edgware and its ghosts

November 28, 20251 Comment

It’s time to post the sketches of What I Did On My Summer Holidays. I was away in Europe for the whole month of August, the longest break I’ve had since moving to California, to visit family in London and attend the Urban Sketching Symposium in Poland, as well as take a few days in Berlin. Davis is too hot in the summer. Anyway let’s get on with it. I was back home in Burnt Oak, but I had to go to Edgware, one stop up to the end of the Northern Line (or a ten minute walk up Deansbrook and a short cut through the alley behind the car park). Back in California I found a bunch of old undeveloped camera film in a box from before we had moved out here, so I brought a couple back to England with me to get developed at Snappy Snaps on Station Road (same or next day developing, you can’t get that these days over here, not in Davis; I developed a film at CVS and it took two months, and no negatives back; no positives either). Well Snappy Snaps in Edgware did not disappoint, but I had no idea what was on the film. It was like a time capsule. I stopped using film two decades ago (though my friend got me a film camera last year I don’t use it much). One of the films was photos from London in about 2003, a few pics of our old flat in Crouch End, but a lot from down in the City, before all those big skyscrapers went up. The Gherkin being built. Feels like a million years ago now. the other film was more of a surprise – photos from Las Vegas in 2004, in the day or two before my wife and I got married! Some really nice family pics, all looking so much younger, that I had never seen before, because I had never developed the film. Cupid’s Wedding Chapel, it’s not even there any more. The past came back to life. It was funny that I should see these while walking around Edgware, because it’s a place full of my own past.

Above is Edgware Station, the end of the line. I stood across Station Road to draw it, people walking by, buses turning in to the bus station behind. A lot of memories are in this station, not all of which I can even remember. Getting out here as a first year pupil at Edgware School having survived the often chaotic journey on a schoolkid-packed old tube train from only one stop away, those first days being allowed to travel on public transportation by myself (or with my friend) with my own travelcard, then having the long walk up Green Lane to school, very much a choose-your-own-adventure story. Sometimes instead of the tube I’d brave the bus, the dreaded 251, they saved the oldest and dirtiest buses for the school runs. If I was very brave I’d get the 142, going all the way to the school itself, but what courageous adventurer would choose such peril, not I. Many years later, Edgware was also the unintended last stop of many late nights (well, early mornings), the end of the line for the N5 Night Bus. The Night Bus Years, now that was a time of legends. Waiting for what felt like hours (but was in fact hours) down in Trafalgar Square or Charing Cross Road, fingers greasy from cheap fried chicken, ears still ringing with Rage Against The Machine, managing to stay awake on a bus filled with sweaty nightclubbers that one by one vanish into Belsize Park, Golders Green, Hendon, not knowing exactly where we are due to foggy windows, and gently nodding off to sleep somewhere around Grahame Park, completely missing Burnt Oak and ending up in Edgware. There are only three certainties in life: Death, Taxes and Waking Up at 4am in Edgware Bus Station in the 90s. I imagine that Death when it comes will feel very much like that. I got very used to the walk back to Burnt Oak in the wee hours, passing like a ghost through the alley behind the car park, up Deansbrook Road, down Littlefield and up Orange Hill, and right into bed.

While I drew the station a bearded man started filming my page without asking or acknowledging me, as if I were a real ghost. What you doing, I said. He said he was just showing someone who he was video-chatting with; bit intrusive. Be nice to ask before shoving a phone over my shoulder, I said, before he went off still having his conversation, oblivious. I was told while I was back that there are plans to completely redevelop Edgware, to knock down the Boardwalk Shopping centre next to the bus station, and build something like ten massive tower blocks on top of the car park, completely changing the face of the area. I suppose the alley will go, no more short cut back to Burnt Oak. Who knows, but change keeps coming, and so in a few years this view of Edgware station will look very different. I remember before the Boardwalk opened, there was a junk yard where the car park is. Edgware Station opened on August 14, 1924, 101 years to the month before I drew this sketch. The extension of the Underground into what used to be open country but was becoming known as ‘Metroland’ was responsible for Edgware’s development into the town and then suburb it is today, right at London’s edge. Edgware has existed for centuries though, since Anglo-Saxon times, recorded in the tenth century as ‘Aegces Wer’. I think this was about the time my old Maths teacher started teaching at Edgware School, my school from 1987 to 1994. The school changed its name to ‘London Academy’ a few years later, and then ‘The London Academy’ (as opposed to ‘That Edgware School’ as it was known before). The old school buildings I went to were knocked down years ago, and replaced with something more modern, as were the entire surrounding estates. I have dreams about those old buildings, but they are now just ghosts. Everything changes, and only the ghosts remain.

