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…

a walk around the watling (on the radio)

June 27, 2024June 27, 2024Leave a comment

I just got back last night from our two and a half week trip back to London (which included four nights down in the south of France), which felt too short, and now I’m totally exhausted after another very long transatlantic journey. Still, I’m stocked with a whole load of sketches; I didn’t have a plan of ‘must sketch this, must sketch that’ but ended up getting a lot in along the way, including a few morning walks around my home area of Burnt Oak, to see how much that has changed. The phone box in the last post has indeed been ‘disappeared’ after all these years (but not turned into flats, unlike most of what used to be Colindale). There is a lovely big colourful new mural on the corner of Barnfield and the Watling though that says ‘Burnt Oak’, which I was sketching in the image above. It was very good to be home again, to see my family. As I get older, I know these won’t last forever, and it was a long year between this visit and the last, a very long year.

Anyway, one exciting moment on this particular trip was that I was asked by BBC London to provide a small section about Burnt Oak for the 30th anniversary show of the Robert Elms radio show. I used to watch Robert Elms on TV when I was a teenager, though I’ve never listened to his show (I live in America now, but didn’t listen to the radio much in London anyway) but I know of others who are fans of his show. Elms grew up in Burnt Oak on the Watling estate and went to the same school as my older siblings, though a few years before them. So the producers asked me if I could talk a little about my own experience of growing up in Burnt Oak. They actually asked while I was still in California, but when they got back to me I happened to be in Burnt Oak, so I met someone from the show for a quick 40 minute walk around the area, right before I had to rush to Stansted to fly to Marseille. We walked from the station and down Silkstream Parade to the library, over to Watling Park and then up to the Annunciation, before popping up to that big mural. We didn’t get up to the Broadway, to see where the Stag was or all the other things that have long gone. I noticed a sign outside the library announcing a couple of architectural walks coming up, one looking at three local parks, one at three local churches. It reminded me that I should really try to organize a Burnt Oak sketchcrawl some day, through USk London. Perhaps next year. Anyway, I didn’t know when the show itself would air, but while I was on vacation (I was actually walking around Monaco) my mum got in touch telling me that one of our family friends had heard it on the radio already, last Friday. It is available still on BBC Sounds, but will only be up for the next 24 days (so, until about July 21). The show is four hours long (bit long for me guv) but if you want to jump to the bit I’m in, it’s at about 36 minutes, not long after the Amy Winehouse song. It’s a nice little walk around my area, and only a few minutes long, but I hope you enjoy it.

Anyway, back to the jetlag and travel exhaustion, I’ll rejoin the real world tomorrow…

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.

bar italia – round the corner in soho

September 1, 2023September 1, 2023Leave a comment

Looking back to London, this is the famous Bar Italia, a cafe on Frith Street in the heart of Soho. I drew this as part of two pieces I out in to the Pence Gallery’s annual Art Auction, deciding I really wanted to put in a place that meant a lot to me. Well, Soho means a lot to me, not necessarily Bar Italia, given that the last time I actually had anything here was in the mid-1990s. I just love that it is still here, still very much keeping Old Soho alive in the face of all the dross and change in this area. I drew it on an 8″x10″ piece of paper and framed it, I was really pleased with how it turned out. That might be me sat in the corner, wearing what looks like a Charleroi shirt (lot of Italians lived in Charleroi), but not exactly representative of when I would actually go there. For one thing, it’s daylight, and another, I don’t drink coffee. Bar Italia was a great place to go at about 3 or 4 in the morning, after going to whatever small Soho nightclub that played indie or rock music, and have a cold soda or even a cappuccino. I knew some Italians back then and we’d sometimes go there in those wee hours and those were the only times I ever had cappuccino, and the cappuccino in Bar Italia was really good. I can’t stand coffee, but that was nice. It was more the location, filled with interesting people, Soho people, all that little bit still awake and alive before the night bus home. In summertime the sky would already be streaked with early morning pink, as you walked down to Trafalgar Square to get the N5 from outside the National Gallery with the rest of the world. In those days I had boundless energy; if I stayed up all night, I wouldn’t even notice. I definitely had the odd occasion when I would be up all night, then rater than sleep I would just shower, have breakfast and then go off to work my day job in the Asda coffee shop. When you’re 20, you can do anything. I was a sensible 20 year old though, not very hedonistic, but I loved London. I remember going off to Germany when I was 20, to spend a year working in a school for children with disabilities, a live-in job I found so difficult and stressful that I ended up leaving, and coming home again. Mostly I just missed London. The world out there was great, but London, and this London especially, was just the best place. I’ve long since left it behind now, and found a new life in California. Pulp famously ended their Different Class album with the song ‘Bar Italia’, dedicated to this old Italian cafe, including the line “I’m fading fast, and it’s nearly dawn”. When a man is tired of London, it’s time for the Night Bus. This building, 22 Frith Street, has a longer history though, as the blue plaque indicates. This is where John Logie Baird first demonstrated his new invention, the ‘television’, back in 1926. That caught on didn’t it. Further up Frith Street is Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club – and I’ve never actually been there. When i was in my late teens and 20s, jazz clubs were not really my thing. Maybe some day I might go, and pop into Bar Italia afterwards.

