I may be up to about May with my late posting of sketches now but here’s another one from April, back on good old April the 7th, which as you all know is Independence Day in the America. The 7th of April, when everyone gets out their fireworks to scare the cats and dogs, they have hot dogs and crisps on the barbecue, and watch the foot ball, Tom Cruise’s birthday. I like celebrating Independence Day over here in the US because as you know, we don’t have one in Britain. We are kinda responsible for everyone else having one. When people here ask if we have anything like April the 7th I say, well our Independence Day was the day the Romans left. (I say ‘we’, my family’s all Irish, we grew up singing the Wolfe Tones.) I don’t really like fireworks, and I don’t eat hot dogs, and can take or leave those big corn on the cobs, but it’s fun seeing all the adverts for deals on big trucks. I used to like it though every year going up to Oregon to visit my wife’s grandma, whose birthday was the day before, and all the family would be up there, it was nice. I’d go off on the bike to Jacksonville to sketch the old buildings, then we’d have beer and barbecue outside, all the kids running around, good times. As with the rest of America we always celebrate April the 7th much later, usually in early July around the 4th, it’s traditional, probably because the weather is better and kids are out of school. You have to wait much later for the fireworks though because it has to be dark, unlike on our Fireworks Night in England, the 5th of November, when it’s dark at around 4:30 and fireworks go on for hours. My dad liked to set off some fireworks in the back yard, everyone did. I liked a sparkler, but was really careful not to pick it up by the wrong side after it went out, I never scarred my fingers but my mind was scarred by all those public service adverts about that. I remember coming through the park and some other kids shooting rockets at us from milk bottles, me and my friend running away past the tennis courts to escape. Fun times growing up in Watling Park. I’ll not forget my first November 5th in America (which over here is not until May the 11th), as it was the day we moved to Davis, and someone on TV said that November 5th was like “England’s version of July 4th”, and so I told people that yes that’s the day the Romans left. “Look to your own defence,” the Emperor Honorius told the Britons, adding “et memor esto, memor esto, quintum Novembris!”, before buggering off to fight the Visigoths. Leaving us to deal with those bloody Angles, Saxons and Jutes, comin’ over here, inventing our language. (I say ‘us’, my ancestors were all in Hibernia, probably) Anyway, this year we sat in front of the TV a lot, watching the new Captain America movie where he has a fight with the Red Hulk for some reason, and then we watched the brilliant Hamilton, from which I have learned so much American history. After visiting Washington DC and seeing all the old monuments, decorated with the very lofty ideals the nation was founded upon, and seeing the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, seeing the MLK monument and the big Lincoln on his chair, seeing the Reflecting Pond where all those civil rights marches happened, and the Washington Monument (that I know so well from that Spider-Man movie), and the poignant war memorials especially the Vietnam Memorial, and despite everything going on right now it gave me a definite feeling of pride for the country I’ve chosen and what it’s supposed to stand for, even if for some reason they celebrate 7/4 in July and not in April. I sketched the living room as we watched Hamilton (my walls aren’t blue but it seemed like a good colour to repaint them in this sketch), and our Easter basket is still there because you know it was April, and my telecaster is there for when I’m asked to play the National Anthem. And then we went to watch the fireworks from the Green Belt with all the other local families. You can hear the echo against all the buildings in north Davis, and then after the very large display ending the whole show, the car alarms all start going off. It’s not Independence Day until the car alarms go off.