Last week there was a launch party for David B's Black Paths, at Clerkenwell Tales, a lovely little bookshop in Exmouth Market. I'd only heard about the launch the previous evening, which meant I was a bit late in getting a place — in fact I didn't get a response until 6:30 that evening, which was exactly when the event started. Oops! As a result, I entirely missed David B being interviewed by Paul Gravett, which was a bit annoying, but at least I got there in time for some free booze, and also a chance to catch up with Dan Lester before he flew off to teach English in South Korea the following day, as well as lots of other people.

I did have a flick through the book, however, and it looks pretty good, with lovely paper stock and full colours throughout. I have to say publisher Self Made Hero really excel at good production values, compared to some other publishers. Having only seen David B's work in black-and-white, where it works so well, it was nice to see that it translates well into colour too (you might think that's a given, but it isn't always). I definitely want to give it a proper read at some point, even though a couple of friends read it over the weekend and said that although it's visually stunning, the story isn't very compelling. I wondered whether this might partly be to do with translating a work from another language, and having read this fascinating post by the book's translator, it seems quite likely. On the other hand, I do remember that, as much as I appreciated the artwork in David B's Epileptic, the story did lose me along the way (although it's been almost 10 years since I read it, so I may feel differently now).

After waiting for friends to get their copies signed, I went to get some food with Woodrow Phoenix, Rob Davis and Glyn Dillon, which I mention only because it gives me a good excuse to plug Nelson again, as I discovered over dinner that even more amazing creators have signed up to participate. It's a shame I can't say who, because I'm sworn to secrecy, and if I told you I'd have to kill you, and there's no easy way to round up a bunch of mostly anonymous readers on the internet and quietly bump them all off, but trust me when I say NELSON IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. Glyn's new book (his first foray into comics publishing since, what, the 90s?), The Nao Of Brown looks likes it's going to be really good, too. If you want more proof than just my word, then have a long browsing session on Glyn's blog, which is chock-fulla-pretties. There's more on Space In Text, too.

Monday saw the launch of Reinhard Kleist's Castro, in the gallery upstairs at Foyles, which had a bit more space than Thursday's bookshop, but wasn't quite as well attended — even though there was the promise of free mojitos! And such promise: this is the pile of mint and limes at the start of the evening. A couple of hours later, the mint was all but gone and there were only about six limes rattling around the basket. The mojitos seemed to get exponentially stronger, too (my third drink was stronger than the first two put together!).

I took a few notes while Reinhard was being interviewed by Paul, which I've tried to knock into some kind of sense rather than the stream of consciousness that my notes read like. I should say to start with that I've not read Kleist's biography of Johnny Cash yet, and I'm not especially fascinated by Fidel Castro, but I am quite interested in the general history of Cuba, as it seems like a interesting country, albeit often romanticised, and in a constant state of some sort of flux (plus, I'll be honest, it is hard to say "no" to free mojitos!)

Kleist himself admitted that he initially had little interest in Cuba — "Cuba was for the old guys" — but he ended up visiting after a German editor asked him if he wanted to go and make a book about another country. This book was Havanna, which doesn't seem to have been translated into English (yet). In Cuba, he sometimes had trouble understanding people because "the Cuban people have horrible Spanish. It sounds very beautiful but they swallow all the syllables" (this made everyone laugh).

Kleist is pretty good at talking in snappy, visual soundbites. Describing some of Castro's early life, he said that "Havana university must have been like a Mafiosi melting pot" and that Castro has a nose "like a Greek statue." He'd wanted the art to look "a little bit more rough" than his art in Cash, but to keep it black-and-white because "you can do so much with black-and-white and create such a strong atmosphere." I'm inclined to agree, but I also think you can create strong atmospheres with colour too. His Greek publisher felt strongly enough that it should be in colour that they showed him a colourised version, but he hated it. (I'm curious about that, because Cuba is so strongly associated with colour in almost all media. Havanna is full colour, though, so maybe that'll get an English translation soon.)