I will tell you a ghost story now though, so if you are of a nervous disposition, look away now. Above is a row of buildings at the end of Station Road, at the corner of Penshurst Gardens, where it meets steep Hale Lane and curving Edgwarebury Lane (which stretches right up to Edgwarebury Cemetery, final resting place of Amy Winehouse. I stood outside what used to be Loppylugs Records, now an unappealing lounge bar. I wanted to draw this corner because back in the 80s my older sister used to work in the Lunn Poly travel agents, now a Polish food store. She lived in a flat on the top floor above, it was her first place after leaving home, it was the first home of my first nephew, and it also happened to be haunted, by an actual ghost. Now look, let’s be fair, I don’t really believe in ghosts, except maybe the ones that exist. Some ghost stories still give me a shiver, and my big sister used to tell me ghost stories at bedtime, like the one our grandad used to tell about the ghostly music playing where the Titanic sank, though I was never sure why that one scared us so much. It’s the way you tell ’em. Anyway I liked this flat but it was big and old and at the top of a long winding staircase, and the hallway felt like one that would get longer as you went down it. I never saw a ghost, but my sister definitely knew one was there, cold feelings in certain places, unusual things happening like the clocks setting their hands into the same place, noises in the next room. Our dog was too terrified go into the flat, but our dog was also terrified of tortoises. My sister saw the ghost at least once, a pale woman in the bedroom, but it was not scary. A family friend passing by Station Road one day did say they had seen a woman with long hair at the window, when my sister wasn’t home. Since I was a kid scared of everything (except tortoises), my sister didn’t tell me about the ghost at first and I never saw it or had any sense of it at all, but every single time I pass by this part of Station Road I think about that ghost and wonder if she is still up there. I still dream about ghosts a lot, but I think we all do. The window was open as I sketched; there wasn’t a figure there but I drew one in, looking out of the spare bedroom where I used to sleep when I stayed over. I have a few more sketches of Edgware to post but this one is already long enough with the ghost stories; there might be a few more ghosts, or at least highwaymen.

by the stream in Watling Park

January 16, 2025January 17, 2025Leave a comment

And so, the last few sketches from my short trip back home to London last month. While at home at my mum’s if I wasn’t out on a sketching day or visiting my dad in hospital, I’d sometimes go for a walk around Burnt Oak to see what’s changed; quite a lot, some good, some not really. I still look for what’s the same. The park at the end of the street has never had the best reputation, but Watling Park is where I spent my childhood with my friends from our street and the kids from all the other streets, so I thought I should bring my sketchbook back down there, since 2024 was all about drawing trees after all. It was a damp gloomy decembrous day, my tummy was full of mince pies. I stood by the stream and drew trees going across it. The sketch below is what I drew first, a tree that had fallen across the stream, I sketched quickly in pencil and added paint right there. Across the stream a very excitable dog was running around and up to people, I think it was a Staffy, and the owners weren’t bothered if it jumped up at people. I wasn’t keen on it jumping up at me while I painted so I worked fast. They didn’t walk on this side of the stream though. The one above was drawn in pen, but I didn’t colour it in until the plane journey home. This part of the stream has walls into the stream (see below), while the section above does not, though I was in roughly the same place, just turned around. The tree that had fallen, I think that may have been the one when I was a kid that had a Tarzan rope attached to it so we could swing across. The stream is so narrow that a kid can jump across anyway (well, usually) but the Tarzan rope was always the more adventurous way. I spent so much of my childhood here, when I wasn’t indoors drawing. So did my older brother and sister, and my uncle Billy, I always think of him when I think of the Tarzan rope. The view above, that’s the park I know. That little arched bridge, this is the middle one, there are three in the park. The stretch of stream between that one and the one by the old Bowling Green was full of bushes and hideouts, an adventure playground for us. There were stingy nettles, but also dock leaves, that is where we learned that old medical trick to heal the stings. That stream is properly called Burnt Oak Brook (we knew it as part of the Silkstream, though didn’t know the word ‘tributary’ in those days); we just called it ‘The Stream’, and it ran over towards the Meads, past the allotments. It was full of little stickleback fish, shopping trolleys, bits of old bike. We used to try damming it up with sticks and mud and whatever we could find, to see how long the dam would last. The stream always came back.

