What a world. Things seem to be rapidly going from bad to what-the-hell-is-happening with overwhelming speed. I go into my sketchbook to not be so overwhelmed, but it’s not making much difference to my stress levels. Keep on keeping on, and look for the good things. I’ve slowed down on my manic sketching a little in March, probably due to work being busy so I’m not sketching at lunch so much, and I’m hitting that wall again of “I’ve drawn all of Davis do I really need to draw more of it?” I need a sketching trip away again, a change of scenery. I’m hoping I can make it to the Urban Sketching Symposium in Poznan, Poland this summer, August is a long way away. I did still draw a lot of Davis during February, probably the longest February ever for news and worries, and so I have a few more downtown Davis sketches to post here. I’ve not been taking the time to sit down and write either, my head feels too exhausted, but I like the quiet, still early mornings. Above is Woodstocks Pizza on G Street, not the same place as when I drew it years ago, but further up the road where KetMoRee used to be. You can see some of the colourful blocks outside that are part of the new G Street redevelopment that I mentioned a few posts ago, it’s not very inspiring to be honest, and I wouldn’t say those blocks are that great for sitting on in any useful way. There are a few tables and chairs spaced out along the sidewalk, and I sat at one to draw this scene on a very cold afternoon. I’ve not been into the new Woodstocks location yet. We sometimes get their pizza for work events, it’s pretty good.

This next one is a lunchtime sketch on 1st street, I wanted to draw the very bobbly bark of the olive trees, but I drew the one next to the crosswalk so I could put the face-height STOP sign in it (it’s that height for cyclists coming off the bike path). We are the cycling capital of the US, so we have a lot of cyclists and were the first city in the country to have a bike lane (though bike lanes are probably considered ‘woke’ by the numpties running the country now) and we even have the US Bicycling Hall of Fame here , a couple of blocks up B Street there. I’ve never been inside, I am not that interested in bikes, despite being a bike rider myself, and I do watch the Tour de France, but mostly for the maps. Someone had written ‘genocide’ on the STOP sign, hard to disagree there. On the other side of the street, the Aggie Inn. I love cycling in Davis, it’s great. Although sometimes my commute down Oak Street alongside the High School can be a little hairy in the mornings. Cars will zoom past a bit too quickly, and because traffic backs up you’ll always get the cars that think they can just slip quickly into the wide bike lane to overtake, right as I am approaching (this happened a couple of days ago). The crossroads at Oak & 14th with four STOP signs is a nightmare too, as cars who have stopped before I have will often decide to wait and let me go as a cyclist, while I am stopped waiting for them (who were there first), causing general confusion; I cannot see inside the car to see if they are waving me on, and nor can other drivers, so if I say ok then I will go first, it’s usually at the same moment another driver has decided to do the same. All the while, other cyclists (often kids headed to the schools) will just breeze through the STOP sign anyway, and so many cars expect all cyclists will do this and act over cautiously, understandably. If I wave the car through and they go, invariably what happens is the car behind them will go as well, at the same time I do. I just avoid that crossroad in the morning if I can. Then there are all the cars parked alongside the High School stadium in the evening, you have to be extra careful that they don’t open their door without checking, I have been close-called on that a few times. Other cyclists though too can make this route feel hairy, one guy this week ran through not only the STOP sign (while a car was about to pass across it) but also ran the red light, and then crossed over the street to cycle on the wrong side causing bikes in the opposite direction to have to move over into traffic. And then there are the so-called e-bikes that are really just silent motorcycles that are in the bike lane, that seem to appear out of nowhere and cut you up on the inside. And then there is the lack of street lighting on Oak, when it is dark it’s impossible to see. I have two lights on my bike just for better visibility along Oak, but I’ve nearly gone into the piles of leaves and branches that people helpfully place into the bike lane to make it more interesting, not to mention other cyclists who don’t have lights. But I love cycling in Davis it’s great.

The sketch above is the corner of 2nd and G, that is ‘Pachamama’ which I think sells coffee, a drink I don’t drink, but years ago it used to be Subway, a sandwich I don’t eat any more. I did then, but mostly because they were the only place in town I could find the pineapple Fanta. I loved that sugary nonsense of a drink. It’s not Lilt but it was good on a hot day, and we get a few of them here. I drew this in the early evening, one of those Saturdays I just needed to get out of the house but didn’t really have anywhere interesting to go. Story of my life, I was like that as a teenager as well. It’s a good view to draw. Not the sort of one that would end up in a book or a poster but I’m happy enough with the sketch.

And finally the Scout Hut on 1st Street, the old log cabin building that’s about a hundred years old or something, I’ve never been inside (that I can remember; wasn’t there a gallery in there when I first came to Davis?) but I’ve sketched it before. It’s all on its own, barriered by traffic and trainlines, easy to miss. I was in the scouts when I was younger. First in the Cub Scouts, which was one of the best experiences of my life, and also gave me my first leadership experience when I became a ‘Sixer’ (leading my own six, or was it pack, I can’t remember as I was like 10 or 11), before graduating into the Scouts. I remember that event, you wear a green jumper in the Cubs, embroidering the badges onto the arm when you pass them – my best areas were with art and camping and reading – but you wear a green shirt for Scouts, and on the day you go from being a Cub to a Scout you have to ritually take the jumper off for the last time revealing the new shirt underneath. I liked being in the Scouts, and still did a lot of events and camping with them, but as we became early teens a lot of kids fell away and I stopped going regularly, and then in the end not at all, so I never went up to Venture Scouts where you get a khaki-coloured shirt. The old 8th Edgware, blue scarves, little plastic toggles keeping them in place, that drafty old hut in Burnt Oak behind the shops on the Watling, with the goat tied up outside. Those were the days. I don’t know what the Scouts are like over here, what I do know is that the Girl Scouts here (we have ‘Girl Guides’ in the UK) sell excellent cookies at this time of year, my wife always buys several boxes. The old scout hut isn’t used by the Scouts any more.

