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I’ve been itching to draw criminal mastermind V.V. Morgenstern from the DFC’s Donny Digits (‘by Woodrow Phoenix, obviously’), whom I v.v. much suspect is based on Woodrow’s fabulous partner, Bridget. I still haven’t quite got the essence of Ms Morgenstern or Bridget, but here’s my go at it. Happy birthday, Bridget!

I just saw on the Forbidden Planet blog here that one of my favourite illustrators, François Schuiten, is going to design the new Brussels Railway Museum, planned to open in May 2010. That will please both Stuart and me to no end, as I’m fond of trains and adore Schuiten, and Stuart is almost a transport fanatic, and thinks trains and trams are far preferable to humans. Trams are really his thing, and he used to go round and round Moscow on the trams in the dead of winter, just because he liked being on trams. Although we once went on a steam locomotive on the Isle of Man and I’ve seldom seen him so excited. We went with friends who live in Brussels to the tram museum there a few years ago, around Christmas, and it was shut. But a nice elderly Flemish caretaker let us in and gave us his own tour around the shadowy depot, with its amazing world of dust, leather, mechanical oddities and fading signs.

And a book list for a meme from nice_cup_of_tea following the BBC’s The Big Read:

Instructions
Copy into a new note Put an X next to the ones you’ve read. Include the number you have read in the title and post to your journal. (I always break the rules on these things.)

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien X
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, X
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman, X
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, X
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling, X
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, X
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne, X
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, X
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis, X
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, X
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller X
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë X
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier, X
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger X
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, X
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, X
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres, X
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, X
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell X
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling, X
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling, X
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling, X
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien, X
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot X
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving, X
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck X
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, X
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson X
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez X
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens X
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl, X
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson X
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen X
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen, X
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery, X
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams X
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald, X
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh X
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell, X
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens X
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett, X
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck, X
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, X
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl X
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell X
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer, X
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, X
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman X
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden, X
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens X
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton,
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding, X
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind,
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl X
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding, X
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt X
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson X
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl X
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith, X
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy X
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley X
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel X
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett,
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho X
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer,
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez X
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie X

Book score: 63
(Or 62, really, since I haven’t quite yet finished A Tale of Two Cities.) Kind of handy, as it reminds me of a lot of books I keep meaning to read. I bet Salman Rushdie’s thrilled to bits for being listed just after Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries.