Last night was a still, quiet, beautiful night. I went inside to watch A Bug’s Life with the family. One of my favorite scenes is the moth flying toward the bug zapper, with his buddy shouting, “Don’t look at the light!”

“But it’s so beautiful...” Zap.

Absolute brilliance.

I’ve always found a quiet, deeply rewarding joy in inserting myself into the minds of creatures, imagining the glorious inner monologues as they go about their business. (I believe the technical term is anthropomorphism, though personification works too.)

Anyway, back to the scene at hand: a quiet night, no wind, the outside lights on, and insects buzzing around them. I often wonder what drives the sheer ferocity with which moths pummel themselves against a lightbulb. It seems chaotic at best, but perhaps it’s an elaborate, intricate, and highly tactical maneuver—so terrifyingly complex that to us, it just looks like a frantic mess.

Maybe that complex pattern is part of something deeper and we are witnessing an unseen, all-out war playing out right before our eyes: the full might of the insect world waging a silent campaign against the intrusion of artificial light. Night after night after night.

So when I turned off the light last night, I swear for a second I heard the faintest, microscopic victory cheer echo from within the darkness. I do quite like that image, and maybe tonight I will listen a little more carefully as I switch that light off. Find the beauty in the mundane :) Or maybe it’s the early onset of madness.

Happy Tuesday.

If you like it, press the button thingy, or if on the app hit restack. It really helps!

Last weekend we had a birthday party for my son. It was a bit of a journey to get to, but overall it was a great day. Not too many people got lost, though more than a couple endured some challenges reaching the spot.

Which naturally took me back to my own childhood travels.

My Dad was famous for never asking for directions. On the off chance he ever did get lost, a phenomenon he firmly assured us was mathematically impossible, he would turn to my mother and ask, “Hey ‘I’, which was short for Irene, which way do you think? Left or right?”

Without fail, he would immediately steer in the exact opposite direction of her answer. My mum would giggle, most of the time, call him a sod, and off we’d go.

I, too, have had my fair share of directional blunders, though rarely executed with the absolute, supreme grace of my father.

This wee comic is a tribute to every dad born with a physical inability to ask for directions, firmly resolute that every wrong turn was merely a slightly longer shortcut. Bless these wonderful beings and all the unexpected adventures they dragged us on.

Happy Tuesday!

I wanted to draw penguins for some reason. I do love these funny little suited critters. I believe they are nature’s equivalent to the Minions—or rather, that’s how they live in my head.

I tried them with eyes and expressions, but for this one, they felt better with huge foreheads that cover the eyes. Giving a character an expression gives it individuality, which works against the intended joke.

I also initially had hundreds of penguins, and it somehow didn’t work. I honestly thought it would support the joke, but it became really hard to see what was going on. The three protagonists got lost in a sea of suits. That often happens: you have an idea, map it out, and then when you put pen to paper, you realize it falls flatter than a fart at a funeral.

It seems funnier to me like this—perhaps it makes them all seem more daft because there are only three of them, and it’s also clearer what’s going on.

Now I just needed to work out what she was saying to the wrong guy.

Then I suddenly remembered my first ever breakup. Pam. I think that was her name.

Happy Tuesday :)

I’ve been pondering the concept of evolution again. What prompted this sudden excursion into natural history? To be entirely honest, sheer professional regret. I was looking back at a previous comic, felt the familiar cold wash of creative disappointment, and realized I’d missed the mark entirely.

That, I suppose, is the eternal cross of drawing these things: the core objective is to take an event of staggering, cosmos-shattering gravitas and forcefully cram it into an atmosphere of suffocating, suburban mundanity. It’s remarkably difficult to pull off. Occasionally, by some miracle of timing or sheer fluke, I hit the bullseye. More often, I am left staring at a published strip, quietly mourning what could have been, and waiting for a socially acceptable period of time to pass before I can brazenly steal my own idea and try again.

If one is searching for something unfathomably grand to drag down into the gutters of domestic irrelevance, it’s hard to overlook the natural world. Consider it: billions of years of cosmic violent birth, culminating in primitive, wet little organisms deciding to hoist their slimy torsos out of the primordial soup to lay the foundations for all land-based species. (Or specieses? Specii? Whatever the plural is, I’m fairly certain it shouldn’t sound like a brand of cough drop.)

Which brings me, inexorably, to the gap year.

