Drive Time

A lot has happened since my last post; both of the student newspapers asked me if I would like to contribute cartoons, and the main Cambridge University website ran an article on my competition win. This meant most of my evenings last week were spent frantically knocking out cartoons to submit to all three. Sadly, one of the papers decided that they couldn't run my cartoons if I was producing material for the other, so I'll now be focussing my efforts on The Cambridge Student or TCS for short. This week they've published one of my cartoons, "The Uncooperative" under the title "Drive Time with Alex Driver". Very nice.

I also tried creating some topical cartoons for TCS about two news stories which they didn't run in the end so they didn't appear in the paper. The first was regarding a Cambridge professor who had developed an alternative to chip and pin technology. I thought this was a good excuse to think up an absurd form of biometric scanning:

The other story was something ridiculous about a strongly worded letter from the local Labour association to the local Conservative association complaining that they had inappropriately large dinners. I thought it would be a good excuse to draw a local landmark, the “Trailer of Life” kebab van that sits in Market Square in Cambridge late at night servicing nightclub goers:

I decided to send the other paper a series of Cambridge based jokes rather than anything news related. The first speaks for itself I hope:

The second refers to another Cambridge landmark, “Reality Checkpoint”, which is just a lamppost sitting in the centre of a park. My understanding is that it is said to mark the boundary between “gown and town”, in other words between Cambridge University and the rest of the city (or world). It does feel like you’re in a bit of a bubble in Cambridge sometimes so I think it’s quite apt. One more thing – somebody has helpfully scratched the words “Reality Checkpoint” onto the side of the lamppost for you. My hope is that at least some of the students would be familiar with it:

I’m especially pleased with the last drawing which I did for the lady who interviewed me for the University Website article. She wanted an illustration for another article about an event going on in Cambridge. The brief was to draw a Cambridge student or professor falling into a manhole cover in a Cambridge setting. I pulled up a picture of King’s College Chapel on Google and half an hour later this plopped out: