Another May in Davis

July 24, 2025Leave a comment

Time to start catching up on posting my sketches, so here’s a few more from the month of the May. In the grand story of this blog, which effectively is my diary of living in Davis for all to see, it’s good to have things in order as much as possible, though the dates may not always follow one another directly. I’m not trying to tell a story out of sequence, this isn’t Pulp Fiction, though I do use a lot of Pulp Fiction references in my daily life, especially to my wife who gets them, as opposed to my teenager who definitely doesn’t. You have to be from the 90s. The 90s is My favourite version of Pulp Fiction though is the one I saw on TV in America many years ago, which had some additional scenes not in the original release, and also hilariously replaced as much of the swearing as possible, because American TV doesn’t like a swear word. Not simply muting the odd f or sh but literally replacing the words with something else. I remember they changed the odd “mf” to “my friend” or even “mama sucker” (!), but the best bit was that famous scene in the diner at the end, where Jules is yelling at Tim Roth “Tell that funky babe to chill! Chill that funky babe out! Say Babe Be Cool!” Speaking of diners, here’s one that we would swear by. This is the Black Bear Diner on the corner of B and 2nd. I drew this one lunchtime while walking back to campus, and I was taken by that sky. I stood under a tree for a bit of shade. We would go there for breakfast after doing the Turkey Trot or other runs. We’d take our son here when he was little for pancakes. I like their breakfasts (though I don’t eat bacon, ‘cos I don’t dig on swine. I wouldn’t eat the filthy mama sucker). I love their cinnamon roll french toast, covered in lashings of warm maple syrup, enough calories to last you through the winter.

This is next to Cloud Forest Cafe, with the Mustard Seed in the background. I was drawing this at lunchtime, drawn in by all that red, contrasted against all the green leaves, which you just have to imagine as being green here. In fact letting yourself imagine all the green rather than paint it in makes the red stand out a lot more. Red and green are not great next to each other (especially for those with colour vision deficiency). That said, the main reason I didn’t paint the rest is that I ran out of lunchtime and had to get back to the office. One man who had been sitting outside the cafe watching me did say to me that I should draw the building across the street, which I had actually never sketched (but have done so since). This is a more interesting view though. The red phone box is away to my right just off the page. I’ve drawn that a few times.

This one at the corner of E and 4th I did colour in. I sketched after work, it was a hot afternoon but times are stressful (work, politics, the endless news and noise cycle) and I really needed to sketch. I always need to sketch but these days more than ever. In fact I have done a lot more sketching in 2025 than in 2024. On the chart I keep I’m up to about where I was in mid-October, and it’s only mid-July, and I have a full sketching trip still planned. Almost like I need to draw to keep my mind safe. As I sketched, a man walked past wearing one of those hats, you know. He also wore a bum-bag (they call them fanny-packs here but I can’t call them that because it means something else where I’m from) made out of an American flag, so clearly going for a certain look. I don’t remember what the t-shirt said, probably something to ‘own the libs’ or whatever. No, I wasn’t gonna sketch him. I focused on listening to my audiobook instead and tried to catch the different greens on the trees. I was using a new sketchbook by this point of the month, a Hahnemuhle watercolour book, 200 gsm, I had never used one before. I like it, it’s slightly slower on the pen but not by much (I notice it when I am trying to do lots of scribbles, seems to feel like more of an effort than in the Moleskine), and it takes the watercolour really well like the Moleskine does, and more comfortable than painting in the Seawhites. That store on the corner, “Why Not Boba” is one of many boba shops that apparently the world needs so many of these days. I remember it used be where ‘Mathnasium’ was, I can’t remember what they did there but used to imagine it was a place to do mental gymnastics, but half the world are experts in mental gymnastics these days. I have never had boba tea, it’s probably nice but I won’t try new things. I’d probably make some poor Boba Fett joke that has been done a million times and walk out ashamed.

