Category Archives: Personal Post

SMUDGE JOiNS THE OiNK BLOG!

28 October 2025 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Anyone who’s been following the OiNK Blog for a while will be familiar with the furry little face above. Smudge has popped up in occasional posts here and there but what a lot of you mightn’t have known was that he didn’t actually live with me. Instead, I cat sat him regularly. However, I’m very happy to announce that as of mid-October he has come to join me in OiNK Blog Towers permanently. That’s right, Smudge is now living with me and my house has never felt cosier.

My friends Vicki and her mum Elaine were out for dinner on a cold, rainy night back in 2015 when, on their way to their car, they heard a cat crying out from somewhere. They found a teeny tiny kitten in a hedge but couldn’t get near him and had to leave. They couldn’t get him out of their heads though, so the next morning went back to see if he was still there. He was.

The story of how they got him was funny. They’d taken a box to catch him but he was too scared to get near. By pure luck, just as they got close to him and he made a dart to escape, Vicki’s husband Colin arrived and as he approached he saw the cat run and kicked the box, which fell over the yet-to-be-named Smudge. Later that day I got the first of the photos below. He was so small!

They got him checked out and the vet estimated he was only three months old. Initially they weren’t going to keep him, just until they could find somewhere to take him. Of course, Smudge made sure that didn’t happen. The photo below was taken on 10th October 2015 by me the first time I ever met him. By a strange coincidence, he moved in with me on 11th October 2025, just one day over exactly ten years since I’d instantly fallen in love with him.

Over the years I’d visit my friends and see him, and I’d look after him when they all went away on holidays. Of course I spoiled him rotten! When I was growing up we had a couple of budgies but no cats or dogs. In fact, my mum didn’t like cats so I was always fascinated with those belonging to my mates. I found it so surprising how much Smudge and I grew to become friends, something that had never happened between me and an animal before.

Sadly, Elaine passed away in 2021. It hit us all hard. I could also tell Smudge was missing her and stressed about where his owner had gone. In the years since then I’ve looked after him more regularly and recently I was doing so every other weekend. Before she passed, Elaine asked me to take him, but he lived in a big house in the country and I lived in a regular Belfast terraced house in the city. We thought it couldn’t be done.

One look at these photos taken over the past fortnight should tell you how it’s been going!

Vicki and I brought him up in her car and he cried all the way in his carrier (he hates that thing). I was ready for him to cry all day and hide himself away. I was prepared for it to take a few weeks for him to settle in. IF he settled in. He sniffed around a bit, hid upstairs under my bed for half an hour, then came back downstairs and I put some food out, not expecting him to be up for eating anything. I expected him to be too out of sorts and nervous. The next four photos took place over the first couple of hours of him being here.

This wee cat never fails to surprise me. I’ve always said he’s a smart cat, I swear he understands me, but that’s not to say he isn’t daft. That’s something we’ve all always agreed on! He has been great fun since he got here and he’s wonderful company. He’s really taken to his new home and spends much of his time purring on my lap, and for me I’ve been having the deepest of sleeps at night with him curled up on top of me, beside me or even just near me in his cat bed at the foot of my own bed.

(Deep sleeps, just not full nights of sleep anymore. He gets up to ask for a bit of chicken about 4am. That’s my own fault for letting him get away with it for years while cat sitting, so that’s come back to bite me!)

I’m also developing new skills thanks to Smudge. Anyone who has a cat will know if they curl up to have a catnap on your lap, you do not get up. You. Do. Not. Get. Up. You just don’t want to. I’ve gotten quite good at editing on my laptop one-handed or writing whole posts and articles on my phone!

So, welcome home Smudge. OiNK Blog readers, you can expect him to pop up more around here I’m sure.

To Elaine, you were right, and I’ll take really good care of him for you ❤️ xo

PERSONAL POSTS

Personal Post

HEALTH (& BLOG) UPDATE

30 August 2025 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Anyone who follows the OiNK Blog’s socials will know I was recently admitted to hospital with a very bad infection and work on the website was temporarily paused as a result. Add to this the fact a dear friend also became very ill recently (unrelated) and it’s been a hell of a few weeks. We’re both on the mend now, although I’m going to take a few more days to fully come around as I’m still exhausted pretty much all of the time. I’m home though and resting up.

