#oneaday Day 568: Doodling is fun

I'm going to make no attempt to convince you that my doodlings are in any way "good", because I know that I have precisely zero technique and don't do things "properly", but man, doodling is fun! I just spent a little while fiddling around with Clip Studio Paint (which I bought a copy of, because if I've got a tablet I might as well use some good software with it) and that resulted in the above nonsense. There wasn't any real thought behind it other than an experiment with how to bring the cartoonish representation of me into a slightly more "detailed" space than the stickmen I've been drawing up until now.

Don't get me wrong, I love stickmen and I doubt I will be abandoning them completely, but when one has better drawing tools at one's disposal, one inevitably feels like one should be doing a little "more" with them. And so we have the above.

With the above images, I was channelling some of my past cartoon-drawing experience — specifically that of my time in secondary school, doodling with my friend Ed in our "rough books". The styles I've experimented with over the years have a few influences, but one I keep coming back to is inspired to a certain degree by Jim Davis' work on Garfield — particularly in the area of the eyes. I've always liked Garfield-style eyes as two slightly "protruding" spheres on a character's face; it's not at all realistic, but it can be immensely expressive, which is why I think I've always been rather fond of it as a style.

The uncoloured top-right doodle in the above is somewhat akin to how Ed and I drew our shared "Edlock Holmes and Watson" cartoon strips when we weren't doing them as stickmen (which, eventually, we adopted as the "primary" style) — big noses, eyes inspired a bit by Sonic the Hedgehog's big "mono-eye with a perpetual frown. Fiddling around with that style today, I feel a bit less fond of it than the other approaches: the aforementioned "Garfield-style", and an adaptation of what I was doing with the stickmen, with simple lines for eyes.

One thing I've discovered with Clip Studio Paint that I'm quite fond of is colouring the images in! Using layers, you can leave your line art "on top" and paint behind it, and that, it turns out, is immensely satisfying to do. All of the above are coloured by hand using a paintbrush tool rather than a flood fill, and I really enjoyed doing that for some reason. Given the output of the tool is rather "solid" you probably can't see much in the way of "brush strokes", but I feel that colouring things in that way introduces just enough in the way of human imperfections to give it a bit more of a personal touch.

One thing I really like about drawing with a tablet on the computer is the smoothness of the lines it produces. There's still some "humanity" in there due to things like variances in pen pressure and suchlike, but there's a pleasing smoothness to lines drawn as one continuous motion that is hard to recreate even using real materials. You can't do that with a mouse, either — not even a fancy-pants high-DPI model — and, for me, it's one of the ways that computer art strikes a nice balance between the physical and digital spaces; a real way that the medium makes itself stand out as something unique, rather than an attempt to recreate something that already exists.

I'm looking forward to experimenting a bit more with this drawing tablet, and I'm going to try and scribble something as a companion piece to each post each day, just like I've been doing up until now with the stickmen. As I say, I can't promise that some days won't still have stickmen — I know they have their fans, and I still like them myself — but I also want to experiment with pushing myself a little more, and perhaps developing a bit of a style that I can absolutely call "my own".

Also the sassy gal in the bottom left is cute, no? She will definitely be making more appearances.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 567: I got a tablet

I got a drawing tablet for Christmas. It's something I've always wanted to experiment with a bit, but the price on previous occasions I've looked always felt a bit prohibitive for something I don't know if I'll stick with — but in more recent years, these things seem to have become quite a bit more affordable, so I didn't feel too bad sticking one on my wishlist.

As such, you can expect the stupid drawings on this blog to take on a certain… different quality from what they have been in the past. I am making no promises whatsoever that they will be better, but at least now they will be drawn by hand with a pen rather than scrawled using a mouse that isn't really fit for the job.

Drawing is something I used to love doing when I was a kid. I have particularly fond memories of being at my Nan and Grandad's house, armed with nothing but a pad of paper and some pencils, and that would keep me occupied for hours at a time. Sometimes I would draw things from my own imagination; at others I would attempt to recreate things I had seen myself elsewhere. I recall one of my best pieces of work being a recreation of Asterix from the famous comic book series; that was in full colour and everything and, of course, my grandparents were good enough to proudly display it on their fridge.

