the towers of westminster

July 16, 2024July 15, 2024Leave a comment

This is Westminster Cathedral. No not Westminster Abbey, this one is a little further up Victoria Street, free to go inside, and according to the priest I spoke to a few years ago they have the best bacon sandwiches in London down in their cafe. Well, I’m neither a catholic nor do I eat bacon, but this is one of my favourite buildings in London. It’s often overlooked, not as old or famous as its big Church of England brother down the road, but it’s a spectacular sight, especially on a sunshiny day like that day. Well a London cloudy sunshiny day, my favourite type of day. We had just taken my mum on an Afternoon Tea bus ride around London, one of those ones bedecked in flowers and pretty colours where you sit at little tables upstairs and enjoy tea, cakes and even some sparkling wine, while being driven around the streets of the capital. The staff were very friendly, though it wasn’t a guided tour, but they sure filled us up with tea and sandwiches, while playing the usual Abba style music over the speakers. I had an idea, there should be a bus where the theme is cockney singalongs. I would love to be the tour guide on that bus. When we got back to Victoria station, we took a walk around to Westminster Cathedral. I actually first heard of it when I was a kid and my mum went there with the local Catholic church (the Annunciation) to meet Cardinal Basil Hume. It was many years before I went inside myself, but it’s really grand inside, with some glittering mosaic tiled ceilings in the adjoining chapels. I sketched it five years ago, on a rainy day when I actually took the elevator up that tower to enjoy the view. This time I stood in a similar position on the street opposite, not rainy this time, and the colours really popped. Victoria is so much more modern and shiny than it used to be, so many new big buildings I would not recognize, but they reflect the cathedral well. It was designed by the architect John Francis Bentley in a neo-Byzantine style with no steel frame, and opened in 1903. It was Friday afternoon, I went off after this for a walk around London before meeting up with my friend to watch Scotland lose to Germany in the first game of the Euros. As I write, I’m not quite over England losing to Spain in the last game of the Euros. Football, I don’t want to talk about it.

On a completely different day, when I was still quite lagged of the jet, we took a long walk along the Thames, my favourite river. I mean, it’s not like I have a bunch of other rivers that I’m ranking, it’s only the Thames that means anything to me. The Sacramento river? Please, I have to go to Sacramento for it. The Liffey? Yeah it’s ok, for the amount of times I’ve been to Dublin in my adult life (twice!). The Sambre in Charleroi? I used to avoid it when I lived there in case monsters came out of it covered in grease. No, I only really know the Thames, and I love that river so much. On this day we walked from down beyond Tower Bridge all the way to Hungerford Bridge, and my jetlagged head was thinking it needed a nap by that point, but as we took a rest before getting on the tube, I did a quick sketch of Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament. (You have to say that in the voice that bellows “He-Man! And the Masters of the Universe…”). The South Bank is a must-do in London. Personally a big fan of it on very cold bright mornings, or misty evenings in November. Not a huge fan of that time I got stuck over there on a freezing cold snowy night in February in about 1996, when right after crossing over the river, the bridges and tube stations all got closed due to a terrorist bomb going off accidentally over in Fleet Street. Took me ages to get back over the river that night. I do remember one time coming down here when I was about 16 or 17 and drawing by the Thames, I drew pretty much this exact scene from this same place. This was long before the London Eye and all the river buses. There were a lot of homeless on the South Bank in those days, especially under Waterloo Bridge, and one guy who was from Liverpool started chatting to me while I was sketching, and we had a long conversation, he told me about how he’d ended up where he is, and that gave me a different perspective. I gave him the drawing I had done, and he was nearly in tears. I was poor as hell myself and couldn’t even afford to give 50p for a cup of tea, but he did appreciate that drawing, and the chat. I remember drawing another one (which I think I gave to my godmother) but this view does always remind me of that moment, decades ago.

Finally, another tower, this time it’s the Coliseum Theatre on St. Martin’s Lane. I drew this on the same day as Westminster Cathedral, having arrived in the busy Leicester Square area with some time before meeting my friend James. Interestingly enough, the last time I drew Westminster Cathedral, I went over and drew St. Martin’s Lane right afterwards; coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences, detective. The evening before, we had spent a wonderful evening in the Coliseum Theatre watching the current production of Spirited Away, adapted from the animated Miyazaki masterpiece. It was not a cheap, but I could not miss out on seeing it, and my son and I are both big Studio Ghibli fans. It did not disappoint! The theatre itself is an incredible place, it’s worth seeing something there just to be in the space. The puppetry, the performance, the music, the staging especially, it was all done so well, and it was all in Japanese! It’s a theatre company from Tokyo bringing the original show to London, so the actors are all Japanese. I have only ever watched Spirited Away in English (I did try to get a head start by watching it in Japanese on the flight over) but since I used to do sessions on ‘performing in a language the audience does not understand’ back when I was a drama student acting in German or French, I was interested to see how their acting and physical performance would tell the story; I wasn’t disappointed (although to be fair, I know the story). Nevertheless there were subtitles, displayed out of the way above the action as glowing words through the green foliage around the stage. I loved all the costumes too, especially of the various spirits, but like the film it really did transport me somewhere else for a while. If you get a chance, I recommend seeing it. Good theatre is well worth it.

