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Library > New Acquisitions > Book Review
Quality Time?; Mike Peyton ; Fernhurst Books, 2005; £12.95 ; CA 16625
Having laughed immoderately at Mike Peyton's cartoons over many years, it is a particular pleasure to review his latest collection of eighty examples drawn for and from Yachting Monthly and PBO. An especial joy of this book is that the brilliant cartoons are preceded by his highly entertaining illustrated introduction of some thirty pages which ranges over Peyton's varied career. Mike's first cartoons were drawn in the wretched conditions of a German prisoner of war camp. After the war and Art School he conjoined successfully his two loves, drawing and sailing, with a very sharp eye for the comic.
He has owned and sailed an eclectic collection of vessels from his original canvas canoe with a 12' mast and leeboards via a 'penny sick, a 24' open gaff-rigged centreboarder named Vagrant 'because she had no visible means of support', an ex Dutch fishing vessel sail number 49 hence forty-niner - and her name, Clementine, a 30' Colin Archer double-ender and many more. In time, Mike became convinced of the virtues of ferro cement as hull material, building three boats in succession in the back garden - Lodestone, Brimstone and Touchstone. Kath, Mike's long-suffering wife, eventually threatened that if there were to be a fourth, it would be Tombstone.
Many years of chartering with his boats in the Mediterranean and most particularly off the East Coast and around the North Sea provided Mike with income but almost more importantly with a stream of anecdotes and material for his wonderful cartoons which capture every embarrassing and hilarious moment to which the cruising sailor is heir. A number of these were reproduced in December's edition of Cruising and will be exhibited at CA House in early 2006. A modest man with the great ability to laugh at himself, Mike has known all the agony and ecstasy of sailing hence the vital, ironic question-mark of his title! - CH
Page prepared 11 January 2006