I took one myself after my studies—that grand, noble tradition of wandering around foreign continents under the delusion that one is expanding one’s horizons, when in reality one is merely accumulating dysentery, thoroughly fumbling other people’s languages, but generally having a bloody marvelous time.

Which brings us to the inevitable domestic reality: what does billions of years of macro-evolutionary glory look like when viewed through the judgmental prism of two gossip-loving suburban mothers over Earl Grey?

My daughter broke her arm a while ago, and I happen to have a fondness for drawing bats—specifically their wonderfully piggy little faces. Naturally, I tried desperately to ram these two completely unrelated concepts together into a mundane, everyday setting that tickled my own warped sense of humor.

First, one must address the logistics: how, precisely, does a creature equipped with millions of years of evolutionary refinements manage to break its own arm, arms, or legs? Flying around like an unhinged lunatic in the pitch-black seemed a reasonable possibility, but I decided to lean toward the utterly absurd habit of sleeping suspended upside down from the rafters of an enormous cave. I now possessed the golden opportunity to draw a heavily bandaged, thoroughly indignant bat. But why was it bandaged?

It was at this point I recalled my son, a boy uniquely notorious for hurling himself out of bed mid-slumber. It was a magnificent spectacle to behold: a colossal, bone-shattering thud echoing through the dead of night, followed immediately by a face of total, vacant bewilderment. Looking at him lying on the carpet like a discarded sack of flour, I must admit I genuinely wonder how our species ever managed to claw its way to the top of the food chain—or indeed, out of the primordial sludge.

So, I had my bandaged baby bat, but I still needed a setting to deliver the punchline. Having two suburban dads chit-chatting over a braai felt completely wrong, and having mothers dropping their kids off at school only served to confuse matters for some reason. So, in the end, I settled on two mothers having a cozy little catch-up chat in the park. And that is how this nonsense ended up in front of you today! And these are two minutes you can never get back. Happy Tuesday!

Ah, London in my youth. What a magnificent cesspit of unbridled insanity it was. A truly marvelous place to be young, broke, and blissfully unencumbered by anything resembling adult responsibilities.

The primary charm of any grand metropolis, of course, is the ironclad, mathematical certainty that at any given moment, you are roughly six feet away from a complete raving lunatic. And if you haven’t found one, then it’s highly likely you are said lunatic.

If you do happen across one, I suggest leaning into it—it can turn out to be a bloody marvelous giggle.

Take the London Underground—a subterranean purgatory designed by sadists, yet an absolute goldmine of top-tier entertainment for myself and the questionable band of miscreants I used to consort with. We operated under one golden, unbreakable rule: if a packed Tube carriage contains a single, enticingly empty seat, there is a damn good reason for it. It is not a gift from God; it is a trap.

Naturally, I sat in it anyway.

The moment my posterior hit the vinyl, the gentleman next to me expanded his lungs and launched into a full-volume rendition of Cliff Richard’s It’s So Funny How We Don’t Talk Anymore. Now, to be entirely fair to the man, he raised a surprisingly valid point about the breakdown of modern human communication. We went on to have a splendid chat and a thoroughly good laugh.

Then there was our morning public service initiative. In the bleary, poorly lit hours of the early morning, we used to place a fake rubber snake right at the exit of our local Tube station. Now, you might reasonably expect Londoners to be thoroughly incensed by this. Quite the contrary. Within ten minutes, we’d assembled a delighted little mob of onlookers, all standing around in joyous solidarity, cackling like hyenas as fresh victims leapt three feet into the air.

With all that in mind, it wouldn’t have surprised me to pull back the curtain of a suburban house on the outskirts of London town and see a well-dressed Elvis impersonator sprinting down the street as soon as the sun had set. Londoners have seen it all.

Happy Tuesday!

The absent-minded professor—or, in this particular case, professors. Sometimes one can become so completely consumed by a single task that one fails to notice the vast, blinding forest for the exceedingly obvious trees. It is entirely possible to miss something parked directly under one’s nose, or to misread a situation with the kind of spectacular accuracy usually reserved for royal cartographers. It happens to the best of us, of course, and what a glorious, soul-restoring thing it is to wallow in. Taking proper delight in a cock-up of such monumental proportions is enough to make one’s sides split, provided it’s appreciated with the right level of “I dun goofed up.”

