11. The lesson

On my return to the damp grey climate of England I once again got wrapped up in my work and my deadlines that had become increasingly stressful, and It was about this time I was approached by the Alton Towers theme park. They wanted to produce a book called Adventures of Henry Hound. I needed a break and what better than a days pass checking out the rides and cotton candy at Alton Towers. It was great fun! And the reason I mention AT is because shortly after the production of their book, the owner of Alton Towers decided to buy Battersey Power Station, the old power station and a historic landmark in London, now future home of a seven story theme park.
I was duly summoned to a site meeting, where we all hummed and ha’d and Ooooo’d at the place and my job was to create the identity of the Henry Hound corporate artworks for the project.

After I returned to my normal working schedule I was once more consumed by my deadlines,
although I was so excited with the possibilities and size of this project.

It was weeks later and I didn’t hear anything, in fact I tried calling many times but no reply, everybody seemed to have disappeared into the woodwork.
It was then I decided to take a ride and present myself as an interested party in front of the management team. I was told there was nobody available but was invited into take a look around the grounds as though I’d lost something valuable. It was while I was while walking around that I noticed all the costumed characters, copyright Mike Gordon, that had materialized, stickers, general shop window displays, books, badges and all things copied from the book. No wonder management had disappeared. On my return home I related this to the publisher, who looked just blank as did their management, and obviously they wouldn’t want to take this any further let alone get involved in any kind of lawsuit. Eventually it became just blew over, and I later heard that the owner of Alton Towers had had money issues and was now broke, this was probably due to the Gordon curses I had put on them!