pretty seven dials and ugly pink riders

January 13, 2025January 12, 2025Leave a comment

A different day in London now, and after doing some work at home in the morning I made my way to Covent Garden to meet up with my friend Simon, who I had not seen since his stag party a year and a half before, and who was visiting from Dublin for a couple of days. We met at the cafe of the London Transport Museum, I love going to their shop and I picked up a fantastic festive hat. I wish I had bought the matching scarf too, but instead I settled on the socks which I wore on Christmas Day. You don’t need to know that. We then popped into the Freemason’s Hall, which I had heard you could go into, and looked around at all the masons’ stuff. You can’t wear hats in there, so my new hat was not allowed, yet there were lots of other items of silly clothing on display. We felt a bit out of place. I don’t really understand all the Freemason stuff, the secret handshakes and whatnot, but it was interesting looking around at the museum, all the information about past famous members and all the trophies; we are a Spurs fan and a Newcastle fan respectively so the well stocked trophy cabinets made us feel a little awkward. We went and had a little bit of lunch and a Belgian beer at the Lowlander Cafe, before he had to go and meet up with his dad for some shopping (and I had to go and meet my dad for hospital visiting hours). Before I took the tube up to Barnet though I walked through Seven Dials (which I kept calling Nine Dials) and sketched the pretty scene with the golden-leaved trees. It was very nice, until about seven or eight of those bloody awful unlicensed rickshaws pulled up outside a theatre, presumably to catch people coming out of a show, and all started blaring ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba at the same time on their individual speakers. I say at the same time, they weren’t all in sync, so it was just an aural mess of Abba, completely ruining the xmas atmos. Each one of them was decked out in garishly pink frills, designed as if to say “we think you are stupid and will stupidly ride around on this stupid tricycle for stupid money”. I hate these things. If I were Mayor of London I would ban them, and anyone caught doing it would be forced to ride their tricycle all the way to Scotland, going on all the B roads and everything, and then ride around the hardest estate in Glasgow or somewhere, playing bloody Dancing Queen. They prey on tourists, I always read stories about people getting in them and then suddenly being charged 300 quid to ride from a hundred yards up the road by a threatening man with a frankly scary pink vehicle. And sure people might say, well they are part of London now, that’s just what you do, we’ve had pedicabs for ages and tourists want the loud colour and music and don’t mind paying for ten minutes of dodging traffic and pavements and pedestrians. Personally I think they’re awful ugly noisy things, and they ruin any charm Central London still has. You won’t see me in one any time soon. Bah humbug indeed.

advance to mayfair

January 12, 2025Leave a comment

Mayfair is one of those parts of London I’ve frankly ignored for too long. Last year we nearly walked around there, to find the Mercato that we’d heard was cool, but after looking walking over to Savile Row to see where the Beatles played in 1969 on the roof, we ended up catching a tube to St. Paul’s for a walking tour of the City (those Blue Badge guides know their stuff). So I had it on my list to explore this area finally, for the first time in I don’t know how long. It’s that big area full of big super expensive buildings and flash cars, embassies and posh hotels, more Rolls Royces than you can dream of, all bounded by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Regent Street. That’s a big area and it’s not all the same (I am not even sure all of it is ‘Mayfair’, except in the geography of my mind, but we call it that). So on this trip, I decided to make an effort to explore Mayfair again. I actually used to come through here almost every day, twenty-five years ago, on an open-top tour bus, telling the same old stories, waving at the barber, humming the Nightingale song in Berkeley Square song because I didn’t know the words (or the tune) (or the title, evidently), pointing out where the Queen was born (not the original building) and where Jimi Hendrix used to live before he died. Those well-rehearsed yarns have faded in the memory but not as much as the streets themselves; walking around it was like reading a book I had not read since I was a kid, knowing the lines and the characters but still being completely surprised by the story. I was certainly surprised by the little red Mini parked outside a fancy hotel, covered in a Christmas tree, people were stopping to take photos and so I had to grab a sketch. All along the street were expensive cars, this was Grosvenor Street. The Grosvenors are the big cheeses in this part of central London, and many other parts too, they are the Dukes of Westminster. The Grosvenors built this whole area, as well as Belgravia. This street leads up to Grosvenor Square, formerly the location of the massive U.S. Embassy, and the last time I was there, and in this part of town, was in 2005 when I completed my application for Permanent Residency, and had to go to the Embassy, hand in all my paperwork, have a little interview, pledge allegiance with my hand up (that was odd, did that happen?) and then it was all good, I can go ahead and live in America, and I’ve been doing that ever since.