The Silkstream itself flows through various parks and underneath Burnt Oak and Colindale, and was sometimes treachourous. We grew up knowing there were dangers when playing by the waters; I don’t mean in those public service shorts that would go out on kids TV in the early 80s, “Charlie Says” and so on. When I was about five or six, there was a horrible day when some children died in different parts of the Silkstream, not in Watling Park but further down in Silkstream Park and another park in Hendon I think. The water was high from the rain and deceptively strong. One of them was a boy, also called Peter, who lived in the next street over from us, he was in my year at school. It was the first time I’d really experienced knowing anyone who had died, other than my grandad, and at such a young age I didn’t really understand. I remember a lot of kids at school crying, and kids in our street being in shock. I think I was playing down Watling Park myself that day with my neighbours, in those days that park was our babysitter, if we weren’t at home or in the street outside, that’s where we could be found, don’t go beyond. What I didn’t know until recently was that when this happened, and people started to hear about it, some kids heard ‘Peter’ and assumed it was me (there weren’t many Peters in our area, a lot of Marks and Lees and Davids but very few Peters). They went to my house and told my sister they heard I had died in the stream. I can’t imagine what she must have thought. I think she went straight down Watling and found me, we don’t remember now, she always knew where to find me, and I was probably in my neighbour Tasha’s house, the other place I spent my childhood. She was close to Peter too, and his family, and we found it difficult to talk about it back then, we were all so young. It didn’t stop us playing by the stream, but only in this part of it, which always felt safer and closer to home, but that day definitely stuck with us. We as kids in the area never stopped thinking about him.

There are a lot of changes happening in the park at the moment. The big playground by Cressingham Road has been taken out, hopefully another one will go in because that’s the last playground in the park. However there are three big ponds being added, and new paths across what used to be the big fenced off sports field, but is now part of the park proper. and on top of the hill, it looks like a little bandstand or something is being built. Hopefully not just a place for the junkies to sit out of the rain. I hope these are positive updates for the park, what they have done to Montrose Park looks great, although they did build a sports centre over part of it too. London is great for parks and they need to be both protected and improved; Watling Park has a bit of a wild feel to it, but it wasn’t always that way. When I was a kid there were still tennis courts, beaten down though they were, and when my brother and sister were younger there was a putting green, I always wondered why they referred to the little patch of grass where we’d play football as a putting green. There used to be another playground near Abbots Road, I would be there every day on the swings or the see-saw, and that huge tall metal slide with the cage on top that would never pass a health and safety inspection these days, and whose metal slide surface would heat up to about 500 degrees on a hot day. Still better than those horrible plastic slides that generate enough static electricity to power a small car. We’ll see what it looks like when I’m next back. The drawing above is of another tree I saw on that walk, next to a row of houses on Fortescue Road, I really liked the ramshackle fences. I only had time to draw a quick outline, so in fact I drew most of this a few days later. I think I remember a schoolfriend lived on Fortescue and I went to their birthday party when I was about six or seven, but that’s all part of the blur of childhood.

Ok, back to posts and sketches from California. Until next time, Burnt Oak. See you in the summer.

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.

liberty’s before lunchtime

January 11, 20252 Comments

While in London last month I took a day to sketch and explore Mayfair, and area I have not really walked around in a long, long time. It’s good to not stick to the same places each time I go back. However I wanted to start my day somewhere more familiar, draw a lot of old timbered beams, and maybe do a bit of Christmas shopping along the way. I have sketched Liberty’s of London before, but it was a long, long time ago, when I drew smaller snippets of buildings, and in that case not very well. It’s such a big old building, a massive department store in mock-Tudor behind Oxford Circus station, that you want to spend the time to really catch all the details. I chose a spot on Great Marlborough Street that looked down Kingly Street on the right, a street well worth a day of detailed sketching in itself (but which I always associate with fancy bars and cozy pubs, having spent a few evenings down there with friends back in the old days either drinking cool cocktails among media types or room-temperature beer among tourists). It’s an intriguing little corner of the sketch that, like a window that you open on an advent calendar. There’s a fun idea for an advent calendar, one that for each window, you are taken to a new place full of other windows. I’m not sure how it would work but I can imagine quite a bit. The sun was blue and the sky was shining, there were clouds dotted about to make it more interesting for me when I drew the little triangle of colour on the top left. I wasn’t sure how much colour I would add to this drawing, it being an essentially black and white building, so I just added spots here and there, such as the golden parts (with my gold gel pen) and flags. Unfortunately I did not colour all the trees in, just putting in some green, the uncoloured ones were purple. I should have added that, I’m not averse to colouring-in later after all (I’m the king of colouring-in later, saves so much time on those days of exploration), but I never got around to it and the moment’s passed. Purple is very much the corporate colour for Liberty’s, though at this time they were also very invested in green as they were promoting the movie ‘Wicked’, and had large displays about it in their windows and interior. The whole sketch took me about an hour and fifty minutes (yes not quite two hours, I was determined to finish by midday and press a hard stop, though I spent some time faffing about taking pictures of it). I did go inside and look around, bought some Christmas ornaments and stocking stuffers in their amazing festive department on the top floor. I don’t remember ever walking around here before, it’s very wooden and unusual inside, well worth a look. Some of the things they have for sale are a bit expensive mind, the designer goods. I’d like to make a point of sketching more of the big old department stores of London, I drew Fortnum’s already, now Liberty’s. I tried to draw Harrod’s last year but it was covered over with scaffolding (to hide their shame presumably, given news reports about their former owner) and then there’s Selfridges on Oxford Street. I always took that for granted, but when I passed by it later on this day I remembered how absolutely immense it is, so I’ll leave that for another time.

