Sorry, I've been busy and...

The lovely image above is from a project I have been working on with rather a tight deadline, producing an illustration for a gin bottle.

The company concerned, Kennet CrayFish, are fighting the good fight against the signal Crayfish, an invasive species which had no natural predators in the UK, and so having arrived here a few decades back, is creating havoc in many of our most beautiful waterways.

Fortunately, they are also delicious, so firms such as Kennet Crayfish, are doing their best to harvest the little buggers and help them reach our table. They were doing very well, until Brexit happened (see, I told you this would happen) when the extra paperwork needed to export food to the EU, the major market for crayfish, means that they now can’t get them to their main market fast enough not to have them arrive in a state no one would be safe eating.

Not prepared to give up, Kennet Crayfish have diversified, including into gin, which along with crayfish, is flavoured with riverside botanicals such as watercress and dill, and have asked me to give their label a facelift, crayfish not being the most attractive brand ambassador.

The river Kennet provided the inspiration, a beautiful place indeed and where Otters and Kingfishers are doing well, and which both feature on the bottle.

Of course, dreaming of bucolic English countryside has not only been keeping me from my keyboard, it was my birthday at the weekend, where I spent three hours dancing to Leftfield and Orbital at Dreamland, which is very much my favourite venue (buy VIP tickets, the lack of toilet queues are more than worth it) and then having to get stuck into the final preparations for Brand Licensing Europe, which will take up all of next week - I will try and send updates but it might be hard!

In case you are wondering, but I was not drinking Crayfish Gin, mostly because I don’t really drink, and when I do, I cannot drink gin as it makes me cry, and I detest Crayfish, so sadly the work of removing them from our waterways I must hand over to you.

I’ll let you know when the gin is out - it’s a touch job but someone’s got to do it!