Page 3: The Art And Madness Of King James.

     Down the Pab.


     "Pablo. Yer tea’s ready."

     "But Mum, I’m just finishing a painting."

     "Don’t argue with your Mother son or you’ll get a good hiding."

     "Dad, you don’t understand…I’m on the thresh hold of something big…something extraordinary….a new way of seeing things…a breakthrough…a…"

     "Don’t tell me that you are developing Cubism?"

     "Yes, how did you know?"

     "Well, I watched you go through all your other periods…Blue en all…and I said to your Mum…Doreen, I said. You watch. That little brat is on ter something and if I’m not very much mistaken, my feeling is that it’ll be cubism."

     "But Dad, how could you possibly know that and come up with that name even."

     "I’ve always had an intuitive nature son. I can see things. I was telling your Mother the other day about Pop Art and Op Art…it’s just a matter of time before someone is going to screen-print a red and white soup can and call it art…I can feel it in me bones. I knows what I knows."

     "Dad you’re amazing."

     "Well, I guess I have to confess that it being 2012 and me having read art books about it.
Also the fact that you’re not Picasso, but just our kid who we named Pablo….. after the great man himself.
Still never mind son, your teas ready now and you can get back to your paint by numbers after."





     Shortly after this story was written PabloWordsworth decided to give up painting and become a poet.

     His Father founded a book club and his Mother losted it.








JAMES SWEETLAND - CAREER PATH

     I would decide on my career plan of action as I was walking down the road to catch my bus.

      THE PLAN:

     I’ll work at different jobs for a few years to gain the necessary working experience, and then I’ll go on my own. Not necessarily to have a company or people working for me, but to work for myself. That was the key thing.
I wasn’t interested in having people reporting to me. After all, I’m not the supervisor type. The idea of being a manager was not for me.

     At this point, I was an art student in my third year, so I’d already learned a few things and heard a few things about the commercial art world. We had even been on a field trip to ABC television ( later Thames Television ) in Teddington. Our Tutor Robin Hughes had worked there and produced the first “Avengers” on-air opening graphics…how cool is that !! The graphics at ABC Television were cool and watching that set designer working on a stage set complete with frames to set up the different camera angles….that’s what I’d like to do. The fact that he makes good money also helps !!

      THE DREAM:

      Ideally I’d like to get into The Royal College of Art and then…. get a job at JWT or ABC TV or BBC Television.

     It didn’t matter which of these jobs came first. I could work at JWT to get agency experience and then either ABC or BBC to get television experience. Graphics and set design. Working in television would be great and doing graphics for a while and set designing for a while would cover a lot of ground for me to go independently….solo…freelance, or whatever it may be called. The name wasn’t important. The important thing was to work hard, get the knowledge and go for it.

     Well, that was the plan anyway.

      THE REALITY:

     Sometimes you get what you ask for but not necessarily in quite the way you might expect.
The experience and going solo thing DID happen, but not as I had imagined.

     First of all…I didn’t get into RCA.

     The Royal College of Art was / is the Mecca for art students.
Only a few are accepted. This only after submitting portfolios of excellence, being chosen to go on to the second stage and then passing vigorous interviews and exams. I, on the other hand, received the letter …

     ”We regret to inform you ....”

     I was quite envious when I learned that three of our group had been selected. Still, maybe it’s for the best. Studying for another three years… better to accept that it wasn’t meant to be and get a job and start earning an income.

     John Sturgess my teacher, was very supportive and asked how I felt about not having been accepted.

     I put on a brave face…probably even gave the impression that it was all A okay …but that day was a tough one, and the failure to get in has haunted me ever since.

     So, the next thing to do was to find a job ASAP.

     The idea of working at one of the three aforementioned companies was still a possibility. JWT, ABC , BBC. I had interviews at all of them !!

     JWT is probably the best known and highly respected advertising agency in the world. I was short listed and had a second interview as a junior art director. In hindsight, it was just as well that I didn’t get in. I wasn’t really the agency type. I liked the idea from a prestige point of view, but in reality, I probably wouldn’t have fit in well at all.

     ABC Television…again, it looked promising at first and head of graphics was to consider me for employment…but…nope.

     BBC Television…an uncomfortable meeting with the head of graphics…not meant to be.
I’d re-designed The Radio Times in horizontal format, not sure that went over too well.
So, second round.