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I could have spent the day sketching just around this little corner, looking across Regent Street with this winter sunlight hitting things just right. Carnaby street is nearby, but I don’t like it there much any more, it’s too bland, and there are just not any football shirt shops any more. The best was SoccerScene, a shop that did more than anything to enflame my lifelong obsession with interesting foreign football teams and their shirts (and their metal pin badges, they had a huge array of those). I remember further down Great Marlborough Street there used to be a fantastic foreign language bookshop, the best one in London, and when I was in college I spent a lot of time there looking at all sorts of interesting books in French, German, Italian, Danish, whatever was tickling my linguistics at the time. It’s gone now. Grant and Cutler, that was it. It seems they have merged with Foyles and have a section of that massive bookshop on Charing Cross Road, but I miss the feel of that other place. Anyway I was wasting time reminiscing in nostalgia again, I had to go to Mayfair.

I’ll put the Mayfair sketches in another post, it’s only fair, but this is another timbered building that I drew next, the Mason’s Arms on Maddox Street. It’s opposite a really interesting church which I’ll draw another time called St. George’s Church Hanover Square. This is across Regent Street, and I came across here rarely, probably feeling that this part of town was not for oiks like me from Burnt Oak. People get progressively richer with each passing square foot. I think I only had about a square foot of pavement to sketch on, the streets were a little tight, probably why they’re so rich eh. All the old tour guide jokes coming out now. I remember going down Regent Street on the bus once talking about Soho when an American tourist asked me why it was called Soho and is it named after the SoHo in New York. I said no it isn’t, that area is a contraction of ‘South of Houston’, whereas the one in London is ‘South of Hoxford Street’. After finishing my sketch of the Mason’s I popped in to sit down and grab a drink. I ended up not eating, saving my appetite for the Mercado in Mayfair which was my destination, but it was a nice little pub, historic (1721, though rebuilt as it looks now in 1934 in that Mock Tudor style; a new Lego set has just come out which reminds me of this, I might have to get it). The Rolling Stones had offices on Maddox Street and used to record at Chappell Studios a few doors down, as did the Beatles occasionally. It’s good to read the signs on the pub wall.

afternoon tea at fortnum’s

January 10, 20252 Comments

One afternoon while in London I took my Mum for tea at Fortnum and Mason, on Piccadilly. It was an early treat for her birthday, something festive to do before Christmas. I took her there once before years ago (I think the prices were about half what they are now) and have wanted to take her again for ages. It’s up in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, though to get up there you need to brave the packed store full of Christmas shoppers and squeeze into the tiny elevator. It’s lovely though, and I still put Fortnum’s among my favourite London shops. During the pandemic for Mother’s Day I ordered a hamper for my mum and another one for my mother-in-law which had to be shipped over to California, they do really nice tea and cake hampers. Piccadilly at this time of year, the start of December, is even more crowded than usual, but I don’t mind. It means London’s doing alright. We walked about a bit looking at expensive cars in the Lotus showroom (they had Ayrton Senna’s old F1 car), expensive jewellery at Bentley and Skinner, and expensive glassware at the Lalique store in Burlington Arcade. I took the opportunity to draw Fortnum and Mason from across the street, as during Christmas time the whole store is made up to resemble an advent calendar. As you may know, I have a long history of making advent calendars so the idea of turning an entire building into one makes me happy. A lot of people were stopping to wait for the little statues of Mr. Fortnum and Mr. Mason to come out from the ornamental clock and tell us what time it is. Fortnum and Mason dates back centuries, 1707 in fact, the time of Queen Anne, Fortnum being one of the Queen’s footmen. I sketched for a while as my Mum looked around some shops, and by the time I was about done there was a woman who had set up a little camera on a tripod to film herself talking about the Bible and singing psalms, fair enough but when they get a microphone out and start going on about sinners that’s enough for me. Anyway it was time for our tea. We each got the regular Afternoon Tea with scones, sandwiches, cakes and tea, as much as we could eat and drink, and we ended up taking many of our cakes home with us and eating them over the next couple of days, they were quite rich and filling. We started off with a drink called a ‘turtle dove’, a kind of cocktail that was so good, a nice way to kick off Christmas. For tea I had the Afternoon Blend, Mum had the Queen Anne. I think, I can’t remember now. I think I had a couple of different types actually. I had to draw the teapot and cap along with a cake that looked like a present. When we were done I spent more money downstairs picking up a few things here and there to bring home for family, but I could have got so much nice stuff. My Mum bought a nice Fortnum’s ornament for my wife (when they wrapped it, it was like that scene in Love Actually with Rowan Atkinson and Alan Rickman), and I bought chocolates and tea and fancy greeting cards. I bought a lot of fancy greeting cards on this trip, Britain does the best ones, by far. So that was our tea at Fortnum’s, a nice treat and a very festive thing to do before Christmas.

