[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":11},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-post-dfc-issue-27":3},{"_type":4,"body":5,"bodyHtml":6,"excerpt":5,"featuredImage":5,"publishedAt":7,"slug":8,"tags":9,"title":10},"blogPost",null,"I was really happy with how today's \u003Ca href=\"http://www.thedfc.co.uk/issues/27/vern-and-lettuce/\">Vern and Lettuce\u003C/a> came out. Eight weeks ago, just before it was due, I was pulling my out my hair trying to get it written. I decided to relocate to a cafe in Brockley for a change of setting, and plunked myself down in a good hard chair in front of a big window with lots of light, facing a blank wall. But the magic only started to happen when DFC's \u003Ca href=\"http://www.thedfc.co.uk/issues/27/vern-and-lettuce/\">Woodrow Phoenix\u003C/a> came and sat with me and we had a really nice morning of working on our strips together and Woodrow helped talk me through some of the problems I was having. ('Nip and Scritch' was his idea.) So thanks, Woodrow! \\r\n\\r\nThe other bonus was seeing his sketchbooks, with almost all his \u003Ca href=\"http://www.thedfc.co.uk/strips/thats-a-horse-of-a-different-colour/\">That's a Horse of a Different Colour\u003C/a> pictures drawn into it. I hadn't realised how much Woodrow draws by hand, I'd assumed he'd done everything completely in Illustrator or something. His notebooks looks amazing, full of sketches and hand-drawn lettering samples.\\r\n\\r\n\u003Cimg src=\"https://images.jabberworks.co.uk/lj/vl27-fd5e90e358.jpg\">\\r\n\\r\nOh, I meant to tell you about my Thanksgiving! Whenever you get a bunch of women from Bryn Mawr College together, the conversation's always fascinating. This year we talked about forensics, avionics and astrophysics. The forensics expert is Kimberlee Moran, who's offering \u003Cb>six once-a-week classes for adults about forensics\u003C/b> in Islington - all the stuff you see on CSI, but the real thing. It's only £75, so if you have a friend or family member in London who's obsessed with crime television, \u003Ca href=\"http://www.forensicoutreach.com/class.html\">book them on this course\u003C/a>! It's hilarious talking about decomposition and maggots while eating pumpkin pie, really! :-D\\r\n\\r\nAnother remarkable person at dinner was an astophysicist at Oxford named Susan, who's fairly elderly (late 60s?) and flies herself in her own \u003Ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooney_Airplane_Company\">Mooney airplane\u003C/a> to various astrophysics conferences all over Europe and the Mediterranean. She's the kind of person I love to ask leading questions and then just sit back and listen to amazing stuff about the stars, black holes; the fact that they've closed the maintenance garage at the Oxford airstrip so she has to fly all the way over to Biggin Hill to get her plane serviced; emergency landings; different strategies for how not to get ice particles stuck to one's wings, etc. I've had Thanksgiving with her for at least the last three years and each year I always hope she'll be there. And that Kim will make her \u003Ca href=\"http://baking.about.com/od/bundtcakes/r/bacardirum.htm\">best-ever rum cake\u003C/a>, and she did, hooray!","2008-11-28T21:00:00.000Z","dfc-issue-27",[],"DFC issue 27!",1776628724525]