Tutorial: How to Paint Textures the World of Warcraft Way

During the course of the thesis project of my bachelor study at University of Teesside, I experimented with putting together a World of Warcraft style outdoors environment.


Over the course of this project I developed a particular methodology for painting my textures. This ensured both a fairly consistent output, but also helped as a paint-by-numbers backbone when I was stuck on a particular task, or uncertain about how to begin it. Once all these guidelines had been checked off, I would have a product, which was so near completion that it would be easy to make out which parts were still missing. Or as Rembrandt so wisely said, "start with what is known to you, and what is unknown will be revealed."


Though this is all the way back from 2004, perhaps it might help a few people out there.


So here we are in Photoshop looking at how to organise our layers and progress them logically till we have the desired look:


My first layer in Photoshop is a sketch layer. 

1.1 The sketch layer (left) for a grass texture, along with the final texture (right)

With quick and simple brush strokes I lay down a rough design for the texture. The sketch layer will not be seen in the final texture at all, so precision is not paramount. It is more about trying to lock down the composition and placement of the different elements. Also it is a subconscious warm-up for the artist, where you can doodle your way into the world of the material you are about to create. Depending on the type of texture and the projection and UVW coordinates, it is a good idea to save often, and then load up the object in 3D space with the unfinished texture mapped on. This gives the artist a chance to make sure the different parts of the texture is placed correctly before too much work would have to be redone or edited. 

For textures where a solid template has been extracted from the geometry, you often don’t need a sketch layer, if the UV template is self-explanatory. Here the template layer serves as its replacement to offer the proportions and shapes of the final texture. 

1.2 Templates laid out on the canvas

After the sketch layer, it is time to lay down the major colour values. For that I will create a base colour layer for each of the separate objects or fields featured in the texture. In turn each object or section will be organised in separate layer sets, appropriately named for ease of navigation as well as organisation of screen real estate. On the base colour layer a fairly accurate estimate of the materials average surface colour will be painted in with a decent amount of precision. 

Following on from the base colours, the details will be painted in, in a similar fashion, on a layer above the base colour layer. The main objective here is to lock down their shape and general colour. 

1.3 Base colours blocked out

Once we have these, the most prominent colour values painted into the texture, it is time to think about the texture of the surface of the object we are creating a material for. What would it feel like, if we were to run our fingertips over it? Rough or smooth? Is there a particular pattern to the texture of its surface? 


Take polished wood from a tabletop for example. There you will have a very smooth surface marked with tiny grooves, which all run more or less parallel, and furthermore form a pattern of elongated rings. Once a suitable texture has been found as a reference photo or painted from scratch, I will usually set this layer’s blend mode as either multiply or hard light with around two thirds worth of opacity and fill. This will allow the texture layer to mesh nicely with the colours of the base and detail layers, as it increases the contrast between brightness and darkness of the colours below in the pattern of the surface texture.

1.4 Patterns added to the texture

The next layers I work into the stack are some I personally refer to as my curvature or dimensionality layers. What I want to add to the image now, is the illusions of depth. 


I try to illustrate the curvature of the surface by creating a light and a dark curvature layer. The first one is the “curvature dark” layer where I, with a loose hand, will paint broad and slightly transparent lines of dark and desaturated purple. Usually the brush settings are not more than 20% opacity, to make sure that I can build up the effect I want in an organic way, by painting over and over till the desired colour depth is established. The idea is to make the parts of the surface that are the farthest away from the viewer the darkest, and vice versa. I do the same with “curvature light” layer, which I place on top of the “curvature dark” layer. Here I use the light yellow to illustrate where the surface of the material protrudes out towards the viewer. 


These two layers will then be taken through the Gaussian blur filter in Photoshop to smooth them out, and make sure the painting is not too conspicuous. Furthermore I lower the opacity to no more than 50% and might even take off a bit of the fill rate too. For the dark layer I usually use the multiply blend mode, and for the light layer, I use the lighten or soft light blend modes. 

