Sometimes, usually in situation comedies, one might end up going to the wrong party instead of the intended festive destination. Maybe the address was garbled, maybe the wrong kind of people crashed the original party and everyone you’d want to hang out with left — and there you were, trying to make conversation with the most obnoxious strangers your imagination could conjure up. Or maybe — gasp — they came to YOUR house!

Terrible Tickle and Catastrophic Cough — The first through the door, seen here in their natural order, TT preceded CC to, so to speak, feather the nest with tasteless jokes.

In my last post, I described my accidental derailment onto an alternate reality track from the one I had planned. For a solid month, I was trapped in my own home by a crew of unwelcome visitors, who kept me up all night, insisted on eating weird food and didn’t clean up after themselves, kept sending my poor hubby out for giant-size bottles of Nin Jiom cough syrup and cases of Kleenex, and worst of all, kept me from going to comic cons! 

The Bronchial Band — actually audible to those nearby. If I had been a house, the neighbours would have been calling out the decibel police.

Usually, when entertaining these kinds of visitors, I can take them up to the studio and make them listen to music while I draw stuff. I find it a comforting and productive way to distract myself from unwelcome company. But this horde was not going to let me do that; they sat on me and took turns regaling me with bad jokes, dreary stories, and their loud cacophonous music. Fortunately my old friend Lozengia showed up, or I don’t know what might have happened.

Lozengia, bringer of ephemeral comforts. At every party there always seems to be one nurturing individual trying to make sure everyone’s comfy and cleaning up the empty glasses.

Even the most energetic party has its lulls, and I took a few opportunities during these to draw some portraits of the partiers (just in case I needed to describe them to the police or something). There were a few I didn’t have time to capture: the elusive Sneaky Sneeze; the Appetite Pirate; and shadowy Lurking Despair kept hiding under the couch. Eventually I managed to evict the lot of them, although they kept popping back in for a couple of weeks for stuff they forgot.

Schnotty Schnozz was a latecomer to the party, apologetically asking for tissues and taking up all the airspace.

So if you see these shady characters, avoid them like, er, the plague! Eventually I may colour them in (with lots of icky looking splotches). You are welcome to download these, print them out, and colour them yourself (or give them to someone who needs to distract themselves from a similar party)!

… and if you do colour these, and share them on your social media somewhere, please mention this blog when you post, and I’d love it if you’d link them in the comments below so I can admire them too!