This comic plunges headlong into just such a tale as we join two terrifyingly dedicated brothers (and on a quick side note: who, in God’s name, is holding the horse’s head?). They have finally arrived at a critical juncture in their noble quest to unlock the universe’s deepest mysteries of time travel. A long, distinguished trail of utterly failed experiments has dragged them to this exact moment, and they have now concluded that it might—just might—be time to seek outside help. Help that has, in their deeply delusional minds, been crystal-clearly etched onto a sign for all the world to see.

One can only pray that they, too, have the good grace to revel in the sheer, unadulterated brilliance of their own stupidity. No doubt the Madame will dining on this story for some time to come!

Gladiators were pretty cool. Fierce, disciplined warriors. An open arena. Tens of thousands of blood thirsty, screaming lunatics baying from the terraces. The whole thing conducted with a ceremonial gravity that left absolutely no one in doubt about what was at stake.

The modern equivalent, one might argue, is the sports stadium — vast crowds watching two teams do battle on a field of manicured grass. Though if we’re talking football, the comparison collapses into complete farce rather quickly. There is a meaningful distinction between a warrior facing a man with a lethal trident and a modern midfielder who has been breathed on from three meters away and is now thrashing around on the turf, weeping and clutching his shin as though it he about loose his limb. But I digress.

The point is this: colosseum or stadium, the crowd wants spectacle. In fact the whole point of it is entertainment, focused on that spectacle.

I have, however, witnessed something far superior.

There is a particular, deeply magnificent kind of person — you will have met one; you may have even married one — for whom being right is not merely a position, but a sacred, unstoppable vocation. When that moment arrives — when the universe finally, reluctantly, gets around to agreeing with them — the outside world simply dissolves. Arguments, oncoming traffic, the minor detail of a massive, heavily armed man with a Club — all of it washes away in the warm, nauseating glow of pure, unhurried vindication.

It is not arrogance, exactly. It is something far purer and altogether more glorious than arrogance. It is the calm, radiant certainty of someone who has who feels a sense of divine intervention every time they get to say the words I knew I was right. The smile could not pried from their lips even if it was their final moment. A thing of beauty.

I’ve started a project that involves peering back into prehistoric times. Well, assuming it actually lands, of course.

Still, I take a distinct, rather twisted pleasure in poking around in history, constantly wondering what truly ignited its pivotal moments.

There is, after all, a supreme, cackling joy in reducing the entire grand, majestic saga of human existence down to a series of completely mundane, wildly uninspiring events.

Take our own distant, scaled ancestor, Carl. In my mind’s eye, I see Heather, our intrepid female fish, as the aquatic equivalent of Janice from Friends: that nasal terror who relentlessly pursued Chandler through multiple seasons of televisual torment. The thought of her screeching through the primeval ooze tickles me endlessly. Frankly, given the circumstances, it isn’t the least bit far-fetched to imagine Carl leaping desperately onto dry land—inventing lungs, legs, and terrestrial life itself, simply to secure five minutes of peace and quiet.

(Footnote to Carl: It didn’t work, mate. She followed us up here.)

And with those monumentally profound thoughts, I hand you over to another silly comic. Have a decent Tuesday. This is comic #20 in a series of very silly comics, as we race at a staggering snails-pace toward 100.

It is the start of the school term and I’m struck by the sudden urge to write about witches. Is there a link? Who really knows? I have long since learnt not to ask too many questions, as my brain tends to do its own thing. A lot of the time I feel less like the master of my own intellect and more like a terrified passenger fumbling at the controls while a manic goblin steers me into oncoming traffic.

Anyway. Witches.

To construct a house out of gingerbread would require some serious supplies. Naturally, the next image that pops into my head is a witch in a supermarket, hauling the biggest, most absurdly oversized bag of gingerbread mix known to man. (Whether such a pre-mixed compound actually exists in the real world is a mystery I refuse to investigate, on the high-minded grounds that intellectual curiosity is famously exhausting.)

However, one solitary witch in a supermarket felt dull—even with a bag of pre-mix the size of a small mattress. So naturally, another hag materialises right next to her in Aisle 4. Honestly, this is the terrifying mechanism by which my ideas are formed.

The rest happened rather quickly. Drawing from personal experience, as soon as two middle-aged ladies randomly bump into each other, a serious catch-up is legally mandated. They dive into a fabulous yarn about who, what, why, and where things have taken place over whatever vast expanse of time has elapsed since they last encountered each other. But now my grey matter needs to figure out what they would be chatting about, so it starts playing a bit of frantic improv. Thankfully, this embarrassing process happens entirely behind closed doors.

