Have you written your thank you letters yet?

So, the exhibition of the audiovisual collaboration, Systems out of Chance, is down. Dismantling the exhibition after a creative journey that began over the best part of eighteen months ago felt akin to pulling down the Christmas decorations. A new year, then. The super sharp portrait monitors are back in their boxes, the six speakers playing three pieces of music simultaneously (and for keeping them in time with the imagery with not a fag paper between themselves or the visual triptych - thank you Mick the Mac man) are packed away, the ltd edition DVDs are ready to be sold* (thanks screen print Ben - you're a star) and the 16 page booklets** are ready to be dished out to anyone polite/daft/interested enough to ask me about the whole thing... (big thanks also to Sam Gathercole for the Six Chapters on Systems out of Chance), thanks to Parfitt Gallery curator Michael Hall for your experience, guidance, patience, and bone dry sense of humour and anyone else who chipped in. My day job boss would call it a team effort and it would be churlish of me to disagree. Thanks to those that attended the private view and of course, thanks to composer Joe - I went into the gallery for one last listen today and it sounded wonderful.

* either/and/or **, contact me.

What's Play To Your Strengths in latin?

This evening on University Challenge contestants were asked to translate the literal meaning of the mottos of three football clubs currently in the Premiership. It's a pity that the question masters didn't pick Stoke City's motto - Vis Unita Fortior (trans. United Strength Is Stronger) - that continues to have a relevance in an area determined to hold onto old fashioned values (a good thing in the main) in a post-everything society.

Stoke-on-Trent did manage to get a mention on another Paxman vehicle, Newsnight, with regard to the decline of the pottery industry. An article with the broad purpose of asking 'where next for Britain'? showed us a few arial photographs of duel carriageways and call centres, built on land formerly occupied by world famous pottery firms. The news reporter made a suggestion that something as radical as the canals that wind their way through the city needs to happen again, something physical that makes people think and act differently, shifting ways of being, bringing new economic methods and hope. Copying a way that has worked for another part of the country may not be the answer, but Stoke-on-Trent and its surrounding area needs people brave and brazen enough to try new things.

Away from economic turmoil, there's one thing that has happened in the last eighteen months that has reminded people that Stoke does still exist and that is the promotion back to the top division for its biggest professional football club, Stoke City.

Particularly curious has been the way that Stoke have got under the skin of the footballing inner circle since promotion in May '08. I always thought that everyone knew some teams played more direct than others and that playing the top teams at their own game upon promotion rarely pay dividends but what I didn't realise that the Premiership in-crowd (commentators, reporters et all) wanted a new whipping boy, but they chose the wrong one. With a pragmatic attitude towards tactics and principles (and aesthetics but I'll save that for another time), manager Tony Pulis gave purists and idealists ammunition to dismiss the team (if not the club) as being in possession of vulgar ideals and tactics with the deployment of Rory Delap. Rory's virtually secured a place in the starting eleven based largely (though not solely) upon his quite unbelievable ability to launch the ball from a throw in towards the opposition goal. Watching opposing players desperately trying to not give away a throw in is great fun, which has once or twice resulted in corner kicks - the acceptable face of dead ball set pieces - being sacrificed instead. Rory's long, fast and accurate throw ins are both a fantastic spectacle and function better than the average corner kick any day of the week. You do what you have to do what you need to do to succeed, right? And to hell with those that sneer.

Rory Delap triptych © Ralp Kidson 2010. Stoke-on-Trent is north of Birmingham and to the south of Manchester and the north west of England.

I'm a fan of Ralph Kidson

Sad Animal. Giant Clam. Envelope & Stick. Two To Beam Up. Captain Dolphin. And now Animal Job Centre. Ralph has been producing small press comics (some really small) for roughly thirteen or fourteen years is it? A mutual friend sent me one of Ralph's early comics and I was so impressed with the bone dry wit, the humanity and the rubbish-not-rubbish drawings that I had to send him a letter (a letter! I didn't have 56k at home at that point) which said, almost word for word "dear Ralph, I love your work but could you confirm for me whether your use of hand drawn frames are some kind of statement or are you lazily fannying around?" I was overjoyed when I received the next comic some months later to find that he had printed my letter with the reply "lazily fannying around". I was relieved because I would hate to think that Ralph's way of working is anything other than straight up funny comic book writing and drawing.

Ralph doesn't do irony - when a clam swears at a squid or an envelope gives a stick the silent treatment it's because it's what they do, as we do, as we all do. Ralph has managed to avoid in-jokes, games and knowing nods to the side of the stage. His work is a bit sweary in places - there was the time when a commissioned strip of his wasn't used in an overseas indie comic due to its explicit content, well, as explicit as 'badly' drawn animals can be - and when I asked him about, whether he was disappointed, frankly, he didn't give a monkeys and not in a pretending-to-not-give-a-monkeys way, he was really non-plussed. Just y'know, "...another pint?", a bit like, some people don't get it, then fair do's.

The blurb on the back of his other recent release - Doctor's Waiting Room - says "ooh look, Ive made a wuvvly, fwuffly ickle dickle mini-comic, aaah... hand made itty bitty frou-frou inky-dinky wittle comic, bless... maybe I should go to craft fairs and sell them in a wickle hand made basket, all in different colour covers, wouldn't that be darling. Have them next to the till in poncy fucking brighton gift shops that smell of incense and hand-made frigging soap. Ooh yes, that'd be wuvvly duvvly... actually I might do that..."

I've resisted the temptation to compare Ralph's work to that of more in/famous published souls of recent years but to cut to the chase, can someone who works for a grown up publishing house and distribution empire get it sorted that all of his back catalogue is put together in one great big compendium with a range of greetings cards, animated shorts on E4 and t-shirts please. Everyone should have Ralph Kidson's work in their lives as well as their soap baskets. Ta very much.

all images © ralph kidson 2010
Animal Job Centre and Doctor's Waiting Room are both available to buy from Ralph c/o 3 Langridges Close, Newick, E.Sussex, BN8 4LZ