A palindrome for Tony Blair

 TWENTY years ago or so I had this letter (a palindrome) printed in the Hereford Times. All the letters started with 'MADAM,..." so it seemed an ideal opportunity to send in a palindrome. I wish now that I had pretended that my name was actually Adam. Oh well.

 

Buoyed by success I thought I would start work on another and after a few weeks I had come up with the following:-

 

Party rotten? Test on odd ones. Retaliate, disaster rages! Unite, gristle-bottom. So go let arise Tony Blair to do trial by notes irate. Logos? Motto-belt, sir? Get in. Use garrets as I detail a terse nod. Do not set net - Tory trap!  

 

I remember starting with "Tony Blair to do trial by not" and working outwards, and the rest sort of fell into place in the usual way. I have not attempted any more since!

Christmas Cards from 2011 to 2023

EACH year I try to draw a Christmas card and I have been trying to sort them into order. Most have the year on them but some I have had to guess.. and it seems that there are 2 missing. I wonder what was on them...

Anyway here they are in chronological order, starting with what must be 2011 judging by the apparent age of Cormac.. unless I've drawn him too young-looking.

2012: There was a brief period when Cormac was more interested in trains than his father.

2013: I cunningly moved the monkey's eyes to the right to make him appear to look at Father Christmas.

2015: Cormac was into the planets a bit hence the telescope.

2017: Siobhan doesn't look much like her real self in this one. It's always tricky drawing wives.

2018: I must have been looking at my copy of Gerald Newton-Sealey's book of the villages of Herefordshire at this time and decided to copy the formula to make a News-Card. They take quite a while to draw, of course, but much time is saved later on when writing inside them as you only have to put "to so and so" and "from whoever"!

2019:

2020: I must have either been too busy this year to do a news card, or maybe there wasn't much news.

 

2021:

2022:

And finally I realised that it might be useful to have the year (2023 in this case) more prominently displayed..