     I sent letters to over sixty agencies and design houses and had interviews at more than twenty. Interestingly, I wasn’t fazed. I just kept moving along.
FCB ( Foote Cone and Belding ) another big agency interview.

     DRU ( Design Research Unit ) on Davis Street in Mayfair. A fabulous interview where I was told by June Frazer that I was probably too creative for the RCA judges. A wonderful thing to hear, but I still didn’t get a job there.
So….. many more agency interviews and then….. trendy design houses.

     Another great interview after another….but no job as such.
I wasn’t taking all this too personally because, every student was doing the rounds and there really weren’t the openings.
It then got to the point where the prestige of the company was getting less important. I just wanted to get a job.
I answered a local newspaper ad. for an Exhibition Designer with Marley Tiles, a building company that had their design department out of town, near Sevenoaks in Kent.

     All the other places necessitated a train ride up to London, and here I was taking a bus in the opposite direction. The studio Manager, David Kerslake, hired me on the basis that he liked the comic book style design that I’d done for an art school project for the movie Dr Strangelove ( a movie that poked fun at the cold war ). He felt that I could inject a different look into the studio’s work.

     I was to be an exhibition designer starting at an income higher than if I had worked for any of the other companies. Also, Marley, being the largest building product supplier in Britain, also had benefits. There was even a terrific staff canteen with subsidized meals, pension plan, decent holidays…and good working conditions…...all away from the big smoke.

     I really didn’t know much about exhibit design, but I was keen to learn and this turned out to be an excellent training ground. I was responsible for the design and construction of exhibits. This would mean producing renderings and models and drawing up construction drawings for the builders to work to. I enjoyed suggesting a different way of designing exhibits…and probably rocked the boat a bit.

     “Why should the fascia always be horizontal ? Why can’t we go with something different ? How about this !!”

     It all worked out well. My work was well received and I was gaining the knowledge and experience that I needed for my original plan.

     This first job couldn’t have been better. Within a few short months, I had purchased my first car.. a Citroen Traction Avant. ( a 1951 Citroen Light 15) and was driving down into the countryside towards Sevenoaks ( where incidentally The Beatles shot their videos for Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane. This is also where John Lennon purchased the famous poster that influenced Mr Kite) I was twenty years old and all was good.

     The studio was made up of four departments, Graphics, Exhibition Design, Flooring Design and Flooring Layout. The people there were great….about twenty in all, with three of us plus a manager in the exhibit department. Two working on in-store displays and the manager and I designing exhibits for the London Shows ( Olympia and Earl’s Court ) and also shows abroad. Marley had offices around the world and I’d get a charge out of producing something that would be seen in Germany or Australia.

     Though there were four separate design departments, we all mingled and supported each other. I was getting advice from some of the graphics guys who showed me some rendering techniques.

     We had actual official coffee breaks, when we would sit in the vending machine area and puff away on our pipes. This was a new thing for me…pipe smoking. I learnt how to mix rum into the tobacco and the correct way to light the pipe…even treating myself to a cherry wood pipe and a Peterson pipe, complete with a real silver decorative band. I still have these as keep sakes. Yes, in those days, it was Ok to sit there bellowing clouds of smoke…for all to enjoy !!!!
Interestingly there were a lot of David’s working in the studio…...

     David Kerslake …the Studio Manager
     David Willoughby…Graphics Manager
     David Summers …Designer
     David McLeod…Designer
     David Gabriel ( Gabby ) Exhibition Design Manager
     David Ginsbury…Designer

     A lot of us would enjoy the canteen lunch together. The food was really good. Marley really knew how to look after their people !! So, why would I want to move on. This company was amazing. The work was always interesting and I had a good rapport with the guys in the studio ??!!

     It was that same need to fulfill my initial ambition of gaining experience from various companies and eventually go on my own.

     End of Part One

______________________________________________________

      Career Path ( Part 2 )

     In 1969…I got the urge to move on.

     I’d been with The Marley Tile Company for three terrific years.
In that time, I’d learnt a lot about the design and construction of exhibits. Immodestly I’d have to say that I had a positive affect
…having come up with some innovative approaches to the way exhibits were designed. This is what David Kerslake had seen in my college work and that is why he hired me in the first place. When I started there in ’66, all the exhibits were being built in a traditional way with traditional materials. I’d changed all that. Now we were creating more eye catching exhibits….displays suspended from the ceiling…reflective surfaces to create depth….unusual approaches to the way products were displayed.