The book was lettered in Photoshop, and Gravett pointed out the speech balloons are more "emphatic" than in Kleist's previous work. Kleist admitted that in earlier work he had tried to "erase" the balloons, but it didn't really work, as he realised that "text is important". This was an interesting point for me, because one of the things that has put me off reading his books are the cluttered-looking speech balloons — which is only exacerbated in something that is filled with pages of long political speeches, but is evident even in earlier work like Havanna (see pic below). I also noticed from looking at some pages displayed on the gallery wall, that, although Castro is lettered with capitals, there is also an inconsistent use of lower-case i's for no apparent reason other than whimsical idiosyncrasy, which doesn't really fit the general theme of the book and therefore irritated me a bit, because it kept distracting me from what was being said. But maybe most other people don't notice stuff like that.

The interview also touched on some other aspects, such as Cuba's ongoing political situation, and whether the state of the country was doing good for people or getting more corrupted. "Everything raised more questions." There were some comparisons made with China, and Kleist said "we might have a Chinese edition, but I don't know if we'll be allowed to print it." He also mentioned once being asked to sign a copy of Castro "to Fidel" and then learning that it was actually for Castro himself, and that Castro already owned a copy of Havanna, which was a bit nervewracking to discover.

The story itself is a fictionalised biography of Castro, using the character of a young idealistic journalist from Germany, whose look was based on a young French journalist that Kleist saw at an event in Cuba. (I don't know if the young man ever learned how he'd been immortalised), and of course other characters like Che Guevara appear in it as well. According to Kleist, in soundbite mode again, "the main point of the story is how to deal with your ideals" because "there is always another position and you have to show both if you want to be objective". With that in mind, I am quite interested in reading the book now. I quite like his artwork, which in moments reminded me of such disparate artists as Jose Muñoz, Hugo Pratt, Scott Morse and even a touch of Paul Pope in the brushier panels. Overall, it was a pretty interesting evening — and I'm not just saying that because of the free cocktails! Thanks once again to Self Made Hero for the invitations.

I haven't been buying books lately, due to a slight lack of funds, and also having far too many books that I haven't read yet, or haven't read for many years. So I've decided on a new-book moratorium, even though there are so many brilliant books coming out at the moment, at least until I've read (and got rid of) some of the old ones. However, there was one book I had to buy, because I'd been waiting for it to come out for about six years, and that was Carla Speed McNeil's latest Finder book, Voice.

I've been a huge fan of Finder ever since I first discovered it through Sequential Tart in 1999 (side note: I'm sort of amazed that ST still has the same design it started out with in 1998, and that the design still actually works). I was hooked from the first issue I read, enjoying the mix of slice-of-life observation and densely detailed science fiction setting. The deceptively simple artwork was full of intriguing background details that hinted at further stories, and I couldn't wait for each issue to come out just so I could find out more about the world that Carla had created. Even though I had many of the single issues, I bought some of the trade collections too because I loved the end notes printed at the back of them; they were like a director's commentary of extra background detail which added to the richness of the experience. After reading them I always feel a keen desire to visit the places, which is always a good sign that the environment has captured something in my imagination. I was even enough of a fan to buy several pages of original artwork from Carla several years ago (although three of them sadly went missing in the mail and never showed up).

As much as I enjoyed Voice (a lot, and even more so on the second read), there are elements of it that would definitely be very confusing if you'd never read any Finder before. So this post is really an an attempt to convince you all to go and buy Volume 1 of the Finder Library. It's actually really good value, collecting the first 21 issues of the series for only $25, which is probably about twenty quid in UK money at the moment — books don't seem to follow the exact rate of exchange, but that's less than £1 an issue, which is brilliant value. There's something in it for everyone and I promise you you'll thank me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to a book launch. Which I will try to write about later this week…

Last night my friend Viv Schwarz had a launch party with Alexis Deacon to celebrate their new children's book A Place To Call Home. Viv was one of the winners of this year's Booktrust Best New Illustrators Award, and already has a few great picture books out, and she writes one of my favourite blogs (she posts a lot of interesting work-in-progress and says sensible things about ebooks, and makes up bread recipes that actually work!)

The party was at Colour Makes People Happy, a nice posh paint shop in East Dulwich which also sells nice plates and books.

Sarah has a much better post about what happened and who was there, so I'll just leave you with some photos.