I found the Mercato Mayfair, an incredible food court inside an old church. There are lots of different options from around the world as well as a bar over where the altar would have been. It was done up all festive for Christmas, and I grabbed some south-east Asian food and a fruity soda and had a late lunch/early supper. I still had a lot of drawing I wanted to do in Mayfair, and the daylight was already getting short. I walked over to Duke Street, near the magnificent Ukrainian church (how had I never seen this building before?) to the unusual Brown Hart Gardens. I’ve seen these on walking tour videos (tall tales about elephants being kept here) and one of the Urban Sketchers London events was around here a year or so ago, and I had really enjoyed all their sketches of these domes. I stood among the rich people in nice clothes and sketched. Behind me three suited men talked loudly about work, all business and deals and masculinity. I would have found it hard being a Man of Business, not the life for me guv. The sunset was causing all sorts of colours to appear in the sky, and made the buildings look as if they were made of gold, which they probably are.

A lot of the buildings nearby do look pretty golden. I found myself walking down past the Connaught Hotel, which is a five star hotel that looks like it needs a few more stars added to that description. I didn’t draw it this time, but I did stand outside the Pasticceria Marchesi across the road on Mount Street to sketch the beautiful window display. Their cakes were more like crowns or ornate cushions, and there was a line out of the door. This terracotta building was designed by William Henry Powell and I seem to remember having to say something about Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee when talking about it on the tour, back in the days when Queen Vic was the only one who’d ever had one.

The next stop was Berkeley Square, of the aforementioned song about a nightingale. I had forgotten how big this square is, and even though it was already dark I was amazed at how beautiful it was. I’d honestly not been there since swinging past on a Big Bus pointing out all the Ferraris. The one story I always had to mention were the London Plane trees, as there are a lot of them here, trees that were strong and particularly resilient to the infamous London pollution. I had to sketch one of course, in pencil this time, another tree for the collection. I imagined walking through here on a smoggy evening in Victoria times with horse drawn carriages and top hats and gas-lamps. Now it’s Bentleys and Maseratis, and I did notice that many of the map-posts have been converted into special chargers for electric cars, they just plug them into the lamp-post. We live in the future now my friends. I pressed my nose against the Ferrari showroom checking out a car that costs a quarter of a million quid.

Finally, a famous old pub on the corner of Bruton Street, near where the Queen was born (I suppose these days I should say ‘Queen Elizabeth II’ rather than just ‘The Queen’ in case you think I mean Camilla, or Taylor Swift), at Number 17. The Coach and Horses is the oldest pub in Mayfair, and history pours off of it. I didn’t go in this time, but I’ve been inside many years ago with my mate Tel. I have wanted to sketch this pub for years, another in the mock Tudor style (see my sketches from earlier that day for more of that) so it was always going to be my final destination, but as I stood on the other side of the street drawing the outline, and red buses and taxis passed between us, I ended up just drawing the outlines and scribbling the rest in later, as I had to catch a tube and a bus to Highgate Village. It was a nice stroll around Mayfair, well worth the 400 quid in Monopoly money. I mean, pound for pound, square foot for square foot, it’s the cheapest place on the board.