To recap: the fictitious scenario I have created contains two witches, a massive bag of gingerbread mix in a supermarket. We must also reiterate that the sole, driving purpose of all hags is, for some unfathomable reason, to boil plump children into a palatable stew. Let’s bring these terrifying creatures into the modern era.

And now, I drop you right in the middle of the catch-up:

My family are obsessed with birdwatching—a pastime to some about as thrilling as watching paint dry on a particularly damp Tuesday, though I’ll concede that a few of these creatures are pretty cool. However, the best bit about birds is not the feathered beasts themselves, but in their names. Absolutely sublime, every last one of them.

Take the comic above. I’ve penned several iterations starring the magnificent Bearded Tit, but this version remains my absolute favourite. I would like to point out that these are all actual names of existing birds! The whole thing stems from a simple, terrifying realization: what if the birds actually found out what we decided to call them?

Because let’s be entirely honest. These creatures were not christened by solemn men of science. No, they were named by a collection of hard lined stoners huddled in a smoke-filled room—gentlemen who had consumed enough dubious herbal remedies to think themselves gods. Picture it: a room reeking of hemp and intellect, where someone giggles hysterically, shouts out the most profoundly absurd string of syllables imaginable, and as the room howls with laughter, someone else scribbles it down into official law.

And thus, the Bearded Tit was born—a name as magnificent, absurd, and completely unhinged as the minds that birthed it.

As a bonus here is one of the other comics featuring the bearded Tit!

​Let us suppose that over a span of several years, a concentrated caucus of exceptionally clever people constructed something quite extraordinary. They unveiled it to the world with the measured reassurance of an enthusiastic dentist explaining that this won’t hurt a bit, before promptly retreating behind a doorway to observe what terrible thing happened next.

​They gave him a name, naturally. Something domestic. Something calculated not to alarm the neighbours—a name that sounded, frankly, like one’s slightly distracted uncle at a family barbecue. It was so aggressively unthreatening that one can only conclude it was selected by a man who had skimmed a single psychology textbook during a train delay and declared himself a master of the human mind.

​They called him Adolf.

​At first, the intention was to depict him as a modest little chatbot—a harmless metal teapot cruising about innocently before evolving into whatever power-hungry monstrosity he was destined to become. Finding the appropriate backdrop for such a moment, however, required several dreadful iterations.

​In the first draft, he was slumped on a damp mattress in an alleyway, surrounded by spent batteries. That certainly captured a mood, but it lacked a certain spark. In the second, he was a glorified toy in a child’s bedroom, plugged quietly into a wall socket while arranging plastic soldiers into neat, totalitarian rows. It had potential, though it suffered from the slight drawback of making visual sense only to someone currently residing inside my own skull—a remarkably small market.

​In the end, logic was abandoned entirely in favour of a wall socket the sheer size of a municipal building. How he intends to connect to it remains a complete mystery, but what remains beyond question is the sheer manner of his approach: marching toward it with all the focused determination of a seven-year-old boy encountering his first adult urinal.

​Once these geniuses had pried Adolf away from the wall socket, however, panic set in. Like any sensible parents realizing their initial choice was an unmitigated PR disaster, his architects had the good sense to rename him something like Claude. Because, frankly, who has ever been punched in the face by a Claude?

The mosquito is, without question, one of the most comprehensively misunderstood creatures on the planet.

​Let us, for a moment, set aside the staggering body count. I am aware this requires a rather heroic act of generosity on your part, but do try. The mosquito is, statistically, the most lethal animal in human history—responsible for more deaths than every war ever fought, combined. This is not open to dispute. We are simply choosing to sweep it under the carpet for now.

​What is considerably less appreciated is what actually drives the beast. The mosquito—specifically the male of the species—is propelled by an insatiable thirst for a damn good time. That, coupled with the fact that it possesses a memory span so fleeting it makes a concussed goldfish look like a grandmaster chess champion, makes the creature unique.

​Whilst they often reside in perfectly modest suburban arrangements—which is precisely why they are so devilishly difficult to locate during daylight hours—at night it is a rather different matter. At night, it is just a bunch of blokes out looking for a laugh. Every night is a bachelor night.

​What you hear as an infuriating high-pitched whine is actually a gleeful cheer as the lads dance around, stumbling their way through the dark. Ibiza every night! Or... was it?

​Which brings us back to Mildred.