This scene is just a block away, corner of 3rd and E, looking up towards Chase Bank which is right next to Why Not Boba. I kept thinking of jokes about Bank Bobas, “hands up this is a bobbery”, but none of them were very good so kept them in my head. I decided not to colour this in, the decision was based on the fact I couldn’t be bothered. Or boba’d. The bank sign has the ‘E’ obscured, so it just says Chas. This reminded me of Chas’n’Dave. That made me think, Chas’n’Davis. I could come up with Cockney Chas’n’Davis style songs about Davis. I started with a new version of the classic ‘Rabbit’, but with ‘Boba’. “Boba-boba-boba-boba-boba-boba-boba-boba…” “You got more Boba than Nugget…” but none of it really made sense. I tried the Margate song. “Daaaaahn to Davis, you can keep yer Farmers Market, I tell that that I’d rather have a pint of boba tea down Davis in the rain.” That works slightly better, the old Courage Best words coming in, but it doesn’t rain much in Davis. I tried one of the Spurs songs. “Ossie’s goin’ to Picnic Day, His Doxie’s in the Derby,” yeah that doesn’t work. So I gave up on the whole Chas’n’Davis idea, it was rubbish. Can’t mix Cockney culture with Davis culture. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner. That’ll do, more Davis sketches to be posted soon. I can’t stop drawing.

crème de la crème

July 17, 2025Leave a comment

I like the little alleys that connect E Street to D Street, between 3rd and 2nd, there are little shops and cafes and narrow passages to explore. It’s a charming and shaded quarter and behind the Mustard Seed restaurant is this little store called Crème de la Crème. The lady who runs the store came out and was talking to me, she liked the sketch and I think she had heard of me and seen my other work, and she lent me a chair to sit on while I sketched. I sat for a while but ended up having to stand again, as I was losing some of my shade, and sitting changes my perspective very slightly. I appreciated the gesture though. Sometimes when I am sketching on the street I do wish someone would come along with a chair. That happened once in the Castro in San Francisco, someone just brought one out from their house for me, which was nice. I remember once in Whitechapel in London these teenage lads saw me sketching, it was a really hot day, and they decided to get me a drink from the shop, a cold bottle of Coke. I was very touched by the gesture and even drank some of it, but I don’t like Coke (I prefer Pepsi Max). I never forgot that though, it’s funny how little acts of kindness do stick with you. Anyway, I have sketched this store before, but it was a very long time ago, back in 2011 in fact. I think it was on the day of a Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawl where I was focusing on the interstitial spaces of downtown, those areas between the streets, which are always fun to explore. That sketch is below. There is a lot more foliage around it now, the little plant pot with ‘Bonjour’ on it is still there, as are the little table and chairs. I don’t see the sign that says “Live a Good Life” any more, but I like to think that in between 2011 and 2025 I have lived a good life, so I guess I have done what it said. 2011 feels like such a long time ago. I was thinking about the early years in Davis, well before 2011, the other night and about how much I have changed and also how much I have not, because we all grow as years go by but we also shrink, in ways we might not notice. I’ve become shyer in recent years, more likely to hide away than I used to, even from people I know. I haven’t organized a sketchcrawl since last Fall, though I am planning to start organizing sketching events again this Fall. Areas like this are good places to sketch and explore. I might go back and draw from a different angle.

celebrate davis 2025

July 10, 2025July 8, 2025Leave a comment

Every year the city holds an event called ‘Celebrate Davis’, in which loads of local businesses and organizations put up stalls at Community Park, food and drink vendors, musical performances, and then a firework show which scares our cats (we live nearby). This year they didn’t have the fireworks, much to the pleasure of the neighbourhood pets, instead having a big drone show. There was a little train for the kids to ride on, plus an inflatable forest. There was also an exhibit of classic cars by a local group of auto enthusiasts, and that’s what I was going over to sketch. It was really hot out, and I was feeling tired, but I like to sketch old cars, even though they are difficult, it’s a good challenge. I drew this blue Chevrolet ZL1, and was chatting to the owner for a bit. The car folk were a nice crowd, and very willing to share a story about their cars with people taking a look. I also drew the one below, a Chevy Camaro SS, but just quickly in pencil so it’s just the outlines, I decided not to ink and paint it.