tamara’s book signing at jam

January 9, 2025Leave a comment

While I was back in London I went to a book signing at a small independent bookshop in Portobello Road. It was a special treat because the author was my old friend and German theatre pal from university, Tamara Von Werthern, who I’ve not seen in more than ten years. In fact the last time I saw her was on one of my Christopher Wren sketchcrawls in the City (the one in 2014), when she came along to sketch with her husband (also an artist) and young children. She’s a playwright with many published and performed works and in recent years has also become a detective novelist, writing a series of books in German based on her father Philipp; ‘Ich Glaub, Es Hackt’, ‘Ach Du Liebe Zeit!’ and the newest one, ‘Adel Auf Dem Radel’. These have even been included on the curriculum of the German department at our old school, Queen Mary, and she has been invited back to talk about them. The first two books have been translated into English, as ‘Only The Lonely’ and the most recently published book, ‘Silent Night’. It was this book that was being signed, and Tamara has done a series of book talks recently accompanied by her father visiting from Germany. I’ve seen Tamara post about her books for a few years now since the first one came out in Germany, but as I’ve not been able to get hold of any I hadn’t read them. So at the bookshop I took the chance to buy the first two in both languages (I will save buying the third German one for another time). I drew them (above) when I got back to America, and so far I’ve read the first one ‘Only The Lonely’ which was really fun with an interesting twist, well not a twist but a surprise I didn’t see coming. I am going to try to read the German original next; I am so out of practice with my German, it’s twenty years since I last visited!) but I’m looking forward to reading Silent Night. I kind of wish I’d read it over Christmas, but I’m a very slow reader.

Jam Bookshop was small but really well stocked in some great titles, and very much an artist-friendly shop. I did also buy a beautiful novelization of My Neighbour Totoro for my son (we both love the Ghibli films), as well as a zine about Rediscovering Colombo (apparently this was a thing during the pandemic; I did not know, but I had myself started watching them online too just recently. I’m getting into detective stories, reading a bunch of Agatha Christie books lately). I also got a couple of drawings on notecards (one of Totoro, one of Columbo) which were drawn by the shop’s owner. I didn’t realize he was the artist, David Ziggy Greene, until he offered to sign the back of them for me (though he signed mine to ‘Paul’), and he is a cartoonist for the magazine Private Eye which was very cool. Anyway of course I wanted to sketch Tamara actually doing the book signing near the front of the store, and she signed all four of my books, as well as signing the sketches I did. It was great to catch up with her after all these years; I had just run my first 10k the week before and she shared with me her own running stories. I sketched fast, preferring my second one (below), while people came in and spoke with her and bought her books. Very cool indeed.

IMG_0794s, When it was time for me to move along and get sketching the rest of Portobello Road (and meet several other artists along the way, as it turned out), I did stop for a little while outside the shop and started drawing the exterior, which is actually inside an indoor section besides the market. I was thinking, I mist take my son here if we come back to this part of London, I think he’d like it (though maybe not the crowds of the market). Unfortunately, I saw their posts last week that the shop has closed. Being in that inside passageway did not bring a lot of foot traffic, and it’s such a hard time for bookshops these days (I used to work for an independent one in Finchley that is now long gone). I’m sorry to see it go but am glad I was able to visit and draw it while it was there. Tamara said they had been very good with supporting artists and local authors, and had moved form another location in east London.

Anyway, despite that news, I’m glad to have been able to go to Tamara’s signing and hope that her books do really well, and I am looking forward to reading the rest. Finally – a fun fact, Tamara is the only person I have ever allowed to draw in my Moleskine sketchbooks. It wasn’t on this trip, it wasn’t even on that sketchcrawl, in fact it was on an evening out with friends in London in late 2009 at the Ship pub in Soho, when I had my purple pen and was not very comfortable drawing people, so she drew us instead.

