#014 Is a second newsletter really a good idea?

Cafe annotation / Mattie is 18

Hello Diagram Club,

It’s edition #014, arriving in your inbox on a weekday, which is, I think you’ll agree, verging on the commendable. 

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Household problem of the week

I could do quite a lot of diagrams about decluttering, or rather whatever the opposite of decluttering is. I’ve drawn shirts here, but for you it could be pens, or trainers, or bicycles, or fat squares (niche haberdashery reference). Summary: I have too much stuff, and haven’t quite got around to Sorting Everything Out.

You can find more drawings from my (let’s be frank) less-successful-than-hoped Household Problems series on HouseholdProblems.com and @HouseholdProblems on Instagram.

Admin announcements / Matters arising / Important news updates

Ill-advised second newsletter. The news this week is that I’ve started a second Substack newsletter. It’s called The Cartoon Church, and it will be a bit similar to this newsletter, if a bit less frequent, and will feature my church cartoons. You’ll find it here (*cue orange button*): 

If you’d like to know why, or when, or how, there’s an About page that will answer all of these: About page.

From that page, a brief word on eligibility for signing up:

Should I subscribe even if I have no knowledge about churches, or (if I’m honest), a huge amount of interest in religion? I always try to make my cartoons understandable to anyone, in as far as that’s possible. This isn’t going to be a heavy newsletter. I’d love it if you gave it a go.

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Mattie’s 18th. Our lovely cat, Mattie Walker, celebrated her 18th birthday this week. Well, she didn’t really know she was celebrating it, but she had some tuna and slept through Taskmaster. OK, so we don’t know her precise birthday, but she was a rescue cat who was said to be 6 months old when she and her sister came to us, so an approx calculation has been made. I’ve spared you cat pictures so far, but I think this calls for a photo:

Mattie Walker, 18

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Squirrel news. Rachel asked whether I could include more wildlife news, following the bat event I described in Issue #013. Well, this week I saw a squirrel harvesting corn on the cob. Willing to take questions on this as required.

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Sponsorship suggestion. If anyone would like to sponsor this newsletter via the medium of supplying a Brompton G-line bicycle I would be entirely open to the idea. I would draw diagrams about it, annotate it, and mention it in the newsletter for the next 1000* weeks. (Well, you’ve got to try.)
*Details to be negotiated.

Annotated photograph of the week / Cafe update

This week I’m mixing / mingling two features into one, and we’re in the cafe:

Notes: So yes, I branched out into the world of flavoured lattes. The UFO is filler for the sky because I can’t draw bats.

Thanks again to the brilliant staff at Essex Wildlife Trust Langdon for not minding my depictions (and who continue to do more for my not-particularly-robust morale than they realise). Please support your local Wildlife Trust or local equivalent.

Apologies, corrections and clarifications

Janet. In the annotated photograph in newsletter #013 I described Janet as ‘of to London’. This should of course have been ‘off’. Apologies to everyone, but most especially to Janet herself, for my careless annotation.

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Cycling cartoon of the week

Carrying things on your bike, from The Cycling Cartoonist (book info). Have I put this one in already? I am an administrational disaster, so it’s highly likely I will repeat myself. Please know that, if the same cartoon appears five weeks in a row, it is incompetence, not malice.

Studio Playlist update

This is where I tell you the sort of thing that’s playing while I pretend to have a studio but instead empty the dishwasher. This week’s theme: ‘Cover versions where I like the original, but you know what I quite like this version too, even if it’s almost certainly heresy, not that it really matters as no one reads this far down anyway’.

Learning to Fly - The Weepies, Deb Talan, Steve Tannen (Tom Petty cover)
Tougher Than the Rest - Camera Obscura (Springsteen cover)
No Surprises - Madison Cunningham (Radiohead cover)

Please send messages (by email, loudhailer, whatever) expressing abhorrence at these choices. The playlist is here: Studio Playlist 2024

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Colour of the week (filler)

Burnt umber. You know, #8A3324. Or, for any non-Hex speakers in our midst: Red: 54%; Green: 20%; Blue: 14%.

Closing remarks

Thanks for reading, everyone. If you’re enjoying this letter please do share it (big old orange button below) and/or consider becoming a Paid subscriber. And do write to me with questions, complaints, suggestions, cartoon ideas, anything.

Content for Paid subscribers continues below. See you again soon for issue #015.

I hope you have a good weekend,

Dave
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