The Dublin Castle

September 6, 2024Leave a comment

Another in the series of London drawings I did this summer after our trip, all of which have some meaning to me. This is The Dublin Castle, on Camden’s Parkway. I wrote some things about Parkway recently, but I did not stop by or sketch the Dublin Castle on that trip. I started coming here in the mid-1990s, and there were always live bands to see out the back. That famous sign on the right, with the black and white squares announcing who would be playing, is a piece of classic Camden iconography. It hasn’t changed in there, and that’s what I love about it. This is the pub that made Madness famous, giving them their first gigs and forever being associated with them afterwards. In fact, when I was in there one quiet afternoon ten years aqo I sketched the bar, and who should walk in but Suggs, the lead singer from Madness, who was chatting with the landlord. I didn’t sketch him (as I’d already finished most of the drawing) and I also didn’t go and say hello (what would I say? Would I tell him I once went to Aarhus in Denmark simply because if anyone ever asked where that was I could sing “in the middle of Aar Street”? I’d only embarrass myself). I like Madness a lot though, I never got to see them play live but I saw that they were playing in Oakland a few months ago at the same place I saw Belle and Sebastian, and I was very tempted. Lots of acts have passed through this pub, your Blurs, your Amy Winehouses, and all your up and coming Camden bands have squeezed onto that stage. I would go to the club nights there too, the beer soaked floor and sticky toilets, all my favourite music pumping those red painted walls, and you never knew what sort of conversation you’d get into with whoever you ended up being sat next to on those old pub seats, it might be some old geezer going on about John Lydon’s brother Jimmy and the four-by-twos, or it might be a conversation about Serbian poetry, to name but two things random people have started talking to me about in that pub. On our nights out in Camden in my 20s, usually with my mate Tel, this would often be the last stop, this or the Mixer, starting out at the Rat and Parrot (now gone) or the Earl of Camden (I think it was the Hogs Head) and on to the Spreadeagle (still there) or the Parkway Tavern (now gone). I’d avoid the World’s End, my mate Tel liked it there (though the Underworld was alright), and I always enjoyed sitting outside at the Edinboro Castle, though it felt a bit posh to be doing that in Camden Town. Speaking of the Edinboro Castle (not ‘Edinburgh’), that is one of the three ‘Castle’ pubs in this area, the others being the Dublin Castle and the Pembroke Castle, apocryphally to keep the railway workers from Ireland, Scotland and Wales separate in case they should start fights with each other. There used to be a Windsor Castle for the English too but that closed a long time ago, insert whatever clever comment here. Still, the Dublin Castle is the king of the old pubs around here, and holds a lot of histories.

This is the other of the drawings I have in this year’s Pence Gallery Art Auction, by the way, and bidding starts very soon on those. Get yourself a little bit of north London history for your wall, and next time you’re in NW1, pop by for a pint, and maybe some live music.

Regent Sounds Studio, Denmark Street

September 5, 2024September 9, 2024Leave a comment

Another in the series of London drawings to hang on the wall. This is Regent Sounds Studios on Denmark Street, off Charing Cross Road. I’ve already posted about the state of Denmark Street in a recent post. So I won’t here again. I have drawn this before, a couple of years ago it was, in a panorama that included Wunjo next door. This was the actual place the Rolling Stones recorded their first album in 1964. This is what I love about London, you can just drop things like that. They recorded more music there, and so did many other famous acts. I like the guitars they have in stock, I never bought one from there though. If I had a big house, and a lot more money, I am sure I would be picking up guitars all over the place. My Instagram algorithm certainly things I should be, every other post is advertising this Fender Acoustasonic, that Danelectro 12-string, this Luna classical, that Meteora bass. They really want me to have loads of guitars. I probably need to get better at playing them, but I am ok, I like playing what I play. I can’t sing for Jaffa Cakes, but I don’t care, I grew up in a family where having a singalong in the back yard is totally normal. When we were back in London we took my Mum on one of them double-decker bus Afternoon Tea tours, it was nice, a lot of fun. They mostly played Abba while driving us around, but I had the idea (which I didn’t start doing by the way) that there should be a Cockney Singalong bus tour of London. That would be brilliant. Go round London for an hour or so, cup of tea and a few slices of cake, and everyone sings the old Cockney songs, “Let’s all go down the Straaaand, ‘ave a banana”. Interspersed with a bit of ‘istory of course, black cabbie knowledge really. I know a lot of people who drive the black cabs and they know a lot of the history. Seriously though it would be a good laugh and very popular. I don’t live there no more though, so someone else can have the idea. Even rig up a little piano, an ol’ Joanna. I’d have to play my guitar though, or my ukulele, I never learnt tinkling the ivories beyond what I taught myself on my keyboard as a teenager. Anyway. I wanted to draw this as another slice of London that meant something to me, and in fact I’ve put this one up for sale in the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction which will held be later this month if you are interested in bidding. Visit the Pence Gallery website for more information.