among the stones in hampstead and highgate

July 15, 2024July 15, 2024Leave a comment

I think I sought out quieter spots on this London trip, I wasn’t really looking for the busy crowds and bustle of the city, it’s been too stressful a year for that. I found myself in Hampstead a few times, only a few stops down the Northern Line from Burnt Oak, but a world away in how it looks. It’s a bit nice round there. We went down one afternoon to walk about a bit, before I would be meeting up with a friend in the evening for dinner. I had a bit of time to myself to go and do some sketching, and I stood on Fitzjohn’s Avenue and sketched this weathered old post box (below), which bore the royal cipher of King Edward VII, so it’s quite old. I love old pillar boxes. I saw one from Queen Victoria’s reign on Hampstead High Street, although it was kept as a relic and was not in actual use (despite being opposite the post office). My brother called me up, and as I spoke to him I found myself wandering down old streets I had never been to, not really paying much attention to where I was going. I found myself at the Parish Church of St. John at Hampstead, an impressive old church with an adjacent burial ground, rows of gravestones poking out of long grass. It was quite peaceful, and I do like a graveyard. Real England is old brick and stone and greenery. Local ladies walked their small dogs about, and I sketched this scene above. I felt it had to be in pencil. If I still lived in London I would probably spend a lot more time sketching graveyards.

On a different day, I came through Hampstead to pick up some photos I had put in to Snappy Snaps on Hampstead High Street a few days before to be developed. That’s right, an actual roll of film. I haven’t developed a roll of film in nearly 20 years, and in fact I still have some rolls of undeveloped film that I brought with me when I emigrated to America, memories still waiting to jump out at me from the past. Well this roll of film was from just the past few months. A friend got me a basic film camera for Christmas, and so I bought some film (not cheap any more like the old days!) and was taking pictures on some of our recent travels. I maybe got the film wrong (it was good quality and cost me enough), but the photos turned out terrible. Like almost unanimously awful. The ones in Zion Canyon for example were just big dark masses. It wasn’t cheap to develop either, but there you go. Fun experiment, I suppose, but I’ll stick to digital, and sketching. My son was using the film camera on our Europe trip this time, so we will see how they turn out. Better than mine, I hope. Anyway, on my way back to the tube, after stopping in Cass Arts to pick up yet another sketchbook (I never seem to not need sketchbooks), I stopped in Flask Walk to draw. The sketch is below. I like Flask Walk, it’s narrow and full of interesting little shops. I like the Flask pub, I usually pop in there when I’m back in London. When my son was little, I took him ghost hunting there, because it is supposed to be one of those haunted pubs London has so many of. I like all the little antique shops, though I’m not the sort of person who shops at antique shops. I stood nearby and drew the view looking down, trying to catch some of the things people were saying to each other, like the older woman saying “bye darling! bye darling!” to her friend. I got asked by someone passing by if they could take my photo while sketching. I said of course (I get that occasionally when I’m in London, I think it must be the way I hold my sketchbook). They had a nice digital camera; I said I had tried taking photos with a film camera but just got them developed and they had turned out really bad, so I will be sticking to the sketchbook in future. I asked if they drew and they said they did but not much, and would like to do more, so I gave them the information about Urban Sketchers London, and said they should join them on their regular sketchwalks. If you are interested, check out their calendar for the rest of 2024 at the USk London website. When I was done with my sketch, it was time to head home.

But I have a couple of other sketches to show from the area. On a different day, we all came back down to Hampstead to look around before taking a walk across Hampstead Heath. I love Hampstead Heath, it;s easy to get lost along its tree covered paths. I have a photo of my holding my son by the ponds when he was only four months old, he’s sixteen now, so we took the same one, though I wasn’t carrying him this time. As we rested on top of the Heath, looking towards Highgate Village, I did a quick small paint sketch, below. It’s hard to imagine, we lived over there before moving out to California. It was a bit of a walk, but we’d sometimes come over this way on a Sunday, enjoying the peaceful English day. We lived on Hornsey Lane, and I still love that area. We went over there on of our first days back, it had been so many years. In another universe, if we had not moved to the US, we might be over there still, my son might have grown up there. We joked about that; the truth is, working for universities which don’t pay much in England, and with the extortionate cost of living in London, there’s no way we could have afforded a bigger place in Highgate unless we got very lucky, and would probably have moved our further, or back up to Burnt Oak, or just moved to California anyway. You can’t see the multiverse. There are a lot more hills here than in Davis. We did explore Crouch End again though, I miss that neighbourhood so much, and Highate Village, and Waterlow Park. We walked down our old street and took a photo outside the house where we rented a flat, those horrible old windows were unmistakable (except they were mistakable, because we were stood outside the wrong house; our old one was a couple of doors down, so we took a photo outside that one instead).