Doodling was a big part of my time at school also. I've talked on numerous occasions about the "Rough Books" my friend Ed and I had, and these were inevitably filled with silly cartoon strips, fake adverts and doodles of our favourite characters that we had created. On more than one occasion our predilection for doodling got us into a bit of trouble, but I think most teachers knew that it was ultimately fairly harmless compared to what some of the other kids got up to.

A tablet is half of the equation when you're talking about digital art. The other half is the software you use. Up until now, the free and excellent Paint.net has always been my tool of choice, but I feel like if I want to do a bit more with this thing, it might be worth looking at some other tools. I know Clip Studio Paint is quite well-regarded, so I may have to give the free trial version of that a bit of a go and see how I get on. I also have access to Photoshop via work, but modern Photoshop has so much shit going on in its interface that I find it borderline indecipherable compared to the CS2 and CS3 versions I'm mostly accustomed to, so I'd rather not get too involved in that.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having a play around. And you will hopefully excuse the inevitably variable quality of the illustrations you will see on these pages as I get to grips with my new toy!

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#oneaday Day 566: Merry Christmas

Just a short one for today, as it's Christmas and I'm very tired indeed, plus we have things to do tomorrow!

A very Merry Christmas to anyone reading this. It's been a pleasantly quiet one here on Davison mountain, as we've just had the immediate family together for the first time in quite a while, particularly after some have had a bit of a turbulent year, to say the least.

Everyone got a nice selection of presents. I got some books, a nice Samsung smartwatch/fitness tracker thing and some other bits and pieces. I bought Andie a Soda Stream, as I thought it would be fun and we use quite a lot of sparkling water generally anyway.

Tomorrow we are attending a "handfasting" ceremony for my brother and his partner — not something I'm familiar with, but it sounds like a nice little event for close family. After that, it's the long drive home to reunite with the cats, who have been having to fend for themselves (with the food and water we left for them, obviously!) since Christmas Eve.

Anyway, I'm pretty wiped out so it's time to sleep. I hope you all had a pleasant Christmas if at all possible, and that you at the very least get some nice time off for the end of the year.

#oneaday Day 565: It's almost Christmas

Which means it isn't Christmas, I know. Christmas where I am at the time of writing is in 52 minutes.

We're at my parents' place for this Christmas, as my brother is over from the States, and it's a rare opportunity for our Mum and Dad to have the whole family together at a special time of year. (We're going to the in-laws for New Year, then next year they get us for Christmas.)

I've waxed lyrical over the years about how Christmas kind of loses its magic a bit as you get older, but I think there might be a kind of inverse bell curve thing going on, as I feel like I powered through Christmas being a bit "meh" over the course of the last decade or so, and I'm back to it feeling rather nice to get together with family and share some good times.

Of course, there was a hefty period of my life where things were not going particularly well, and that didn't exactly help with the festive spirit, but while I'm not in a position where I can say my life is "perfect" or 100% where I want it to be, I'm a damn sight more grounded and, for the most part, content than I was back around 2010 or so.

As I say, there are plenty of things I want to work on and improve in the coming year, and the festive season, of course, always gets one in a reflective sort of mood and keen to kid oneself that yes, this next year will be The Year.

I don't yet know if next year will be The Year. I suspect we all have many uphill battles to continue fighting in our own respective existences — and the world itself, for sure, needs to overcome its current challenges and, eventually, heal.

No-one really knows what the future holds. So while you're in a pleasant present, you might as well at least try and enjoy it.

I hope any of you out there reading this have a pleasant conclusion to 2025, whatever you might be doing to see it off — if anything. I certainly intend to try — beginning with a nice long sleep right about now.

#oneaday Day 562: This is not sponsored by Manta Sleep

A while back, my pal RoseTintedSpectrum blew up on YouTube (in the good way) with his coverage of classic TV shows, which naturally caused the sponsors to come a-knockin'. Since Rosie is well aware of the number of scammy YouTube sponsors out there — he, like me, is part of a Discord group of YouTubers, and we frequently share and discuss news from around the platform — he wasn't just going to immediately jump at the first dodgy online counselling or grocery delivery service that came his way. As such, I knew that if and when he did take on a sponsor, it would be someone that he felt comfortable recommending.