1.5 Dimensionality layers in effect

Already now, after these few crude operations we have a decent texture quickly emerging. It has an illusion of dimension and depth. It has an illusion of a surface texture native to the material we are trying to describe visually. It has a good estimate of the correct surface colour. There are still a lot more that can and needs to be done, but after these few fundamental manoeuvres we are well on our way. 

A good technique is to make sure your edges are marked out. Corners which points away from the viewer and other crevasses in the texture, I line with a dark colour, typically dark purple, on a low opacity layer with multiply blend mode. Corners which points to the viewer or edges where the material portrayed ends, I line with a light colour, like light yellow, on a similar low opacity layer with a fitting blend mode. That can be anything from colour dodge to overlay, depending on the situation. The illusion that we are trying to create here is, that at the very least, tiny amounts of dirt will gather in grooves and corners, which will obscure and darken the colour underneath substantially. Likewise protruding edges have a tendency to reflect light in a different fashion than the flat surfaces adjacent to them. This we are trying to illustrate with the lightening effect. Both layers will need to be slightly blurred with the Gaussian blur filter. 


Apart from illustrating changes in local colour from additional wear on edges protruding out and collection of dirt and dust in corners and crevasses, this step is also a bit of cheap and dirty ambient occlusion, where we are painting a touch of lighting information into the texture.

1.6 Edges and corners painted in

If the texture we are painting is for an object that resides outdoors, it needs to show the effects of weathering, or if it is placed by windows where sunlight will regularly bleach the surface, it will need a similar effect. For that we need to desaturate the colours where sun, wind and rain have washed them out. For this we paint with a light grey where we want the desaturated effect. Again the brush needs to be very transparent, around 20% or so, and I find that broad strokes work well for this effect. Generally in texture work, textures will need to be far more desaturated than you think at first, in order to achieve a realistic look. But since this is the highly stylized look of World of Warcraft, we don't need to go to those lengths.


When I am happy with the areas covered I change the blend mode to colour dodge and lower the opacity to around 70% to brighten up the area. Then I copy the layer and change the blend mode of the new layer (sitting on top of the old) to saturation. And the weather-worn effect is finished. 


Another effect of being left outside could be long-term exposure to moisture, which will leave green algae or lichen on the material. Such effects I usually conjure up with a noise filter, and then setting my blend mode to soft light and reducing the opacity with a good 20 percent. 

1.7 Residue of green algae added to the bottom of the bucket

Most any material, which has not just left the factory line, will have scratches, cuts and wear of different kind. So we analyse the material we are portraying, and make out where scratches and tears would gather with normal use. These I usually paint with a dark thin brush. I will then add the layer style outer glow to them, and use the default light yellow glow in overlay blend mode. To use a lighter outer glow, gives the lines a subtle addition of contrast, so they will stand out more. Furthermore the light edges on them will simulate the same effect we did when adding light edges to the corners that are protruding. Then I select the contents of the layer with the surface texture and delete that selection from the scratches layer. This lets the scratches be embedded into the surface, by following the closely the texture of the surface. 

1.8 Leather shield without scratches (left) and with scratches (right)

If the texture has areas with paint, enamel or other materials covering the surface, you need to make sure that the scratches will be etched into the paint. So I select the outline of the scratches and the wear and tear and delete that selection of the paint layer. After that, it can, in many cases, be beneficial to add a bevel and emboss layer style to the paint layer. Just a few pixel thick it will give the illusion of dimension in the paint layer; that the paint is actually added on top of the base surface, instead of it being assimilated completely into the material underneath.

1.9 Painted leather shield with scratches etched into the paint

Where the material has overlapping objects or other things that will cast a shadow on the surface beneath it, we paint lines of dark purple with a soft edged brush. It is a good practise to build up the wanted result layer by layer, by setting the opacity of the brush as low as 20-30%, and then keep painting over and over and over again, until the desired result is there. This allows for a free and painterly style of working, where you leave room for “happy mistakes.” Then the layer is blurred with the Gaussian blur filter, and finally the blend mode changed to multiply and the layer’s opacity lowered to around 30-40%.