This one is on 5th Street, I was cycling home that same day and liked the look, another little house with a tree outside, have to draw that. Picket fence, always annoying to draw but this is what we move to America for isn’t it, picket fences. There were picket lines on campus recently due to a strike by some unions. I was going to sketch them in support but (ironically) had to get back to work. They were banging drums and it was all very positive. We do get strikes over here, but I remember my year in France, there were so many. My favourite was the 59 minute bus strike, they wanted to be able to get the buses out on the hour but strike in between, and I was on one bus which just stopped at 1:01 or whatever it was and said to everyone they could get off, or wait on the bus for 59 minutes if they liked. No complaints, everyone shrugged (the famous Gallic shrug) and just walked, it was fine. I was working at the university in Aix at the time. One of my duties was to work in the library for part of the day, and one afternoon I came in for my shift to discover that I too was on strike that day, but didn’t know it, so I walked downtown and got a poulet frites instead. The first song I ever wrote was about a strike. I was at school, music class, our teacher asked us to write a protest song about something that was in the newspapers at the time. I saw that there were travel strikes that day and wrote about them, performing it with my mate Kevin. Rudimentary at best (“down to the station I usually hike, today I have to take my bike, because there’s a strike”). I didn’t even ride a bike at the time, London was rubbish for that, not like Davis which is great. So I was already totally making things up in songs and stories, all for a cheap rhyme. I’ve not changed much.

I have meant to re-draw this house for a while, I don’t know what occupies the space now but for a long time this was the Davis Psychic, and the building was quite colourfully painted. I drew it a couple of times before. This time I sketched it after work as the late sunlight was making shadows creep slowly up the walls. I am not into the whole psychic thing, but people enjoy it, fair play to them; I wonder if they saw February 2025 coming. The mind is a strange thing. We all have one, in some form or other, but can’t all understand them. I suppose psychologists give it a good go. I’ve been thinking about the mind during all of this, because a mind is a fragile thing, manipulable, sometimes delicate and sometimes unbreakable, but it can only bear so much weight and people know this. So I go back into my sketchbook. I decided a little while ago that all this sketching was my way of controlling a little piece of the world in my own way, looking at it and making sense of it, trying not to be too affected by it, while at the same time feeling like I know it a bit more. ‘Conversations with the City’ was the tagline for my sketchbook exhibit in 2016 (centuries ago now, that feels) and it still rings true, though I am getting very shy and not interacting with people as much these days. If they are missing from my sketches it is because they just weren’t passing by at the time, but subconsciously I’m probably enjoying the space without all the people and their little worlds. Sometimes I like to be around lots of people, and other times, well I like the quiet.

Finally, a quick sketch on 2nd Street, near G, again as the late afternoon turned to early evening. Friday evening, another busy week with stresses and unknowns, so I rode downtown after work was done and just drew something, anything. This is Aggie’s Barber Shop, who must close after 5 because it was already dark when I got down there. I listened to my audiobook, still going through all the Terry Pratchett series on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and relaxed a little, though not enough. I listened to some podcasts as well, stopping and starting, bit of football, bit of history, and some of my favourite one on the History of the English Language. This month was overwhelming for sure. One of the executive orders I heard about though was they were going to make English the ‘official language’ of the United States. This topic has been a big deal for ages, and many of us have long felt it important that the country had no official language, since it was not needed, and could potentially marginalize further the minority languages of the country. I don’t just mean like Spanish (not just a language of immigrants, it did exist here before the US was a thing) or the ‘smaller’ immigrant languages but the many many native languages that are too often overlooked and historically repressed. (I used to read a lot about this when I first came over here, when I’d devour books on language at the library because I wasn’t sketching as much then). Britain similarly does not have an ‘official’ language, in both countries English is only the de facto official, not officially official. Until now, because that guy has decreed it so, English is the official language. Wait a second; English. English. Not ‘American English’…just ‘English’. Right then! Well in that case, you’d all better start learning to bloody spell! English yeah, from England? Ok then. Stop all this ‘aluminum’ bollocks, it’s ‘maths’, put those ‘u’s back where they belong and put the ‘y’ back in ‘tyre’, and yes it’s fine to spell it ‘ise’ instead of ‘ize’, you get to choose. And we aren’t stopping there. Pints should be 20 ounces not 16. Learn to queue properly too. Move July the 4th to the 7th of April where it belongs. If you insist on keeping the Imperial system you have to use ‘stone’ as well, I don’t care if it’s confusing. And it’s ‘BERNard’ not ‘BerNARD’. Sorry, that’s the law now, you bought it, gotta keep it.

I do have a couple more February drawings from downtown Davis to post but I’ll stop here, the sun is up now and the cats are demanding food with menaces. It’s Saturday now, there’s housework to do, and let’s face it, more drawing. February was too long, but March is marching on.