I just got back last night from our two and a half week trip back to London (which included four nights down in the south of France), which felt too short, and now I’m totally exhausted after another very long transatlantic journey. Still, I’m stocked with a whole load of sketches; I didn’t have a plan of ‘must sketch this, must sketch that’ but ended up getting a lot in along the way, including a few morning walks around my home area of Burnt Oak, to see how much that has changed. The phone box in the last post has indeed been ‘disappeared’ after all these years (but not turned into flats, unlike most of what used to be Colindale). There is a lovely big colourful new mural on the corner of Barnfield and the Watling though that says ‘Burnt Oak’, which I was sketching in the image above. It was very good to be home again, to see my family. As I get older, I know these won’t last forever, and it was a long year between this visit and the last, a very long year. 

Anyway, one exciting moment on this particular trip was that I was asked by BBC London to provide a small section about Burnt Oak for the 30th anniversary show of the Robert Elms radio show. I used to watch Robert Elms on TV when I was a teenager, though I’ve never listened to his show (I live in America now, but didn’t listen to the radio much in London anyway) but I know of others who are fans of his show. Elms grew up in Burnt Oak on the Watling estate and went to the same school as my older siblings, though a few years before them. So the producers asked me if I could talk a little about my own experience of growing up in Burnt Oak. They actually asked while I was still in California, but when they got back to me I happened to be in Burnt Oak, so I met someone from the show for a quick 40 minute walk around the area, right before I had to rush to Stansted to fly to Marseille. We walked from the station and down Silkstream Parade to the library, over to Watling Park and then up to the Annunciation, before popping up to that big mural. We didn’t get up to the Broadway, to see where the Stag was or all the other things that have long gone. I noticed a sign outside the library announcing a couple of architectural walks coming up, one looking at three local parks, one at three local churches. It reminded me that I should really try to organize a Burnt Oak sketchcrawl some day, through USk London. Perhaps next year. Anyway, I didn’t know when the show itself would air, but while I was on vacation (I was actually walking around Monaco) my mum got in touch telling me that one of our family friends had heard it on the radio already, last Friday. It is available still on BBC Sounds, but will only be up for the next 24 days (so, until about July 21). The show is four hours long (bit long for me guv) but if you want to jump to the bit I’m in, it’s at about 36 minutes, not long after the Amy Winehouse song. It’s a nice little walk around my area, and only a few minutes long, but I hope you enjoy it. 

Anyway, back to the jetlag and travel exhaustion, I’ll rejoin the real world tomorrow…