When I got back from London, I was filled with that usual longing for the old place, faced with the long hot Davis summer. I wanted to be back wandering the streets and looking for cool things to draw. So I went back into the photos I took and started drawing some places on 8×10″ watercolour sheets with the intention of framing them and putting them on wall up the stairs. It’s not the same as being there, but then again I get to sit at my table and watch YouTube videos about London and take as long as I want, unperturbed by traffic, weather, an aching back and the need to get home for dinner. Still, give me urban sketching any day, I love to explore the real world. While we were back, we visited our old neighbourhood of Highgate. I didn’t sketch down there (except on that one other day when we visited the Cemetery) but we looked around the place we used to live, up the village and Pond Square, down to Waterlow Park and over the bridge along our old street Hornsey Lane, taking a picture outside the house where we lived before moving to America, before realizing it was actually the house next door, memory not being the most reliable thing in the world. I joked with my son that this is where he would have grown up if we had not moved to California, and it’s probably true, though not in that little flat on Hornsey Lane, and we’d have probably had to move somewhere else that we might not have liked as much as Highgate and Crouch End, and just ended up moving to America anyway. The weather’s better here anyway. I do miss the cute little shops around there. We stopped into this cafe for some pastries, the Highgate Pantry, and I knew I would have to draw it, either something back and standing across the street or like I’ve ended up doing, from a photo with a cup of tea. The pastries were lovely, we ate them while walking through Waterlow Park, as the north London rain kept trying to make its mind up about falling. That whole area, the bricks and leaves, it’s what I loved most about London. I remember on Sundays after having a roast dinner I would sometimes walk up this hill to exercise off the food. I was a lot skinnier then, twenty years ago. Twenty years, where does the time go. I don’t even remember now if the Highgate Pantry was there then, I assume it was, but I would usually get my pastries and cakes from Dunn’s down in Crouch End so probably didn’t come in here much. It definitely wasn’t always pink, but I like it pink, and it looks nice on the wall as I go up the stairs. I have some more of these drawings done after our trip to show, but will post them separately.