a saturday down portobello

January 7, 2025January 7, 20255 Comments

On the last day of November, exactly a year since Shane MacGowan died, I found myself in Ladbroke Grove, heading to Portobello Market. I was going to a book signing by an old friend of mine from university at a little bookstore. I was up early; my Mum and I were playing the Pogues music in honour of Shane, and having a morning singalong with a bit of the Wolfe Tones on my ukulele, and then I headed out for my day of sketching and literature. I decided not to take the tube, but caught the 302 bus from the end of my street like I would do in the long-ago old days. I hadn’t been this way to Notting Hill in over 25 years, I think, changing bus in Willesden for the 52 towards Victoria. The 52 used to run all the way from Victoria to Mill Hill before they split the route in two. I sat at the top looking out of the window, trying to remember and recognize all the places along the way, seeing some of them in a new way as an urban sketcher. I must explore Kensal Green and its big old cemetery some day. I got out at Ladbroke Grove, which was already quite busy with foot traffic for the market, and sketched the tube station from across the road. It’s not the most visually exciting tube station, but worth sketching. I am really into sketching tube stations, and old pubs, and bookshops. I like sketching markets too, but they get so busy that I often shy away from it. I stood outside an estate agents; as I sketched, tourists stopped by to look at all the places that were listed, massively overpriced tiny flats in a massively overpriced massive city. Tour groups gathered outside the station. Portobello has always been popular with tourists; growing up Ladbroke Grove was always seen as a little bit rough, but definitely a big area of music and culture. I’ve only been to the Notting Hill Carnival once, on a baking hot day in 1996, and spending a day squashed in a slowly moving crowd that moved like a thick sauce through these wide streets before ending up watching Jamiroquai in his massive hat, that was once enough for me. I thought about that as I sketched. I am better in a crowd when I’m by myself. I headed into the crowded market looking for some food, and smelled out what looked like a delicious paella. It really wasn’t, and I ended up throwing it away. “More like a paella shite” I said to myself, making a mental note to remember that if I ever came back. I went to my friend’s book signing at the nearby Jam Bookstore (more of that in a different post).

After I left the book signing at Jam I went back into the busy world, and stood in between two parked vans to sketch this book stall. I had books on the brain, and also on my arm, carrying a bag with five new books in it. I didn’t have space to buy any from this stall, but they were getting a fair bit of foot traffic. As I sketched, there was a fellow behind me taking photos, photos of me sketching as it turned out. I didn’t much mind. He introduced himself to me and offered to message me the photos. His name was Trevor Flynn, and he’s an artist himself who has sketched around Portobello for years, and runs a company called Drawing At Work (http://drawingatwork.co.uk/), he has got people out sketching for years. He also knew about Urban Sketchers London and has worked with sketchers I know. Always nice to meet other sketchers. In fact he told me he did all the sketching and storyboarding for the film Notting Hill, back in the 90s. I loved that film, I remember I had a really long and stressful day at university, I studied drama and they were usually long hours, and I would often stop at the cinema on the way home (either in Stepney or in Camden) to catch a film and relax, and this one night I watched Notting Hill and it cheered me right up.

I kept strolling further down the market; I had sketched down here last year so wasn’t necessarily going to do too much today, as I was heading towards Notting Hill Gate with the idea of walking down Kensington Church Street, but this colourful art market area on Tavistock Road caught my eye, especially the bits of orange on the trees in the background. Well I had to sketch the scene. As soon as I did, a lady in a pink high-vis vest came to talk to me, she told me this was something called Open Art Spaces (see openartspaces.co.uk), and these were all independent artists selling and showing their work, and she gave me their card (a Moo card; I had forgotten mine). As I sketched, I was joined by one of those artists, Chen Xi, who is also an urban sketcher. He is from Singapore but is in London doing a Masters, and he knew several of the Singapore sketchers that I have known over the years, even been taught by them. I chatted with him for a while sketching the scene, and when I was done I bought some of his cards and walked around the market talking to other artists and buying more cards, coasters, bookmarks. It was fun getting out and talking to people in my favourite city, I should do it more often.

I walked down Portobello with that Al Green song from the movie stuck in my head, though the seasons didn’t change, and I don’t look like late 90s Hugh Grant, well not much anyway. I saw the Electric Cinema and decided I really needed to draw that, with the Christmas trees for sale outside. I never saw a movie here, but I have a vague memory that they had a small bar here back in the 90s and I came in for a drink with an ex, though it might have been somewhere else, or maybe I imagined it. I’ve been dreaming about London for so many years now, I mean actual dreams when I’m asleep, that whole areas have grown that my sleeping self is convinced are real but actually don’t exist at all, built as if from broken Lego sets of real places and experiences; I wish I could draw them. There is a lot of London that I’ve not been to in over 25 years that I have almost entirely forgotten; later that week I walked around parts of Mayfair that I had honestly set outside my mind completely, not since I was an open-top tour bus guide, but when I walked through certain squares and down certain roads, memory and story came flooding back. In some cases, they trickle back, and it’s like that around here. Sometimes the mystery of memory is more exciting. I was standing next to a stall that sold quite posh looking ham, if memory serves (and we know it doesn’t), and the market was getting busy but I wanted to press on.