Primrose Hill Books

September 4, 2024September 3, 2024Leave a comment

Here is another drawing from the series I made after getting back from London. That afternoon when I went to Primrose Hill, climbed up the hill to look over the view I had not seen in many years, remembering my days struggling at A-Level Art, then drew the Pembroke Castle and remembered my stag night twenty years ago, well I also had a stroll through Primrose Hill itself, another of those villages within London, the sort of place the American lead might end up in a romantic comedy set in a version of London where people say “fuck” and “wanker” a lot more than we actually do (and we do say those words a lot). I remember coming down here years ago and going to a really nice pub, and my friend pointing out Chris Martin from Coldplay and referring to him as “Travis out of Travis”, and I’ve called him that ever since. The road curves around and there are some nice little shops, as you’d expect in this romantic comedy part of town, and of course there was a nice little bookshop too called Primrose Hill Books. As a small bookshop lover, I was drawn here like a magnet. It’s very small, smaller than the one I worked at in Finchley (the now sadly long-vanished Finchley Books, where I was the book-keeper in the office downstairs before moving to America). I recognized that small independent bookshop smell, very warm and snug, and got flashbacks of trying to pay invoices to Bertrams or Taylor and Francis. A lot of small bookshops, a lot of small shops in general, just never made it in the end, so it’s always nice to see a real bookshop out there. I knew I would have to draw the place, and when I passed by again across the street I started to, but decided to just take some photos instead and draw back in California, as I needed to draw the Pembroke Castle and get off to Hampstead to pick up some photos I had developed at Snappy Snaps (like it was 2003 or something). This one isn’t on the stairs yet, I need another frame. I used a gold pen for the signage, which you can’t tell here but in the flesh it does shine. I am thinking about all the other bookshops in London, and elsewhere, I want to draw. Daunt Books in Marylebone for example, that’s long been on my sketching list. Finchley Books is long gone, of course, having closed in about 2006 or 2007, I can’t remember now, I still think about them.