Here are Viv and Alexis making their official launch speech. Alexis appears to be phasing out of this dimension, but to my knowledge he's not actually a pan-dimensional being (I've only met him a couple of times, though, so maybe he saves that revelation for people who've known him longer).

Viv was wearing a fab Moomin dress that I didn't manage to get good photos of because she was moving around so much being the life of the party! I did manage to snap the fab vintage dresses that Sarah and Holly were wearing though.

Colour Makes People Happy is in a long building, with four or five rooms going one-behind-the-other. Viv has her studio in one room, which is nice and light, although a bit chilly.

Even further back, there's a workshop with a paint-spinner for making spin paintings. I used to love making those when I was a kid — I bet it would be fun to have another go.

This is Charles, who I made for Viv after she saw Maurice Morris and decided she wanted one of her own. Last time I saw him he had pride of place surveying her studio.

And speaking of hamster joy (which I only mentioned in the title, but they do feature in the book), here's a lovely post over at Quad Royal (and yes, I totally nicked the title of her post to use it in the title of mine. It seemed too apropos not to.)

pic by Joe Gordon, with thanks

AJ: There's a very obvious ligne-claire influence on your work, which you've made no secret of, but I'm curious about any other influences on your drawing. From what I've seen of your adaptation of The Tempest (here and here) — which I've not read in full — the line was much more detailed, and reminded me far more of artists like Arthur Rackham and William Heath Robinson. Are there any other artistic influences besides the obvious ligne-claire stylings of Edgar P Jacobs and Hergé who you would like to namecheck?

GE: Arthur Rackham and Heath Robinson are two of my favourite artists, and were my gateway into discovering Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Harry Clarke and others of that era. That may seem a long way from Hergé or Yves Chaland, but there's a sensibility that connects them all in Japanese print work, which I used to sit and copy for hours in my mid-teens. Those prints, by artists such as Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige are very ligne claire, and they also influenced the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. Another big influence on my comic work is Richard Corben, I'm aware of him within my work but I doubt it shows through the Hergé that I suspect blinds the casual observer. I used to want to be like Brian Bolland, but I'm all right now (I still love his work). The artist I got compared to most in the early 90s was probably Bryan Talbot, which is fine by me!

AJ: Was it a conscious decision to move towards the ligne-claire style because of the style of the story you were telling, or was it more of an organic change?

GE: It was a conscious decision. I kind of decided to give up wanting to become a "proper comic artist" – I realised I didn't want to be a pen for hire, I wanted to indulge myself, so it was a matter of deciding the kind of comics I loved most, and wanting to do my own. There are a lot of good reasons, I think, for doing this kind of adventure comic in ligne claire. Having said that, after the complexity of my style in The Tempest, I did clean up my art a bit – I did a little strip for Rol Hirst's The Jock that is a sort of missing link between The Tempest and The Rainbow Orchid.

AJ: Speaking of influences, you mentioned on Twitter a while back that your narrative was quite influenced by playing the Broken Sword computer game. Are there any other writerly influences people might not guess at?

GE: I've mentioned the authors H Rider Haggard, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle before – they really are the biggest story influences on The Rainbow Orchid. I like film directors who also wrote their own scripts, especially Akira Kurosawa and Charlie Chaplin. They solved story problems visually and through character. That is always a background to my writing, but I don't think I've had the time to really indulge in that area of things yet — I haven't given myself enough space. But I think there are probably one or two moments where I'm channeling that spirit, if you like.

I want readers to get lost in the book, and that's what happened to me when I read King Solomon's Mines, or Asterix and Tintin, and when I played Broken Sword for the first time. From Hell is another example — I forgot I was reading a comic, which is a lovely feeling.

AJ: It's interesting that almost all of the storytelling influences you mention are prose or cinema writers rather than comics writers, and From Hell is not exactly a typical comic — or at least, it wasn't when it came out; being as literary as it was. Are there any comics writers you particularly admire?

