Here.

 

"Here". Or "Ta-daa". The New Royal Festival Hall is, it turns out, the old one with more wood and a dirtier carpet and a terrible bunch of soap-boxes in that squeaking exhibition plateau down the steps behind the bar. A waist-high maze (so not a maze then) of soap-boxes with paper provided for you to contribute something... "Here." Where? ... What? If you find yourself there do pop in and have a read at what passers-by have written, or alternatively guess, or alternatively read any of the "This sucks! - You suck! - cheese bees cheese bees" comment strands on any website ever. It did suck, to be fair. They might have got a better response if they'd ditched the disappointing crate maze and just left the paper... The little Red Gate Gallery opposite Loughborough Junction once tried something similar: "Here's some paper and a pen. Here's some blue-tak" and actually got some very entertaining results (maybe because it used the word "draw" instead of "write"): a happy ostrich in jail, a group of "pairs of things beginning with S", a cat with a wispy speech bubble that read "you will die soon"... all of which I took photos of at the time. None of which I can upload. Oh. Erm. Here:

An earlier contribution of my own to the seminal seventies "Anti-Colouring Book". A similar exercise. As in my Willow Bible the protagonist is ginger. Did I actually think God looked like that? Probably. There were options. My childhood church education was full of illustrations of deities. Here:

Now, that I found behind the bar at the Shunt Lounge - a hardback volume of Roman Myths once stocked in our school library. And yes, I remember Gods were big and see-through. When representing the figure of the Angel of Death visiting the Egyptian firstborn, however, there was less of a consensus... Below is an illustration of which I was reminded by a posting on Chris Goode's blog about a recurring nightmare involving Windsor Davies (on whom I clearly remember this angel being based). Here:

I also clearly remember my mother saying "Windsor Davies? Oh, it looks like Wille Rushton."

So eat your heart out, Antoine de Saint-Exupery.