morning walks in Burnt Oak

August 2, 2024Leave a comment

And so to the end of my sketches from the recent trip (over a month ago now). I’ve been back in the excruciatingly hot summer of Davis, a record set of July temperatures, and trying to get back into the groove (what’s the difference between being in the groove and in a rut?). The summer is long, and I’ve been wishing to be back in London again. It won’t be long, I hope, but it is nice being there when the sun rises early and sets late, and now there’s finally a new government too after the mid-summer election. England losing the football final was a sour note. Lewis Hamilton winning the British Grand Prix (and British drivers suddenly winning F1 races in general after a long dominance by Max Verstappen) was a nice moment to celebrate. I prefer watching those races early in the morning over here in California anyway, on my couch with a cup of tea. I wasn’t always an early riser, growing up in Burnt Oak I wasn’t anyway. When I travel though I’m usually up first, and I’ll get some time and some nice breakfast with my Mum, those are the times I miss when I have to fly home again. I also like my morning walk around Burnt Oak, where I can see all the things that have changed or stay the same. Here are a couple of sketches from those morning strolls, after we’d returned from France and before we were going back to the US. Above, that is the Annunciation Church on Thirleby Road, though I sketched it from Gervase Road. I always loved this building. This is the main Catholic church for Burnt Oak, and so most of the Catholics I knew would go here, and go to school at St. James’s, or St. Martin’s for the juniors, or at the Annunciation Infant School next door to the church for the very young (my little sister went to those). I’m not a Catholic myself (having been christened at the local C of E church St. Alphage when I was a baby), and I’ve never been religious, so I didn’t have to go to church; I’d get to stay home on Easter when I was a kid and eat my chocolate eggs, but I also had to hoover the floor and dust the shelves, small price for being a heathen. I did go here many times though for one reason or other, weddings, christenings, funerals holy communions. My mum and dad were married here when I was 15 (though I was late, as I went to collect my great aunt). Mostly I spent time here in the community centre, in the Annunciation club upstairs where our local community would drink regularly (we would do the Quiz Night regularly, and my Mum would always win that; we loved a Quiz in those days, and when it was my Mum, my older sister and brother, and me together, we were an unbeatable quiz team in the Irish pubs of our neck of London back in the 90s). I remember watching USA 94 in there, the great moment when Ireland beat Italy and the place erupted. I spent a lot of time in the Annunciation Youth Club as well when I was 16 or 17. My (also non-Catholic) mate Terry and I would go there, hang out with the other kids, play pool, and watch TV; I remember watching the Euro 92 final in there, Denmark beating Germany. It was a good place for local kids, give us something to do, keep them off the streets and out of trouble, not that me and Terry were out getting into trouble, we used to just play football down Montrose, and walk over to Vibratanks the tropical fish shop to look at guppies. The youth club all went on a camping trip to Devon one summer, to the little town of Watchet, looking back at it they were great memories, you don’t think too much about them at the time. I remember telling ghost stories to everyone by the fire on the beach, the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor, the Beast of Exmoor, all those old chestnuts I used to read about. My mate Terry, now in Japan, used to live on Gervase Road so I would be down there all the time. We actually went top school on a different school on Thirleby Road, Goldbeaters, just a short walk from here. As I sketched, being morning there were young kids being walked to school by their mothers just as we had been decades before. I heard quite a few speaking Romanian, Burnt Oak has a big Romanian community now. I thought to myself, I remember the language our parents used to use in the mornings, when we were late for school. All the memories, I spent a good deal of time around here growing up.

And on my second last morning in Burnt Oak, I walked down Abbots Road, cutting past the old allotments and over to Deansbrook Road. I stood in the shade of a tree on the corner of Cressingham, looking out over the little parade of shops. There’s still a newsagent there, I got myself a cold fizzy drink. No Lilt any more, that delicious drink has now been replaced by yet another flavour of Fanta. I used to pick my little sister up from school when she went to St. Martin’s juniors in the Meads nearby. I hardly ever come down this part of Deansbrook any more, except for fish and chips. When I was a kid there was a good Chinese shop here that I’d be sent to pick up the takeaways from. My big sister lived nearby so I would also come into the shops on the way there when I’d walk over, usually on the way to babysit her kids. Of course the main attraction of Deansbrook was the Dassani Off License, which I note is still there. They had a video rental store at the rear, and that’s where we’d go on a Saturday night and pick out whatever action film we’d watch with my dad, and get some Munchies. They also had video games you could rent, so I’d get Nintendo or SNES games to play for a few days, when I couldn’t afford to have the actual thing. On the whole though, I’d often avoid this part of Deansbrook growing up, it was always seen as a bit rougher; even if the Watling was probably rougher, it was a bit closer to home, though geographically it really wasn’t; I lived between the two. You get this sort of thing into your head when you’re a kid, it might just be that the kids over this street were more likely to beat you up than the kids over that street, who might know you or your mates more, it’s all a bit random now looking back. Anyway, I finished this sketch but added in the colours later, on the plan back to California.

We flew back next day, into the long Davis summer, fiscal close, triple digits, and scanning the travel sketches, and a huge desire to just go back to London again. A day will come when I can’t go back as much, and I’m always wanting to get as much of it as I can until then, and bring my sketchbook to watch it as it keeps on changing.

a few more corners of London

July 22, 2024July 22, 2024Leave a comment

Before I dive into my sketches from the south of France, here are a few more London corners that I caught between doing other things. Above, a quick sketch of Neal’s Yard, while my family were looking through shops in Covent Garden, I decided to pop in here to draw. It was nice watching people move by, tourists getting an ice cream, people out enjoying the June afternoon. It was warming up. One weird bloke came through yelling obscenities at random people, though not to me thankfully. After sketching, I headed to my favourite map shop Stanfords.