Down Notting Hill Gate I went, and there’s a lot to sketch around there, but I just wandered about, thinking about stories. I was near Campden Hill Road; back in the mid-90s I actually took an evening course in screenwriting here, not a very long one, but it was enjoyable. I remember quite liking the people in the class, and the teacher was nice, and I had to write a short screenplay; I think I wrote one about a priest meeting a woman, it wasn’t very original, and in fact the instructor complained it was too derivative of a TV show called ‘Priest’, which I had never seen, and didn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d watch. Then I wrote another about a woman who was in love with the grim reaper and would murder people to see him again; not very sophisticated, and my heart wasn’t in it. I’ve never written a love story since. I remember there was an Irish guy on the course who was writing a screenplay about the Battle of Brunanburh, but this was before I studied Old English poetry so I wasn’t really familiar with it, but I remember he did a good job. I should do more evening courses, though there’s not as much choice in Davis as there was in London, and I don’t know what I’d want to do. Not screenwriting again. I walked down to Kensington Church Street as I wanted to visit the Churchill Arms, or at least watch their Christmas lights come on. This is a famous pub, often winning pub of the year awards for its unusually over the top floral arrangements outside, though for the festive season they deck out in thousands of lights, and as you can see from the sketch lots of people gather to watch them come on. I stood across the busy street and drew fast. My waterbrush ran out so I had to add the paint in afterwards. As I sketched, a woman with a thick Texas accent asked me without prompting or introduction if I had visited the Tim Burton exhibition. I said I had not, and she proceeded to tell me I should go, because they had just been there and it was wonderful. She said my drawing reminded her of his sketchbooks, which was a surprise to hear. she then asked if I knew who Tim Burton was; now the thing is, whenever anyone I don’t know randomly asks me if I have heard of someone, my natural instinct is to say I haven’t, so I said “no; is he the guy who invented trousers?” It just came out; I was thinking of the clothes shop Burtons. So she listed all the films he had directed, and by this point I had to keep pretending I didn’t know who he was, in case she thought I was taking the mick, so I ended up making the “no, don’t know that one” face to films like Batman and Edward Scissorhands. I did like the sound of this exhibition though, and said I would try to go and see it; “Tom…Barton?” “Tim Burton, you’d enjoy it.” “Thanks, I’ll check it out.” “You should. Have a great vacation!” and off she went. It’s nice to meet people, I’m getting good at it.

I did want to rest my legs and have a festive pint before heading back to Burnt Oak though, as it was now dark and my legs were feeling weary. I stand when I sketch because I don’t like being hunched over on a stool, and getting some rest is good. The Churchill was packed, there was no room at the inn, even though the interior of that pub is on my list of must-sketch places. I used to go in there sometimes years ago and marvel at all the stuff on the walls and ceiling, the landlord was from Tipperary I think because I remember lots of Tipperary hurling memorabilia, had some good nights out in there years ago. They also did a lovely Thai curry, but no chance today. I walked about to some other little pubs I was surprised were still there, but didn’t look much like they did in the 90s, but I ended up in the Prince Albert, where a load of people were watching the football, Arsenal against a really bad West Ham. I sat down for a while with my back to the screen, nursed a pint and sketched them watching it, lads with no faces. The food smelled expensive and not very enticing, so I didn’t eat, and then I got the tube back home. It was a year since Shane MacGowan died, and I went back to Burnt Oak to spend the evening out with my Mum and some longtime family friends, and several pints of Guinness. That was a busy day.