GE: I don't think there are any comic writers, separate from artists, that have left any kind of an indelible mark on me, apart from Alan Moore to some degree. Most of the comics that have had any kind of impact are the product of a singular vision – Hergé, Jacobs, Lewis Trondheim, Hiyao Miyazaki, Osamu Tezuka and all that. One of my very favourite comics was, and is, Charley's War, but I'm not certain that I feel particularly influenced by Pat Mills — but I'm sure it must be there in the mix to some degree. What child that grew up in the 1970s and went on to make their own comics doesn't have Pat Mills in there somewhere?!

AJ: That's true! You do a lot of research to get tiny details right. You must come across a lot of temptingly interesting tangents. What's been the most intriguing, which might make you want to abandon what you're doing and chase fragments of a new story?

GE: Looking into the Kalasha people of Chitral was fascinating, and I did a disproportionate amount of research seeing as they only appear in a few panels, but I would be tempted to follow them up, and the myth that they might be the descendants of some of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, which I'm not sure I believe is actually true. I think it would be too close to Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King though!

AJ: That's not necessarily a reason not to write about it, though — if it was then pretty much most comics or movies would never get made!

GE: That's true, but I think Kipling (or John Huston for the excellent film version) said it all so well already, I don't think I'd bring anything new to it.

Another thing might be the Breguet aircraft – I had a friend of mine make a balsa wood model of it, though the plane crashes in a ball of flame in volume two – so I'd like to get more use out of that and give the Tayaut family some little adventures of their own.

AJ: It would be great to see more of the Tayaut family. I love the twins; they seem like great role models for little girls: I think they probably would have been my favourite characters when I was a kid. They remind me of the character Fio in Miyazaki's Porco Rosso, being girls doing things with airplanes that weren't — and still aren't — traditionally female. In some ways that film also has a similar aesthetic (albeit from a slightly later era), which brings me to another question — animation is another medium which combines words and images, almost a bridge between live action cinema and comics. So what sort of animation do you like?

GE: Miyazaki hits the spot for me. I just watched Whisper of the Heart (for which he wrote the script) – it was a four-blub film, so beautiful. Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky and My Neighbour Totoro are masterpieces, and I remember thinking Porco Rosso probably was about the same time setting as Rainbow Orchid… late twenties? I used to really love Disney, but since discovering Miyazaki I can only watch a few of them now. Pinnochio is the best, Snow White, and I quite like Mulan and Atlantis from the later period. When I was about 11 my mum wrote off to the Disney Studios on my behalf to enquire about working there, and I got a reply letting me know how much hard work it would be!

AJ: Yeah, I'm under no illusions that doing animation is an easy job, even with computers. Speaking of work, you're working on volume 3 of The Rainbow Orchid, before it all comes out in one collection next year. What do you want to work on after that?

GE: Already plotted out is another Julius Chancer adventure. This one takes place mainly in Britain and leans more towards being a detective story, a murder mystery. It also focuses more on Julius Chancer as the central character, because The Rainbow Orchid is rather an ensemble piece, I think. I want to dive straight into that as soon as Rainbow Orchid is done.

AJ: Oooh, exciting! The 1920s and 1930s is such a classic era for detective fiction. I'm tempted to quiz you further on that, but I think I'd rather be surprised.

GE: I just hope The Rainbow Orchid does well enough to see a second story published. RO was conceived and plotted, including the ending, back in 1997. I'm dying to originate something new, with all I've learnt about comic storytelling in the past ten years.

AJ: The second Rainbow Orchid book has a couple of "origin" stories — how Lily became a Hollywood actress, how Julius ended up working for Sir Alfred — will the next book have some more of those?

GE: The only other story that gets told in The Rainbow Orchid will be Meru's story in volume 3. William Pickle's was told in The Girdle of Polly Hipple, which appeared in Accent UK's Twelve anthology, and Lily's was a longer story that appeared in The Girly Comic back in 2004. Julius's was plotted out for an anthology as well, but in the end was just summarised in RO volume 2. Sir Alfred would be the other big story to tell, but I think that will just be revealed in little snippets as we go along.

AJ: Is there any plan to collect them, or at least make them available to more people? And I'd love to know more about young George Scrubbs, Pickle's photographer. He seems like he might have some stories to tell.