I’ll hopefully start getting caught up on the blog’s posts next week. In the meantime, thank you all for your messages and a huge thank you as well to the wonderful NHS Belfast Royal Hospital and the Celerion medical research staff who got me through this. In particular, while the infection had nothing to do with the Celerion trial I was on, I just wanted to make sure I thanked the doctors and nurses there who really went above and beyond with me, whose aftercare has been so good, and who really helped me get to the bottom of it all.

Hopefully see you all next week, pig pals.

Personal Post

THE BLOG iN 2025

9 April 2025 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Hi everyone. I’m writing this post to let you in on a couple of new series coming to the blog this year that should please Beano and Marvel UK fans, as well as officially announcing the first writing project of mine that I hope to launch on Kickstarter this year, a project that’s tied in closely with the site. However, this means there are some changes to the planned contents of the OiNK Blog this year.

First up, those new series. Back in 2018 D.C. Thomson’s Beano celebrated its 80th birthday in style with a fantastic box set containing a fascinating bookazine, lots of little extras and, best of all, one issue of the comic from each decade. The comics were selected for specific reasons and included a reproduction of the very first Beano! I’d originally begun writing about it on the old blog that very year but never followed through on my promise of covering them all.

It’s time to set that right. So, in a new occasional series I’ll be reviewing each of those celebratory issues on the dates of their original release, in keeping with the theme of the blog. There’ll be two issues this year, one during the summer and the next at Christmas, with a special introductory post taking a closer look at the contents of the box too. Watch out for that in the Retrospectives section of the blog (in the pull down menu) in July.

At the end of the same month begins a new 74-part weekly series of The Mighty Marvel Checklists. Anyone who bought Marvel UK comics between the summer of 1988 and the end of 1989 will remember these updates that told us what was on sale every week for us to rush out and buy. Using my Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters collections I’ll also be showing you all of the contemporary adverts for the company’s comics released during that time.

Loads to look forward to, as well as two more parts of the OiNK’s Real Ads series and at Hallowe’en there’ll be some extra love for fans of Super Naturals and Aliens/Predator. Then of course there’ll be the usual huge selection of yearly real time read throughs and extras throughout the festive season. However, between now and then I’d planned about a dozen or so extra posts for various comics (OiNK and others) on the blog, but I’m now postponing those until next year.

The reason is my first self-publishing project, a bookazine I’ve decided to name Comics 80:99. The majority of the comics covered on the blog haven’t received much press since their time of publication and Comics 80:99 is going to follow this template, as well as delving into lesser discussed aspects of some popular titles. It’ll contain articles exclusively about UK comics from the 80s and 90s and will be a Kickstarter project that I hope to launch on the crowdfunding website sometime this year or early 2026.

It’s still early days so that’s all I’m going to say about it for now, but make sure you bookmark the OiNK Blog because I’ll be documenting Comics 80:99’s creation right here, step-by-step. I’ve put a lot of hard work into this blog over the past four years (according to WordPress’ word count I’ve written nearly 600,000 words, the equivalent of over eight novels!) and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this too and sharing it with you all.

Officially announcing it is a major step for a project that’s only been in my head until now, so I hope you’ll enjoy reading all about it on the blog, alongside the continuing real time read throughs of Aliens, Transformers: Generation 2 and Dracula, the new series discussed above and the extras to come throughout the year. A lot to look forward to… in fact, there’s a lot to do, so I’d better get started! Thanks for all your support as always, folks.

PERSONAL POSTS

Christmas, Personal Post, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends

YOUNG ME iN STUFF!

10 December 2024 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

It was 10th December 1988 and my mum, dad and I had just returned from a local Christmas jumble sale and I’d sat down on the sofa to read the comics we’d picked up from the newsagent on the way home, beginning with Marvel UK’s Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. I may technically have been a few years older than the target audience even at that young age but I still loved the show and my Hornby train sets, so I was still collecting the comic too.