This drawing will be in the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction this year; details are at: https://pencegallery.org/events/art-auction/. There’ll be a Preview Exhibit on September 8th if you’re in Davis, and bidding starts on Sept 10 through Sept 23, when the Art Auction Party takes place at the gallery, always fun, and there are loads of great artists involved this year.

Friday night by the Thames

August 16, 2023August 15, 2023Leave a comment

We definitely had to sleep in after getting back in the wee hours from Scotland. Exhausted, not feeling too well, and probably having withdrawals from all the Irn Bru and Tunnocks Teacakes, I didn’t have a lot of energy. However I had planned to go down into central London to attend the London Urban Sketchers Friday evening sketching meetup at Bankside, and despite my headache, I’m glad I did. It was cooler by the Thames, with a nice river breeze. I got there a bit too late for the start, so I just got my sketchbook out and started. As you can probably tell, this is Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, with the tall tower of Tate Modern in the background. There were a lot of tourists about, enjoying the last day of June next to my favourite river. It was extremely relaxing for me to get down here and into my sketchbook. People lined up to see the latest show at the Globe; I really wish I’d had the forethought to book tickets to see something there, as I’ve never actually seen a play there, even though it opened while I was a drama student twenty-odd years ago. I remember our Places of Performance class did visit the Globe in about 1998 or 1999, when it was still a new addition to London, for a tour. During the early part of the pandemic, our family would watch full plays provided by the Globe online for small donations, filmed in the preceding years, since they were closed back in 2020 and we had no idea what would happen. So I love the Globe, but still have yet to go there properly. Some day.

I have also never been mudlarking by the Thames. The tides were low that evening, so there were quite a few people down there looking around in the silty mud and stones, looking for whatever the old Thames has dredged up. People find things that are centuries old. I sketched them in my little Fabriano, looking down from the Embankment, and then sat on the steps leading down to the River. A couple of hours later, the water was already way back up there (I presume everyone got back up before that?). The Thames is a tidal river, at London anyway, due to its proximity to the Thames Estuary which is where it meets the North Sea. So the river goes right up and down a couple of times each day.

The London Urban Sketchers met up again outside the Tate to look at each others sketchbooks. It wasn’t a huge crowd this evening, but I gather that the monthly “Let’s Draw London” sketchcrawl attendances have been so big that they have started holding them twice per month in the same location. These smaller evening events are bonus meet-ups for the summertime. I spoke to a few familiar faces, and looked through sketchbooks of some newer sketchers, and remembered how much I always enjoyed this part of urban sketching. I’d not organized or even attended a sketchcrawl in Davis or anywhere for quite a long time, so it was great to get to meet the sketchers again. I resolved to start organizing more in Davis again (and I just held one this past weekend, in fact, on a very hot mid-August morning). When we were done, I was not quite done yet. I stood beneath the Millennium Bridge (to all those tour guides who still insist that Londoners call it the ‘Wobbly Bridge’, no they don’t, do they. They did back in 2000 when it opened, and when it wobbled so much that all the high-end architects involved in its design were stumped and they closed it, but then they fixed the wobble and reopened it in early 2002. Nobody is still calling it the wobbly bridge except tour guides telling a story. And I used to be one of them, but that was in 2000 when it was actually still wobbling) . Anyway, I drew that ever-changing City of London skyline again. Every time I return, it looks different. The top of Tower 42 was decked in Pride colours. I forget the names of all these towers now, the walky-talky, the big spinach, the witch’s watering can, the flake, I honestly cant keep up with all the silly names. Call them what you want. Call the Millennium Bridge ‘the Wobbly Bridge’ if you like, it doesn’t really matter. That’s the great thing about London, names just spring up out of nothing, sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t. Even the Thames gets a name change when flowing through Oxford, where they call it the Isis, though maybe in more hushed tones than before.