1.10 Shadow cast by the rope is added

One of the last things left to do now, is to paint highlights with a light shade of colour, usually a light yellow in this colour scheme. The highlights go where light will bounce off the material; where the material is shiny and smooth; and where the materials protrude out towards the viewer. This is done with a brush of a fairly low opacity, around 20-35%, and then blurred with the Gaussian blur filter afterwards. I set the blend mode to screen and lower the opacity and fill rates to around 60%. 

As the texture is almost finished, I like to go back to my base colour layers and pick out two or three shades of colour analogue to the base colour underneath. These I paint on separate layers in a quick and semi-random fashion with a soft edged brush with no more than 15% opacity. The blend mode stays as normal. This is used to give the colours underneath a more crisp and lively feel. The last thing you want is a flat and completely uniform field of colour, even if that is what you are aiming for. This sounds contradicting, but even if a face of colour is perceived as being uniform, there will always be subtle variations, without which it would not be perceived as real or normal looking. Furthermore with an understanding for colour theory, the base colours can be enhanced immeasurably this way. Take a green for instance, put a light yellow on one side of it, and a purple on the other, and it will spring to life and appear much more crisp and sparkling. 

1.11 On the left the wall is without analogue colour differences, on the right it has the differences painted in

Lastly I want to make sure that no surface, detail or anything else is too uniformly coloured. So my topmost layer consists of very subtle colour noise. This is made by using the filter render clouds on an empty layer with the default setting of white and black for foreground and background colours. Then I switch to the channels palette where I will repeat the same filter in each of the red, green and blue channels. This secures a random distribution of red, green and blue, which will show as a harlequin kind of pattern on that layer. I change the blend mode to soft light and decrease opacity and fill down to at least 40. In some instances you need to go as low as ten. This makes sure that a random pattern of the RGB colour hues is softly changing the underlying colours to break up overtly monotone fields of colour. 

1.12 A colour noise pattern

Notice that one of the absolutely crucial effects needed to conjure forth a realistic texture, dirt, is seldom needed in a cartoony texture. Normally you would use a dirt layer messing up the hitherto so tidy material, typically with a multiply blend mode. But that effectively ruins most stylised looks. 

At this point I have a decent texture, which oftentimes only needs minor tweaking. In the worst cases the details or changes needed, will be apparent at this stage. If the texture includes ornamentation or other decorative details, they can easily be added now, on top of a very believable surface, which will constantly remind you of its make and condition. 

1.13 The finished texture

1.14 The finished texture applied to geometry and rendered out

Old Boards

Found these old boards kicking about (I really need to clean my/make myself a new website). They are from my 2nd year at University of Teesside. Obviously, I have immense love for all beings canine. 

Enjoy: 

A bit of slapstick there. I remember, I wanted this to read like it was a single panel newspaper cartoon. I am not sure if panel number 9 reads correctly as the dog is sniffing his crotch. I wonder how you'd visually tell that stronger?

Story Game#1

Based on Emma Coats' "Pick a random photo and develop a story over the next 5 panels" exercise.

Leading with the original image:

Brutal Dentistry

You know what I miss?

I miss university. I miss being constantly surrounded by people so passionate about the same things you are passionate about. I really miss always having a ready audience to discuss techniques, ideas and theories from art, games, animation and more. Amazing partnerships would wax and wane spontaneously; like ebb follows flow.

Alright. Out with it. I need a partner. I am looking for the Lennon to my McCartney. The Elton to my John.

Partnerships are just so crazy empowering on so many levels. You support and challenge each other to be the best that you each can be. The sum will far outweigh the number of parts.

It is hard to sum yourself up to fit the 2 page resume rule, let alone in a 100 word blog post, but this is what I bring to the partnership:

I enjoy both words and images; But also theory and analysis as well as creative business models and strategies. Passion and enthusiasm drives everything I do. I am greedily in love with knowledge - about most any field.

The summary must read something like: Artistic renaissance man.