Above, a quick sketch of De Hems, a well-known old Dutch pub in London’s Soho. I was meeting my friend here on a busy Saturday evening, we were watching the opening game of the Euros, Scotland v Germany. Alas, Scotland lost big time. I think the Dutch in there were for Scotland mostly, but it was a convivial atmosphere with Scottish and Germans together. As full-time blew though, the pub did decide to play The Proclaimers ‘Letter From America’, bit of a low blow given they’d just been beaten 5-1 without I think an actual shot on target (their goal was an own goal). The Scottish fans were popular in Germany though, as in most places they play well with the locals, unlike a lot of times when England play abroad. My friend and I stayed in the pub for a good long time and an old catch-up, with plenty of beers along the way. Central London has always been busy on a Saturday night, but I’m not wrong in feeling that it seems a lot busier than it used to years ago. I mean, better than during the Covid years of course, but still it felt pretty crowded. Summertime though, footballs on, weathers nice, good time to be alive I think.

The last one is a quick sketch I did while we were down in Spitalfields, my family and I had just eaten lunch in Spitalfields market (a much trendier and modern place than the old Spitalfields Market used to be), and were looking around shops and stalls, so I popped out to the street and did a quick sketch of the Ten Bells pub with Christchurch Spitalfields behind it. It was a hot day, and I just wanted to draw quickly and sketchily in pencil, and just added in a couple of colours for a fun effect. After this we walked down to the Classic Football shirts store to look at some great old kits, have a cold drink, and wander up Brick Lane looking for murals and public art. London’s great.

typhoon and spitfire

July 22, 2024Leave a comment

We visited the Royal Air Force Museum in Colindale, London (RAF Hendon), a place I really like because it’s so full of historic old fighter planes, and also really close to where my mum lives, where I grew up. And yet a place I don’t go to often, even as a kid. It was always just there, over by Grahame Park. I am glad in a way though because every time I do go back, it always surprises me. Last time I was there was about five years ago when Urban Sketchers London had a sketchcrawl there, and I brought my nephew along. I love drawing the old World War Two planes. My family and I wandered through here, and I drew a couple of planes in pencil, the Hawker Typhoon (above), a small plane with some big guns, and of course, the Supermarine Spitfire (below). The Spitfire is the best, isn’t it, the most beautiful of planes. I used to call it the X-Wing of World War Two when I was a kid, but even the X-Wing isn’t this beautiful and iconic. There isn’t a better plane (and I love an F16) but to Britons, this is the plane more than any other that represents the British spirit, Battle of Britain and all that. I do love a Spitfire. It also has the best name. If there was a Transformer with the name Spitfire, it would be the most popular robot, more than Bumblebee or Jazz. Remember those little foam planes you could buy in the corner shop, for about 20p or so, they had all the old planes and you attached a little plastic propellor to the front and flew them until they crashed into a bush or under a car? You can still get those actually, I’ve seen them over here. The Spitfire was always the best one, flying against the Messerschmidts, Sopwith Camels and and the (hehe) Fokkers.

still alive on denmark street

July 20, 2024July 19, 2024Leave a comment

This is the acoustic guitar room upstairs at Hank’s on London’s famous Denmark Street. I love it in there, it feels like it hasn’t changed much since I would go in there as a teenager and early twenty-something in the 90s. The walls are covered with Denmark Street flavoured pages from old music mags, mostly Beatles ones, but the sheer number of guitars is incredible. Some of them aren’t that expensive, some of them cost a surprising amount of money for ones that are just displayed for anyone to pick up and strum on that old chair. I always watch my step. I was here with my son, who at 16 loves playing the guitar, and a guitar shop where he can just sit and quietly try things out is a little refuge in the busy city, and often a door into a new world of ideas. We weren’t in there too long, but I thought I may as well get my sketchbook out and start drawing anyway, so I drew the outlines of this scene until it was time to go (I drew all the smaller details while on the plane to France the next day, and coloured it in when I got home again). I would love to spend ages in there drawing every room, though I would also want to just sit and play guitars. I tried out a really nice Gibson acoustic. My son was trying out classical guitars and banjos. I wish I had space for many, many guitars. I am starting to think there is not such thing as too many guitars. Increasingly though there are fewer and fewer guitar shops on Denmark Street.

