I’ve been sitting in bed with the dog for so long that we’ve turned into a cartoon, all suggestive lines and just a hint of shading to indicate depth. We are both reading newspapers, but one of us – and I name no names – has forgotten our glasses, so we keep exchanging a single pair of gas station readers each time one of us needs to focus on the small print. One of us is reading about atrocities committed in the name liberation, the other is browsing the funnies, but you wouldn’t know which is which from our expressions. Maybe the cartoonist’s still learning his trade and hasn’t quite got the nuances down, or maybe it’s the whole point of this clever sketch in which we find ourselves trapped – something about desensitisation to the world and its human atrocities, and something about our inability to find even brief relief in a dash of quick wit and light absurdity. We look like a middle-aged couple from a 70s sit-com, and I think about all those commonplaces that once occupied such people, like putting the milk bottles out, posting the football pools, and wondering when the Russians would drop the bomb. Plus ça change, I sigh, or maybe it’s the dog.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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