Photos from the Mayor's Ball!

Had a great night on Saturday at the Mayor's Ball in the Galway Bay Hotel. The meal was beautiful, five courses of the best vegetarian food I've had in a long time. Managed to raise a few quid for charity as well during the caricatures, as each person donated as I drew them. I also tried to get donations from people before they saw the finished product!

Shane Lennon and Lucia Evans put a brave face on it!

The lovely ladies of the Galway Junior Chamber...

Andrew and Alison asking for a refund...

Aidan and the missus squaring up to me...

...and even more satisfied costumers!

Well done to everyone involved for what was a very successful night.

Galway Water Crisis Update

Via Galway Water Crisis:

PETITION

The petition, which now has over 2,000 signatures, is now available at several places in Galway to sign. They are as follows:-


Kenny's Gallery,High St


Charlie Byrne's Bookshop,Middle St


Dillon's Jewellers,Cross St


Pat O'Connor's Gallery, The Bridge Mills


I-Supply, Sea Road


Ernie's Fruit and Veg shop, Sea Rd


Back to Music, Abbeygate St Lr


If any other business is interested in having a petition please let us know. We will pop in and see you.
Thanks to all the businesses above for helping us. We really appreciate it.

Mayor's Ball tonight!

I'll have some photos up next week from the Mayor's Ball in the Galway Bay Hotel, which is happening this evening. It promises to be a fun evening and raises thousands of euro for various charities every year. It's a slightly different event this year, with an organic menu and non-black-tie policy, there'll be a few raised eyebrows, but that's what you get when you have a furry Green for a mayor!

Now someone remind me to take my camera!

Dear Green Eyed Monster...

...thanks for reading.

Allan.

Another critique on Ryanair!

Check out Charlie Adley's Double Vision!

Where have all my smoker friends gone?

Smoking cartoon t-shirts now available!

Yesterday I had 187 visitors, mostly from the above smoking cartoon via the original post on smoking that featured the cartoon. Most visitors were from American and Canadian universities. The visitor numbers have dropped way off today. Maybe I've inspired a mass quitting!

Come back, I'm worried about ye!

Perceptions of Mental Health Cartoons from the Mayor's Youth Conference

Perceptions of mental health cartoons from the Mayor's Youth Conference. I sat in on the session and came up with the cartoons based on the issues raised. The cartoons will be used in the report on the conference. You can see more of my conference cartoons here and here.

Transport cartoons from the Mayor's Youth Conference

Transport cartoons from the Mayor's Youth Conference. I sat in on the session and came up with the cartoons based on the issues raised. The cartoons will be used in the report on the conference. You can see more of my conference cartoons here and here.

Anti-Racism Cartoons from the Mayor's Youth Conference

Anti-racism cartoons from the Mayor's Youth Conference. I sat in on the session and came up with the cartoons based on the issues raised. The cartoons will be used in the report on the conference. You can see more of my conference cartoons here and here.

Dickie Rock and the Big Pants

From the Country Living section of the Connacht Tribune, buy it this Friday!

Mayor's Youth Conference

God I'm bald.

Thanks Aengus McMahon.

City Council to recycle water bottles for free.

From Galway Water Crisis:

FREE RECYCLING OF WATER BOTTLES WILL BE AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY. Just put them in clear plastic bags and put them out at your normal day/time. This was announced at the 23 April meeting of the City Council in a letter to the councillors from the manager.
Here is an excerpt of the city manager’s letter:
This issue of disposing of the bottles is primarily bulk and not weight. The best advice is to squash the bottles after removing the caps. This allows a reduction in bulk in the green bin and also allows the refuse freighter to compact the bottles more efficiently.
The following measures are being put into place:
(i) Bottles which are put in clear bags will be collected with green bins as per normal collection dates. It is important that water bottles are not mixed up with other waste to facilitate recycling. Free clear bags will be made available from the Environment Department, City Hall, on request.
(ii) A container will be available in Sandy Road Depot from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. on Saturday to facilitate this collection of plastic bottles.

Also let me give a plug to the Galway Wants Water forum, which has been set up to give Galwegians a voice in the current crisis.

Beleagured Galway Mayor gets even more beleaguered...

...or is about to! Mayor of Galway Niall O'Brolchain gets a caricature makeover at the Mayor's Youth Conference today.