It was only the second Christmas edition (of a comic that still continues to this day) and I remember my parents were in the kitchen unpacking whatever we’d bought at the community centre and making cups of tea. I’d only been reading comics for a couple of years but I’d already fallen in love with the issues published this time of year. Tim Marwood’s cover may have been missing snow on the logo but I don’t think we can accuse him of holding back on the Christmassy feel.

Inside, the editorial made mention of a page of drawings sent in by readers a few months previous and I’d completely forgotten I’d sent one off. So, I sat there and continued to flick through the issue to see what was ahead of me, as I would do with all the comics I got that day before deciding which one to read first. A few seconds later my parents had the fright of their lives when I screamed at the top of my voice and came running towards them!

I can clearly remember my mum’s panic dissipating into laughter and a huge smile as I showed off the Thomas comic in my hand where my drawing had been chosen to be printed! I’m not sure why I’d never sent anything to OiNK over the previous two years (it had been cancelled two months before this), given the excitement I felt that day knowing thousands upon thousands of kids would see my Gordon, Thomas and Percy (the three Hornby engines I owned) in their Santa hats.

On the 36th anniversary (blimey!) of that moment I thought I’d share the few occasions as a child that I saw my name in print in some of my favourite publications of the time. I began writing in to many comics with letters or drawings but I wasn’t successful until four years later. By that time I was in high school and in the middle of a different big craze amongst my friends, the Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles.

Any international readers might be a bit confused by the title there. Our turtles were called “heroes” rather than “ninjas” in the cartoon, its song and any merchandise, all because stuffy Brits thought “ninja” was too strong a word. Even all of Michelangelo’s nunchakus moments were edited out of the cartoon and the movie was sliced apart upon release. All this even though the comic and toys would show those weapons. So strange to think back to those times!

Anyway, as I babysat my niece one night I drew a picture of said mutant turtle for no real reason. So chuffed was I with the end result that I added a quick background and sent it off to the comic, once again forgetting I had done so. The thing is, I cancelled my reservation for it not long after, some time before issue 50. Almost a year later, knowing we had some classes in school that our teachers wouldn’t be there for (I can’t remember why) I decided to buy a comic on the way and the best option on the shelves was #67 of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles Adventures.

Talk about a lucky coincidence. I’d flicked through the comic on the bus but only during one of those classes did I sit down to read it properly and discovered I was in it! It had taken them long enough to print it and to this day I still find it quite unbelievable this was the only issue I ever bought after I’d stopped collecting it. It was the last drawing I sent to a comic but my letters continued, for example inside an issue of a new, futuristic magazine.

After seeing the new 3DO machines on an episode of Channel 4’s Equinox I was sold! It was to be the new standard for interactive entertainment much like radio or VHS and I wanted in on the ground floor. The story of the 3DO is for another time but I became an early subscriber to Future Publishing’s Edge and in the days before widespread internet in all our homes this was the only way to get my queries answered before I spent (my parents’) money on the system.

Why I thought Edge would know anything about Jaws I have no idea and I was heartbroken that Equinox had lied to us. As you can see I was by no means the only person hyped by 3DO and while I adored my Panasonic model, I still covet that Sanyo machine on the other page to this day. I also collected the bi-monthly 3DO Magazine around this time and got another set of queries answered in its final issue. Unfortunately, I never kept them and they go for silly money on eBay these days, but eventually I’ll track down what other not-as-important-as-I-thought-at-the-time questions I had and add that magazine to this post.

There was one publication I appeared in quite frequently and I’m currently tracking down all of its issues to complete my collection. It was a computing magazine that’s already featured on the blog for its coverage of the OiNK computer game and the fact it was the very first magazine I ever bought, beginning a few years before Edge. That superb magazine was Commodore Format, also from Future.

Yep, that’s me in my school uniform with my friend’s fluffy duck. (I know, you have questions.) We really thought that would make a good promotional photo. The story of Commodore Format and how formative it was for me and my friend Colin is worthy of a post all of its own, so that’ll be something I’ll dive deeper into in 2025 and I might even be able to get Colin involved. So if you want to find out what the hyper-intelligent duck forced us into then keep an eye on the blog over the next year sometime.