After the walk across the Heath, the final destination beckoned: Highgate Cemetery. That is the literal final destination for many people, from your Karl Marxes, your Douglas Adamses, your Jeremy Beadles, even your Eric Hobsbawns, your Malcolm McLarens. We only walked about the East side; I’ve never been to the West side, some day I will, but I notice that David Devant (the magician after whom one of my favourite bands is named) is buried there, as is Prof. Lisa Jardine, who I actually knew from my days as a drama student at Queen Mary, and Michael Faraday, one of my favourite scientists. George Michael is in the West side too; he was a local lad from near where I grew up, and he also lived in Hampstead in his later years, and speaking of the Snappy Snaps on Hampstead High Street, that was, er, the place where he crashed his car back in 2010. Anyway, we just looked around the East side, found the big Karl Marx, found a few other names I was looking for, talked about vampires, and then went down to the village at Parliament Hill for an overpriced pub lunch. Anyway, some nice times spent in Hampstead and Highgate, still some of my favourite parts of London.

another wander up the watling

July 13, 2024Leave a comment

While we are currently sweltering under this impossible Central Valley heat, it’s a good time to fly back to Burnt Oak. It’s always nice to go back home, for as long as I can still call it home. When I was a small kid going to Goldbeaters School, I don’t think I ever wondered what I’d be doing when I was in my late forties, and whether that would also involve flying back from America and doing drawings of Watling Avenue. (No, when I was six years old I just wanted to be Ossie Ardiles when I grew up). It has been a very busy past year, I say ad infinitum, but it really has. It felt like a long gap between trips back. I’ve wanted to come back for family reasons during this time, but I just hadn’t had the opportunity. I didn’t have time to mentally prepare, as if it was just never going to really happen, I wanted it so much. So, when I finally got back and walked around the old area, I felt a pretty big wave of emotion and even relief. Yes, a huge wave of relief to be home. It has changed so much, no doubt, but the Watling Estate is still old and recognizable. Communities have changed and evolved, but it still, in its way, belongs to me. That won’t last forever, so I draw it while it is still there. I’ve done a lot of Burnt Oak sketches on my trips back over the years – probably not enough. There are places that have now long disappeared that I wish I had drawn. There are places that disappeared many years before I left Burnt Oak that I wish I had drawn. The main thoroughfare of Burnt Oak is still Watling Avenue, although the shopping up here is not as good as it used to be. It was still possible to do all your shopping on the high street when I was young, rather than all in the supermarket, although we did have a Tesco up on the Broadway, a smaller one that annoyingly closed recently (Burnt Oak was the first place in the UK to have a Tesco, here on Watling Avenue in fact). At least there are still shops though. In many places I’ve been, the old shops sit empty, not deemed profitable enough by the property owners to serve a local community. Places evolve, but the Watling is still alive. Communities change, but I can tell there is still a sense of love for the area among the locals. It’s not always a safe area, for sure. Yet I do get the sense of the community feeling like the place is worth it. I love the colourful ‘Burnt Oak’ mural opposite the station. What really surprised me though is the new colourful ‘Welcome to Burnt Oak’ mural painted on the corner of Barnfield Road and Watling Avenue. It’s amazing, and features very Burnt Oak elements inside the big letters. (I will add a photo of it below). So that’s what I decided to sketch. I didn’t get as far as adding the colours, or even really finishing the scene, but I quite liked it like that. That corner, there used to be a fruit and veg stall there, I remember a guy I knew from scouts (Dillon? I just remember he was a QPR fan) worked there. Opposite where it says ‘Aksu Food’, there was another fruit and veg shop that my brother Johnny used to work at for quite a while. I do remember being sent down there regularly by my mum to pick up potatoes, five pound of spuds was fine, I hated being sent down for ten pound of spuds. Long walk back up Orange Hill with those. Next door to that there was a fishmonger, I still remember the guy’s face, I would go in there for crabsticks, they were cheap, tasted nothing like crab. Looks like there’s a fishmonger still, but further up. There was a hairdressers too just up Barnfield where the mural is, and I would be taken there as a kid, but as soon as I was old enough to get my haircut on my own I went to the barbers, not the hairdressers, and would go to the little one at the top of Market Lane (one of two small streets that run behind the Watling, the other being Back Lane, and neither being places you want to spend much time), and then later to Syd’s, in the alley behind Woolworths (now gone), where I would get my hair cut well into adulthood, the last time I went in was about ten years ago, right before a funeral. Ah, I wish I had drawn Syd’s.

Here are some photos of the big public artwork in Burnt Oak now. I love them, brightening the old place up. I couldn’t find the name of the artists, but they were delivered by Accent London, and there’s some information about them on the Borough of Barnet website. I did notice that the big ‘Welcome to Burnt Oak’ mural on the corner of Barnfield is painted over some concrete which has some old carved graffiti on it. I remember seeing those names carved into the wall a couple of years ago when something was removed from the wall revealing it, those names must have been hidden for years. Lots of ‘Bill’, a few ‘Jackie’, and even a ‘John’…are these my uncle and older siblings? This is where they grew up, went to Barnfield School, played Space Invaders in the chip shop nearby. I like to think it was them, back in the early 80s. Either way, I love that these names of young Burnt Oakers from the past, whoever they were, are preserved behind this new mural.

Above is Silkstream Parade, or one side of it, the little section between the station. There is another barber shop at the end of this row now, where years ago there was a little second hand bookshop packed to the gills with interesting old books (I would go in looking for old Roy of the Rovers annuals). It closed when I was a kid. Where the Afro Cosmetics shop now is, that was Alfred’s, where people got their school uniforms. It’s probably funny to Americans that British kids wear school uniforms, but that’s what we did. These days though I notice that most junior schools have uniforms too, which might have been true years ago as well (my little sister’s junior school did) but wasn’t the case at my old school Goldbeaters. I got my first school uniform at 11 at Edgware, though we got it from the school, not from Alfred’s. I think all the kids who went to St. James’s probably got their uniforms at Alfred’s. Who knows, it’s long gone now. There used to be a launderette along here too, until just a few years ago. I might even have a photo of it, I’ll try to draw it from that one day. And at the end there, a phone box. Remember I drew an old phone box that is now gone? This one is still there. I would have to go and use that one sometimes, there would often be a gang of kids sat outside the library yelling abuse across the street. I sat outside the same library to sketch this view. The sky was dramatic that first week I was back home, threatening a little bit of everything; a bit like London itself.