That sponsorship deal eventually came in the form of Manta Sleep, a luxury sleep mask company. And a while back, I did something I don't normally do: I bought something that I had seen advertised online. Specifically, I bought a pair of Manta SOUND masks — one for me and one for my wife — during the site's Black Friday sales, which meant they were considerably cheaper than they would be under normal circumstances.

Manta Sleep's "thing" is that rather than just being a blindfold you put on to go to sleep, their masks are designed to be both comfortable and effective. The band is made from pleasantly breathable fabric and is nice and soft, and the front of the mask features padded eyepieces that completely cover your eye sockets, blocking out absolutely all light without applying pressure to your eyes. And they really do offer complete blackout to such a degree that you will see the same thing whether your eyes are open or closed: total darkness, even if a light has been left on in the room.

The Manta SOUND mask, as the name suggests, also comes with Bluetooth headphones integrated into the mask. Rather excellently, the part of the mask that has all the electronics in can be detached from the bit that comes into contact with your face, so you can actually throw the thing in the washing machine without having to perform surgery on it beforehand. (Or, indeed, frying the electronics because you forgot to perform surgery on it beforehand.) The two earpieces are very thin and light, meaning you can lie on your side without them digging into you, and can be easily adjusted forwards and backwards in the special little pocket they're in to match the shape of your head and the position of your ears.

The sound quality is very good, too! There seems to be relatively minimal audio bleed out into the room when you're listening to something, and the sound you're listening to has a decent amount of presence. Obviously by nature of the design they're don't have quite as much oomph as a pair of "proper" headphones, but when you're trying to get to sleep, you don't need oomph — you need comfort and reliability, and that's what these have provided so far.

I've been really impressed with the Manta SOUND. They're pricy — and I'm glad I got the Black Friday deal on them — but they're clearly a premium product. And it's worth noting that for those who don't want or need the "sound" part, Manta Sleep's other masks are a tad more affordable, and just as comfortable and luxurious.

So yeah. This blog post is not sponsored by Manta Sleep, but I decided to try them out because my friend was sponsored by Manta Sleep, and now I will quite happily and comfortably recommend Manta Sleep to anyone who asks about them.

Manta Sleep.

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#oneaday Day 556: Customer non-service

Generative AI has, supposedly, revolutionised a number of sectors, with customer service being one of the most commonly cited areas that benefits from having a lying chatbot front and centre.

Except it doesn't benefit at all, does it? Because all the chatbot adds is an unnecessary step between someone who needs some help with something and them actually getting that help. And, in a lot of cases, the chatbot passes completely incorrect information on to the few remaining real people who might actually be able to do something.

My current predicament is that I'm trying to return something to a retailer. A pair of shoes. They didn't fit. Should be simple enough, right? On the retailer's own website, they allow you to set up the return and organise a courier service to come and collect it.

The courier service of choice for the retailer, Schuh, was Evri. This will probably strike fear into the hearts of most people, but honestly, up until now I've not had a huge problem with them (or their previous incarnation, Hermes). But it seems that Evri, specifically, is having a few issues right now.

My particular problems started ten days ago, when the courier was originally supposed to pick up my package to return it. They did not show up. My wife and I were in all day. There was not a single knock at the door, and I got a notification that there was "no answer" when they supposedly called to pick up the package.

No matter, I thought, checking the tracking information. They said they'll be back the next working day.

They were not back the next working day. Or the one after. So I attempted to contact Evri in order to sort things out.

Initially I got a chatbot that promised to "escalate" the issue and then did absolutely nothing. Like, it just stopped responding to anything. So I tried again. This time I tried some different options and seemingly got a message through to someone.

Except the people on the other end of my correspondence are all absolutely convinced that I am awaiting a package delivery, despite me telling them repeatedly that I need the package collecting from my house. And thus I suspect what is happening is that they are rummaging through their big pile of parcels, hoping to find the one they think they are supposed to deliver to me, not finding it, going "oh shit" and then just not doing anything else — when, in fact, the package that I want them to collect has been sitting in my house's front hallway for the last 10 days.