a night at the spurs

December 30, 2024December 30, 2024Leave a comment

While I was back in London, I unexpectedly went to see my beloved Tottenham play in the Europa League against AS Roma (another Italian team I like, who have had a weird season so far, but recently appointed Ranieri as their third coach of the year). I’ve only been to see one previous game at the new stadium, a friendly against Inter not long after it had opened, and that was over five years ago. This was the first competitive game I’ve been able to go to in about nine years. My brother was sick and couldn’t go, though my nephew did go with his friend, I didn’t go with them as they were sitting in a different part of the ground. I went early by myself (I think I’ve never been to a home game by myself before?), eating down my turkey dinner that Mum made for Thanksgiving and getting the tube to Seven Sisters. That long long walk up from there with the many thousands of others, I have not done that in at least ten years. The Roma fans were being chaperoned up there by a lot of police, that was interesting. I made it to the ground, it is so massive, and popped into the shop to get my son a half-half scarf, he also likes Roma back from our trip there years ago, though Spurs is our football love, and our football headache. My seat was high up in the north stand, very high, but I had a great central view overlooking all the action, so I sketched in my little Moleskine before kick-off. It was so exciting. I was there among all my fellow Spurs folk, and there were a lot of families, kids, older fans, a great mix. It’s easier to get tickets to the European games, but you need to have a Membership to go to Premier League games. It has been a really long time since I went to a European game at Spurs; the Cup-Winners Cup I think, back in 1991 vs Sparkasse Stockerau, the little Austrian team? They had a player called Helmut Flicker, which I thought was hilarious. I was there thinking, if we lived in London right now I would for sure try to get a season ticket, get to see a lot more games. Well, season tickets are very expensive, so maybe not, but I love it, I loved being at the Lane, I love being at the new ground, which is in the same place. Anyway, I didn’t sketch after kick-off as I wanted to pay attention to the match, and it was an extremely entertaining game. It’s Ange Postecoglou football isn’t it, it’s crazy stuff. From where I sat I could really see our shape for the first time, much better than on the limited TV screen. We don’t like going too wide, our wing-backs/full-backs really give a lot of space to their wide attackers. Both teams played full-on, there were so many goal attempts, disallowed goals, off-the-line clearances, it was nervy, and highly entertaining. We should have capitalized on our attacks, but in the end when we were 2-1 up, everyone around kept saying the game feels like a 2-2, and when Mats Hummels (who I had no idea was playing for Roma now, after those years at Dortmund) popped up and scored an equalizer, to be honest it felt like a fair result. My jetlag was kicking in, but I had the long long walk back to Seven Sisters yet to come, among the thousands leaving the stadium. It was a great night, I’m glad I went and can’t wait to go and watch another one sometime, hopefully with my son. Come on you Spurs!

a hundred years of burnt oak tube station

December 28, 20242 Comments

A few weeks ago I was back in London for a quick visit to see my Mum and my Dad, but of course managed to get a fair bit of sketching and exploring in as well. I also had to draw Burnt Oak Station, which I didn’t sketch last time I was back, even though I had that little walk around Burnt Oak that was on the radio, starting out at the tube station. What I had forgotten was that 2024 is the actual centenary of the station being built. Back in 1924 there was an extension of the Northern Line into what they were calling ‘Metroland’, according to all the old posters, and these areas that were previously fields and small settlements, your Edgwares and Hendons and Stanmores, all became part of this large suburbia of an ever expanding London, full of nice terraced houses, or orange brick council housing estates such as the Watling Estate where I grew up (as did my Mum). Burnt Oak Station is a good starting point because you could say that the Burnt Oak we know started here. Well, we were all told at school that it started with the Romans, who used to burn an oak tree to mark boundaries of areas, and yes, it kind of did. The long Roman Road, Watling Street, arguably the most important of roads in Britannia, runs right through it up on a ridgeway and gave birth to the settlements around here (Red Hill was the village up there; I’m from neighbouring Orange Hill), now known as the Edgware Road, or Burnt Oak Broadway as it comes through this area. Burnt Oak Station is down from that on the street which was named Watling Avenue, and so some of the signs inside the station still read ‘Burnt Oak (Watling)’. Locals call that street ‘the Watling’. It’s changed a lot over the years. I was back in the iconic library at the corner of Orange Hill and the Watling, and was shocked to hear that it would be knocked down and replaced with a modern building full of luxury flats. I mean, FFS. Oh, but they will build another library around the corner in Barnfield, so oh that’s ok then. (Why can’t the flats go in Barnfield and keep the historic pyramid shaped library there?) Behind the station is a dingy car park and an old market area, I don’t know if the market is still on but it we used to go there when I was a kid. It was always full of rats when the market was closed. Anyway, that is going to be developed into loads more private flats, another whole development. I’m not sure the are can handle so many more residents, and these aren’t going to be cheap. Having seen Colindale become an endless sea of new tall buildings full of expensive flats, especially over the old Police training centre you could see from the tube, with very little making it feel like an area with community, I worry the same could end up happening to Burnt Oak. All the old pubs are gone. I had a dream that they knocked down Burnt Oak station and replaced it with something big and modern (like they are doing with Colindale now, to handle all its new volume of users), and that will probably end up happening. But I’ll enjoy it while it still looks like itself. One thing I remember from years ago, when coming up the Northern Line you could usually tell which station you were at if you couldn’t see the sign, each station along this way was painted a different colour – Hendon Central was light blue, Colindale was yellow, Burnt Oak was red. They changed that years ago, and mode those three paint in a cream and dark green paint job. Now they announce the stations anyway, and the big roundel signs are pretty visible. Lot of memories here, good and bad, but growing up this was the exit point to a more interesting world, as well as the familiar entryway back home. There’s nothing like that moment when, having travelled five thousand miles across the world, my train pulls in and I go up those little stairs again, knowing I’m just minutes away from getting to my Mum’s house for a nice cup of tea. Happy 100th birthday, Burnt Oak tube!