It’s still January, if you can believe it. It’s been a productive month sketching-wise. I wonder what the point of it all is, all this sketchbooking, but then I remember last January, all those trees that came down, it’s not like the trees got rebuilt or anything, they are gone forever. The big old trees have really interesting shapes and textures at this time if year, when they are free of all those leaves that give us much needed shade in the hot summer, now they open up to provide light. So I am continuing in my documentation of these large living beings, they are worth a look. This one is outside California Hall, the new lecture hall built a few years ago (it’s in the sketchbooks), with the outline of Kerr Hall in the background.  I keep thinking of that Pulp song “Trees” when sketching trees, and that album “We Love Life”, their last proper album as a band from back in 2001. That was quite a long time ago now, but it always makes me think of the year spent in Aix-en-Provence when I first heard it. I liked it a lot, but it’s more what the sound of the music brings me back to I guess, and I think of the chilly mornings walking my usual route to the Faculté des Lettres along streets with bare plane trees and the occasional dog poo, to teach my classes in English. The taste of a fresh poulet-frites for dinner. Completely different life, I can barely remember much of it now. Looking on Google Street View, it looks like the old ‘Fac’ has been demolished and replaced with a new modern building, which looks a lot nicer. No doubt if I’d been there, I would have drawn it all being knocked down and then being built. Looking at this sketch, that tall Kerr Hall behind was where my current department used to live before our new building (shared with Math) was built, just before I arrived. Time moves along, the trees just watch it all go by.