family holiday in provence

Just a few quick snaps, as I’m herding my parents off to Bath tomorrow for the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature. Do come along if you’re at all in the area! We’re having a great panel on Saturday the 27th with my publisher David Fickling, John Aggs, the Etherington brothers and me. 12:30-1:30 at the Guildhall, Bath. Details here.

Apologies if you’ve e-mailed and I haven’t responded, I did try! I stopped at an internet cafe in Nice, but the slightly different French keyboard totally threw me, so after five minutes I threw up my hands in despair and went for a glass of pastis.

Here’s a sketch I made overlooking the Roman ruins near Van Gogh’s hospital:

I only did a little drawing this trip, it’s tricky with four people. Sometime I’m going to go on a trip by myself, like Craig Thompson, and fill half the sketchbook with amazing sketches and the other half whinging about how lonely I am. And maybe a little time whinging about how my drawings don’t look like Thompson’s; his Carnet de Voyage made me hop with envy. For some odd reason, no one wants to sit on an obscure street corner with me for two hours while I draw… except, perhaps, my sister. We have almost identical attention spans when it comes to drawing. So a sister holiday is definitely on the books.

My dad really liked the olives, except not to eat.