Finally, at the nearby junction with Orange Hill, a quick sketch of the entrance to Watling Park. I drew in burgundy coloured pen. The entrance to the park has always been sketchy, but I did love this park growing up. However I still avoid going down the left hand path beside the stream, because that’s where the gluesniffers used to lurk. You definitely still get wrong’uns hanging about there, and worse than the old glueys. Underneath the entrance is The Tunnel, a small, dark and foreboding portal which follows the Silkstream into the sewers, underneath the shops in total darkness until coming out some way up the Watling towards Silkstream Park. I never ventured far into The Tunnel as a kid, we were always a bit too scared, and never brought a torch (we did have the bright idea that you could float polo mints which glowed in the dark (!) and follow them down the stream) though I know my older brother and sister and my uncle Bill did venture deep into the tunnel to a place called The Witch’s Cave. Too many rats down there for me. Growing up in Burnt Oak though, Watling Park was the heart of the area for us kids, and it was at the end of my road so I spent a lot of my childhood down there. We knew all the hiding spots. It was a country unto itself in our imaginations, one that has never dislodged itself from the subconscious, and still appears in dreams just as it did when I was 8. Anyway. I do have a few more Burnt Oak sketches from this trip, but let’s get off one bloody memory lane and go down others. Incidentally, if you want to hear that episode of the Robert Elms show that I appeared in briefly talking about this little stretch of Burnt Oak, it’s still available still on BBC Sounds, for another 8 days. I have plenty more London sketches to share, and quite a few from the South of France as well, so check back soon…

phone home

June 6, 20242 Comments

It won’t be long until I’m home again, back in my little corner of the northern reaches of London, Burnt Oak. When I was back a couple of years ago I was going to draw this phone box on Orange Hill Road, on the corner of Littlefield, but ended up taking a picture and running down to the tube station. I saw the photo recently and thought I’d like to draw this now, so I pulled out the grey paper book and drew in brown pen. A proper London phone box you say, why isn’t it red and full of little windows? With a little man in a bowler hat and umbrella stepping out to read the Times with a cup of Early Grey? And a puddle of piss and escort service calling cards? Well it surely has at least one of the last two. I like that there was a little mini bottle of Chardonnay in there, Burnt Oak has really gone upmarket, a bottle of wine with your phone call sir? And some caviar truffles? Or will you stick with the Tennents Extra Strong? I grew up in Norwich Walk, just off Orange Hill, my dad lived until recently in Littlefield Road. When I was a kid my Godmother lived on the corner of Colchester Road right opposite this, and my brother and sister’s dad lived in the flats on Colchester until he died a few years ago. I used to bump into him for a chat right next to this spot when I’d be on my way to school or college. These were the phone boxes I grew up with, literally this one in fact. A lot of of the metal and glass ones had doors, this one did not, you were open to the elements. In the days before cellphones were everywhere, this is where I’d spend many an evening, if I could not use the phone at home (or didn’t want to). If this was occupied I’d have to walk down to the one outside the Library, and face yells of abuse from the yoofs hanging around there, all for my crime of having ginger hair. Invisibility was not an option. This one was closer to my house though. I remember being in here on a really frosty-cold night talking to my then-girlfriend, and you’d still get someone waiting outside asking, “how long you gonna be mate?” like there wasn’t another phone box just down the hill. Yeah, you remember the days of waiting for the phone to be free. Needing coins (remember coins? Cash? Ok grandad) to keep going. I mostly used phonecards by this point. Remember them, the green Phonecards you’d buy and place into the little Phonecard slot, not all the phones had those did they. I don’t mean the phonecards you’d get at those little shops up the Watling, where you for a fiver you could call Ghana for two hours, though I definitely got a lot of those in later years when I first met my future American wife. It’s ironic, I actually hate using the phone and will do almost anything to avoid it. Some people cannot get enough of the phone, and will spend hours on the bloody thing, walking around yelling. Now, it seems people have stopped understanding even how mobile phones are used. You see them walking around don’t you, not holding the phone to their ear like a normal person, but holding it up horizontally like it’s a slice of cake, speaking into what is probably the plug socket. And people go one further don’t they, walking around with the phone on speaker, so everyone can hear the person on the other end too. That happened recently and I felt like asking them, does the person you are talking to know their voice is being broadcast to everyone nearby? I realize I am fast on the Grumpy Old Man track, but some on kids, learn how to use the dog and bone.