I also drew the old red fire truck that was out in the main field. I grabbed a beer at the little Sudwerk stand (the guy selling me my beer recognized my accent as British and said he was a soccer fan (a fan of “the PreMEER League” as they say here) and I asked who. He said with a little embarrassment “Manchester United”, even after the terrible season they had been having, and I said not to worry, I am a Spurs fan and we have been even worse, but we’ll beat United in the Europa League Final (and we did). I stood and sketched the fire truck, going quickly in pencil. I like drawing things like this because it’s not just about the sketching, or the recording of an event, or even that I like fire trucks (though my teenager has long since outgrown the toddler-era delight of them, and I used to draw them back in those days for their amusement), but it’s like figuring out a puzzle, working on a bit of perspective, this goes there, that goes there, it all comes together. I sketched fast, my beer in its plastic cup was at my feet and likely to either be knocked down by the kids running around next to me, or invaded by ants who love a beer. (Do ants love a beer? I know that fruit flies like a banana but I’ll have to check on ants. I know they like the cat food, and if I leave the Nutella unguarded even with its lid on our kitchen becomes like Ant Glastonbury).

There was live music too, and while waiting for my wife to come over and join me for the drone show I sketched the band that was playing, they were very good. I think they were called ‘Immediate Spank’ and the best sketches I could get were from a distance and very very sketchy, as you see below. I was quite tired by this point, and focused on shapes and colours, the atmosphere. It’s quite fun drawing like that, but it’s also pretty much all the detail I could see. Interesting band name though. The sort of name I would forget and call something else, Immersible Tank or Immaculate Wank or something. Coming up with a band name is hard. The only band I’ve been in was at school, and we were called Gonads. That was my idea. Actually I was briefly part of another band at college which rehearsed a few times but never played, they called themselves the Lemon Sharks, but I didn’t really get on with them, I wasn’t a very good guitarist (they weren’t exactly Top of the Pops themselves) and my mates were not impressed by them, so that doesn’t count. Gonads on the other hand was chaotic fun, and we delighted in getting booed off stage every year at the big school variety show. I wish I could go back in time and sketch us, but I’d probably die of embarrassment.

And then we watched the Drone show, which was a first for Davis I think (did they have it last year? I don’t remember). We saw the drones rise from the field like an army of robots in a sci-fi film. We are very much in the future now, the idea of something like this did not exist when I first moved to America. They formed into the logo of the City of Davis, and then slowly formed into a series of other Davis related shapes – bikes, double-decker buses, a large deformed frog, it was fun guessing what was what – plus some logos of sponsoring businesses. It was fun, I enjoyed it. The fireworks are not completely going away, we still had them on July 4 (my cats hid under the couch), but this was a creative new addition to the event. After this, we took the short walk home. It’s nice living close to these events.

davis farmers market

July 5, 20251 Comment

Still making it through the sketch backlog, here are some from the Davis Farmer’s Market in early May. (I say Farmer’s Market, but I think it might be the Farmers’ Market which actually makes more sense, as in the Market of the Farmers (plural), it’s not the market of a single farmer who owns all the stalls and controls the means of production, I’m not an economist so I couldn’t really say) (actually a quick butchers at their website shows it is simply the ‘Davis Farmers Market’ with no possessive apostrophe at all, confusing things even further, is it a place where you can go and buy various farmers? Do they all line up like the droids outside the Jawa’s Sand Crawler? “Farmer Giles, two for a pound, ger your Farmer Giles here.”) (It is a truth known to all British folk that to be a real farmer, you have to be called ‘Giles’). Anyway I went to the Farmers Market and sketched. And then bought a Farmer to put in my salad later. Not really, I don’t eat salads. This was on the hottest day of the year so far, it was a whopping 94 degrees, which is very hot for early May. It is currently early July and the weather is of a similar temperature, and I am not a fan of hot weather, but I live in the Central Valley and it’s Hot. I thought about going down to the City today because it is generally a lot cooler down there, but in the end I couldn’t be bothered. I do need to get out and sketch though. It keeps my mind off of everything. I think about apostrophes rather than catastrophes.

