I had never been to Richmond, so when my friend Simon popped over to London from Dublin, I suggested we spend the day down there. I have heard it’s quite pretty there, some interesting scenes to sketch, nice by the river. We met at Kenton train station, and took the Overground train – the Lioness and the Mildmay lines, in the brand new parlance – down to Kew, where I have been before (coincidentally with Simon more than 20 years ago when we went to Kew Gardens). He is currently letting out a flat down there so knows the place well. Kew Gardens station is nice, worth a sketch but we pressed on, and walked from Kew all the way down to Richmond. On the way there we passed by the Gardens, and also the cafe above, ‘The Original Maids Of Honour’ (or ‘Newens’). We popped in and picked up a ‘Maid of Honour’ as a snack. The cafe dates back to the 1850s, but apparently the Maids of Honour date back to the time of King Henry VIII, and were made here in Richmond. What are they, well they are a little bit like custard tarts I suppose, little pastry cakes that were quite tasty. I had to draw outside while Simon took photos. Then we walked down the long road to Richmond town centre. I found myself coughing, my nose running, as though something in the air was setting off my allergens. Maybe it was the busy street, the proximity to Heathrow’s poor air, or maybe the variety of trees and plants in Kew Gardens, but something was setting me right off, just on that road. We popped into another cafe to use the bathroom and it started clearing up right away. By the time we got to Richmond, I was feeling better again, and it didn’t come back. Now if ever I am asked if I’m allergic to anything, I can say ‘the A307’.

The town centre in Richmond is nice, lots of shops and cafes and pubs. Despite being only mid afternoon it was already getting dark, or at least Decembrous, which is a word I made up for those gloomy times of day when it;s not raining, but feels dark, and yet festive too. Decembrous is nothing like the equivalent of a month later, ‘Januarse’. So far 2025 has been very Januarse all over. I found that well known spot in Richmond with the old pub and the phone box, where there are little alleys of shops near the big green. This little spot has been made famous in recent years by that show Ted Lasso, and there was even a Ted Lasso shop just further up. Honestly, I’m not a fan of the show. I watched it at first, and enjoyed it to a point, mostly because I really loved the original sketch from about 2013 or 2014 when NBC first bought coverage of the Premier League in the US (thank gawd they did too, it’s been great, far better than Fox Sports), and they advertised it with a little bit about this American coach becoming manager of Tottenham (Gareth Bale was still there, it was just before he left), and it was genuinely hilarious. The show itself, well that’s very popular but the more I watched it the more schmaltzy I found it, and I just had to give up. Plus I didn’t like how they use the word ‘wanker’, it’s really not how Londoners use it. Maybe in Richmond, not in Burnt Oak. Secondly, I hated the kit used by the club in the show, it’s a complete mess of a design, and no top level team would have that mash-up of colours. No, it doesn’t look like Crystal Palace. Red and Blue halves, ok, with a yellow trim, fine. White shorts, look, at a stretch, would look good on Palace, but with yellow socks??? Who came up with this kit-man’s nightmare? Not having it. Still, they had some pretty shots of Richmond, and it brings all the Americans here to say ‘wan-kerr’ over a pint and a game of darts. I enjoyed sketching here, Simon took photos (he is a great photographer) and we chatted, and then when I was done we went for a walk down the Thames. The riverside walks are lovely here, though the banks have a tendency to overflow. There’s one pub called the White Cross which regularly lends out wellies so customers can leave the pub safely.

On the way there we stopped into this bookshop, The Open Book, which was just the perfect size to eb sketched from outside. I had seen my fellow urban sketcher from the early days Cris Urdiales (from Malaga) had posted a sketch she’d drawn here a week before on Instagram, and so I was excited to stumble across it, and showed them Cris’s sketch. Simon was inside talking to the staff while I drew outside for a bit, and when I went in I resisted temptation to buy any books, instead buying loads of amazing Christmas cards. They had such a good range of them. They had a great selection of books too, I could have been in there for hours exploring. As it is, we needed to get back to the warmth of the pub, and headed back to the place I’d sketched already, the Prince’s Head, for a lovely London Pride. It was a nice day out in Richmond, but the rain was starting on this Decembrous day, so we got the train back into central London and met with old friends for dinner and drinks in Camden Town.