But look at this thing. It’s like a piece of Roman Britain, standing for years after it’s served its purpose, with later civilizations not understanding what it was possibly for, marveling at the advanced technologies of these people from long ago. I’ll be back home soon, Orange Hill Road, and it might even be gone by now. It might even still be there, but converted into luxury flats. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Thames Time

January 11, 2023January 10, 2023Leave a comment

Now this is an atmospheric river. Back in July, the day before we left for France, the family and I took a walk down the Thames. A few days before we had been dealing with unbelievable record temperatures in London, making it nigh on impossible to do much other than hide inside listening to the news of how this was the Hottest Day Of All Time. My wife flew into London on that Hottest Day Ever (having stayed behind in California a few more days to look after our sick cat), transport was down all over the place as the English train tracks could not handle the heat. They famously can’t handle any slight change in weather, for those of us who remember leaves on the line, etc. Now the average temperature back in Davis is much higher at this time of year as a matter of course, but it feels a lot worse in London where the humidity is much higher, nobody has air conditioning, and well we just love a moan about the weather. A few days later, it had cooled off considerably, and was now a nice, humid, overcast London summers day. There was even a touch of rain to freshen us up. Still slightly sensitive from the previous night out in Camden, I braved the nice weather and took the tube down to the river, and we walked down past Tower Bridge towards Bermondsey along Shad Thames. I’d never actually walked very far down that way before, it was pretty interesting. A week before my son and I had taken a boat trip down the river all the way to Greenwich and listened to the stories of the riverman, that was a fun little history trip. Although our guide insisted telling us that the word ‘wharf’ is an acronym for ‘warehouse at river front’, which sounds nice but isn’t true. It comes from the Old English hwearf, which stands for ‘house where even alligators read French’. Shad London is an interesting street flanked by old warehouses at the river front and criss-crossed several storeys above by old metal walkways from the Victorian era, definitely a street I would go back and sketch another time. Instead, we turned back towards Tower Bridge and walked down the South Bank. I did stop to draw the panorama above, the view from the Tower of London on the right westwards toward the City with its expanding bouquet of steel and glass towers, all different shapes and funny names. This is where London has changed the most for me since I left, seventeen years ago. Seventeen years! Back in those days the small group of towers in the Square Mile were dominated by the Nat West Tower (I mean, ‘Tower 42’) and the Gherkin (I mean the Swiss Re) (sorry no it’s called 30 St Mary Axe) (look it’s the bloody Erotic Gherkin, that’s what we called it when it was being built in the 2000s). Neither of those can even be made out in the cluster above now. I don’t even know all the names of the funny looking skyscrapers now. There’s the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, the Heron, maybe the Dark Crystal, the Skeksis Finger, the Great Conjunction and the Gelfling’s Flute. Those cranes tell me that they are not done building just yet. I drew them again from a different angle when we had sat down to eat. The shapes are fascinating to draw.

You’ll notice that there is a red Urban Sketchers stamp on that last sketch. While we were walking down the Thames, we started seeing other sketchers dotted around the riverbank. Then I remembered that Urban Sketchers London were having a three-day celebration to mark ten years of USk London, and that there would be some sketching going on down the Thames. Due to our trip to France I wasn’t able to take part in this so I never signed up for the workshops and talks, and had forgotten that there would be loads of fellow sketchers around. Just as my wife said “maybe you’ll bump into someone you know!” I spotted someone I definitely knew – Gabi Campanario! Urban Sketchers founder and my sketching friend since about 2007/8. I think he was as surprised to see me as I was him. My wife had never met him though she knew who he was from all those years back. I first met Gabi in person back at the first symposium in Portland, and several others since, and his daughter was there in London with him. On top of this nice surprise, I bumped into another of the original London urban sketchers, James Hobbs, who I’ve known since USk London started in 2012. I have a nice photo of the three of us from Amsterdam in 2019, and now a nice one of us in London 2022. As one of the leaders of USk London James was very busy and showed me the new book that came out to mark the tenth anniversary of USk London, “London By Urban Sketchers” (an excellent book by the way and I recommend you get it, if you love London, follow that link to buy it). I have two drawings in there, plus a shout-out in the intro to that first sketchcrawl in 2012 that kicked off USk London, called it “Let’s Draw London“. Urban Sketchers London is a really strong chapter of USk and have some great sketchcrawls all over the city each month. So, excited by all the sketch chat and activity all around, I had to do some more drawing. My wife and son took a rest on a bench while I went and drew the view of the city which includes St. Paul’s, as well as a mudlarker down on the sands. I bumped into another old sketching friend Joe Bean, who I’ve met at a few of the symposia since Manchester, as well as some in London, and who has been doing some great sketching up in Leeds. The sky was grey and that’s the way I liked it.

I always want to be down by the Thames. Even looking at these sketches I just want to jump on a plane and get back there, explore and draw, see it as it keeps on changing. Some day I’ll put together a post of all my Thames-side sketches. Actually a lot of them are here: https://petescully.com/tag/thames/

Here’s one for you. An old one, from around fifteen years before the one above, from almost the same spot. 2007…