This isn't the first time I've encountered a situation like this since the dawn of AI chatbots, either. Earlier in the year, I had an Ikea chair break on me, and it was under guarantee, so I tried to get it replaced. After laying out very clearly that I needed the entire chair replaced under the guarantee thanks to the nature of the problem, and receiving assurances that yes, I would receive a full replacement chair from the possibly-human-probably-not thing that I was interacting with online, I waited two weeks… and then received a package through the post that contained a single chair leg.

How is anyone looking at situations like this and thinking "yes, that's a big improvement over what we had before"? The blame isn't entirely at the feet of the AI chatbots, I know, because in all of these cases there's an obvious degree of (possibly) human error involved, but the AI chatbot certainly isn't helping the fucking situation. In every case that I've had the misfortune to interact with an AI customer service chatbot, the bot hasn't been able to help with what should be a very simple enquiry and has passed me on to what is supposedly a human being that speaks English. And in every case it has seemingly passed on incorrect information — information that the supposed human being won't fucking listen to me correcting, even when I do so repeatedly and very, very clearly.

Just another way that the cyberpunk dystopia we live in completely and utterly sucks. With no real benefits to go along with all the suck.

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#oneaday Day 553: Cream crackered

I am lying on the prison-like bed of a Travelodge somewhere in deepest, darkest Kings Cross, and I am absolutely exhausted. As noted yesterday, today was our Work Christmas Do, and as anticipated, I have bowed out of proceedings before the evening drinking in a bar because I absolutely could not even contemplate spending any time whatsoever in a busy, noisy London bar right now. We spent about half an hour in one while waiting for our dinner reservations earlier, and that nearly made me want to run away screaming, so voluntarily subjecting myself to more of that is firmly off the table.

The rest of the day has been good fun though! Monopoly Life-Sized was quite entertaining, though also subject to Overeager Forced Fun from the staff. I can't blame them for that, though; it's almost certainly drummed into them that they have to be high energy at all times, even if it is patently obvious that the grumpy middle-aged group in attendance is very much Not Up For dancing, chanting and shouting.

The game itself was enjoyable, if a little chaotic. We had four teams, three of which consisted of our group and the fourth was a bewildered looking couple who got lumbered with us. Each turn, two teams got to roll a die and move around the giant (but hugely condensed) Monopoly board, while the other two got a "Strategy" turn, where they could either build a house or hotel on a property they owned, or take on a challenge to earn a bit of in-game cash.

When landing on an unowned property, the team had to go into a little cubicle behind the "space" and complete a challenge to take ownership of it; these varied enormously, including a bar billiards-esque ball-rolling game, a cooperative rhythm game, frantically pedalling an exercise bike at arm level, and various puzzles. There was a lot of variety, and the games were fun, if quite easy for the most part.

Building a house or hotel, meanwhile, tasked you with assembling a Tangram-like puzzle in the shape of a Monopoly house piece. The "community chest" challenges were mostly puzzles themed around various well-known Monopoly cards, though they included both mental and skill-based challenges.

All in all, it was a good time, though the game attendants were a little too willing to "cheat" on your behalf in order to ensure no-one spent too much time "failing". This felt a bit patronising, but again, it's probably in their "script".

For dinner, we went to a steak specialist restaurant, and most of us had, of course, steak. It was really good, and the bread and butter pudding dessert was also delicious. I was absolutely ready to call it a night by the time we were done there, though, so here I am now.

I think I'm mostly over "going out" — particularly going out for drinks. The brief period we spent in a Leicester Square pub prior to dinner was actual hell for me — thankfully, there was an outside area, and I even managed to get a seat before too long. Much needed, as the entire Monopoly thing had been standing up, and I was very tired.

Anyway, like I say, it's been a mostly pleasant evening aside from all the walking and that brief period in the pub, so I'm glad I came along. I am very much looking forward to getting home tomorrow, though.

#oneaday Day 552: Christmas party season

It's the Work Christmas Do tomorrow. As is (apparently) usual, we're going to London to go and Do a Thing, then Eat Some Things, then Drink Some Things. I suspect I will probably bow out of the latter quite early like I did last year, as London bars are rather overwhelming. But we shall see.