     But, it was time to move on and I landed a job with a small boutique design studio. RD Design Consultants was a successful interior design and exhibit design company operating out of a studio in Upper Warlingham in Surrey. Reg Drummond was the “RD”of RD Design Consultants, and he and Anthony Meyrick-Eastick were the only designers.
     They were working for some very prestigious clients. Bell and Howell and The Ford Motor Co. to name a couple. They needed an extra pair of hands and I was hired as the second designer while Reg spent more time on the road as the sales guy.

     By this time I had traded my Citroen” TractionAvant” in for a Rover. A real beauty….a 1951 Rover75 in pristine condition. I would drive, again as with Marley, out into the country, in my shiney, black luxury motor car…complete with walnut fascia and red leather upholstery. It even had gold tassles for the passengers to hang on to in the back section. It ran like a Rolls Royce…all that you could hear when you were cruising down the road was the clock ticking.
Reg, a six-foot three inch tall car enthusiast, teased me about driving “an old man’s car”. ( he had a Jaguar plus a VW Porsche and lived in a state of the art custom built modern house, high on a hill overlooking the Surrey countryside…..complete with a Great Dane dog. He was the epitome of success.

     “Jimmy, you should be driving a young man’s car…get yourself an MG !!”
So I did. I bought a MGA sports car. What I didn’t know at the time was ..it was a collector’s item !! One day, a man came into our offices asking who owned the “twin cam”. That meant nothing to me, but it turned out to be my MGA that he was referring to. Apparently this guy was the MG Club Secretary and had seen my car parked outside the building.

     “Do you realize what you have there ? That is a collector’s item…there were only a thousand produced…you could get a fortune for it !!”

     Tony was a terrific colleague who had all the skills needed to be an interior designer. Good knowledge of all aspects of the business…design, construction plus great people skills. We would go for pub lunches every single day that I was there. We would jump into my MGA Twin Cam and drive a mile or two to a country pub where we would have the lunch special and a couple of pints of bitter. This did rather negate the increase in salary that I had gained by moving from one job to another !!! At the pub, Tony would confidently chat with the other pub clientele. He was very comfortable in his own skin and gave off a professional aire.

     Businessmen felt comfortable in his presence….and this ability would later benefit him when he started his own design company later on. He had a different approach to design and rendering from the guys that I had worked with at Marley. The space was plotted out differently and the renderings were produced in a completely different style. This was all good, because I emulated his style and that gave me more valuable experience.

      Another way of working.

     One thing that was a challenge for me was working with the radio on. I was used to a quiet working atmosphere…no music. Here at RD, Tony enjoyed listening to radio plays. For me this was like walking and trying to chew gum at the same time…a bit tricky. I’m used to focusing on the work in hand.
Still all things considered, this was another terrific work place. Driving to work and parking my “collectable” right outside the building. Starting at 9:30 am, finishing at 5:00 pm with an hour and a half pub lunch and no necessary overtime. ( though that was also the case at Marley )

     Sooooooo, what could possibly go wrong ???
I was fired…yes, fired.

     I’d been there seven months and was producing some great design work….but I did the unmentionable…I told Reg that I really wasn’t interested in materials and finishes…meaning choosing marble surfaces or specific paint colours…or fabrics…..or…..
Bad move!! These are the things that interior designers are supposed to live for….but it wasn’t for me…and still isn’t. I’m more interested in the overall concept, the neat idea, the way that a design challenge is solved…the big picture.

     When I returned from my Spanish holiday in late 1969, Tony said that Reg wanted to see me in his office. Yes, he did ask me about the holiday, but he was letting me go. He felt that I needed to gain greater knowledge about those above mentioned materials….however, what he DID do was line me up with a job to go to from there.
In hindsight it was all for the best, but it was brutal at the time to hear that news.

     The next stop was “Carisbrooke Displays” in Thornton Heath near Croydon ( not exactly The Berkeley Square, Mayfair address I had originally imagined for myself)….however, again learning experience extraordinaire.
“Carisbrooke” was primarily geared to the fabrication of exhibition stands in the London Shows. In fact, the reason Reg got me in there was because he used this company for many of his own projects and highly recommended me to the owners.
There were probably sixty people in the company, mostly in the carpenters shop, There were two partners, both sales guys, plus two or three additional salesmen.