And finally, Morph. This year in London there are loads of statues of Morph, painted in a million different ways, and this one outside the Globe was as you’d expect painted to look like William Shakespeare. For those who for some reason have no idea who Morph is, Morph was a little plasticine stop-motion animated character created by Peter Lord, and appeared on the TV shows of the late Tony Hart, every kids favourite fatherly TV art figure (quickly checks online, we still think he’s ok right, no scandals there yeah? Phew, he’s fine. You never know when it comes to our 70s and 80s kids TV heroes in Britain). Tony Hart was also the only person we knew of who was named after three body parts. Morph was a national treasure though, even though he could only speak in little sounds, and he had a friend called Chas and this little brush that would follow them round like a dog. Oh, and he had a super power where he would turn himself into a kind of cylindrical tube of plasticine and ‘morph’ his way through the solid wood of a table. Having sketched Morph, the sun was finally down over the Thames, so I got a very crowded tube back home.

piccadilly to tower hill

July 31, 2023July 31, 2023Leave a comment

I didn’t do a lot of London sketching on the first few days of our trip, just what I could get in quick moments. The one above was drawn while waiting for my wife, I was outside Waterstones in Piccadilly (in the building which used to be Simpson, Piccadilly, the old department store which was the inspiration for the TV show Are You Being Served). Looking towards Piccadilly Circus. It was the sky that interested me.

We walked into Mayfair and up towards Savile Row. It’s incredible, I’ve never actually been up Savile Row. I explored London for years but for some reason Mayfair a lot less so, though I would give open-top bus tours round a lot of the fancy squares and high-end streets, twenty-odd years ago. I had it in my head that Savile Row was further up, on the other side of Oxford Street somewhere, but of course it’s just a block off Regent Street. I do love that even in London I can be surprised and find places I’d not really been to before. The only place on Savile Row I was interested in seeing of course was #3, now an Abercrombie and Fitch, but that was once the HQ of the Beatles’ Apple Corps, and where they played that concert on the roof in January 1969. Watch ‘Get Back’, it’s my favourite thing ever (right up there with Star Wars and The Dark Crystal). There’s a blue plaque to commemorate the historic event, and so I put that in my sketchbook.

We were on our way to take a London Walk, over by St.Paul’s. It was the walk called “Old London”, and was a two-hour-plus stroll through ancient streets in the City, ending up at Tower Hill. It was a hot day, but our guide was excellent and she took us along streets I hadn’t explored in years, or didn’t even know about (and I have given walking tours in this part of London myself years ago). See https://www.walks.com/ for details on all their walks, given by accredited blue-badge guides, they are great and know a lot more than me. I was remembering some of the old stuff I used to know, but was fascinated by the stories. I did one sketch of St. Vedast-Alias-Foster, one of the many Christopher Wren churches, while we waited.

When it was over my wife got the tube back home while I stayed out a bit longer to do some sketching before dinner. I decided to draw the Tower, with that big sundial thing in the foreground. I was pretty tired though, my heart wasn’t really in it, so I left it as it was and got on the District Line. We were off to Scotland next day.