I don't really know what to expect this time. The Do a Thing step for tomorrow is "Monopoly Life-Size", which I have heard is a lot more fun than actual Monopoly, because each of the "spaces" has a little room where you have to go and Do Stuff. I can see there being potential for some fun there, and my work colleagues are always a good laugh to hang out with on occasions like this.

For dinner in the evening, we are seemingly going to some sort of steak-centric restaurant. I am all for this, as I love a good steak, and it's something we tend not to have all that often at home. I think it will be a tad less pretentious as a meal than the last time we got together, where we went to one of the numerous The Ivy restaurants — the one in Covent Garden, rather than the famous club, though they are run by the same group — but I anticipate it will still be tasty. Plus being fed and not having to pay for it is always a great thing.

It's been a very tiring year work-wise, but it's been a good one — and I'm looking forward to the future. At some point relatively early next year, my role at the company will be changing somewhat; I'll be stepping aside from the social media duties I currently have and do not enjoy in the slightest, and becoming more involved in the development side of things, primarily on the testing front. I'm excited about this, as it means I can have a direct impact on the quality of the stuff we put out, plus I anticipate I'll get to learn a fair bit, too.

I won't be leaving aside the more creative parts of my job, though. I'll still be producing manuals for Evercade cartridges, and supporting those with material for the website and YouTube channel. Those are the parts of my work that I really enjoy — even if in 2025 it's an absolute fucking nightmare to get anyone to read anything. Still I persist, however; I still like to read stuff, so I'm sure there are at least a few people out there who appreciate some written material! (If you've never seen my written Evercade stuff, check out the Evercade Blog and you'll see all my stuff is marked with my name.)

Over the long (long!) term I'd like to put together something like a book on Evercade and its games, but while I've had all the other responsibilities to juggle, this is not something I feel like I've been able to make a ton of progress on planning and proposing, let alone realising. We'll see if that changes in the future. My goal is something along the lines of Limited Run Games' "The Complete Run" books, which will go through all the Evercade releases sequentially and provide Something Interesting To Read about all of them, be that historical information, tips on playing or just some interesting things to look out for. In essence, it'll be like my blog posts, but more formalised. If I can achieve that, I think I'll be satisfied that I've done something good for the world, on balance.

But anyway. All this is stuff to ponder in the future. Right now I smell bad so I need a bath, but I have a chat to moderate first. After that, it's off to bed, and then on to sunny London tomorrow daytime. I will doubtless be reporting in from the hotel tomorrow evening, so I shall see you then.

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#oneaday Day 548: The noodle chronicles

One of my favourite things about Paul Gannon and Eli Silverman's hilarious Cheap Show podcast is Eli's obsession with noodles, and Paul's performative weariness with this obsession. The result is that, on a semi-regular basis, the pair provide some reviews of a wide variety of different noodle products, and these have helped me — and doubtless many others — to discover things so far beyond the humdrum Pot Noodle that you wouldn't believe. It's a wild and wonderful world out there, so I thought today I'd share some personal favourites.

Samyang "Buldak" noodles

Image via ubuy, who are doing free chopsticks with this bundle! Not a sponsor.

These are the famous Korean "fire noodles" that were probably some stupid TikTok trend a while back. They're a stir fry-type noodle, which means you boil the noodles without adding any seasoning, then drain most of the water and add sauce and a sachet of goop before "frying" (actually just stirring around in the pan a bit for about 30 seconds while the heat is still on) and serving immediately. The result is a generous portion of glossy, medium thickness noodles, an angry red in colour thanks to the notoriously hot sauce, with no "soup".

These noodles come in a variety of different flavours. All of them claim to be "HOT chicken flavour", plus something else in the case of anything other than the regular ones in the black packaging. Don't be too concerned with that, though; a bit of investigating revealed that the "Buldak" part of their name is a reference to a Korean street food dish that involves chicken served with incredibly hot sauce, and the sauce is based on… well, the sauce, rather than the chickeny bit.