     The design team was Roger Dauncey and myself. The two of us did all the creative. Roger was another great colleague to work with. He knew the set up very well and was a very likeable guy who knew all the carpenters, painters, electricians, and lorry ( truck ) drivers. This was very much a “Union” shop, however we, the designers, were not in the union.

     Crazy thing is, Roger and I weren’t earning anywhere near what the guys in the shop were earning…and the guys in the shop were building what WE were coming up with.

     This has been a pet peeve of mine. To design an exhibition stand, you need to be creative, solve client’s requirements, and have the knowledge to make construction drawings that are accurate and understandable to all the craftsmen involved in the building process…..and yet…a guy sweeping up the sawdust in the “chippy” shop was earning twice, sometimes three times the amount that we the designers were earning.
T
     he offices where Roger and I worked, overlooked the main London Road…which was neat. We could watch the nice looking girls going by. On one occasion I saw Rod Stewart driving his Rolls Royce on his way up to London. We were served coffee and biscuits ( cookies ) in the morning and cups of tea in the afternoon.
Unfortunately the offices were on the second floor above a Fish Shop…not Fish n’ Chips, but an actual Fish Shop that sold raw fish….and the smell was, or could be, pungent.
I stayed here for the next couple of years,

     By this time I had sold my MGA Twin Cam, driven a ’66 Mini, a ’64 MGB convertible and was now driving a brand new Citroen Dyane 6 ( a crazy looking machine that could sail over the roughest roads !!)
I’d kept in touch with one of my work mates from Marley, Dave Summers. He had by this time also moved on to another company. He now worked as a “visualiser” graphic designer ( as he had at Marley ) for a company on Grays Inn Road.

     “Strata Design” was a studio that prepared presentations for the large London advertising agencies. Dave had recommended me for some freelance work. Strata needed some exhibit work done and Dave had put in a good word for me.

     Some months later, I met with Dave for a beer. I had now done a few projects for his company on a freelance basis, and we got chatting about income. It turns out that I was earning peanuts compared to some of the guys where he now was, and why don’t I ask Bill Petit, the senior partner, for a full time position.
Next time I delivered a freelance project I asked Bill just that. What are the chances of working here on a full time basis. Another partner quizzed me about my graphics “production” knowledge, but that hadn’t been my thing….so it was a no go.
That same evening, I got a call from Bill Petit…”When can you start ?”
Here beginneth another neat chapter in my career path !!!!!

______________________________________________________

      Career Path Part 3

     Pay attention you people at the back…I’ll be asking questions later about my amazing career.

     Where was I…Oh yes…Strata.

     This was to be probably the best move of all and the one that gave me the opportunity to get back into Agency and… much later…. Television mode.
Strata Design provided presentations to some of the large London advertising agencies. Dave Summers, who had recommended me, was a “visualiser”…a term used in those days for a designer who came up with the look of newspaper ads, posters and the like. I was brought in to work along side him as the second visualiser. It was a learning curve for me, because for the last number of years I had primarily designed three dimensional exhibits.
We worked on presentations for the agencies, for such companies as British Leyland, Heinz Food, Rediffusion Television and a whole host of other accounts.

     Dave was brilliant…a very creative guy who had mastered the necessary skills needed for this line of work. He encouraged me and gave me a lot of advice. One piece of advice was to take on the responsibility of the project and not to go back to ask questions…make a corporate decision. To this day, I keep that in mind. The best and most respected “suppliers” are the ones who take the brief and run with it…..as opposed to “please sir, what do I do now sir ?”
I was now traveling up to London for the first time in my career.

     This was more like it…this is where I should be…the big smoke. Though instead of a leisurely drive through the countryside in one of my cars, I was now joining the rat race and commuting with everything that goes along with it. Crowded trains, taking escalators deep into the depths of the London Underground system ( the Tube ) and…STRIKES !!

     It took a bus ride, commuter train and two tube rides to get to work.
The job was great. I was on a weekly retainer and could double or sometimes triple my income by taking on extra evening and weekend work. I kept a tab on all those extra projects and billed Strata monthly. The boss, Bill Petit could give me as much work as I could handle. He had that uncanny knack of being able to go into an agency and come out with arm loads of work.
The studio consisted of maybe twenty people.