Why is Denmark Street famous? Historically this was London’s ‘Tin Pan Alley’, the busy hub of Britain’s songwriters and music publishers, musical instrument shops and recording studios. Famous names have been associated with here, the Beatles, Elton John, the Sex Pistols lived in a flat here, and the Rolling Stones recorded their first album here at Regent Sounds Studios, and music mags such as NME and Melody Maker were based here years ago. I always knew it as the place for guitars, and guitar shops would also line down Charing Cross Road as well, alongside all the bookshops making it my favourite part of London. It’s unquestionably the place with the biggest musical heritage in Britain, but slowly the tides of redevelopment have been pushing it all away.

Back in 2014, I went there to draw the row on the north side, and as you can see it’s still packed with guitar shops, music shops, and the 12 Bar Club is even still there. That was an interesting venue, so many greats have played in that tiny space. The last time I was in there was watching a friend of university play with his band, this is going back 20-something years. Macari’s in the middle there, I bought my beloved Hohner acoustic guitar not from that one but from their other branch on Charing Cross Road, around the corner, while I was on my break from Thorntons in Oxford Street on a dark December evening at the end of 1996, I still have that guitar with me in California. Both those Macari’s are gone now (but the company still exists, and they have a shop in Haywards Heath, which is a bit far for me; their website is macaris.co.uk, and, a side note here, looking at it I was surprised to discover that they used to be based on Burnt Oak Broadway back in 1958?! Right by where Iceland is now. That I did not know!). Below, the in-progress shot.

Ok, now look at that, from 2014, and look at the same scene now in 2024. Isn’t that heartbreaking? It is fitting that the black SUV in front resembles a hearse. Hanks is still there, down the street on the right (the photo curves even more than my panorama). Where is everything else, and what is in its place? About a decade ago it was announced that a lot of Denmark Street would be done away with completely, part of the redevelopment of the area for the new Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line). Several older buildings nearby were demolished, such as the great London Astoria and the (even better) LA2, and it’s not all bad, the new Tottenham Court Road station is a lot more spacious than the old one. What price progress.

denmark st 2024

Below, this is what I drew a couple of years ago looking over to the south row of Denmark Street. Those places are all still there, though I was disappointed to find another couple I used to go into had now gone. It feels like Denmark Street is vanishing bit by bit, being eaten up by a world without character, and it’s not just Denmark Street. It feels like everything is going, old pubs, old shops, old ways of doing things, replaced by nothingness. It reminds me of the Never-Ending Story, where The Nothing comes and consumes all, replacing imagination with…nothing.

When I see a music shop, I see a place full of possibility. You might never be able to afford that guitar you really want, but you might find something you really love, as I did with my Hohner back in 1996, that cost me less than a hundred quid (on the wages of someone who packed boxes of chocolate on Oxford Street). You might not be able to play it that well, but every instrument is a gate into a more creative way of living. There they all are, waiting for you to unlock whatever is inside of them, or maybe it is the other way around. A kid who never gets to pick up a real guitar and try it out may never think to play one; we need independent guitar shops. The musician Yungblud (who I first saw in that series about Camden Town) wrote a song about Denmark Street called ‘Tin Pan Boy’ and said that it was the first place he picked up a guitar. I first took my son to Denmark Street two years ago, when he had never played a guitar before (and as I write, two years later, I can hear him upstairs with his electric guitar coming up with new chord progressions). The world keeps on changing, doesn’t it. But it won’t be as good as Denmark Street was.

