(originally posted on myspace here)
... wwwwwas made on Monday evening in the insensitively well-lit Crypt of Saint-Martin's-in-the-Field - Saint-Martin-in-the-Field's - Saint's-Martin's-in-the's-Fields's-whatever it is. Time was, I remember, you could pop down there for a coffee and barely see who you were talking to, but now it's lit like a prison. Or Ikea. Perhaps nobody had told that to the people at Bloomsbury when they chose it as the location for the launch of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, hiring a couple of actors to drift eerily past disguised as Victorian ghouls. Still it was packed. A bit too packed as my opposite undead number Alice (who actually did look great in her sulky cowl despite the absence of candle light) pointed out. You couldn't really "drift" anywhere, you had to more, kind of, "barge" eerily. So mainly we stood still and I decided to look a bit lost and pensive and hanger-onnish (I'd been generously invited that day to the Evening Standard Theatre Awards by Ella who'd just been nominated best newcomer - YAY - and guessed I'd be adopting much the same attitude) and I attempted to hold my hands in the manner of a Chris Riddell illustration. And below is a lovely little film by one of the greatest illustrators ever to work in comics, Dave McKean, who was also at the launch which made me very excited. And above is a little image from The Tempest film I made eleven willion years ago which I realize now shows his influence puh-retty clearly. In the flesh Dave McKean looks like some extraordinary household spirit, or the patriarch and sole beard-owner of an arboreal race visible only to the drinkers of neat willow hooch. Also a lot like a trimmed Arvo Part. His son and I had a staring contest. And I got him and Neil Gaiman to sign the inside of my battered dungeon topper. I'm getting paid in books. Not a bad gig really.
(I think that last caption reads "God finds an important use for the third, and previously spare dimension".)
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