At any point in time, I am writing on a couple of books, putting together a prototype for a game or sketching out an animated short film, with countless journals full of other ideas and stories waiting for their chance. Why? Because I enjoy creating. I need your help with these things. Not necessarily on the legwork/execution part. But what's more, I need to share these things with you, to make them stronger and better experiences.

To this end, I am looking for a creative partner. Somebody who enjoys bouncing ideas back and forth as sparring, brainstorming or refining. An off-beat sense of creativity would be good; Flair and fluidity in expression in either images, words, sounds or actions. A great sense of humor would be... well, great. It is an area I struggle a bit with. Extremely valuable is the ability to quickly jump between paradigms, realities, genres and topics. Not precious about own work and preferably with a manageable ego. I think that's it.

If you haven't got the faintest idea what I have been on about for 200 odd words, it is not you. If it is you - I'd love to hear from you!

Let's see what amazing things we can create together. Together - I think that is the operative partnership word here. Together.

Things That Definitely Didn't Feel Like Work:

- Making silly Post-It notes with slogans & scribbles & drawings.

- Painting silly textures for my 3D version of Animal Crossing.

- Writing mockumentary press releases about my friends and getting them featured on national radio.

- Doing pencil animations for fun.

- Coming up with lists & plans instead of actually doing the work.

- Spamming out DPS in WoW.

- Drawing with charcoal sticks and sooty fingertips.

- Dreaming up epic story versions of events from my life.

- Getting others all fired up about some idea I am all fired up about.

- Painting sea slugs in Photoshop.

- Painting cartoony fir bark textures.

- Writing fake posts on forums to stir trouble.

... It's a pizza place, where you make your own pizza!

Or as Oscar Wilde definitely didn't put it, "life imitates games!"


This begs a mention: A game about running a games development studio. Doesn't that just blow your mind?


What could possibly be next? A movie about making movies, or perhaps an opera about a singer or even a book about an author? 


You know what the worst bit is? Admitting my mother was right all along: "Stick to what you know!"

What has optimism done for me lately? Overrated, I say...

(The sticker, along with the happy yellow/red vibes, was thrust onto me at a Nokia event. Said optimism culminated in angry shouting matches and large parts of the audience walking out... optimistically, of course!)

I was clearing out in my mother's basement, when I came across this little scrap of historic evidence: A seemingly innocent collection of signatures on what looks like a petition of sorts. 

Upon closer inspection this proves to be a document of a much more mischievous nature! A remnant of a long gone past, where my irrepressible antics and star spangled jacket earned me the nickname "Captain America" in the snowboarding community. Terrorising the slopes, accommodation area and dance floor at a summer camp in Norway, I hooked up with several snowboarding stars, who kindly lend their support to my letter of recommendation (Stine Brun Kjeldaas went on to become world #1 and took silver in 1998 winter olympics in Nagano).

On that trip to Norway, I even managed to give myself a black eye (landing a jump and the impact made me crouch down so deep my knee met my eye).

Completely hooked on snowboarding, I was trying to pick up a sponsorship - so you need a portfolio of photos or videos of you riding.

Didn't have a board, so what do you do?

Well, I climbed my ironing board. Somehow I figured it would hold. I hadn't even put one foot on it before the legs broke off. So I had to mount it on my trusty Samsonite + a chair. This is of course the Stalemasky trick. Just close your eyes and add the snow...

I also found my original snowboarding sponsorship collage anno 1996. Notice the incredibly complex between the legs double grab tricks, the endlessly graceful inverted tricks and my lovely old Williams pinball machine in the background.

Second page of my snowboarding shots: Including 2 images from an article in the European Onboard magazine, August 1996 edition. These printed collages I would send out with elaborate cover letters to companies I targeted for sponsorships. To make sure I would get noticed (as if...), I would post them in bright red "hazardous item" envelopes, which I would collect on plane rides (I used to bring squirt guns on air planes for entertainment. Don't ask!). Upon reflection, I suppose I was afraid to blend in with the crowds of other ironing board surfing sponsorship applicants...