GE: I haven't thought very seriously about collecting them – the Lily story just appeared in the Dutch comics magazine, Stripschrift. It was a twelve-page story that I crammed into six pages, and the Pickle story was an eight-pager that went down to four, so it would be nice to give them more space one day, though I doubt that will actually happen. George Scrubbs I haven't thought about, to be honest, but you're right, there's a story there somewhere…

AJ: This probably ties into the question above, but how did Evelyn Crow get to be so nasty?

GE: She would be the other main origin story readers would want, certainly! But actually she's probably best kept as an enigma, which she is, even to me at the moment! Maybe she'll reveal herself one day…

AJ: It seems fitting that of all the characters, she's the one who remains most shrouded in mystery. I think in some ways that's a large part of her appeal, and learning the truth about her might seem… disappointing or anticlimactic.

GE: I think you're right. Evelyn is my most common sketch request at comic shows and signings, though she does have to survive volume three yet – Nathaniel did put a bullet in her at the end of volume two!

Thanks again to Garen for the interesting conversation. Books one and two of the Rainbow Orchid are out now, with volume three to come next year. Go and buy everyone a copy for Christmas!

Finding the Fleet River under Royal College Street

Interest in what is beneath our feet continued apace when I read The Great Stink by Clare Clark, a brilliant novel set in and around Joseph Bazalgette's enormous Victorian sewer regeneration scheme. It's an incredibly evocative book, describing the lives of sewer flushers and toshers in all its smelly detail, which was brought even more to life because I'd just bought a copy of Lost London, a fantastic book from English Heritage which is chock-full of photos of what London used to look like before it was levelled by urban regeneration and bombs. It was great to be able to compare descriptions of the Victorian streets in The Great Stink with contemporaneous photos of the same places in the Lost London book.

Joseph Bazalgette, engineer of the London Main Drainage System

Then Londonist visited the Northern Outfall Sewer at Abbey Mills (which I have walked on top of), and I spotted a discussion thread on the Brighton Flickr group about visiting some sewer tunnels in August. It's always funny watching the reactions from people when I tell them I want to explore a sewer. You can see their disgust, but really, would a water company give tours to the general public without making sure it was relatively safe and shit-free for them to be there? I mean, there was even a gig in one of the tunnels during the recent Great Escape festival: here's a photo). Aside from having to wear a hard hat to watch a band, it doesn't look that dirty. Anyway, we had to wear hard hats when we went to see Carlo Gatti's ice wells at the Canal Museum a couple of weeks ago. Although not a tunnel running beneath the streets, the ice wells are definitely subterranean, and as a result remain very cool whatever the weather. There's a nice piece on them here, which is well worth a read.

Today I read this article on one of Mexico City's two sewer divers over at the always edifying and constantly fascinating Edible Geography blog, and once again I was led to thinking about the shit beneath our feet, only this time I was prompted to write this post. It seems it's a recurring theme this year. Maybe it's a metaphor. Shit happens.

First up, these are the cordons that ensured people stood in proper lines inside an otherwise giant, empty hangar. When I arrived it was back to being a giant empty hangar, but earlier in the day it was heaving with people having to queue up for at least an hour. Crazy people.

Here's Mondo Towers Tech Hero Billy (he's the one who fixes things when the site's broken) with his freshly shorn head. Those of you who know him can all join me in a chorus of "I told you so" because he looks better now.

(Nestling under Billy's chin is comics colourist Rosemary something-or-other, who I met at dinner, and comics artist Kevin Maguire who I met later in the bar.)

Here's sci-fi space princess Sarah MacIntyre at the Fleece Station table.

She's dressed like that to promote the picture book she illustrated, You Can't Eat A Princess, and apparently that dress really is made of science-fiction because it never ever needs cleaning. (Sarah's reviews of the Expo are here.)

Here's Gary Northfield, looking a bit pensive (actually he was answering someone's question, but I don't remember who or what it was).

And here are the four members of the Fleece Station studio, as drawn by Gary (clockwise from left, Sarah, Gary, Lauren and Ellen):

Here's Daniel Merlin Goodbrey looking tired and overwhelmed, because MCM Expo is a tiring and overwhelming experience. Daniel is one of the organisers of Unicomics which took place a couple of months ago, and is about to be part of a group exhibition of comics artists going up in the Pump House Gallery, so you should check that out (it opens in August, keep an eye on Paul Gravett's event listings).

