After spending some time among the wild stones of Highgate Cemetery, I strolled through the park and back up to the village and sat in the middle of a traffic island, sketching the Angel Inn. Yup, another pub drawn. It’s a nice, warm pub with a good atmosphere and nice beers. I didn’t have the time (or energy) to draw the inside – some other occasion maybe. I would sometimes pop in here when I lived on Hornsey Lane, just down the hill. When I came out of the Angel Inn, the Sun had long since flown and the pretty garlands were zigzagging down Highgate Hill.

I hear there is a lot of snow in London these days. Have they learned to grit the roads on time yet? I remember back in, ooh, ’04 I think it was, the second annual Arctic Blast that caught us all by surprise (by giving us three days’ notice), and how my boss gave me a lift back from Finchley to Crouch End, bypassing the strangled traffic on the main iced-up roads by cleverly taking the back streets, but then having to navigate through stranded cars and sliding buses down Highgate Hill. It was like something from the Winter Olympics, but in extreme slow motion. Pretty scary. Highgate is a very steep hill.