the other side of Denmark Street

January 9, 20232 Comments

Back to London last July. After a day’s touristing with the family – we went to the Churchill War Rooms, then wandered about central London until my feet hurt – I stopped off at one of my favourite old streets, the centre of guitar shops and music people, Denmark Street. Just off Charing Cross Road, round the back of the recently redeveloped Tottenham Court Road station, this was the center of the British music industry for a long time. Tin Pan Alley. As London has been pricing anything good out of existence for a long while now, but of it have been falling away and I was worried to finally come back and find it all gone down the pan. There’s a few old places no longer there, but I was pleased to still find a lot of places to mooch about looking at instruments, the character still exists. So I drew the street looking southwards, across from Wunjo and Regent sounds, and stood drawing until my feet hurt. This was intended as a sister piece to a panorama I drew of Denmark Street back in 2014 (see below) looking northwards, before major redevelopment started in the area. The 12 Bar club was still there, and Macari’s; I was saddened to see Macari’s on Charing Cross Road had closed recently, that’s where I got my beloved acoustic guitar that I still have. After drawing that picture years ago I learned about “Save Tin Pan Alley” – http://savetpa.tk/– which is devoted to preserving this historic and culturally significant London lane. As a guitar-obsessed teen I was often too shy to go into these stores, fearing that I would suddenly be found out and laughed at. They soon became my favourite places, though I still won’t get down an electric guitar and plug it in unless I know nobody is there to listen. They have different guitars than you see in a lot of guitar shops in the States as well. This past year I have finally rekindled my love of the guitar, having abandoned it for well over a decade, and got myself a new guitar, the Lake Placid Blue Squier Telecaster, as well as a Fender electro-acoustic for my son who is learning. Just last month I finally got myself a bass, for the first time in my life, and I of course got the Hofner violin. I should have been playing bass all these years, I love it, and the Hofner is nice and light, especially with the Flatwound strings. I need to fix the fret buzz though. Apparently I should adjust the truss rod, but I’m a bit nervous about that. I also need to fix up my old electric guitar in London and bring it back out here, the one my brother got me when I was 14, the Westone Concord II. I re-strung it and cleaned it up, but the third fret is pretty worn down where the B string hits it, making it hard to play an open D. Teenage Pete played that chord so much it filed away the fret. Maybe on my next visit I’ll take it down to Denmark Street and see if someone there can fix it. I’m still pretty basic with my guitar playing, and I don’t mind that, but it is nice to be back messing about with guitars again.

an early start

November 3, 20222 Comments

Back again. The view from my old bedroom in Norwich Walk, in our little Burnt Oak corner of London, drawn after waking up very early on a hot July day. On these days when I’m jetlagged and the middle-of-summer sun comes up way way earlier in London than in California (where the sun has a nice lie-in but definitely works a lot harder during the day), I like to try and start the day with a sketch, especially if I’m probably not going to be sketching as much due to doing family things. I miss seeing my London family, it’s always nice to be back, even at times when things are a bit stressful, it makes me feel nice to be Home, you know. I was lucky as a kid that we never moved house during my childhood, because it means I have definite sense of where ‘Home’ is in my mind. There are times even here in Davis in my forties that I wake up and I’m not immediately sure if I’m in my old bedroom or in California, with the window behind me, the shelf to my left, cars starting outside, a cat pawing at the door. Burnt Oak is quite different to Davis though. This is looking westwards, towards Orange Hill Road. Lot of stories up this street. I remember that house on the corner which has the little green food truck parked on the drive now, that was Mrs. Philpin’s house for a very long time (she passed away many years back), my mum was friends with her daughter since they were little girls, I went to school with her grandkids. I don’t know many other people in the street now, so many have moved on, passed away, although my old neighbour Matthew still lives across the road and I always stop and have a chat in the street when I’m back, usually about Spurs. This was an awkward looking sketch; the way the bed and side table gets in the way makes it harder to lean out the window than it used to be, although my mum now has much nicer windows installed. The morning sunlight kept changing the colours of everything subtly, but it’s pretty much how it felt; this was soon going to be the hottest summer of all time in London, and this day was going in that direction. My son had been up since about 3 or 4 as well, so we got a very early start and after breakfast with my mum we headed into central London for some sightseeing, taking our jetlagged selves onto a two-hour boat trip down the Thames, before getting the tube back up to Burnt Oak. We were still shattered from the two-day journey from California, but happy to be in London again.

We each managed one sketch while down in central London, a quick drawing of Horseguards (below).

what the dickens

August 15, 2022August 15, 2022Leave a comment

After visiting the Classic Football Shirts shop in its new location on Commercial Street, I decided to take a walk down to St. Katharine’s Dock, near Tower Bridge. I hadn’t seen any football shirts I wanted to buy,
all the really classic ones were out of my price range, although the pound is very weak against the dollar so maybe I should have gotten that 1992-93 light blue Spurs 3rd kit I’ve always wanted. I ended up buying some socks (one pair themed like the 1984 Belgian shirt, and another themed after Roberto Baggio’s 1994 Italian kit), and having a hot chocolate. It was the last day of May, it wasn’t cold but wasn’t hot, it was good London weather, and the weather was about to turn wet. I walked through the east end, taking photos of old pubs I would draw later, but didn’t have time to stop and draw now. The clouds were looking a bit ominous. I’d not been to St. Katharine’s Dock before, at least not since I was a kid and can’t really remember that. My mum likes to go there for lunch, and another mate had told me about the Dickens Inn, and it looked like something I should draw. So I walked about the pretty little docks, there were some boats I thought about sketching, but I sought out the Dickens Inn instead. I found a good spot with a classic red phone box in the foreground, and started mapping out the sketch…and then the skies opened up. It wasn’t so bad, but I had to find something to stand under. So I stood inside the phone box! Yeah this is great, what a story. No, that was uncomfortable, and the phone box just got a bit steamy, and what if someone needed to use the phone? Oh right, it’s not 1994. Anyway, I found a better spot, underneath a tree, this time with a classic red postbox in the foreground. I abandoned that fairly quickly, trees aren’t actually that good at keeping you completely dry, plus I thought I heard a rumble in the sky, though that might have been my tummy. I don’t stand underneath trees if there’s thunder, thunder famously hates trees. So there was the awning of a nearby building, this time with a classic gas-lit lamp-post in the foreground, yes this will do. I drew for as long as I could, which turned out not to be as long as I would have liked, because that rain, man, it kept on coming and just got heavier. I’m almost flat against a wall with little keeping me dry thinking, just do this later yeah. So I dashed inside to dry off.