The name “Kowalski” carries a curse so profoundly absolute that simply uttering it anywhere near an 80s cop movie causes the poor devil to instantly perish.

​“Hey Kowalski, how’s your last week before retirement going?” Dead.

​“Hey Kowalski, I hear you’re getting married!” Dead.

​“Hey Kowalski, your daughter just got into college!” Dead.

​It didn’t matter what the news was. The sheer warmth of the announcement was directly proportional to the terminal speed of the outcome. Kowalski was cinema’s own early warning system — a man so consistently, reliably unfortunate that the genre eventually stopped bothering to explain it and simply accepted it as a cosmic law of nature.

​Now, Kowalski was never what one might call the sharpest tool in the box — in fact, he was barely a blunt spoon floating in a soft drawer — but frankly, the man deserved a bit more screen time before his inevitable, cinematic doom.

​So here he stands. Well before marriage. Light-years away from a comfortable pension. Hovering in the absolute prime of his career.

​And yet still managing to bark up the entirely wrong tree.

I love the ocean. This is not a nuanced, delicate position held by a poet sipping sherry; I simply adore the vast, damp expanse.

Take dolphins, for instance. It emerged recently—and I use “recently” in the sense that I have known this for a considerable while, yet it never stops being utterly delightful—that dolphins take careful, exquisitely measured nibbles from pufferfish. Just enough neurotoxin to get wildly intoxicated, yet strategically stopping short of a permanent move to the great coral reef in the sky. They are, quite plainly, the unwashed, flower-wearing hippies of the deep.

Whales, however, are a different matter entirely. If dolphins are the aquatic ravers, whales are either the stage performers or the world’s most tragically ill-equipped Olympic hopefuls.

A whale breach—that staggering moment when several hundred tons of aquatic lard decides to simply vacate the water, rotate with all the elegance of a falling wardrobe, and come crashing back down in a wall of foam and unearned self-satisfaction—is one of the more inexplicable spectacles Mother Nature ever blundered into creating.

Since marine science remains baffled as to why they bother, I suspect it comes down to one of two things: either they are performing purely for shits and giggles, or they are doomed athletes possessed by all the ambition, nonexistent technique, and absolute commitment of a poorly equipped Olympic dream.

Either way, it is a staggering amount of physical effort for what can only be described as a bizarre lifestyle choice.

Once you begin to view these giant beasts mid-twist as underprepared gymnasts missing their landing mat, it becomes entirely impossible to unsee—and hopefully, next time you spot one, you’ll be looking closely for the optional re-entry.

There is an amusing realization one reaches when studying the African savanna: Mother Nature is not a majestic artist, but a drunk civil servant on a Friday afternoon.

Take the zebra, for example. No two share the same stripe pattern—they wear their own biological fingerprints, which merge into a dizzying optical illusion to dazzle predators. Should that masterclass in camouflage fail, their backup defense mechanism is to gallop off while vigorously farting in the lion’s face. True poetry on the savanna.

Having already exhausted the comedic depths of striped flatulence, I delved into the fingerprint business and wondered: was there ever a zebra so wretchedly cursed as to be born with a stripe running squarely across its eyes like a burglar’s mask?

I began drawing them in a group, adding bowties, eyewear, and a delicate set of pearls. Suddenly, I hadn’t drawn wildlife at all—I’d landed squarely in an Agatha Christie scene. The herd had morphed into a daft collection of pompous, aristocratic snobs, utterly oblivious to the culprit hiding in plain sight among them.

Then again, there is a quiet beauty in being unique. And if you can make a couple of bucks along the way, well... far be it from me to judge.

In my shallower, more vibrant youth, I harbored a borderline pathological affection for fancy dress parties. My strategy was always a masterclass in tactical negligence: leave the costume entirely to the final, desperate micro-second, and see exactly what level of aesthetic insult I could get away with before being barred at the door.

Yet, my own minor triumphs of procrastination pale in comparison to a bachelor party of legendary, near-homicidal genius.

The plan was elegant in its sheer, unadulterated cruelty. We took the unfortunate groom-to-be, wrapped him securely in a seal costume, and immediately ushered him onto a boat for a spot of Great White shark cage diving.

To say he was a “sitting duck” is to do a grave disservice to ducks, who at least have the good sense to fly away when a massive, razor-toothed apex predator decides they look like lunch. There he was, suspended in the freezing brine, looking like a plump, neoprene-wrapped hors d’oeuvre, while several tons of prehistoric killing machine circled him with what can only be described as intense, culinary interest. Comedy gold, of course. For us, at least. The groom’s therapist has since bought a yacht.