Here are the lovely stars of My Cardboard Life.

Some giant banners promoting the Scott Pilgrim movie. Awesome. Watch the new trailer here! (the second one is better than the first)

This is a banner that I think is advertising a game, except that the graphics look like the record sleeve designs of a popular Britpop beat combo, and it uses a very similar same typeface as their 1990s logo. I got confused. Is it deliberate? Can someone explain it to me?

Here are some random cosplayers dressed up as people I am not remotely familiar with.

stroppy foppy

GIGANTNORMUNGOUS SCYTHE

very weird wings

<3 supervillains playing DanceDance Revolution <3

girls with beards

And here's some of my haul from shopping around the Comics Village, including the last Scary-Go-Round book; some prints from David O'Connell; the latest issue of There's No Time Like The Present, a mini-comic from Cliodhna, the first book of Far Out Mantic, and some stuff from Jarina Liew, a brand-new discovery for me, who was so engaging and friendly without being pushy, I immediately wanted to buy everything on her table (the fact it's all so very pretty also helps).

I'm annoyed that I somehow totally missed the DFC table though, because I wanted to pick up a copy of Mezolith for my mum (not that I can't buy it elsewhere, of course).

More coming in part 2!

The only trouble is that it seems to make the page a little slow in loading, and I can't figure out how to add more stuff to it, either because I'm too thick, or because the site really is that badly designed. Oh well, it's there, anyway. It might even lead to a bit of money for me, but that's not really why I put it there.

En route from The Glasshouse to (see previous post) to meet friends near London Bridge, I wandered past the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret. I usually give museums a miss during Open House by dint of the fact that they're accessible at other times, but I had some time to kill and it's been on my list of places to visit for ages, so I popped in. Again, I spent a bit longer inside than I intended, because it's ace, especially the Herb Garret, which smells awesome. There are piles of dried plants and powders all over the place, with little bottles and things tucked into random surprise corners, as well as cabinets filled with old bottles and surgical equipment. For a vintage ephemera fan, it's pretty cool, and I found such gems as Neoklenz, Beechams pills, Concentrated Maggot Wash (ewww), Mawson's Double Action Breast Reliever and a rather disturbing list of hints on the use of the enema syringe. (And just watch the pervs flock in via Google for the last two.)

The operating theatre itself is rather nice, too, offering some pleasing clean-lined minimalism after the glorious excess of The Glasshouse. Unfortunately, I happened to catch the eye of a random camera nerd who followed me around a bit after I casually joked about us trying to take a photo of the same thing at the same time, so I didn't manage to get the exact picture I was after, but I like this one.

More pics here. Read more on the museum at Nothing To See Here.

Downstairs, the shell of St Thomas' was open to the public for the first time in over 50 years. It's now home to an architecture practice called the Cathedral Group [warning: typical architects' flash-only website], and they had lots of contemporary art and architectural dioramas on display. I am a fan of architectural dioramas because I love miniaturised versions of very big things, so I enjoyed those (here's the Deptford Project in miniature), but the art was a lot more hit and miss. My favourite art pieces weren't in fact officially art; one was an old dockyard sign reminding workers that it was against the law to spit in any of the dockyard buildings and the other was a fantastic yellow-and-pink mannequin, created by the firm for an old office party, who wouldn't have looked out of place in Andrew Logan's house.

My other unlikely favourite feature was the window in the ladies' loo; a perfect principle of minimalist design. In fact, it was a design I'd already seen recently, in this photo by Maraid, (which I liked so much I totally copied it, except I had to cheat and use Poladroid to get the desired effect). I also rather liked the shadows cast by the frames on the windows.

More pics here.

Then on to meet friends outside Southwark Cathedral (which was not participating in Open House and was midway through a service so I didn't go in). From there, a bus to Rotherhithe, with the attention of visiting the Brunel Museum and attending the launch of the Geek Atlas that was taking place. However, we got distracted by the Sands Studio and Rotherhithe Picture Research Library next door.

