JUST IMAGINE and HALLOWEEN

I really enjoyed my visit to the warm and welcoming Just Imagine Story Centre in Chelmsford . It’s a beautiful shop, brimming with wonderful books and exquisite dressing up clothes, too. Downstairs is a spooky dungeon, so it’s a terrific place to drop by, browse and play. I talked to some highly intelligent young Earthlings who all drew magnificent aliens. Then I bored on for hours to some very polite (and talented) adult Earthlings about my life as a Guardian cartoonist and authorene. They all stayed awake and even laughed occasionally. That’s because the shop’s delightful owner, Nikki Gamble, was tickling them with an ostrich feather attached to her little toe. You can’t see Nikki’s feather, but since everyone in Just Imagine has a smile on their face, I KNOW it’s there. Thanks so much Nikki and all of the Children’s Illustrators Group.

Meanwhile, Flowkwee, the Alien Schoolboy himself, has shown me his blog about HALLOWEEN but although he thinks he’s so clever, he can’t even spell it right. here’s what he’s written, but you may be able see it on his very own website

http://www.alienschoolboy.co.uk/

GREETINGS EARTHLINGS

I have been informed of a curious Earthling ceremony  called ‘Hallo Ian’ that occurs once every Earth Year on OCTOBER  31st . I don’t know who this ‘Ian’ person is, but you have to say hallo to him anyway if you want to play. You also have to have a fat orange vegetable called a ‘pumpkin’ dressed up to look like a person. Younglings  dress themselves in odd ‘costumes’ called ‘witches’ or ‘ghosts’ and make noises like ‘woo woo’ and bang on doors shouting ‘trickortreat’. Grown ups then open the doors of their dwellings  and give the little savages sweeties!  Sometimes the grown ups give out smaller orange vegetables called ‘tangerines’ but if they do, the younglings are very rude and go ‘yuk’, even though these little vegetables are much better for their chewing blades. As you know if you have read my excellent ‘books’, I have grown very fond of an Earth sweety called ‘chocolate’, so I am going to join my new school friends in their ‘Hallo Ian’ games this year. They say the point is to look scary, but between you and me my friends look like bin liners in bandages. I am going to take off my Earthling disguise and go as myself this year. That should get us lots of sweeties. I love the nice crunchy ‘wrappers’.

Look out for me, I’ll be looking like this.

Maybe I’ll come to YOUR house.