Naturally, through the warped, decaying neural pathways of my brain, this memory of maritime near-death somehow birthed the sketch of a politician in a duck’s costume running for office, flanked by a remarkably well-informed bodyguard.

But then, why demand logic from a mind that clearly thrives on utter chaos? Much like my youthfully negligent approach to party attire, the real joy is in pure spontaneity. Sometimes you just end up somewhere bizarre for no logical reason at all—and it is best to simply embrace the chaos and revel in the glorious silliness of it all.

Though, if you do insist on finding some order in the madness, perhaps you could start by choosing which of our esteemed real-world politicians deserves to take that empty seat?

Not long ago we acquired a puppy. The little fella turned out to possess a stomach of such exquisite, aristocratic sensitivity that it led to a significant, utterly exhausting amount of research into dog food. Frankly, I was entirely unprepared for the current commercial landscape. The sheer, unadulterated grandiosity of the flavors on offer blew my mind—ranging from a hand-fed mix of roasted peacock, gold leaf, and imported truffles, to wild-caught salmon with hand-selected rosemary, lightly sprinkled with the “essence of a loving home.” The implication running through the entirety of this corporate drivel was clear: if you aren’t purchasing a bag that costs the same as a small mortgage repayment, you are a cold, heartless monster who probably shouldn’t be trusted with a houseplant, let alone a canine.

My experience with my older dog had been entirely different; the magnificent beast would happily consume anything up to and including a gravel driveway, making this high-stakes culinary world completely new to me. As I perused the packaging a little deeper, the claims grew more wildly outlandish still—promising to enhance flexibility, extend longevity, and “boost cognitive function.” A profoundly moving concept, given that I have always harbored a secret, desperate desire to own a genius, elderly ballet beagle.

Eventually, we settled on a premium brand that agreed with the puppy’s delicate constitution. That evening, both dogs enthusiastically chomped through their feed and, per the sacred daily ritual, promptly demanded to be let outside.

No sooner had the back door closed than they had an immediate change of heart — launching into a passionate protest to be let back in. The specific grievances still being assembled.

I couldn’t help but wonder how the cognitive boost brand might have played out.

Most people walk through life unnoticed. If you have been lucky enough to encounter a Todd at some point, count yourself lucky. It is something to behold. There is a particular kind of belligerence — self-contained, completely self-referential, utterly immune to external information — that is genuinely mesmerising to witness. The conviction alone. The absolute, unshakeable certainty that the universe has chosen them, specifically, as its primary ongoing project.

Spotting a fully operational Todd in the wild is — and I don’t use this comparison lightly — not unlike observing a total solar eclipse. Rare. Arresting. Over before you fully understand what you’re looking at, and yet somehow impossible to look away from.
The psychiatrist is, depending on your interpretation, one of two people. A man at the end of a long career who, somewhere along the way inspired by the guy from Something about Mary, stopped being entirely present. Or — and this is my preferred version — a man who has told Todd with two D’s this many, many, many, many times before.

I’ll leave that one with you.

It was someone’s birthday last week. In this house, it usually is. My wife loves them. My children love them. There is bunting, and a cake, and a very particular way in which the moment of unwrapping is meant to unfold.

I find the whole ritual — not the sentiment, the ritual — mildly baffling. We are celebrating, at its core, the fact that a person drew breath for the first time. The ultimate participation medal. Well done. You arrived. Here is a cake shaped like a number.

I am probably alone in this line of thinking. And for the record — I do enjoy the day. What I have come to understand is that the gifts are not the point. The point is that everyone, for exactly twenty-four hours, is required to be extraordinarily nice to you. I would take out the trash. But it’s my birthday.

For others, of course, it might be something else entirely. Bats, for instance — maybe it’s just all about the candles. How do you even light one upside down?

As I scrolled through various critters and scenarios I landed on fairy tales. The Brothers Grimm, to be precise.

Those wonderfully gruesome fairy tales about witches at their wits’ end trying to get a fat child into a cauldron. Building houses made entirely of cake and gingerbread — can you imagine the effort involved. The structural challenges alone. All of that to lure one plump German child within grabbing distance.

Which got me thinking about what the ultimate birthday gift for a witch would actually look like?

The cauldron in the corner was probably unavoidable.