watling centre

July 30, 2023July 30, 2023Leave a comment

As with most of my trips back to the UK, there’s usually a sketch from Burnt Oak at the start of it. I wake up early and get out for morning walk with my sketchbook, eager to draw something that isn’t the UC Davis Bike Barn or something. I didn’t walk very far on this one morning, just up to the corner of Orange Hill and Deansbrook, a couple of minutes form my mum’s house. I’m getting very conscious that I won’t be doing this forever. There will be a day when I don’t come back to Burnt Oak much, like everyone else who left, and maybe I won’t even come back to London as much; I’m always torn with the idea of letting London go, but I just can’t, can I. It’s still my favourite city, annoy me though it does. It is definitely feeling too crowded, and while that may be just because I’m coming from less-crowded Davis in a state designed for bigger cars and wider roads (I don’t even drive, I ride a bike), there seems to be so many more cars parked along all these narrow roads, crammed three or four fold onto small driveways built for one or two. I’m not a fan of this new ‘ULEZ’ (Ultra Low Emissions Zone) expansion that is happening – although London evidently needs to improve its air quality – it forces a lot of people who do need their car to buy a newer car they can’t really afford. Mostly though I just think it’s a rubbish name, they really could have come up with something better, I mean if it didn’t sound like a 2nd-person-plural French verb ending it might catch on more with the crowd who don’t like the sound of that sort of thing. But as I see all the cars squeezing themselves around the streets in these old neighbourhoods, I think to myself something needs to be done to reduce or discourage the number of cars. This street in particular, Orange Hill Road, it seems there is usually traffic backed all the way up from Watling Avenue almost to Deansbrook, but when there isn’t, cars will sometimes bomb down here like it’s 200cc MarioKart. I was up early, but even at this hour there was a lot of traffic. This is the Watling Centre. I stood next to the bus stop across the street to draw; as this is Britain, people started queuing up behind me in a polite line, I had to gesture for them to go ahead of me. I’m still disappointed that TFL removed the very useful 305 bus route that came up here, joining our part of Burnt Oak with Edgware. So, the Watling Centre, this is where my mum and dad had their wedding party back in 1991. They obviously met a long time before that, otherwise I’d be a lot younger. I remember that party, we had a lot of family and friends there, friends we loved, family we liked, and also family we didn’t like, that’s how it goes, but it was a good party. There was a lot of dancing to Irish songs, small kids running around. My schoolfriend Terry came, I still have a photo of him in his blue cardigan. I remember eating an entire chocolate mousse cake, because when I was 15 I could eat everything in London and still be like a gangly skinny rake with unbrushable red hair. My uncle Eddie wheeled a shopping trolley with all the remaining booze in it back to our house, and then told me stories all night about my dad in the old days. Fun times. It’s funny, I know I have been to many other events here but I don’t remember them all now. I think this is where I briefly went to karate class, which despite being taught by a family friend, I only went to twice, with my neighbour across the street. There was another kid from my form class at school who showed up, and he was the sort of kid to take the piss the entire time and then continue at school next day, so I stopped going. In earlier years, I would go to the field next to this building with other local kids and look for conkers, because we all knew this was the best place in Burnt Oak to get good conkers. Anyway that’s enough “I ‘member when…” mawkish memories and city-planning moans. I have a few more London sketches to post, then it’s Scotland all the way. We had a great time up there, but I may have drunk too much Irn Bru.

Afternoon at the Nags

July 19, 2023July 19, 20232 Comments

After spending the day in South Ken and Knightsbridge, I sought out another place I have not been to in over two decades. The Nags Head, in a quiet back road behind the busy Knightsbridge, was an old favourite place of mine in the late 90s, where I would go with my friends Rob (a mate from university), and Nick (an old schoolfriend of Rob, whose family lived in an apartment steps away from the pub). It’s an old place, stock full with interesting decoration, like a step into another world. And it had not changed in all this time. The landlord Kevin Moran was there; I remember him from all those years ago, and I had a nice chat with him while sat inside the pub, cooling off from the very hot weather outside. He was telling me of his various travels. When I first came by, I actually started to do a sketch outside, with the intention of finishing that and coming in to cool off, but I was already so warm that I did only the outline outside, stood in the narrow street in the sunshine. There was a group of South African lads outside (not pictured in the sketch); when I was waiting to order a pint I heard one say to Mr Moran, while pointing out a sketch of the pub that was hanging on the wall, that he saw another artist outside doing a drawing a bit like this. There were about two or three different sketches of the pub on the walls, inside and outside. I said, “Yeah that was me!” and showed them what I’d done already. The music was nice in there, very relaxing, and Mr. Moran chatted with his customers, and would ask how people were doing, sometimes popping out for a chat with the South African lads. I sketched the inside as I drank my cold beer, sat in a little corner I have a photo of me sitting in back in about 1999. I remember spending new year’s eve 2001-2002 in here, one of the last times I visited, and a Canadian friend Ben (who I lived with for a short while in France; I was back visiting from Aix at the time) was with me and entertaining people with card tricks, being a magician. No cellphones allowed in here still; back in those days only a few of us had them, and I never liked using them much anyway, but still funny to see the same sign. I chatted for a while with another old regular called David, a well-travelled man who loves London but was reassuring that I’d done the right thing by moving to California, because California is pretty great (and I agree). I showed Mr. Moran the sketch afterwards and he liked it, and later on I finished off the outside drawing as well. It was really nice to find this place again; without the modern GPS on my phone, I think I may have struggled to remember where it was.

This last sketch below was drawn very close by on Knightsbridge, the top of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel. It’s a pretty glorious building, though I was getting tired of drawing and left it at the roof and the speckled May sky. I’m fairly sure I’ve been into the bar there before with Rob and his pals, back in those late 90s. Hyde Park Corner has some of the most expensive hotels in London. I did pop into Harrods nearby for a little bit, to take a look around the Food Court, but I didn’t stay long as I needed to get to my sister’s place by Grahame Park, Colindale, for dinner, and then back home for a late night Zoom meeting with California (that finished at 1am my time…). I was pretty tired after a day of sketching and stepping back in time, but it was well worth it.