Photo courtesy of Aengus McMahon.

Galway Mayor's Youth Conference

Just back from the Mayor's Youth Conference in the Galway Bay Hotel. I was doing my conference cartoons based on the responses to the themes of the conference: mental health, transport and anti-racism. There were 300 young delegates from all over Galway and it always amazes me how articulate and confident many kids are today (at 32 I'm old enough to be of the speak-when-spoken-to generation!)
I got some good images and I should have them up next week.
I'm also doing caricatures for the Mayor's Ball in the Galway Bay Hotel this Saturday 29th April. I'm doing it gratis and I'll be collecting donations for the charities for each one I do. If you're going come over to me and get a lovely caricature!

Feeling thirsty?

Galway Water Crisis Protest

Following on from my last post, The Looking Glass has asked me to post on a protest that's happening over the water fiasco:

"Protest going ahead Monday 23 April. Assemble at City Hall, College road from 6pm. Please text people about this and ask them to pass it on. Also can you copy and paste this and post it as a bulletin yourselves. Its crucial we get large numbers of people at this protest. Thanks"

See you there and bring your own water!

Galway Water Crisis

My take on the Galway water crisis. And when global warming kicks in we'll have plenty of sand to bury our heads in.

And on a related note some Galway citizens are taking a proactive role in questioning exactly what's being done about the current crisis:

Small turn-out but I believe it was an ad-hoc meeting and the questions asked are very valid. Personally I think this is going to hurt our tourist season badly. I hope to be wrong on that. If you are a potential traveller to Galway reading this, you should know that an alternative water supply will be in place soon, and the only inconvenience to you is having to brush your teeth with bottled or boiled water.
God, it's like Jaws, only microscopic!

Indexed!

You may very well have come across these before (I know I did somewhere) but I've just rediscovered the comic brilliance of Jessica Hagy on Indexed.

Sometimes there is an inverse correlation between how funny your gag is and the number of lines needed to illustrate it.
Jessica uses very few lines.

Fox News and a shred of human decency

As in, it doesn't have one:


This came the day after Kurt Vonnegut died. I actually feel a little ill.

Kurt Vonnegut RIP

I meant to post on the passing of Kurt Vonnegut before now but didn't have a moment. I only quoted him a few weeks ago, and I have that quote on the wall beside the computer screen where I see it every day. I think it captures something of the essence of his work- pessimism peppered with hope.

The above clip (apologies for the quality) is an absolute gem.

As has been much quoted the last week:

So it goes.

Quotations- Not so famous second lines from history...

Check out Charlie Adley's Double Vision!

Hello Smokers!

Smoking cartoon t-shirts now available!

Greetings to everyone arriving via this post on smoking. My pagerank seems to have jumped for this blog in the last few days and I've loads of visitors looking for images of one thing: smoking! At the moment the smoking cartoon appears on the second page of a Google image search for smoking. If you'd like to help me get on the first page you could link to the original post on smoking from your own blog or website.

This image seems to be lucky: it's driving my traffic up, and it's the first one I sold at the Galway Comedy Festival Cartoon Exhibition! So maybe linking to it is lucky as well. Not that I'm superstitious or anything.
Go on, link to me and I'll give you a free fortune reading!

Good Friday it's Double Vision!

Go and read Charlie!

Comedy Festival Exhibition

The Galway Comedy Festival exhibition opened last night in the Town Hall Theatre. It was opened by Niall O'Brolchain, Mayor of Galway, who may have missed his vocation as a stand-up comedian- he welcomed everyone to Galway, capital of cryptosporidium!
I have four pieces in it and sold two, this one and this one. And in case your wondering, that's my self-portrait for my biography above.

Concern Workshops

I'm planning a post later on the Concern development education workshops I facilitated around the country last month. I had a great bunch of Transition Year students in Galway, Dublin and Cork. This is an ongoing project aimed at raising awareness of global child exploitation. There are currently over 200 million children being used for labour in the world today.

Caricatures from Gweedore Wedding

Congratulations to Brian and Miranda, who got married last weekend in Gweedore, Co. Donegal. The reception was in An Chuirt Hotel, Gweedore, and of course they had the good sense to have me there entertaining their guests! You can see more of my wedding caricatures here.