THE GOOMB

 In my first night's sleep after being hospitalised for smoke inhalation in 2009, I had three very vivid dreams. I recorded the details of them as best as I could when I woke up, with illustrations, and here's one of them:

 

 "The freighter that picks me up from the Ice flow is manned by tall silver men with long waterproofs, square heads but aquiline profiles, smooth black dishes for ears and receding chrome spirals on the head. Maybe the cube swivels to accomodate the face. Anyway a nice kind image. THE GOOMB-MEN"

 

 I don't know where I got the name "Goomb" from, but they stayed with me. I tried to put them in a Mitchell And Webb sketch later that year (it was never filmed, maybe I submitted it too late), and I was still contemplating casting them as saviours in some children's book or other until today, when I was knocked sideways to see this image pop up on pinterest: 

 

 

 This is a two-headed Martian from the Twilight Zone story "Mr. Dingle the Strong", an episode I have no recollection of ever seeing. Their heads aren't exactly cubes, and their ears aren't exactly dishes, and their antennae aren't exactly spirals, but that's the Goomb alright, right down to their cheekbones. The clincher for me is that, while I describe them as "silver" in the notebook, I actually dreamt them in black and white.

 Emailing that sketch to Gareth Edwards back in December 2009, I wrote: 

"Hopefully you might find some joy – far too late as it is – in this sketch about aliens I mentioned ages ago, and then didn't write because it seemed you had loads about aliens, and now have written simply because it might turn out to be the very-odd-but-actually-useable sketch I have so far failed to produce." 

 And now UPDATE (April 27th 2023) It looks like it might actually be used now! All hail the Goomb...

 

Notebookery: Acting Writing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I found these pages in my luggage when I got back to London. You're welcome, posterity! Click to embiggen. (Images of The Hound of the Baskervilles grabbed from the Octagon's video on demand.) 

Notebookery: CITY and CITIZENS (1993ish)

 I need new shoes again, so I've been out less, the ground being wet, and in the evenings I've been winding down in front of youtube, sometimes for seven hours or more, so my thoughts are a little unravelled. Don't worry though, good times are being had, I just don't want to post too many youtube recommendations on here because I know some of you have lives to be getting on with. Here's another notebook then. These pages are from my A-level Art project, on a subject of my choosing. I can't tell if London looks different now or not, apart from the crowds; I wish I'd taken more photographs of the south bank, back when it was scrubland to the east of Blackfriars Bridge. I think the project got me a B. No. I know it did. But it hadn't yet been through a housefire, so didn't look nearly as handsome. It was almost definitely that kind of glibness that helped get me a B, now I think of it. 

 You should be able to click to enlarge these.

Notebookery 10 (2006-2005)

 Here are earlier pages from the same notebook, including, in reverse chronological order - and not that I encourage you to go looking for them -  rehearsal notes for the show that took me to Japan, Sulayman Al-Bassam's Kalila Wa Dimna, (hence the recurrence of jackals and murk), and Shunt's Amato Saltone and Tropicana. Two pages down is a polaroid of me (far left) in the lift on the Tropicana's last show before I shaved my head and took over as the operator. The shaved head was to make it easier to produce a silicon replica of me for the lift operator's autopsy. You can see both it and me four pages down. The replica's nostrils are narrower because of the clay pressing down as the mould was made.

Notebookery 9 (singed by the author)

 As I said yesterday, I found a whole other notebook while moving bits of the room around, so ta-daa. Like the green one, I clearly wanted this to be a thing I enjoyed returning to, a thing I would like to look at, and I finished it just before I started this blog. Big pre-lockdown cuddles must go to the friends who pulled its remnants out of the fire of 2009. Maybe there's a third I've forgotten about which burnt up entirely. While this was being filled I was touring Japan and the Middle-East and thinking about sketches and a writing maybe something bigger for kids, a standalone fantasy, called "Standalone". Unfinished. Unbegun. Not all the drawings are mine, and I'll post more tomorrow. (The first words we read "O ooo Jeremy Bottom" made me laugh, and as they were written in 2006 are also a complete mystery.)