The jacket against a backdrop of stale snow in the Dolomites, Italy.

And what of those sponsors? 

Japan-o-rama! 


or


Eastern delights from a far faraway place

Welcome to Japan, the land of big ear lopes, small lips and blue scalps!

It took me a while to realise that in Japan, there is no reason to smile - you got letters for that.

Less lenient is the Japanese approach to dress code. Here are a couple of Japanese boys in uniform (the one on the left with the black jacket is expressing his individuality - sticking it to the man!).


Don't believe me? Dressing influences everything in Japan! Take for example drinks...

Apparently the primary market for a cool pint of lager are demure and conservative looking women wearing traditional kimonos.

Don't believe me? Here's another one!

Want a drink? Wear a kimono!

Poor girl just want a cuppa...

Guy got caught kimono less trying to sneak a bottle of coffee and out comes the punishment by public bear costume.

A thrilling prospect.

Alternatively, you can rehydrate with a bottle of Pocari Sweat.

The Japanese say, that you live one extra day, every time you try something new. Suggestion:

Sashimi... from horse.

Yep, raw horse. That was a first for me! Horse, not to mention raw.

If raw is a tad too fresh for you, Japan provides a thrilling alternative. In fact, how can you trust the quality of a restaurant, if they are unable to accurately reproduce their menu in plastic?


Bonus round for reading along so far:

‎3 things as Japanese as middle partings and reliable trains:

Slogans on clothing, which makes little or no sense.

Girls with knees touching in the classic X-legs pose.
People trying to sporadically handle their cell phones while in various states of sleep.

My daughter Jamila drawing my portrait. On the right side, she has conveniently provided a selection of different noses. A little help for the ones, who don't know how to draw noses. So there.

End of the line


Perhaps it was never more than a beautiful dream; A dream I could let myself dream for 5 years or so...


Back to doing dirty dishes, tidying up the mess, paying off the bills.


Well, it was nice to dream. It was nice to belong. It was nice to make believe. Even if only for a little while...


The Chinese live only to make sure their children are better off than themselves. Or so I am told.


When it happens that you are standing at the brink of your dream, but your time is up, your money is spent and your energy gone, it is at least a comforting thought that your dream can live on - if nothing else through your children. That they may not only taste and dream their dreams for 5 years, but actually live them.


As for me, I have to answer the question, if you cannot change something, should you bother thinking about it then?

Pawn shops... Seedy places for desperate people with their backs so firmly against the wall, that the bricks have felt like parts of their ribcages for a long time.

My turn...

These past 365 days have held so many things that I never ever thought I would see in my life. This is just another brick in the wall.

It is all just fading into a grey blur (am I the only one who don't know when to use "grey" or "gray" about the color?). Pawned my wedding ring. Originally I purchased it from royal jeweller Peter Hertz, in Copenhagen, for more than £660. After 30 seconds of scrutinising under a magnifying glass behind a steelbarred window, the verdict was ready: £22!

My only regret, was that I wasn't scheming enough to pawn the diamond ring and gold/platinum ring I gave the snake, before she could get her hands on them.

A yellow piece of paper and a signature, and I had the £22 in my hand.

Perhaps that was what my marriage was worth all along...

Academic Suicide

Dear team,


When I found out about my wife's infidelity, I suppose I should have quit the course there and then. I thought somehow, I could manage to pull through, despite my life crashing down all around me. To be honest, I managed to pull through on my bachelor degree under similar circumstances and achieved a miraculous 2.1 degree. This time I was alone with 2 small children on top of whatever stress, heartache and confusion the rest of the situation brought. But I didn't want to quit, if only one thing in my life could remain sane and intact, this was my hope.


I know I am a laughing stock. I know I am an embarrassment. The guy who needs to be tip-toed around or "dealt with". What faith do you have in my ability and me?
As Rob put it "too little, too late. I don't trust you to get the work done."
Well, I suspect the majority of you have no idea what I have and am going through over the past few months. But statistics say that if you find yourselves in longer relationships, even marriage, you got a good shot at going through it yourselves, and when that happens, I hope for your sakes that you are not in a crunch, because then you might just also loose your job, like I have now.