Let’s have a look at some of the people who were at the Farmers Market that particular Saturday. Markets are good places for quick people sketches, because they move more slowly than they do at, for example, a bus station or a 4am Black Friday stampede outside Walmart. I do tend to mix and match a bit, so you might get one person’s head and another person’s body or legs, or the t-shirt the person you have drawn was wearing replaced by that of the next passer-by with more interesting attire. (Wow that sentence was a slog wasn’t it. “You can type this sh*t George but you can’t say it.”) Then there was this couple, one of whom was definitely wearing a cape and a witch’s hat, along with a mask, and well it was more interesting than the usual khakis and baseball caps or whatever. I bet it felt hot in all that black though. Below, some more people, there’s no way that cellphone man was wearing a green t-shirt with a big white square on it, I must have seen that on someone else. I wonder what was inside the box? I can’t just make stuff up so I left it blank. These are drawn in my little Seawhite book, which is not the best for getting much bang out of the watercolour, they look a bit like dry markers. The colourfully dreessed woman at the bottom with flowers in her hat was at a stall with North African food which looked very tasty, but I have not yet tried. I was listening to a singer/guitarist next to me who was actually very good. I overheard a woman talking to him too, she was a songwriter. I like listening to people talk about song writing. It’s such a personal act of creation, and I do it myself, but I don’t share it, just my drawings. And this blog writing, which as we have determined isn’t really writing. Anyway, this also isn’t fine art drawing, just me going about with my sketchbook trying to record the real world, and this is what comes out. People passs by in the background, just a few lines and a splatter of paint, but they were real people too, now only ghosts on a page.

And then as the Farmers Market drew to a close I drew the stall with all the baskets, next to the Market Info hut. All those people lining up to ask (a) where the apostrophe is and (b) where they can buy farmers. they sell hats and t-shirts with the Farmers Market logo on (you can add your own apostrophe if you feel you need to) you can get your market goods (not farmers) specially wrapped up into a gift basket at Christmas time, which is nice. Anyway, this was me sketching at the market, and already that was two months ago. Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana, etc. I had an overpriced chocolate croissant and went home.

the rest is April

June 24, 2025June 24, 20253 Comments

As I’ve said, I am a bit behind in my posting, though not in my sketching, and it’s another one of those times when I have a backlog of regular day-to-day sketches of Davis to post but not really a lot of stories to tell about them. I am sketching more than ever it seems, as I do when I need to think about something else; yay for anxious and uncertain and turbulent political times, I guess. I’m hiding in my sketchbook. Anyway, as a way to catch up, here are a bunch of sketches from around Davis in April. It’s already past mid-June in the real world, and if April thought things were bad, wait until they get to June. At least Spurs have won a trophy and sacked a manager in that time. Ok, let’s dive in. The building above is on 5th Street, and the bench outside commemorates where young Officer Natalie Corona was tragically shot several years ago, right here. I’ll always think of that awful thing happening when I pass by here. I stood over the street in the shade of a tree to sketch, headphones on. A woman passing by on the other side called over to ask something, I couldn’t hear over the traffic and whatever podcast I was listening to, football or history or something. Turned out she was asking where the train station was. I couldn’t tell why she had to yell it across a busy street and not ask one of the people passing by on that side, but I pointed in the vague direction of where the station is and put my headphones back on.

Here’s another from downtown, this time on the corner of 2nd and D, across from the First National Bank. I don’t know if this was the actual first national bank, seems like a wild claim to me, but I was drawn to the spots of yellow. These are days when I just need to draw something. I get out, eat lunch, have to draw. Helps me focus. I always go on about why I draw. I brew it down to the simple because I like drawing, which is good enough for me and good enough for you. Do I always like what I’m drawing? Probably not, but I like the act of drawing. I am up early right now and going for a run soon. It will probably be slow and not very interesting, running around the same circuit of streets and paths as always, nothing new to see, and not breaking any records or even really pushing myself, but its exercise, and when I do the interesting runs I need to have done the boring ones. It’s all exercising the muscles, practicing pacing myself, seeing what I can do in a certain amount of time and being alright with it. I track my running, but I track my drawing too. I don’t really push myself too hard to do anything out of the ordinary and I probably should, but while I’m thinking about doing that I’ll just go out drawing the world and see what happens. I tend to end up drawing places I’ve drawn many times before, but I’ve been living in this small town for 20 years now so I’m really just tracking the changes. I’m sure Cezanne felt like that as he was sitting under a tree in Aix-en-Provence painting Mont St. Victoire yet again. But I never drew that corner before, so it’s a new place ticked off the list.

