Alan baker illustrator biography of rory

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It was a comforting sound, but the squeaking of the wheel disturbed the family’s sleep. It didn’t, instead making a horrendous smudge. It was more to do with my own makeup than anything else. Through stuttering sobs, I said the words. I could hear Mum in Jeannie’s room breaking the news to her.

Suzie, my younger sister was only two or three and didn’t really understand.

It felt like being hit very hard around the head.

Unable to travel, I ran out of money, ending up in an Afghan hospital with a severe case of dysentery. For sixty-two consecutive days, it lay on the ground. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the slightest clue what it was. I still have mine. After each disaster, it was like starting again. In some ways it’s harder now as the more people there are, the more competition there is which also drives down the fees.

I have been fortunate to live through a time when illustration was well paid and could be a full-time profession.

Finally, white Rabbit turns brown when all three primaries are mixed. She would never have gone away if she’d known how ill he was, but she was also worried about us children being on our own.

She needed to let her mother-in-law know, so walked the mile or so from Mayday hospital to her mother-in-law’s house, finally arriving there at about 10.00 o’clock that evening. 

Her mother-in-law must have been concerned but she didn’t appear so and started talking about the Christmas presents and her ironing!

The busses must still have been running because Mum then had to travel the four or five miles home.

Once home, she didn’t go upstairs to bed but stayed on the settee and tried to sleep. 

At about 2.00 am there was a knock on the door.

It was selected as a Children’s book of the year in 1982.

I loved fireworks and their beautiful designs and took great pleasure in laying them out and carefully arranging them in rows. It was a great success and work poured in. I’d usually be able to make about 4 appointments a day. PE, Football, and Sport, in general, were also heavily encouraged. 

Life continued and I struggled unhappily through school in the ’B stream’, until I  was due to leave school.

I didn’t dare suggest that I might also follow that direction. I think she took this to be arrogance and so followed it up with, ‘I bet you are going to tell people that I’m the biggest f*** c*** that you have ever met’. Other people picked up on the idea and competition was fierce. Today this would be seen as very un-PC.

Mum would sometimes read it to me before bed.

A set of illustrated Arthur Mee encyclopedias, a medical manual [I‘d often read the page on human reproduction- it clarified nothing!]. They filled the house. 

The hearse pulled up outside our gate. My emotions were close to the surface – something else that I hated as it brought on more unwelcome attention and embarrassment.