I've tried a few different flavours of these. The basic black ones are nice enough, so long as you can handle the heat, but my favourite remains the first one I tried: the "curry" flavour. Sadly, this particular flavour appears to have been discontinued, which is immensely disappointing, but the "Spicy Seasoned Chicken" flavour was also very nice, and a tad milder than the regular black ones. I have not, to date, tried the "2X spicy" ones that come in a red package, but apparently these are so spicy they are banned in Denmark. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but given that the regular ones will present quite a challenge for the uninitiated, I suspect a "2X" version will blow most people's heads off, and I've heard rumours of a "4X" variant, though I'm yet to see those anywhere.

On the milder end of the spectrum there are flavours such as "Cheese" and "Carbonara", both of which come with some cheese powder to mix in along with the spicy sauce. These were… okay, but I didn't love them. The Carbonara seems to be a favourite of a lot of people, but I didn't personally rate it that highly. The cheese one also absolutely honks while you are preparing it, leading my wife to brand them "Feet Noodles" and prohibit me from cooking them any time she was in the house for a good few months. She eventually relented because she was fed up of seeing them in the cupboard.

I also tried a habanero and lime flavour variant. These are my least favourite of the range to date, as the lime flavour is quite artificial. They weren't unpleasant, but I wouldn't choose to have them again when other flavours are so much nicer. From the currently available range at the time of writing, I recommend the Spicy Seasoned Chicken ones above all the others.

Anyway, whether or not you will like these noodles is entirely dependent on whether you can handle the spice — and, perhaps more relevantly, whether you enjoy the spice. My wife can handle a spicy dish, for example, but she doesn't enjoy anything over a certain heat threshold, and as such these noodles were not to her taste. Although the flavoured variants are noticeably milder than the regular black version, they're still pretty danged hot, so you better be ready for that.

If you are on board with the spice, however, an enjoyable noodle experience awaits. The sauce goes glossy and sticky with barely any provocation, lending a nice sweetness to the overall dish, and most come with a little sachet of miscellaneous dried bits to add a bit of texture. You can, of course, also customise these as you see fit; I've never actually done this, but I can imagine dumping a fried egg on top would be rather lovely.

A conditional recommend for these, then.

MAMA Shrimp Creamy Tom Yum Noodles

MAMA noodles provide a complete contrast to what we've just described. These come in a somewhat smaller package and thus provide a slightly smaller portion, but they make up for this by being soup-style noodles. For the noodle newcomer, this means that you add the various seasonings to boiling water when you're cooking the noodles, and this means you infuse the noodles with flavour and have a delicious soupy broth to enjoy both with and after you have consumed all the noodles.

MAMA do several flavours of noodles, all of which that I've tried are very nice indeed, and curiously they have two separate "Tom Yum" versions — one comes in a silver packet, and the other comes in a shiny orange packet. We're concerned with the shiny orange version today, whose sole distinguishing feature is that it is, supposedly "creamy Tom Yum" as opposed to just "Tom Yum", but the silver variant is nice, too. I think the orange one has the edge, though.

These noodles come with a sachet of powder and a sachet of goopy paste. As everyone knows, the best noodles have at least two pouches of Stuff with them, and this is certainly true for MAMA noodles, because they are delicious and flavourful. The creamy Tom Yum flavour is ostensibly "shrimp" flavour, but its more of a hot and sour, vaguely Thai curry-esque flavour with hints of lemongrass and a thoroughly pleasing richness to it that combines sweetness, sourness and saltiness together in each mouthful.

My top tip for these is to ensure that you put enough water in the pot for there to be some nice, vibrantly coloured soup along with the noodles. When cooking noodles, it's very easy to accidentally boil off all the water, and with noodles of this type, that means the majority of the flavour goes with it! Give them about 300-350ml of water, boil it, immediately bung in the noodles and flavourings, then serve after just 3 minutes of simmering. The result is delicious, and comes highly recommended for those who enjoy Asian flavours.

We discovered a while back that one of the side streets in the town centre now plays host to a wealth of "Asian supermarkets", and this is a good source for trying new varieties of noodles. I will be trying plenty more in the near future, and will do my best to report on my adventures as and when they occur. Until then, happy noodling — and if I catch you settling for the dirty pond water that is "Naked" or "Kabuto" noodles, we are going to have words. Words that conclude with me boiling up a big pot of MAMA Tom Yum for you.