Here is another sketch of the newly reimagined G Street, a couple of the big useful yellow chairs that have been placed in random spots on the side of the now pedestrianized road. I have never sat in one of these types of big chair other than for one of those photos where you go “look at me, I’m really small” and pull a face. It was warm out while I sketched this and being mid-April my nose was probably running, but I can’t remember all the details now. I am not really in love with G Street. It may be a while before it figures out what it really is. My favourite place on G Street was a couple of blocks up, the Regal Cinema with the stadium seating, but it has closed now because cinemas are closing. We still have the Regal on F Street which is slightly bigger but I don’t like as much, and we have the Varsity on 2nd which is great for the arthouse and quirky movies, you probably won’t see ‘Quick Angry Car Chase IX’ there (or whatever action films are called), though we have seen some really good films there. But I miss the other cinema on G Street because it was a couple of blocks less to cycle from my house, and one of my favourite restaurants Thai Nakorn was next door, also now closed.

On to more a familiar street for me, E Street, and Bizarro World Comics next to Chipotle. I stood in the little alley next to the Bull’n’Mouth (formerly De Vere’s; I feel I have to keep saying that in the same way we would say “X, formerly Twitter” but it’s not really a comparable comparison at all, and I don’t say “Bizarro World, formerly Bogey’s Books”, but that’s because Bizarro World used to be on 5th Street and moved here after Bogey’s went bye-bye). Anyway, that’s where I stood. I have bought comics from them over the years, though not recently since I’m not reading as many now. I have never rented movies from them, but if that’s still a thing, good on them. We were talking about that last night, how when I first moved to Davis we would rent movies and shows on DVD or even Video from Blockbuster (which was where Panera is now; I stopped calling it “Panera, formerly Blockbuster” right away because Panera sells big sandwiches that you don’t have to return nor rewind). Then Netflix came along and it was brilliant, getting our DVDs in the mail from our wishlist, mailing them back when we want, getting another, and you don’t even have to rewind DVDs, this is the future. Blockbuster went the way of MySpace (but we didn’t throw away our Blockbuster cards, did we? No we still hold on to them just in case, don’t we). Then Netflix was like, you don’t need DVDs, you can just stream stuff! Wow, mind blown. And they had all the movies, and all new shows they would make themselves and binge all at once, and we finally had broadband internet capable of handling that, what a time to be alive. Then bit by bit other streaming services came along, and Netflix seemed not to have quite as many movies you wanted to watch, but that’s ok because this other one had so many, and then this other had, and then this other one, and now there are so many different streaming services which you have to pay for, and none of them seem to have the movies you want to watch now so you still end up having to look for it on Amazon Prime (which you pay for) and then pay a rental fee to rent that movie so you can watch it that night. Just like when we’d go down the video store, except instead of watching trailers for other movies at the start of the video, you get to watch a couple of minutes of the same tedious adverts. What a time to be alive, eh.

And further down E Street, another building I have sketched before a few times. I like the triangle bits, they remind me of Darth Vader’s mouth. They also remind me of those houses you see a lot in north west London, in the rows of suburbia that spread for miles, leafy Middlesex (I mean, “north-west Greater London, formerly called Middlesex”). If I ever leave Davis I’ll probably miss drawing this building. If I ever leave Davis I will probably get the urge to come back to draw whatever new buildings get built. I get that with London, the need to come back and record what’s still there and what is new. This gets me back to the whole ‘why I draw’ thing again. I draw to record the changes, so I can look back over two or three drawings I have done of the same place years apart and saw, oh yeah, looks a bit different. I have drawn many hundreds of drawings of Davis, thousands really (let’s say millions) and so I have this record of two decades in this place, scenes of my everyday life. Nothing special, not an unusual life, not an unusual town, just a place like any other. Things happen, most of the time they don’t. Things change slowly, sometimes a bit more quickly. That’s one of the reasons I draw. Mostly though it’s just a side-effect, I draw because I have to. Even when I try to take a break from it, I can’t really. I will still scribble on my notepad, or draw cartoons on my iPad, or design football shirts on the back of scrap bits of paper or envelopes lying on my desk.