This is one of those fantastic resources that not enough people know about, and was one that I had passed on the way to the Mayflower pub next door, and always meant to visit when it was open, but as usual had forgotten about. The picture library is particularly special because it's open to the public during the week, and they are free to go and browse the shelves to find huge picture scrapbooks under practically any subject they could possibly want. The shelves are organised in sections which can lead to some amusing juxtapositions on the shelf labels; for example, the religion and war categories are right next to each other. A particular favourite in the "Trades" section was the shelf labelled "meteorologist milkmen".

The building is a Grade II listed warehouse, built in the 18th Century for storing grain brought in via the Thames. In the picture library the support wooden beams have been left exposed, some of which looked as though they might even have been recycled from old ships — which, in fact, they had. These old masts also appear in the nearby church of St. Mary Rotherhithe.

Although originally created as a film studio, they do seem to rather trade on their past glories (their most recent film was The Children's Midsummer Nights' Dream nearly a decade ago, and they've only made nine features since 1976), and in fact it's their bread-and-butter work which is far more interesting, because they make period costumes using period techniques. Most of these are for lavish period dramas — often those where the clothes are in fact the best bit about them — but sometimes they also make clothes for museum displays, such as two costumes we were shown which will soon make their home in the Museum of London. I was fascinated to see the workshops and the equipment used, because it was really interesting to discover what some of the clothes and accessories were really made of — everything from dresses made from old velvet curtains (bloody heavy) to gold stars made from the gold foil of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Just think about that the next time you watch Sweeney Todd or The Tudors.

Unfortunately, I was the only person during the tour to take any photos and the man giving the tour seemed to think this was a bit suspicious, perhaps because I tend to take photos of things that other people ignore; in this case, stuff like labels on drawers and the different types of buttons on display. I was trying not to be intrusive or interrupt his spiel as we went around, so I kept wandering away from the main group a bit as well, and looking back on it I can see why he must have thought I was being furtive. Although, when he started asking me quite personal questions about myself, I felt more like I was being picked on just because I was the only one actually taking any photos. So I told him that, although I'd be happy to do so if it was just him, I didn't want to talk in front of a big group of strangers, and he snapped and asked me not to take any more photos. At the time I thought he was over-reacting, but I suppose I really must have looked furtive and he might have felt like I was using the Open House tour as an opportunity to spy out some competition or something. As it happened my camera battery died at that exact point anyway, and in fact the light in there was too poor for most of my photos to even come out, which is a shame because I was really impressed with what they do and it would have been nice to show you.

However, this story does have a happy ending, because as we were was leaving, he came rushing out of the door saying, "hey, miss, I thought we were going to sit and talk about your photography!" I kind of wanted to make my escape because I thought he was going to tell me off again, so I politely declined with an excuse of another appointment (I did have to be somewhere else, just not that very second), and he actually looked disappointed and apologised for snapping at me. And I said I realised that he'd been giving tours all day and was probably exhausted so I quite understood. After I explained that I like to take pictures of the things most people overlook, he actually looked quite pleased and said, "well in that case, you must come back any time!" and we parted on very good terms after all (for a moment I almost thought he was going to hug me). And go back I shall, because it's a fascinating gem of a place and I'm gutted I didn't get any good photos. Also, they have a free film club!

We popped next door to the Brunel Museum even though it was too late for a tour, and happened upon Craig Smith packing up from the Geek Atlas book launch, having recognised him from the talk he gave at Interesting a couple of weeks ago (ostensibly about waterwheels, but rather endearingly about his dad). I didn't buy a copy, but it looks pretty nifty — although the paucity of addresses and contact information is a bit annoying. Not everyone wants to work out a location from longitude and latitude all the time.

And that was Saturday's Open House done for another year. I didn't plan to spend it all in one borough, but doing so actually made a lot of sense, particularly one like Southwark with so much to see, although next year I am going to try and see at least one place in my home borough as well, because, well, I should really, shouldn't I?

This post on Roald Dahl covers popped up in Paul K's shared GR items last week, and today I discovered that the rest of the blog has loads of great innovative illustration, too.

Also via Sarah, not exactly illustration, but it does come from illustrator and comics artist, Jamie Smart: Find Chaffy. They are so cute! I want one.