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#oneaday Day 547: School books

I've been thinking about school again. I do that a lot for some reason. Nostalgia for happier days in the past, perhaps. A melancholy reflection on a failed career. Or an earnest desire to go back. It doesn't really matter. I do it a lot, regardless.

One of the things that my brain has decided to fixate on today is the concept of "school books" — specifically, exercise books. I don't know why, but I really liked having a book for each subject's work.

Obviously, from a practical, logistical perspective, it makes sense to have one book per subject, particularly in secondary school, because pupils tend to have different teachers for different subjects. But it also makes sense in primary school to a certain degree, as it allows the teacher to clearly demarcate different subjects' work — which is taught at different times in the week — and for the pupils to easily compartmentalise the various things they've been learning.

I don't know. There was something inherently pleasing about every subject having its own colour, and I bet a lot of schools around the country used a similar colour scheme. We had red for English Language, green for English Literature, grey for Maths, orange for Science, blue for Languages, a different green for the subjects grouped under "Humanities" at our school (Geography, History, R.E.), and your Journal would be a different colour according to what year you were in.

That Journal was a handy little thing, too. It was essentially a weekly planner where we could record any homework we got from our subjects and the date it was due; it was then, of course, up to us to check it regularly and ensure we actually did that homework. This was before any sort of handheld electronic devices with reminders on them — pre-"smart" mobile phones didn't become particularly widespread among me and my peers until we were into sixth form. It was a good and healthy thing to do, I think; it helped teach us matters of personal responsibility — and also occasional bullshitting on the inevitable occasions when we had forgotten to check it properly.

The Journal was treated like some sort of holy book, though. Every single week, we had to get it signed by our parents to prove that they had seen we had been recording our homework, and every week, our form tutor had to sign it to confirm that our parents had signed it. A space on each week's spread was also set aside for any communications between our form tutor and parents — for more serious infractions, of course, you got a Letter Home from the school office, but for minor things (and not necessarily problems!) there was this space in the Journal.

Heaven help you if you doodled anywhere on your Journal, though. Defacing it in any way was an immediate ticket to having to buy — yes, buy — a new one. As you might expect, the end of term rolling around was an immediate signal to many of us to immediately deface the crap out of the Journal for the term just gone. These defaced Journals became companions to "The Rough Book" among me and my friends — there was something about the neatly laid out tables in the Journal that made it ripe for customising with ridiculous doodles. My favourites were ones where we absolutely covered the page with tiny stick figures, all standing on the various lines of the table, flinging themselves off the edge and getting up to no good. I kind of wish I still had some of those.

It was the same for your subject exercise books, of course. Some teachers insisted that, as our inaugural piece of homework for a new term, we should cover our exercise book as a means of discouraging and/or preventing any doodling on the cover. Most people went the "wrapping paper" route, but there was a fun degree of self-expression among us all, and there was always some posh git who would laminate the cover of their book at their Dad's office or whatever.

I realise, of course, that the relative strictness with which we were taught to treat our school equipment can be looked on, from some perspectives, as being stifling to creativity and borderline authoritarian. School in general has always been designed as a means of, among other things, socialising us into becoming "good citizens" — and part of that, at least when I was at school, involved treating things with respect — whether they were the things that had been given to you by the school, the things you had brought in from home, or the things your peers were using.

It didn't always happen, of course, but there was a certain degree of pride that pretty much everyone had in their school possessions. Outside of covering books, one of the best ways to express one's individuality was through the stationery you brought to school — and the pencil case in which you kept that stationery. Some folks had cool, branded, zippered pencil cases; others had little tins. I remember my proudest pencil case at school was a Nintendo-branded tin with Super Mario Bros. pixel art on the front; it was also one of my least practical pencil cases due to its size, but I loved it nonetheless.

Anyway, you'd think I'd have a point about all this but I really don't. Something just got me thinking about the colour of school books, so that's what I've talked about today. Hey! They can't all be winners. Or perhaps you found this absolutely fascinating, in which case I am happy to have served.

Either way, at 20 past midnight I think it's probably time to go to bed.

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