Is it still Wednesday? It is! Made it.

Rome was, as expected, full of stuff to fascinate an ancient history geek like me, and Simon, who is generally much less interested in the subject than I am, seemed to enjoy it, or at least indulged me graciously while I wittered on about how the M. Agrippa credited in a great big inscription with building the very impressive Pantheon is the same Marcus Agrippa as portrayed in I, Claudius. Which he hasn’t seen. He’s now off to Haiti to join in the aid effort with Irish humanitarian agency GOAL, and you can donate to their Haiti appeal by following the link.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Rome on a long weekend with my brother, so chances are next week’s update schedule will be disrupted. There’s virtually no chance of being an installment of Under the Bed on Tuesday, as I’ll be in transit all day Tuesday, and a very slim possibility of an episode of The Cattle Raid of Cooley on Wednesday, although if I manage it it’ll be later in the day than usual. Your forbearance is much appreciated.

On New Year’s Day, a man attempted to kill Kurt Westergaard with an axe, because four years ago he drew a picture.  The man was a Muslim, and he was so upset that Westergaard’s drawing linked his religion with violence that he attempted to commit an act of violence in the name of his religion.

Today, an auction in aid of the victims of the Haitian earthquake rejected another cartoon, with no religious connotations, that Westergaard had donated.  His hairdresser has told him she will no longer cut his hair for fear of reprisals.

Freedom speech benefits everyone. I’m an atheist, and I’m glad I live in an age when I have the freedom to reject and criticise religion without reprisal from the state or the faithful. Not everyone thinks like me. Lots of people value their religion, and are upset when people like me don’t treat it with what they consider due reverence. But think: if you are offended by Westergaard’s cartoon, or The Satanic Verses, or the Life of Brian, or Jerry Springer the Musical, or Bezhti — freedom of speech means you can criticise it as volubly and vociferously as you like, and disseminate that criticism as widely as you can manage. Freedom of speech is as much yours as it is mine.  We must not allow fanatics the power to bully us into sacrificing that freedom. A fanatic with power is a tyrant, and tyrants don’t value the freedom of anyone but themselves.

There will be no installment of The Cattle Raid of Cooley today. I held off saying so because I thought I might be able to get it finished this afternoon and uploaded by the end of the day, but it’s not going to happen. My recent TV adventures (see team captain Stephen Downey’s write-up) involved two very early mornings, little sleep, a somewhat dodgy Italian meal and an incipient cold, all of which has left me feeling completely zonked, so my priorities have been revised away from drawing and in favour of bed. Apologies.

I’m going to be on the telly! On Tuesday I will be travelling to Glasgow with the League of Just Us, a team of Belfast-based comics folk, to appear on the BBC’s quiz show Eggheads! From left to right: PJ Holden (Judge Dredd, Battlefields); Me; Reggie Chamberlain King (the forthcoming Layer Zero: The Exile); Aidan Largey (Layer Zero: Choices, our reserve); Aimee Durkin (Stephen Downey’s model and girlfriend); and our intrepid leader and team captain Stephen Downey himself (artist of Cancertown, Slaughterman’s Creed and the team drawing; also a man who talks faster than the human mind can comfortably process). Wish us luck!

Then, on Sunday 17 January, I will be stallholding again, selling an ever-growing selection of Irish small press comics at the Black Books book fair, the Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast. Andy and I have decided to call our stall, to tie in with the theme, The Black Panel. Unfortunately Andy will not be able to make it as he’ll be in London to hear Mark Thomas, so the role of glamourous assistant will have to be filled by someone else. More when confirmed.

And finally, someone who has too much time on their hands has rewritten The Big Lebowski in the style of William Shakespeare. As The Knave says of his rug, while playing ninepins:

It was of consequence, I should think; verily, it tied the room together, gather’d its qualities as the sweet lovers’ spring grass doth the morning dew or the rough scythe the first of autumn harvests. It sat between the four sides of the room, making substance of a square, respecting each wall in equal harmony, in geometer’s cap; a great reckoning in a little room. Verily, it transform’d the room from the space between four walls presented, to the harbour of a man’s monarchy.

The dread day has arrived. Today, for the first time ever in history, I am forty. The world will never be the same again.

I live in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK and currently ruled by New Labour, who over the last twelve years have been eroding civil liberties and coming up with endless wheezes to put us all on databases. 

It’s not just ID cards – the grand plan to fingerprint the nation.  There’s also the Independent Vetting and Barring Authority.  You’ll have to register with them if you work or volunteer with children or vulnerable adults.  If you so much as drive your son’s mates to football practice on a regular basis without the permission of the authorities, they can fine you £5,000.  And when they’re weighing up whether or not you’re safe to work with children or vulnerable adults, they can take hearsay, gossip, their own judgements about your lifestyle and personality, even things you’ve been found not guilty of, into account.  Then there’s the ContactPoint database of all children, and the national DNA database.

This is a government that passed laws to deal with terrorism which it then used against hecklers at party conferences, student sit-in protesters and Icelandic banks.  It’s a government on its last legs, but it’s bringing all these schemes in before it gets booted out of office, signing contracts with private contractors that’ll make it expensive to scrap any of them.

If you’re as alarmed about this as I am, go and sign the LibDems’ petition for a Freedom Bill to abolish all New Labour’s authoritarian control-freakery.

My own little tribute to the late Oliver Postgate, who died the day before yesterday.

A few years ago I was at Landsdowne Road in Dublin, watching Ireland at a Six Nations rugby international against Italy.  Ireland had a scrum, or a ruck, or possibly a maul, one of those piles of bodies with the ball in the middle they have in rugby, near the goal line, and were trying to push over for a try.  “HEAVE!” went the crowd. “HEAVE!”

And I couldn’t help adding, in my best squeaky falsetto,

“The marvellous… mechanical… MOUSE organ!”

And got the strangest looks from the people around me.  I don’t think they showed Bagpuss in the Free State.

Meme: Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. Post these instructions with your picture.

After Garen Ewing…

Couldn’t do one of these last weekend because I was in Scotland, specifically the western highlands, even more specifically Oban.  Nice place.  All the good weather in the entire British Isles seemed to go there for a holiday the same time as we did.  FlyBe forgot my bag on the flight back (there was a last minute change of plane, which probably had something to do with it) but they got it to me by courier the following afternoon, so overall I’d have to say that was some pretty good customer service.  If you’re interested, my photos from the weekend are here.  Steeve, who’s a proper photographer with a camera that cost about as much as my car, also took some pictures, which can be seen here.  Here’s one of Oban at sunset which I’m quite proud of:

Now.  Webcomics.

Wonderella is running for Vice President…

The FreakAngels, or two of them, anyway, drink foul alcoholic beverages and make plans. Then there’s the morning after…

Our heroes (and our heroine’s depraved brother) come under attack, in Lilly MacKenzie and the Mines of Charybdis…

Two takes on the CERN particle collider black hole contraption from Jesus and Mo, and Welcome to the Future…

And finally, not a webcomic, but an old-fashioned printed one.  The DFC, the subscription-only kids’ weekly from Random House, has a new strip called Mezolith by Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank.  It’s a stone age adventure about a young boy who wants to be a hunter, and it’s gorgeous – look!

Definitely the highlight of the current lineup, which also incudes Philip Pullman’s John Blake, Emma Vieceli’s Violet, Peadar Ó Guilín and Laura Howell’s Sneaky, the Cleverest Elephant in the World, the Ethrington Brothers’ Monkey Nuts, and loads more.