     There was a photography department, screen-printing division, and production area. Dave and I created or designed the projects, and the other guys would take care of all the production side, ready for print.
I learnt a hell of a lot from these guys…layouts, keyline artwork, type-setting, and the importance of presentation.
We worked on several floors of an elegant building on Gray’s Inn Road, within walking distance of the sights of London and its beautiful parks. St. Paul’s Cathedral, The Law Courts of The Old Bailey.

     Strata moved to Tottenham Court Road about a year after I joined them. The new space was larger and we were all on one ground floor, plus the basement for dark rooms and the screen printing department.
Now we were within walking distance of Oxford Street and Regent’s Park…where the London Zoo is located. Some of us would play a game of soccer in the park at lunch time. I’d brown bag my lunch and take advantage of being in London during the lunch break. Strata was yet another terrific experience.

     What I had learned over the last number of years proved to be invaluable.
By the time I emigrated to Canada in the summer of 1974, I had gained plenty of experience in the commercial art world.
I had sent letters of introduction to several design companies in Toronto and had set up a few interviews for when I arrived.
My first interview was with a company that specialized in packaging design. The owner felt that I would be frustrated working solely on packaging as my portfolio covered a wide range of projects. He suggested I contact Sherman Laws, a design studio very similar to Strata ( my last company in London ).

     I met with the Art Director, Rolph Pogue, who asked that I return that same afternoon to meet the president Bill Sherman. When I told him that I had another interview that afternoon, he suggested that I cancel it. This was good news. I’d only just arrived in Toronto….barely a week…and that afternoon I was hired.

     The fit was perfect. This company, like StrataDesign, also provided a studio service for advertising agencies. We worked on The General Motors account and other major accounts for the agencies. The design department consisted of Rolph Pogue as Art Director, myself and one other designer Tad Tanishi. plus a junior designer Walter Campbell. We were located in the front offices of a building overlooking Allen Gardens, a beautiful park with large walk in glass greenhouses ala Kew Gardens in London.

     One of our clients was The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ( CBC ,) which was of course the equivalent of The BBC in England.

     Curious how things work out. I had wanted to get experience working in television, thinking that that would mean working at the BBC or Thames Television ( formerly ABC )…but here I was about to be offered a job in television on the other side of the Atlantic !!!

     Ken Zealley was the senior designer in the department that promotes all CBC Television and radio programming. He worked for the Network, which meant the entire country.
He needed a designer to come on board and asked if I knew of anyone who might be interested. ( by this time Rolph Pogue had retired and I was the Art Director of Sherman Laws )

     This was too good an opportunity to miss…I put myself forward as a candidate. Ken invited me for lunch with a bigger cheese than himself,Mike Scott, his boss. I was offered the job, but I actually turned it down…at first.
I wanted to be loyal to my present company. Sherman Laws had been good to me, giving me my first job in Canada. I liked the guys there, the work was great….the money was OK.

     Within an hour of my call to Ken Zealley to decline the offer, Mike Scott showed up at my office at Sherman Laws to offer me more money and more holidays than before. It just seemed too good to be true…so I made the move from advertising agency type work to on-air promotion.

     This had been my initial plan of action all along and proved to be another rich chapter on my career path.

      Career Path – Part 4

     Bloody Hell…how could I be so lucky. Here I was working for more money in yet another area of the industry. Ken was the senior guy. He was known as the “silver fox” …a good looking older guy, close to retirement, who had had a distinguished career as an illustrator. ( Later through him, I met my hero of illustration Wil Davies who turned out to be Ken’s best friend )

     There were two other designers. Hajime Sawada was the personable Japanese illustrator and Russ Barclay the angry Scot from Edinburgh, who basically resented a more experienced guy encroaching on his territory. In fact, a few months later when Ken took a month long holiday, I was put in charge of the department. This didn’t go over well with Russ, who had been there for many years and had started as a “tea boy”, learning the ropes over the years. Here I ,was this Englishman, who had only been there a short while, over seeing his work. We had a few run ins. On one occasion he failed to show up for work, just by way of getting back at me for giving him back what he was dishing out. I knew that I had to stand my ground with him or roll over and I wasn’t prepared to do that.

     I worked at CBC for eight years. In that time I worked on everything from print advertising to working in the television studios, art directing personalities for both print and on-air spots.