It’s a big place, the Dickens Inn. It wasn’t super busy but there were quite a few people in there, several American tourists (probably why all the tv screens were showing baseball), and a lot of wood. The website says that “it is believed” to have been built in the 1700s – the building, not the pub, this being an old warehouse, maybe a tea factory, just east of where it currently stands. “Years later” it was turned into a tavern. That would be in 1976, so it’s not as ancient as you might think, being as old as I am – we would have been in the same year at school, but it probably has better eyesight than me. It’s not called the Dickens Inn because Charles Dickens used to drink there (this being the one pub in London’s Zone 1 that Dickens apparently wasn’t a regular at), although “Dickens” did drink there, that being his grandson Cedric Dickens who opened the pub. There are Dickens references about, as seen written on the beam in the sketch I did above. It was very nice in there; the windows were open, and outside the rainstorm grew heavier, the rumblings of thunder grew louder, and I had an afternoon of not needing to be anywhere thanks, so here I stopped, eating a pub lunch and having a couple of nice pints, and of course getting the sketchbook out. Bliss. This was the first London pub I was sketching in a long time. I wouldn’t mind coming here again some time.

When the rain slowed down a bit and I was done with sketching, I walked over to Tower Bridge and crossed the Thames, and enjoyed an ice cream in the rain from a proper ice cream van. Ice cream vans in England look like ice cream vans; the ones in Davis, not so much, more like creepy child-catcher trucks with scary jingles. I had a 99 of course (they cost a lot more than when I was a kid), and walked along the river in the rain, before heading back to the Northern Line. Have I mentioned that I love London?

back to burnt oak library

August 11, 2022August 11, 20222 Comments

At the end of May I finally returned home to London, having not been back since before the pandemic started. This was my longest period of time not going back, and it was great to see my family again. My older brother was getting married to his long-time partner (I was best man and gave a speech). It was the first of two trips back to London this summer, and both times I would be going off to France for the second half of the trip. It’s been a busy time. I also managed to get a lot of sketching done, as well as many drawings I would start now, finish later (gives me something to do on the plane home). I felt a bit odd flying across the Atlantic again after all this time, but it wasn’t so bad, and I landed at Heathrow and took the brand new Elizabeth Line, London’s newest train line, that had opened only a day or two before. It was pretty exciting getting to ride this new train so early in its existence. The Elizabeth Line (formerly called Crossrail) station within Tottenham Court Road was like an underground cathedral, at least compared to the tube platforms. Anyway, I made it up to Burnt Oak on the Northern Line which is where my family still live, and this is where I got my first sketch of the trip in. This was a London sketching day and I was headed down into town to fill my book and wander the streets, as I do. I like to explore. But I had to stop here on Orange Hill Road and draw Burnt Oak Library. This iconic landmark of Burnt Oak (opened 1968, designed by B. Bancroft) was like a second home to me growing up, I spent so much time in here. These days only the top part is the library, greatly reduced in book numbers, while the bottom floor is all council offices for local services now (very useful of course). When I was a kid, the children’s library was upstairs while the main library was downstairs. I still dream about the library from those days. There was a smell, a bookish smell, and as you walked in the main doors (which are in a different place now since the remodel), you were greeted with three maps on the wall (I think it was three, maybe two?) showing Burnt Oak as it was when it was all fields and a few roads, then a small village in Middlesex, and then how it looked in the 60s all built up and part of the Greater London suburban metro-land. Burnt Oak is on the Edgware Road, which is part of the ancient Roman road called Watling Street, shooting dead straight in a general north-western direction. It’s from Watling Street that we get the name Watling Avenue, the main road that cuts from Edgware Road (called ‘Burnt Oak Broadway’ in this section) downhill and past the Underground station towards this intersection with Orange Hill Road, and that’s where you find the library. Watling Saturday Market by the way, from the sign in the sketch, was the market that was in the parking area behind the station. I don’t know if it even still goes, and I think the stairwell down there from Watling Avenue has been closed off, but we used to go there on Saturdays and look around the stalls. The little street to the right is Park Croft, a tiny cul-de-sac that just backs up to the train lines. The library itself didn’t used to be painted in such a dark grey colour, but was white (not a very clean white admittedly) and looked quite striking. Then they painted some colourful patterns on the interior parts, and when they did a big redevelop in the 2000s they painted it an uninviting dark grey. There didn’t used to be a fence around the grassy bit, well there was a small shin-height barrier we used to jump over, so we could sit in the shade outside the library windows. I remember getting my library card as a very young kid, possibly on a visit from my infant school which was just up the road (Goldbeaters), the librarian upstairs in the kids section had brown curly hair and was friendly and kind but serious, you couldn’t make noise of course without a stern look, but I remember her teaching me all about book care (I still remember her advice that it’s not a good idea to turn the corners of pages in your books to mark your spot, and to this day I still don’t). I do remember that I forgot to take some books back when I was a kid, and it turned out they were in our loft, and the two books were a very silly children’s story about colourful teddy bears getting into trouble, and a heavy book about the Soviet manned space program. Two more completely different books you could not have chosen but that was the sort of thing I would read, I guess. As I grew I would read lots of adventure books, but I’d mostly spend ages poring over the travel books, especially the Insight Guides which have all the colourful photographs in them. New Zealand, Hong Kong, Germany’s Rhine Valley, Brazil, the fjords of Norway, Australia, Japan, the Trans-Siberian Express, there were all these places I read books about at that library but have as yet still never visited. Some day. When I was an older teen I would study in the library, especially on the evenings when it would stay open late until 9pm, I could get some quiet study done and also if I needed to study with friends, but usually it was a quiet place for myself. I would go to other libraries too, I remember studying hard for my Maths GCSE in Edgware library every day, and the big library at Hendon was a favourite for me, I’d sometimes spend all of a Saturday in there getting lost among the language books, and they also had an excellent music library where I would check out vinyls (I often used to get the old BBC Sound Effects records, for some reason). Libraries were such a big part of my growing up as a place where I could find ideas and let the imagination bubble, and I carried that on into adulthood. When I lived in Hornsey Lane, when I wasn’t working I would spend most of the day in Crouch End library. When I moved to Davis, similarly I would spend a lot of my time in the library, looking through books that might be interesting. I think it’s always a massive shame whenever public libraries close, they need to be protected. While it’s a lot smaller than it used to be, I’m glad Burnt Oak Library is still there. Probably not quiet enough for me to do my homework in now though. And I wish they paint it white again.

