Tilda Swinton… Reykjavik… organic kale...

This cute animation by John McCutcheon, although based on Silver Lake hipsters, neatly surmises how I'm made to feel just about every time someone in East London opens their mouth around me. Hipsters are hipsters regardless of geography after all. I’m totally Pheebs the snail!

Animation was something my family hoped I would go into as it would validate the strange obsession I had in my formative years of creating Fimo effigies of all my favourite TV characters. Rug Rats, My So Called Life, Saved By The Bell, to this day there is probably still a little Fimo Roger from Sister Sister tucked away somewhere in my Mum’s house. Have I mentioned how cool I am?


However my 6th form college animation teacher Bill, a scouse leather daddy with funky breath, put me off animation for good. Without wanting to sound cruel, the animation room was essentially a cupboard, so it was not somewhere you’d want to spend more than five minutes with a heavyset man whose breath could be used to wake up Rip Van Winkle.


I used every excuse imaginable not to be in there with him. Needless to say he wasn’t a fan of mine, but I did manage get an A for my awesome Fimo sculpted clay-mation figures; a bunny in a wedding dress and a mouse in a lion costume. Too freakin’ cute! If only Bill had Listerined and watched the carbs I may have been the next Nick Park…