     My director at the time, Babs Pitt, sent me down to Nashville for The Broadcasters Promotion ( BPA ) convention. This was a five day convention, and I was there as the creative representative for the Network.
There I met with the top creative guys from networks around the world….including the BBC.
One of these contacts invited me to their television station in Sioux City, Iowa.

     I can’t recall if it was an NBC or CBS affiliate….I have their card somewhere in my files.
I flew there via Chicago and was interviewed on daytime television. Initially a single, seven minute interview on “The Morning Show” about my role as Art Director for the CBC. It must have gone well because I was asked to do a second interview on my experiences in England, and for example…what is a cockney ?? The first interview to be aired an hour or so after the recording of it and the second one as a follow up a few days later.

     I watched to my horror a playback tape of myself. The interviewer, an attractive, high energy TV personality and me the slooooooooow talking creative type. Still I DID get a souvenir coffee mug out of it !! They even asked me to play baseball as a guest batter on the station’s team. That too was a disaster….I struck out. I’d never even held a baseball bat before, let alone face a pitcher who could throw curve balls.

     On my return….. at the airport, I got a sense of what it must be like to be a personality, because having been on Iowa television, I was getting looks from people who had obviously seen me on the show.
Not a very comfortable feeling being recognized like that. I was super conscientious. When we were working on the Commonwealth games project, I sent a letter of concern to the top brass about the way the project was being handled. They gave me the task of taking the project over and I flew out to Edmonton and liased with several cities to make sure that everything came together as it should.

     My letter had concluded with the line…”I feel that this is something that we should be proud of and NOT a source of embaressment !”…a line that I would later be teased about by Russ and Hajime.
Art Directing personalities in photo shoots was part of my work.

     The staff photographer, Fred Phipps, was totally underated by the top brass. He was “just” the staff photographer, but in his time he had photographed some of the biggest names in Hollywood including Grace Kelly. Truth is, he really didn’t need me to be there for most of these personality shoots, but the guy was a pro and always included me in on the decision making. We photographed David Suzuki a number of times for The Nature of Things…a popular TV show. Fred would set up the shots with me posing as the famous scientist, and then when Suzuki showed up for the shoot we were all ready to go. Suzuki is a very personable and engaging man, and I was flattered when many years later…long after leaving the corporation…we bumped into each other and he addressed me by name. He was doing a film shoot outside a shopping mall, and when I walked by he said “James, how are you ?” That made my day. He is recognized around the world and must have worked with hundreds of personnel in the years after we did those shoots together.

     I was assigned the job of art directing both the still photography and video shoot for the Federal Election coverage by the CBC. Fred and I drove to Ottawa and did a two day stint there. CBC had rented two large rooms for the shoots in a swanky hotel. All the political correspondents flew to Ottawa for the event including Knowlton Nash, the news anchor, and other recognizable news reporters, including the current anchor Peter Mansbridge.

     I’d come up with the idea of high angle shots, which necessitated getting up on a twelve foot high platform. Fred would set up the camera to get the eight or so news guys in shot, and then I’d climb up to play art director. At the same time the producer of the on-air spots was setting up in the adjacent room. We needed individual shots and video shots of all the news guys, so I would then go back and forth from one room to the other….again looking into view finders and playing Mr Big Shot. I felt as though I was on top of my game…..this was a great job….I loved it.

      Career Path - Part 5

     Here we go….solo.

     A bit of serendipity. As a “client’ I was taken to lunch by suppliers. This was now the eighties, and long lunches in fancy restaurants was the order of the day.

     One, a studio Symes, Caprero, Fagen , had a type division called The Type Place. This had the reputation of producing some of the best type-setting in the business….and the reason for that was Richard Murphy, an intense and learned man who had spent many of his years as a monk in a monastery in New York.
This man would be the king pin in my desire to go solo. I had towards the end of my eight years at CBC done some freelance work….primarily packaging design and print related work, however Richard was interested to hear that I could draw and could read architectural working drawings. Seemingly, an agency that he supplied type to, was in need of an illustrator who had these skills.

     Soon this agency was loading me up with work. Something was going to have to give. Either I would have to decline the architectural renderings for the agency OR I’d have to leave CBC and go solo…the very thing that I had planned to do all along.
I went solo.

     Richard had other contacts, and now that I was more available, I could take on more work…a lot more work !