parkway places

July 17, 2024July 18, 2024Leave a comment

I found myself once again on Camden Parkway. I always seem to end up here. It’s like a default setting, like if you lose something and it’s down the back of the couch, this is where you’ll find it, Camden Parkway is London’s back of the couch. It’s changed over the years as has everything, but it’s still itself and I went looking for the things I know. I didn’t draw (or go into) the Dublin Castle this time, although I did do a bigger drawing of it when I got home, along with a series of other London locations). Some of my old haunts have gone, some remain. I don’t think I ever set foot in the Parkway Delicatessen, I think I developed my taste for panettone in recent years (thanks Zia’s Deli in Davis!), but this was a sketch waiting to happen. So many old places seem to be kicked away these days, but I love sketching an old Italian deli. I stood outside an estate agents to draw this. There was a lot of traffic on narrow Parkway, isn’t there always. I thought to myself, what if I drew all of Parkway, as one big row of drawings? I could do it if I had the time. Sure I would be wistful about the places that are gone, but places there now still need recording. Camden Town is of significant cultural significance to London, and enjoy it while it’s there. I was glad to see the Odeon cinema is still there (it’s strange to think of a chain cinema being something you need to save but so many have been closing). The last film I watched there was The Force Awakens! I used to go there all the time though when I lived in London, often on the way home from university, in the evening I would get out at Camden, go and see a film, head home to bed. Across the street, the old sign for Palmers pet store is still there, though the petshop itself is long gone and now a cafe. I remember going in there as a kid with my dad. It might have been a different petshop actually but going in there in my 20s I seemed to remember that. My dad loves pets. I even have the word ‘pet’ in my name!

Another place I had to sketch was Jamon Jamon, a little Spanish tapas restaurant that has been on Parkway for ages. Although again, I never actually ate here. I don’t eat jamon, after all, so it probably felt like it wouldn’t be my thing, but I love tapas so I don’t know why not. I might give Spanish food a miss for a bit though, as I’m still sad from losing the Euros final, but I’ll get over it because I love Spanish food. Already I’m fighting the urge for a paella (how long did I wait in 2021 before eating Italian food? Two days, maybe?) I always wanted to sketch this place though. I stood just outside it rather than across the street, and the guy from the barber’s next door, Ossie’s, came out to have a look and said he liked it. I said I’d get around to drawing his shop as well at some point. I was worried it was going to start raining, he said if it did, just come inside! My hair was already very short though. I thought about going into Jamon Jamon for a bite to eat, but I knew I’d be meeting my wife for some dinner in Covent Garden before going to see Spirited Away later that evening. By the way, very important point here, even though this is really a 75%-finished sketch, with some colours and details missing (it’s enough for the general idea) I wanted to make sure I included the door on the right, because someone has written the words “I farted” on it, for some reason. Further down the street is Pizza Pilgrims, a newer chain you see around London that does some really nice pizza, I had some when I was over last year. I do remember a place called Parkway Pizzeria years ago that I used to go to, they had very nice pizzas, that was back when a sit down meal was a really big deal, rather than just the bag of chips in the rain or the reduced-price sandwich was Tescos. Every little helps. One place I was on that side of the street was a pub called the Parkway, which was later the NW1. I used to go there a lot, it was my usual meeting place for my birthdays, or to watch the World Cup, and even for my leaving drinks back in 2005, when most people I knew came out and shared several beers with me a few days before I was moving to California, a memorable night I still look at the photos of, how young I was, at the end of my 20s, about to start this new American adventure. Of course my last night out as a Londoner was at Camden Parkway, it couldn’t be anywhere else.

This last one was drawn that same day, much further down towards the park that the Parkway is named after, Regents Park. The buildings change from being the rough and ready Camden brick to the right regal Regent’s Park stucco. I was just wandering at this point. I considered taking a long walk through the park, listening out for the roar of the lion at London Zoo, but I just drew this old 19th century fountain instead, looking like the entrance to an underground world. It’s called the Matilda Fountain, on Gloucester Gate, and dates back to 1878. Leaf and stone, and doorways to the unknown, that’s what England is all about.