Do you think I like to be like this? Do you think this is all I am capable of? Do you think this is all I want to achieve or do? I hate being like this. I hate not being able to run ahead of the project; not being able to pull my weight. Regardless of deadlines and assignment specifications, I have my own set of ambitions and criteria to answer to, to myself. I cringe every time I end up short on a deadline or a promise. I am so embarrassed when I look at most of the stuff I have "produced" for this module. Looking back from momentary glimpses of clarity, all I can claim is insanity or an aneurysm. I feel like a Tour de France rider can't even manage to ride a tricycle anymore. All you can do is put a brave face on it, while you hope and desperately pray that some miracle will help you back to the level of productivity where you should be. And then another promise is broken; another deadline is missed; another piece of crap is handed in. I know this team cares little for reasons, excuses and apologies. The depression, stress, betrayal and humiliation of having your wife cheat on you repeatedly are not going to tidy up the models. Just because the police are trampling through my life, that will not finish that texture set. Tending to my children's welfare as a lone parent, will not layout the UVWs. Keyframes, pixels and polygons are what matters at the end of the day.


You can mock me, tell me off or ignore me, but it is not going to change anything really. I have fought to the best of my heavily reduced ability, instead of just curling up and dying. And if you pull the plug on me now, which you say you already have, that will effectively be my exit from this course, since this is a team based module. I suppose I should have just quit when I found about my wife, but I hoped, that at least one thing in my life, she couldn't ruin. I guess there was never more than a fool's hope anyway.


I know the content freeze is tomorrow. I am sure you must be in full swing on my parts already. My work hard drive busting with the practically finished mill on it didn't help much. But if you care to use it, I have finished the barn. I am sure there are no doubt a million things that need to be corrected, but I am fairly pleased with it, and I honestly believe it will suit the rest of the level to an acceptable degree. The files are too big to include in this mail, but here are a few renders to show what it looks like. I am gonna work to finish the mill now, and then tweak the hay and the nut. If nothing else, then for my own sake.


Sincerely

Marque Pierre

A dark night 2005 

Need to write, need to keep alive

Need to keep from sleeping, need to keep from crying

Need to smile, need to breathe

Need to keep from falling, need to keep from dying

Flying back from Denmark yesterday. Sat next to a guy with brown skin. Well, those Jihad nitwits have threatened Denmark and Italy to be next as terrorism targets in the wake of the London bombings. So what would be better than a flight from Copenhagen to London?


Before we took off, there was all kinds of trouble. The plane had to offload some luggage belonging to a passenger, who for some reason was not onboard anyway! There were strange warning sounds (something like the Twilight Zone theme) which escaped from the cockpit and made it into the speaker system. Stewardesses (Am I the only one who cannot quite agree on that whole "Air Hostess" thing?) were running back and forth... And yet, this guy was sitting very quietly and motionless next to me. In fact, he appeared to be asleep.


By my best guess, he would be of Pakistani descent. I noticed that he was wearing a white long-sleeved t-shirt. Raking my mind I remember some of the plane jacking jihadders of the 70s wearing white, as it apparently is a kind of funeral attire for muslims. Ready to die, eh? Doesn't care whether the plane crashes or not, since he has his own sinister agenda!


I had to control myself to the utmost to keep from asking him, even jokingly, if he was carrying a bomb. Instead I tried a more polite statement of, "not the nicest sounds..." when those warning sirens came back on again. He mumbled an inaudible reply. Clearly he was told to stay low and not attract suspicion, untill his unholy deed was over. And thus my panic grew.


