10 Years Ago
Amber tagged me ages ago to take part in her Back to Basics Comic Meme:
“Draw a ten panel comic about what you were doing ten years ago. Put pen straight to paper - no pencil, no computer, no planning, no starting again if you make a mistake. Simply draw, scan, publish. Tag some people who you’d like to see do the meme too. Oh and if you want to do it even if you haven’t been tagged you are most welcome!”
Oh the agony! The hand cramp! But I did it… sorry, it’s sketchy to say the least. I drew it fast while listening to Lily’s sleepy breathing through the baby monitor. She woke up as I was working on the last two panels hence the hurried (crap) nature of the ending. I told this cake story to my sister-in- law while we were in Canada so it was fresh in my mind…
And I tag Lliam, Emily, Ward, Christina, Natascha and Keri who I know are all incredibly busy but you can always hope.
Responses
24th July 2008 at 4:00 pm
Oh the embarassment, losing the cake!
Great story and memory!
24th July 2008 at 4:24 pm
That was hilarious….and such a fantastic comic strip. Reminds me of the good old uni days…..
24th July 2008 at 7:17 pm
Wow, what a brilliant sketch, I don’t think that I could do something like that even if had three or four times the time you did it in!!
And how could you lose a cake!! I’d have eaten it before it had time to get lost!
24th July 2008 at 7:21 pm
I loved this comic strip of yours - especially the slugs! I have had ants and cockroaches on my toothbrush in various homes, but never slugs. I think it would put me off cleaning my teeth for life…
Clare
24th July 2008 at 8:00 pm
Oh gosh. Different suburb (Brunswick), same story! Right down to the slugs in the house (ewwww!) Don’t think we ever managed to lose a cake, but that’s probably because no one ever baked us one! Love the comic, it’s a riot 
24th July 2008 at 8:43 pm
That was so funny - I laughed out loud!
24th July 2008 at 9:55 pm
That is completely something that I would do… I hate dishes! I’m getting much better at doing them, but still…ugh…as you say, LATER!
24th July 2008 at 10:09 pm
Made me grin! We had bathroom-visiting slugs when we lived in very similar conditions in a musty old 1930s house a few years ago.
25th July 2008 at 1:21 am
we have slugs too in this house-but I have never lost a cake because I never let them out of my sight!
25th July 2008 at 2:59 am
This made me laugh so much :o)! It sounds like my apartment right now. I must get to cleaning it…
xox,
Linnea
25th July 2008 at 3:17 am
Made me laugh this time too. This visual version really hits home especially right now when it makes me realize what a difference time can make. ( in this case 10years-here’s hoping) .
take care
Cathy
25th July 2008 at 4:05 am
Thank you for sharing such an entertaining little piece of your history!
25th July 2008 at 5:12 am
Haha, I lost a cup of coffee in my room once and let me tell you - Starbucks is delicious when you get it immediately. Three weeks later and you can’t find that suspicious smell, not so much.
Loved the comic!
25th July 2008 at 8:46 am
That is great. Ten years ago seems like a lifetime…
25th July 2008 at 9:15 am
Ha! That’s brilliant! I don’t know about the crap ending, I was giggling so much I didn’t notice it. You lost a cake! Too funny.
I’ve only just recently discovered you’re back so wanted to say hello and yay! And I completely understand about the travel, we’ve just moved back to Aus from London and already getting itchy feet…
25th July 2008 at 10:00 am
I lived in Alfred Crescent for a couple of years - at no.52 - a vile shared house only too reminiscient of The Young Ones. This was around about 1992-3.
25th July 2008 at 10:38 am
This made me laugh, and reminded me of where I was 10 years ago (a tiny apartment with colorful fungus, and another old lady who was collecting the trashbags, but keeping them inside!)
25th July 2008 at 11:52 am
I think 10 years ago I was regularly eating Pad Thai in North Fitzroy too. From Lai Thai. And pouring salt on enormous tiger slugs who’d crossed the line from outside to inside.