Behind the library it looks like they are building some sort of extension on top of Silkstream Parade, that changes the look of the street a bit. I’m interested to see how that turns out, but I hope it’s not some big redevelopment scheme like we saw in Colindale, which is a completely different place from when I left the area. I miss it round Burnt Oak, so it was good to be back for a little bit. I did do a few more drawings round here while I was back, will post later. Next up – central London sketches…

deep-six ninety-six

July 1, 20219 Comments

Gareth Southgate 2021 copy2

Well, there’s no question now is there. It is definitely coming home. It may have to quarantine for ten days and take two tests but come on. England did it, they beat Germany in a knockout game, and it didn’t even have to go to penalties. Sure, not an entertaining game, but if you want entertainment go and watch Hamilton. Or Spain v Croatia, or France v Switzerland. Amazing and ridiculous games, no defending whatsoever. England haven’t let in a goal yet. Haven’t scored many either, but maybe this is how it comes home. Anyway I am not going to analyze the game or offer opinions on whether Kane wasn’t getting service or tired or whether this Germany isn’t as good (it’s better than circa 2000 Jens Jeremies era Germany) or home advantage or any of that. I don’t even really think it’s “coming home” (if “coming home” means England winning it, since “it” is the European Championship, which England has never ever been in the final of before, or “it” is the Henri Delaunay trophy, which is French). The semis and the final are at Wembley though, but first England have to play a quarter-final against Ukraine in Italy, specifically so people can sing “it’s coming Rome”. Whatever happens, England did beat Germany, at Wembley. Gareth Southgate beat Germany, at Wembley, in the Euros. So, just as I did an illustration of him in 1996 recently, here he is in 2021, a quarter of a century later, this time in celebration. nice tie, Gareth. No waistcoat this time. Here he is, burying 1996. And so I ask myself, can we all bury 1996 now? 96 is the new 66. England didn’t even win it in 96 but it’s become such a big thing, part of the folklore, and that song, that bloody song, yeah you know I’ll be getting the CD out if England make it through to the final. CD?! How old are you, grandad? Can we all bury 1996 now? Not just the Euros, but everything? 1996 was one of the Last Great Years, maybe even The last one. Nobody used a mobile phone. What a time that was, eh! People had to wait until you got home before you ignored their call. To call people when you were out you had to use a phone box, with ‘coins’, maybe with a ‘Phonecard’. Nobody used a mobile phone. A few people sure, the things existed, but you go to a football match or a gig or watch a building burn down, nobody had their phones out filming it, tweeting it, recording it in case they forgot. People had to just ‘remember’ their experiences. Nobody used the internet. The odd ‘tech geek’ perhaps, in England anyway. There was a guy we knew at college called Ruman who could get us ‘on the internet’ in the computer labs, he was the only person we knew who could get onto this magic place, but there was nothing on there back then anyway, and our college wouldn’t let us stay online for long before kicking us off. Social media? What the hell’s that? 1996, the Star Wars Special Editions hadn’t even come out. The old Tories were still going, pre-New Labour, John Major and co. Princess Diana was still alive and being hounded by the press, before they decided in the middle of the night a year later that she was actually the Princess of Hearts or something. 1996 Wembley isn’t even the same Wembley as 2021 Wembley, it’s just in the same bloody place. 1996, I was twenty and could stay up all night long, bouncing about to Pulp or Oasis or Rage Against The Machine, and often did; I ain’t twenty no more. London was amazing in 1996. I got my guitar that year, on Charing Cross Road, I still have it. I bought it while on my break from the chocolate shop I worked at. A piece of 1996 I have held on to. Soho was brilliant in 1996, not yet shite, but no longer quite as seedy as in the 70s and 80s. Still seedy enough though. The Hellfire Club on Oxford Street was the best place on Saturday nights, a place long gone now. Can we all bury 1996 now? I mean, the world of 1996 has been buried a very long time, and it ain’t ever coming back. Gareth just buried another bit. His penalty miss is now in the ground with all the CDs, VHS tapes, Phonecards, cash, music magazine with cassette tapes on the cover, Soho being cool, and all the other stuff we left behind. Is this about me missing London? Might be, most things are, I’ve been burying that for years.