Here I was sitting with my wife, and 2 small children, of whom only the oldest has figured out there such a concept as death, and for the next 2 hours I would not be able to do a single thing to prevent their death, should the Jihadders deem us all worthy of extinction. I so badly wanted to talk to this man, who in this instance represented them all, Palestinians, Jews, Syrians, Hamas, Osama bin Laden, Afghans, Mujahedins and so on. At the end of the day, it all comes down to this. Do you want your children to die? No? Well, neither do I! So we gotta figure something else out. When everybody love their families, why can't we listen honestly to each other? Why can't we work out something, remembering that the others will also have widows, orphans and worse?


Back home in Boro was a letter waiting for me. Now I have been toiling for 3 full years at University of Teesside to get my degree. Close to loosing health, mind and family at times. And to prove it all, I got this:

I kid you not, this is it. The signature looks photocopied, for sure it isn't the original. No letterhead. Just a piece of paper with 14 lines of text on it. All this "being an academic" stuff sure isn't all it's hyped up to be. I mean, if I was going to fake proof of such a monumental achievement, I would go through a lot more trouble than this. How about the universities, where I seek postgraduate study, will they think I made this preposterous letter myself on a lazy Sunday afternoon? I wouldn't blame them...

Since you have been a bit slow on the responses. I will give you some more hints.


Actually there are a lot of people coming to buy... cigarettes from these people. Same pattern all the time. They take out a bundle of notes. Knock on the door. Hand the notes through the door. Door closes. They wait around. A minute later, the door opens and they get a golden box of Benson & Hedges cigarettes, and leave.


Judging by the thickness of that bundle of money changing hand for one box of cigarettes, those cigarettes are the most expensive EVER!


Anyway, drug dealing neighbours was not what were gonna talk about today.

This is just a simple question I want to pose to you.


Why would a middle aged man knock on your door at 10 PM in the night, asking if this is 'here he can buy cigarettes?'


For you wannabe Sherlocks, I will add that he also said nervously, when faced with the stern face and the commanding height of the author, that he just heard, it was either here or number so and so.


My last clue: We live 2 streets away from a Tesco convenience store, which was still open at the time, as well as a multitude of kiosks and corner stores!


I will await the answer with great anticipation...

Wow!


Middlesbrough might seem like a beaten down, poluted, ugly, crime infested sick joke for an uninteresting city, but oh no, don't be fooled! Middlesbrough is rockingly cool in a really authentic way!


I wonder if there could be a market for sociorealistic tourism? Then the café crowds of trendy assess and the intelligenzia could come here and experience real rough! Next time you watch a movie with tough guys or mean streets, you can shrug your shoulders with that knowingly unimpressed untouchable cool, and truthfully claim, that you have 'done that, been there already.'Forget the wild, wild west and ghetto fabulous, Middlesbrough is where it's at!


Why, it was in Middlesbrough I was attacked on the streets for the first time.


It was outside my bedroom window in Middlesbrough, I saw cops chasing criminals with submachine guns shouting, "Get down on the floor! Get down on the floor! Hands above your head!" for the first time.


It was of course in Middlesbrough, that I first had a police SWAT team bang my door down at 3 AM in the night. Complete with 6 black clad guys with submachine guns up in my face, and shoutings of "drop your keys!", "Hands above your head!" and of course the old classic, "who else is in this house?"


But today came my favourite.


We received an anonymously looking letter. It turned out that it was from the parole board. A Ms. so-and-so is going to be released from prison on parole soon, and she has listed our home, as the place she is planning to stay! Either this is a superbly constructed practical joke (it is not, I have already phoned the parole board), or there must have lived some pretty scary people in this house before us.


So remind me, dear imaginary readers, that come May this year, I should expect a butch woman with knuckle tatoos and very little luggage on our doorstep.

It just occured to me, that we have no less than 4 prams/pushchairs in our possession. 4 (four!), and that is not counting the 2 toy ones the girls have. As I gazed around the carpark, I noticed we also have 3 vacuum cleaners. We have a problem. We might think we are normal folks, but we have a problem. "Oh no, we are not attached to material possessions; we only have 4 prams and 3 vacuum cleaners. I can assure you that each and every one of them are just the absolutely bare essentials!"

Now follows the grim tales of rehab...