Did you ever see yourself in print as a kid? Friends of mine found their way into the pages of Transformers, 2000AD and even other issues of the Turtles. Maybe you were a lucky pig pal and impressed Uncle Pigg enough to get published in the blog’s namesake and received a piggy prize? If so, feel free to reach out to me on the blog’s socials (Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook), I’d love to hear your stories too.

PERSONAL POSTS

CHRiSTMAS 2024

Personal Post

MY DAD: iN MEMORY

12 November 2024 Phil Boyce 2 Comments

It’s taken me a while to write this. I wanted to take the time to tell you a little about my dad, I just didn’t think I’d be writing this so soon. In August, just five short months after my mum passed and I wrote about her, my dad passed away. He was never the same after mum died and on the way to the hospital he kept kissing his wedding ring, ready to go and join her. It’s been a tough year.

If anyone ever asks me about my dad the first thing I mention is always his sense of humour. He was always lovably daft. I remember as a child when he was making himself a cup of tea and I’d shout into the kitchen from the living room, “Can I have a cup?” he’d say yes, and then proceed to come out with his tea and an empty cup for me. “Well, you didn’t say you wanted anything in it.” Then off I’d go to make my own cuppa!

Or how about the life lessons our dads teach us when we’re in our formative years? Like when mum would’ve asked him to do some dusting around the house while she was out, and he’d pull me aside to show me which ornaments to swap about into the wrong places to make it look like he’d done it. Dad’s sense of humour was wonderful and I remember growing up and discovering stand up comedy through him too with the likes of Billy Connelly and Dave Allen, and watching Married with Children together.

It’s strange the random memories that come back when we lose someone we love, and how previously forgotten childhood memories can resurface, clear as crystal in our minds. I remember being very, very young and we lived at the bottom of a hill. My dad owned a motorbike back then and when he came home from work he’d always stop at the top of the hill and wait for me to come running out of the house and all the way up to him so I could ride down on his back. I can see that in my mind as if it were yesterday, something I hadn’t thought of in decades.

As I approach the first Christmas without them I can hear their voices telling me to celebrate and enjoy my favourite time of the year. I’ll make sure I do, in their honour. In fact, this festive season I’ll be partaking in a certain hobby for the first time since childhood, one which my dad and I enjoyed together at times. When I was a kid he sourced a huge wooden board for my Hornby trains and painted it with grass, rivers and roads. I look forward to opening my first model train set in about 30 years this Christmas and thinking about how much dad would’ve been right there with me enjoying it.

My mum and dad split just after I left high school and I didn’t see him for many years. I was in my 30s when he moved back to our hometown and I went to visit him, happy with the news they were talking and had become friends again. They seemed so genuinely happy. I shouldn’t have been surprised then when my dad phoned me one day asking if I had any use of some old TV equipment at mum’s apartment. I asked why and he said he needed to make room for his stuff. I’d no idea they’d even got back together! That was a very happy day.

Mum and dad at my cousin Neil’s wedding in 2012

Dad hadn’t been well for some time at the home where he’d spent the last few years. However, the last time I saw him he was in good form and had seemed to perk up towards the end. In hindsight it was like he knew he was going to see mum again soon. I’ve never understood that whole ‘They’re no longer in pain’ thing people say. I do now, and I’m happy he’s at peace and the two of them are together again.

Me with my mum and dad at my cousin Elaine’s wedding in 2015

My mum and dad both watch over me now from atop my bookshelf in this photo, the same one I showed you earlier in the year. It was the last one I ever took of the three of us together because I so rarely take photos of myself. I know I’ll see them again. Although the wait will be agonising I’ll never stop thinking about them and how they raised me. I hope I can make both of them proud.

To end with, here’s a photo my dad took on a family holiday to the Isle of Man back in 1985. He found the licence plate so hilarious he just had to take a picture of it, which he gave to me when we got them developed. I found it while looking for photos of him and it made me laugh so hard remembering him in that moment!