Tag Archives: childhood

Deadpool and Minnie The Minx #FreeComicBookDay

Have you guys ever heard of Free Comic Book Day before? I haven’t. Recently it seems that quite a few national/international days have been popping up and I knew nothing about them at all.

Of course it’s great for bloggers since we always have sometime to ramble about, but back to the topic at hand.IMG_1228

According to the Twittersphere, today is Free Comic Book Day and it seems a heck of a lot of people are tweeting about it. I’ll admit that I’ve never been much of a comic book reader, aside from the Beano when I was a child, because hey! Who doesn’t love Beano? I used to keep my collection in an box I’d decorated with sticky back vinyl that had the world map printed on it. Minnie the Minx was my favourite character with Dennis the Menace a close second. I think the fact that Minnie had short hair like mine and liked scrambling around with the boys appealed to me. I spent most of my primary school days playing with lads instead of girls and I found my friendships with them were much stronger than the ones I formed with the other girls in my year.

Now days, my favourite comic book character has to be Deadpool. I didn’t know much about him until I started dating my fiancée who introduced me to the comics. During my second and third year at university, he leant me his collection of Deadpool comics and I found myself falling in love with this insane, funny, slightly tragic character. What made things even better was getting to watch the Deadpool movie and see Ryan Reynolds portray that character from the comics to perfection.

The picture of Deadpool took me about an hour and a bit to get to the point you can see in the pictures, the sketch of Minnie took about ten minutes. For a man with very few facial features this was not an easy draw. I kept getting the eyes in the wrong place and the black patches on the mask make it difficult to judge how long and wide the image should be on the page. I’m fairly happy with both of them though and I’m glad I’ve had chance to do some drawing again.

Let me know in the comments what your favourite comic book was as a child? Did you read the Beano too or perhaps you read it’s great nemesis, The Dandy! Whatever it was, come and share it.

Memories From The Playground

 

At primary school I learnt how to skip.

It was one of those games

that didn’t require someone else

to hold the rope,

unless you wanted them to.

It could be singular

or plural

and I could pretend playing by myself

was a choice.

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Check out this monday’s prompt over at dVerse Poets Pub. Could you write a poem in just 44 words?

NaPoWriMo Day Eighteen

 

Twemlows Cottage

The sound of home is my father holding a blade of grass,

between fingers and mouth,

blowing long, sharp shrieks across the garden.

The way sand and soil crunch beneath a spade

and the long, drizzling slide of dirt,

falling as it’s lifted out of a pit.

The old creak of rusted trampoline springs,

groaning on each take-off,

each landing,

snapping back with the crack, snap

of static jumping jacks

to small, flushed hands.

It is the hum of rally-cars on Sundays

down the old airfield runways,

and the drone that vibrates my skull

as the parachute club plane skims by low,

doors thrown open,

the blue behind paint splattered.

It’s the heavy stillness over the nights

and the low-level whisper of the A41,

still muttering odd words at three am

while I sleep, content.

It is the sameness of it all,

day after night after day after night.

It is home.

 

Rust

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I have never liked the way rust feels against the skin.

Shards of old paint curling and collapsing

beneath the press of tiny, grubby fingers

as the latch on the gate fights to remain shut,

last weeks rain, too much for something so old

to face without a little protest.

The tiny flakes that stay behind,

stuck into the sweat and the mud,

too small and sharp to brush off all together

no matter how many times hands are scrubbed

against dirt stained jeans with patches at the knees

or run across the grain of old fence posts

that dot the garden paths and always lead

back home.

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Ba

In the mornings we would bake.

Scones,

crust pastry

fairy cakes.

You’d whip round those edges,

make them trim

and leave the bits

for leaves and berries

from tiny fingertips.

Chairs pushed against worktops

one on either side,

you showed us how to do

this and that.

…

In the afternoons we shared apples.

Jo and I sat together

and you

with that single strand peel

turning always turning

until it coiled around my childhood

and tugged out an adult

who will always miss you,

pastries

and apples.

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Julia ‘Ba’ Farr – 2 April 1915 – 17 November 2015