     This was 1985…and I was now on track and ready to go.

      Career Path – Part 6

     The decision to leave CBC was a biggy. Here was a permanent staff job with all the perks. Guaranteed income, paid holidays, dental plan and a pension….but I couldn’t see myself giving up my original plan even for all this security. I’d hear guys in their forties and fifties, talking about retiring from the corporation with a pension. “Only ten more years to go and I’ll……”
This was depressing. You mean that you’re prepared to hang in there in a job that doesn’t excite you for the sake of a pension at the end of it !!??

     Over the next few decades, I enjoyed ( and often hated ) numerous projects of all kinds and met with clients of all kinds. I have written a few stories about them.

     My struggles with jerks who ripped me off, stole my ideas and ran with them.
My experiences of working on projects in Durham, England for Sir Stanley and working out of a hotel room in Honolulu, Hawaii.
I’ve driven in winter through what seemed like arctic wastelands in Sarnia, to meet a chemical engineer who briefed me on a project for ICI,

     I’ve faced off with a tough Italian contractor who threatened to put his foot through my work ( that worked out OK when I said..sure go ahead, I don’t give a shit !! )

     Corporate boardroom murals, cartoons, museum concepts.

     TV commercial storyboards for everything from beer to shampoo….movie and stage set work.

     Medical related illustration, corporate portraits and retirement cards.
Packaging for Weight Watchers, GF, and Kellogg’s.

     Theme Parks, night clubs, and skyscrapers.

     So, that’s it folks. Not exactly a modest story but all this happens to be true and I feel pleased with myself that the plan of action that I sought for myself in my art college days….came about.
Not necessarily quite how I imagined, but it came about as the Universe said it should.

     For further reading, go to letters A to Z.

     A being the first detailed story and Z meaning that you will have fallen asleep looooong before then.

     James D. Sweetland

     James resides in Toronto, Canada and has never done a days work in his life. He works nights.


Moore Galaxies.

     Sir Patrick. Would you be kind enough to describe for our listeners…space and what goes on in it.

     Certainly. Space is where everything exists. You and I are in fact in space right now. We don’t need to ride in rockets. We don’t need to be launched.

     I had some of my early training in Canada. Many of those countrymen are well aware of space. I met many space cadets while I was there. I also met Albert Einstein when I was on leave over there. I met him in New York City.

     What he described made no sense whatsoever. I showed my disdain by squinting at him through my monocle and by raising an eyebrow…no both eyebrows. This created such a gust that the famous physicist’s hair stood up on end and was never to go back to its original state.

     The Earth, as we know it, revolves around the Sun. Everything that you and I experience is affected by this motion. The Sun is just one of billions in our Galaxy that we call the Milky Way and our Galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies that exist in the Universe.

     What we don’t know is what goes on outside of the universe. Some suggest that there is nothing of interest beyond the known universe, but I say bullocks. There has to be something doesn’t there ?? I mean, how could there not be something ? My guess is that our whole universe is but a pin prick on some larger entity. This entity is governed by forces beyond our comprehension.

     I believe that if we could see beyond the known universe we would realize just how amazing it all is. We would see how everything is being controlled from outside by a series of pulleys. Huge mechanical devices that are operated by that very being that we have worshipped in our churches, synagogues and temples. The creator of all things and all beings….I am of course referring to the Wizard of Oz. That is why Australia is so revered and that is why Jools moved there back in the mid sixties.

     Thank you….and goodnight.


     The above was written to honour Sir Patrick Moore who recently left us at the age of 89.

     Many of the facts he stated are well known and accepted….however, as yet, there is no evidence to substantiate the Oz claim. Yes, Jools DID move to Australia in the mid sixties, but that was because the surf boarding craze had caught on and some of the best waves are to be found off the coast of Melbourne.

     Had he gone to Honolulu, we would supposedly have been under the gaze of the Wizard of Oahu. Should he have decided to go back packing up Kilimanjaro….the theory might have been quite different again…..and so on.

     King James



     The above does not reflect the station’s view on the universe. We remain undecided about the theory and reserve the right to make one phone call to our solicitors.

     Signed,
     The Lion, The Scarecrow and the Tin Man.

     Dorothy was not available for comment, though she did indicate where the wind was coming from with her middle finger. She was last seen somewhere over the ………