Doll...

photoshop coloured scan for those that dream in colour

There was a time when all I would have needed to know that I was a success was to get an illustration published in the Radio Times. A few years later I met someone who’d done just that, he even came along to one of the legendary parties at my house. A few years after that he was applying to me for a job to stick together pieces of paper … but he failed the psychometric testing.

I pulled strings, but sometimes even a master puppeteer fails. That’s the way with alcoholism, he lost it all through the shakes. Poor Carl, best damned line man I'd ever met as well.

These days, as I’m sure you all know, I doodle.

ink on card original for those that dream
in black and white

If this doodle were in the Radio Times it would illustrate an ‘Afternoon Theatre’ story on Radio 4 about a poor Victorian mother who, on losing her only child to the coughing disease, seeks solace in a spiritualist medium. The medium uses a specially manufactured doll to lift the veil, opening the door to the other side; that hidden side behind the veil of tears, the place where only children and dolls can go.

And the rest…

Well, as in all good tales of mystery and imagination - the doll seems to gain a life of its own with inexplicable and terrifying consequences for both the medium and the mother.

I’ll leave the rest for your imagination. By the way, when you go to sleep tonight – don’t look under the bed...

Pleasant dreams.

Mama. Mama. Mama.