Walk Two Hundred and Eighty-Six – School milk

Alison probably remembers free school milk coming in miniature milk bottles. Now it comes in cartons like this and I think is only free at nursery school and for the first year of school. I also order a little carton every day from the milkman so that Xavier has a convenient carton to drink with his lunch. Since Jamie Oliver campaigned for better nutrition in UK schools, the children also get given a piece of fruit or a vegetable once or twice a week to take home, but I must admit the take-up is fairly poor so I often come home with my pockets bulging with unwanted apples or carrots.

The weather was cold and grey and I have quite a lot of work from my lovely clients so I quickly drew this while Xavier ate his lunch, and then walked briskly back over the Woodland Park.

I had a phone call today from a company that made me really appreciate my clients. They wanted a report typeset and laid out together with all the Powerpoint and Excel graphs and diagrams redrawn in Illustrator for £10 per page. All by yesterday. It is possible that it could have been done fairly quickly but I know what a nightmare the re-drawing of graphs and diagrams can be. However, what really set off the alarm bells was when they tried to sell the job to me by impressing on me that I would get my name credited in the book. I think they must have thought I was a very green start-up business, so I just said that the credit didn’t really interest me as in 25 years of being in business I’d never had repeat business from having a credit printed on a piece of work. Then they weren’t prepared to post or e-mail the source files, (so that I could ascertain the complexity of the job) but expected me to drive to the next town to pick them up. Just to give an idea of how that rate relates in other parts of the world, children usually get paid at least £4.50 an hour for babysitting over here and Flo tells me that a McDonalds cheeseburger costs about £2.00. So if it was possible to knock out a page including illustrations in a couple of hours and if the kids helped out with babysitting it sounds as though I’d be able to buy a couple of cheeseburgers a day on the before tax profits. I decided it probably wasn’t worth it!

110mm x 110mm ink on cartridge with colour digitally added later