A Month Ago I Was In England

England looks very much like England looks in pictures. To prove this, I took this picture in London. Looks exactly like London.

I started my visit to England in London, signing at the excellent comic shop Gosh! on a lovely Saturday afternoon. Across the street from Gosh! is the British Museum, which houses the Rosetta Stone, as well as some old Japanese comics.

My partner Jennifer arrived along with our son Oscar the next day, after sorting out some passport issues(having to fly into England separately necessitated leaving the laptop at home, which will remain my excuse for not writing about the trip while we were there). They were just in time to head to dinner with cartoonist Tom Gauld. Tom's most recent book is 'Hunter & Painter' from Buenaventura Press. You should check it out, because Tom is not just a nice guy, he's also a great cartoonist.
From London we headed to Leeds for a signing at OK Comics. So far the infamous rainy English weather had yet to show up, and at this signing I was also fortunate to be given several CD's of music from readers. This also exposes one of the drawbacks of ipods...if you don't have your computer with you, it's really hard to play Cd's on ipods. Jared Myland, the owner of OK, hosted us for the night and treated us to fish and chips.

From Leeds we headed to Nottingham. We avoided the forest which is apparently more than a little touristy these days, and hung out with Page45 owner Stephen Holland, who had kindly made his house extra baby friendly. We finally got the rainy weather, but the signing went very well and a good time was had by all. Stephen also gave us a ride for the next leg of our trip, in Bristol. Despite the pouring rain, people were in good spirits at the signing at Travelling Man, and I was again treated to a number of Cd's. There was also this very nice window display from Jess Bradley.

Bristol was also home to the Comic Expo, which was the reason we decided to do this whole trip in the first place. It was two busy days, with a good turnout for the show. I was given some great cupcakes, and my nagging urge to diet and be healthy was easily overcome. After Bristol we actually headed back to Leeds, this time to sign at the Travelling Man store there. Here is Nabil and Lisa from Travelling Man, entertaining Oscar while I'm signing.

Nabil drove us from Leeds back to London for our final night before flying home the next day. All in all it was a great two weeks, and many thanks to everyone who helped out, hosted us, said hello, bought books, and kept us company. It turns out travelling with a six month old can be a lot of work, but we seem fortunate to have a pretty well behaved baby, even when alleged thunderstorms in Chicago added three hours to our flight home.