and was shut, so we had to come home and starve. I was going to tell you about how I purchased a kit for refilling the toner cartridges in my printer, which I used for the first time yesterday, only to discover that the contents included- alongside a soldering iron, a pair of pliers and a screwdriver - a Kit Kat best before December 2005, which on close inspection of the instructions I was supposed to eat whilst waiting for the soldering iron to heat up. And I was going to tell you about lots of other things too, any one of which would have made a fascinating and enthralling blog entry in itself, but which, without the space to breathe and thrive that its very own personal blog entry would have lent it, instead squished up in a single massive paragraph with a load of other things I meant to tell you about if I wasn’t too busy doing them, sound - or possibly ’sounds’, this sentence has gone on for so long now I’ve completely lost track of the tense - like a load of old rubbish.

Something resembling normal bloggage will resume tomorrow. Probably.

Whenever I walk across the fields, as I occasionally do, I can’t help noticing that a large percentage of the lambs are black, but absolutely none of the fully grown sheep are. This seems very odd to me, and I smell a definite conspiracy, but I’m not altogether convinced that I want to know the real explanation because it’s probably something utterly dull. I’ll just content myself with my fantasy that there’s a black wool thief who’s shaving them all in the dead of night and sellotaping cotton wool on in its place so nobody notices.

Meanwhile, I popped to the garage and asked if they’d found my petrol cap. And they had! So now my new car is restored to the condition it was in when I got it. I wonder how long that will last.

Professor Robert Winston: It’s jolly difficult to remember long numbers, isn’t it? Yes, it is. I wonder if there are any techniques we can use to help us remember them. Let’s ask legendary memory expert Dominic O’Brian. Hello legendary memory expert Dominic O’Brian!

Dominic O’Brian: Hello Professor Robert Winston!

Professor Robert Winston: Legendary memory expert Dominic O’Brian, you can remember hundred digit numbers that you’ve only heard once. How are you so good at remembering things?

Dominic O’Brian: I can’t remember. A ha ha ha.

Professor Robert Winston: Yeeees. Answer the question or you don’t get paid.

Dominic O’Brian: Well Professor Robert Winston, the trick is to write a little story that helps you to remember it. I’m going to demonstrate that by telling a little story to assist in recollecting the number 213764102, and because it’s even easier to remember a little story if you’ve also got a little picture illustrating it, I’m going to be assisted by one of the world’s most brilliantest artists, well known for such works as The Unhappy Hiccup and lots of donkeys - please give a warm round of applause for Simon Goodway!

Professor Robert Winston: How can I give him a round of applause? There’s only one of me. You need at least two people for it to constitute a round.

Simon Goodway enters. Professor Robert Winston claps frantically.

Dominic O’Brian: Hello brilliant artist Simon Goodway!

Simon Goodway: Hello legendary memory expert Dominic O’Brian!

Dominic O’Brian: Are you ready to draw another of your brilliant masterpieces to assist our several million viewers in remembering the number 213746102?

Simon Goodway: Wasn’t it 213764102?

Dominic O’Brian: That’s what I said.

Simon Goodway: Oh. Yes, I am, and while I do so we shall engage in intelligent and witty banter which will keep the aforementioned several million viewers glued in a purely figurative sense to their television sets and entertain them muchly.

Dominic O’Brian: I bet we will too.

They do so, and the result is television gold.

…Except of course it was really more like this:

Professor Robert Winston: It’s jolly difficult to blah blah blah. Hello legendary memory expert Dominic O’Brian!

Dominic O’Brian: Hello Bobbo!

Professor Robert Winston: Don’t call me Bobbo.

Dominic O’Brian: Sorry. Hello Professor Bobbo.

Professor Robert Winston: That’s more like it. Now, why don’t you illustrate your remarkable ability to remember long numbers by telling us a little story that will enable our several million viewers to recall with ease the number 213764102?

Dominic O’Brian: Okay. Imagine that it’s your 21st birthday and you go up a tower with 29 steps singing When I’m Sixty Four and at the top of the tower is Tony Blair who lives at number ten and he gets carried away by a swan that looks a bit like the number two if you sort of squint a bit.

Meanwhile Simon Goodway sits in the background silently, trying frantically to draw all this as quickly as legendary memory expert Dominic O’Brian says it and failing miserably.

Professor Robert Winston: Thanks, Domdom. That’s jolly interesting.

Dominic O’Brian: Don’t call me Domdom!

Professor Robert Winston: I don’t see why I shouldn’t, you called me Bobbo. What kind of a stupid name is Dominic anyway?

Dominic O’Brian: It’s a great name! At least I don’t look like Bobby Ball!

Professor Robert Winston: I do not look like Bobby Ball!

Dominic O’Brian: Rock on, Tommy!

Professor Robert Winston: Stopitstopitstopitstopit!

Dominic O’Brian: What will you do? Set your moustache on me?

Professor Robert Winston: Right, you and me, outside, now!

Yes, that’s exactly how it happened. On the whole the day was rather dull - I was just hanging around waiting to be filmed, but if you’re going to hang around, Longleat House on the sunniest day of the year is the point in spacetime to do it. Now I’m quite absurdly tired, so I’ll stop writing this and go to bed. While I’m doing that, you can make a note in your diaries to watch me in How To Improve Your Memory on BBC1 on the 9th of August. For about three seconds.

Gosh, what a busy life I do lead. I had to take Jess back up north this evening - the plan had been to stay at the farm for a few days, but then this BBC thingy came up and now I’ve got to pop down to Wiltshire tomorrow to do that, so instead of going to Lancashire and staying there, I went to Lancashire and then came back to Leicesecesestershire, and tomorrow I’ll be going to Wiltshire and back, and then later in the week I’ll go up to Lancashire again, so all in all I’m doing an awful lot of driving. But I’ve got a fabby new car to do it in, so that’s alright. Except I discovered this evening when I stopped for petrol on the way back that I’ve somehow mislaid my petrol cap. I can only presume that I forgot to put it back on when I stopped for petrol on the way up, and left it on the roof of the car when I drove away. I popped back to the garage just now in case it was still lying there, but it wasn’t, so I suppose I shall have to make a new one out of cardboard and blutac or something.

So anyway, tomorrow I’m going to do some drawing in the Great Hall at Longleat House in Wiltshire for BBC Science, which will be quite exciting. I’ve managed to find some clothes that aren’t covered in ink and felt tip that I can get away with wearing on the telly, now all I need to do is make sure I know what I’m meant to be doing and shave so I don’t look like quite so much of a tramp. Not that Rolf Harris ever shaved, so I don’t know why I’m bothering really. I suppose this proves I’m better than him, but we all knew that anyway.

I hope the programme’s presented by an obscure non-celebrity. I might be able to notch up another lame claim to fame.