25th July 2008 at 2:12 pm
Heehee! I love this, Claire. I’ve always held you in very high esteem as a domestic goddess, so there’s still hope for me yet!
I can’t draw, but if I was to do one marked 13 YEARS AGO:
T and I lived somewhere similar in North Fitzroy … our kitchen bench was so terminally horrendous that we used to ‘clean up’ by throwing out our dishes and buying a new dinner set on numerous occasions ($24.95 from Safeway, Smith St, is seared on my memory). My then-16-year-old metal-head boy cousins came to stay one weekend (they were visiting Melbourne for a Sepultura concert) and it was too much for even their filthy habits, so they washed up for us. They even bought rubber gloves.
I remember having my (very very very house-proud) motherinlaw over for dinner in that flat and happily showing her the Coca-Cola kiosk flags we’d tacked on the wall, salvaged from the gutter in St Kilda. She recoiled.
Lovely memories. Please do more comic strips!
25th July 2008 at 5:05 pm
haha! classic. Sounds like a house i lived in, in North Melbourne. Raining inside the walls, slugs in the bathroom, etc..
your mum must’ve been horrified! 
25th July 2008 at 5:32 pm
I have a friend who once woke up thinking there were mice munching next to her head. It was slugs eating a legal file she’d brought home from work!
Still, it can’t beat squalor so thick you lose a cake. That is impressive.
26th July 2008 at 7:44 am
Hey there Claire,
Okay, I just need to say “You lost a cake!?!” As for all that other stuff, I think we all go through that in our early twenties. It is almost a requirement, or some sort of rites of passage to slum in front of the tv, turn the kitchen into a plate fortress, and to co-exist with some form of insect life.
Although I was not tagged, I felt inclined to create my own rough 10 panel comic strip. You can see it at my blog:
http://emjietreasures.blogspot.com/
27th July 2008 at 10:21 pm
Lol I lived in a place once that had slugs in the bedroom. They used to crawl over my shoes and leave patterns and a few times I even stood on them bare feet Erughhhhh. In the same house one morning I even mistook a dead mouse for a teabag but that’s another story ( no I didn’t dunk it in my teacup!).
30th July 2008 at 7:47 am
Thank-you, Thank-you, Thank-you. I needed a laugh today. It really resonates for me!
30th July 2008 at 10:09 am
Oooh.. slugs and wet walls.. how terrifying.. Very interesting cartoon nonetheless.
31st July 2008 at 9:17 am
omg, i love this! if i wasn’t so intimidated by all the talented illustrators, i might try it. yours is wonderful!
1st August 2008 at 4:04 am
OH, I love this meme, Claire! And thanks for tagging me — I definitely want to do this one, I just need to find the time. Plus, I’ll have to hit up Andrea for the details to ‘98 — she’s got a better memory than I do.
Expect my entry soon!
3rd August 2008 at 8:06 pm
That’s too funny! Ten years ago I lived in North Fitzroy, just around the corner (maybe we once stood in the same line at Piedies?) and we suffered terribly from slugs in our complete dive of a terrace. You’d get up and find slivery trails all over the carpet, up the walls… and there were always one or two in the shower. Once I found a crazy black tropical worm (I know that because I was studying zoology at the time) in the shower, which I put in a jar and took to my invertebrate zoology lecturer and he said “What the hell? These are found in Queensland rainforests, not North Fitzroy student slums!!” The worm spewed out copious quantities of slime and fell to pieces.
But we would never, NEVER have lost a cake…
18th August 2008 at 6:47 am
this illustrated narrative is:
a) so nicely drawn
b) hilarious
c) delightful
d) creating a bond between us, because I confess I am an indifferent housekeeper, although I’ve never lost a cake. I did melt a pot once though.
24th July 2008 at 3:37 pm
Oh Claire that is so fabulous! To have lost a CAKE - that is a feat indeed. And hilarious! So impressed.
And to think I would have been catching the tram right past your place every day on my way to work. North Fitzroy is still one of my favourite places in the world - in fact, Richard and I met at the Tin Pot Cafe in Nth Fitz.
[sigh]
Ah, nostalgia.