| My hair colour: | An attractive shade of burnt sienna! | |
| My eye colour: | Brown. | |
| My shoe size: | 9/10. | |
| My star sign: | Sagitarius. | |
| My favourite book when child: | The Standard Natural History (thick enough to stun a penguin). | |
| My favourite fictional character: | Darth Vader. | |
| Books that inspired me to become a writer: | I only discovered children's books when I went to art college. We were lucky ot have a large selection of picture books in the library. The one that did it for me, and still does, is Where The Wild Things Are. I still think it is the perfect picture book and the bench mark by which I judge myself, even though I hardly do anything like it. It's so simple and perfectly wrapped up, you don't see all the hard work that has gone into it. I don't like to see an idea overworked. | |
| My favourite author: | Maurice Sendak. | |
| My ideal reading position: | Foetal position. | |
| My usual means of marking a place in a book: | A recently-received postcard or maybe some slaes stuff that came with the book. | |
| My favourite time of year: | Spring, SPring, Spring. I've just worked out that I'm SAD. I do rapidly downhill when the clocks go back. But now that I sit in front of my SAD lightbox every morning things are looking up for the cold, short miserable days of winter. | |
| My favourite time of day: | Dawn. I don't see it very often, and when I do it wipes me out for the rest of the day, but it's so exciting when I do see it. | |
| My best time for working: | 9 - 12 in the morning. When I discovered caffeine-free coffee, I found that I could actually get up and be at my desk by then. | |
| The first piece of work I was paid for was: | Horrid dungeons and dragons stuff! | |
| My favourite TV show: | The Simpsons, Corry St, and Eurotrash. | |
| My favourite song: | Daydream Believer. | |
| My favourite actor: | Greta Garbo. | |
| The creature comfort I would most unwillingly relinquish: | My wife. | |
| My favourite sweet food: | Sugar Puffs. | |
| My favourite savory food: | Pasta. | |
| My typical bedtime is: | 10. | |
| My favourite year of childhood: | Late 5, early 6. The Beatles were breaking, you could rtoam the countryside and be back for tea without your parents making an appeal on Crimewatch, you could park next to Stonehenge and write your name on the stones... There was a lot of proper snow. I fell in love a lot. Oi'll give it noine. | |
| My mousemat design: | A rather natty Jean Miro that Santa gave me last year. | |
| The tidiest place in my home is: | My wife's side of the bedroom. | |
| The untidiest place in my home is: | My studio, followed by my side of the bedroom. Like Philip Pullman, and most other people, I also have a shed in the garden. Although mine is built of brick, so the wolf can't blow it down. It's got much too small for me. I suppose I could chuck out some of the junk. | |
| The working tool I would least like to do without: | My Apple Mac. | |