That same evening, I popped into the aforementioned Bull’n’Mouth pub (formerly De Vere’s) and sketched the colourful bar area. “Is It Beer You’re Looking For?” it reads, above a large selection of not-beers. I did have a couple of beers; I find it harder these days to actually finish a beer, most of the ones now are way too hoppy, or make my stomach feel funny, or I just don’t like the taste. I drink a beer slowly when I sketch anyway. It’s a nice pub still, I probably liked it more as De Vere’s but that’s because of the Irish theme, which they don’t do any more. I used to like having a pint of Smithwicks here, but they don’t serve it now. Other than that, it still looks mostly the same. I like their cosy little library area.

And finally, on the last day of April we find ourselves once again at the comic shop next door, Bizarro World as seen from across the street. A building with a tree in front of it, the typical Davis sketch. I wander about in my spare moments, looking for something new to draw, but I’m so predictable. A building with a tree in front is like comfort food for a suburban urban sketcher. Now I am thinking forward, it’s already June but it will soon be July, and then August, and then I will be in Poland for the 2025 Urban Sketching Symposium, held in the city of Poznań, my first Symposium since 2019. I’m actually feeling nervous, not scared exactly, but apprehensive. The Symposia are so big now, I worry about feeling lost. I do know some people who are going, but it’s been a long time and I feel a bit outside of everything these days, the whole urban sketching community, like I’m a little bit from a previous world. I’ve become very shy since the pandemic, the thought of being lost among all those sketchers… I get overwhelmed and just wander off on my own. I’m sure it will be ok. When I’m around a whole world of people also sketching, I remember that it’s not just me, I’m not alone in my sketching obsession. And so instead of worrying, I’ll just keep sketching. That was April, another April in the bag.

some trees on campus in april

June 22, 2025June 22, 20252 Comments

April was a long time ago now but I’m still posting old sketches. I am forever behind but it’s good to see how the world used to look in the before-times. It’s midsummer already (astronomically, though not seasonally, summer has just begun). Here are a few from a couple of months ago which are very tree-focused, two trees from campus below plus a panorama of the UC Davis Quad showing a lot of trees all at once, like some kind of tree party. The annual Picnic Day is around this time of year but I avoided that kind of thing this year, wasn’t up for the crowds and walking around feeling hot and bored. No sketching Picnic Day 2025. This drawing was done after work one day when the novelty of extended periods of sunlight in late afternoon had not yet worn off, and it wasn’t too hot yet. I like this one a lot though, I might use it in future things at work if I want a regular campus panorama scene. Here are a couple more trees.

Glory Glory in Bilbao

June 22, 2025Leave a comment

Well this happened a month ago – Tottenham Hotspur finally won a trophy after 17 years without one. That’s the stat, 17 years without a trophy, as if to say the football was good 17 years ago, good this year, and not in between, when that’s not really the case. But we won the Europa League, the third time we have won that particular trophy (the first was in 1972, the second in 1984 which I still remember). The final wasn’t pretty, and I had to be at home that day to watch it, but we beat Manchester United 1-0 and that’s that. All those years of scintillating exciting football and nearly getting there with one of the best Spurs teams I’ve ever seen, followed by a few years of that team declining and leaving and chopping and changing the managers and styles, the Contes and Mourinhos boring us to death, and then we bring in Big Ange Postecoglou, an Australian of Greek origin with big bold ideas who “always wins something in his second season” and changed the whole style to something far more attacking and fun to watch. It started well, top after his first ten games, the stadium singing Robbie Williams songs to him, saying “look Mate” a lot and looking at the floor when answering questions, that cough and those sighs, but then we kept getting so many injuries, and he would not change his cavalier style. We ended up fifth, but teams were figuring us out. So the second season, and we never got off the ground in the league, although we did beat the champions Man City away 4-0, everyone else beat us, except United who were terrible. Somehow we managed to stay alive in the Europa League – the new format helped, no heavyweight teams dropping down from the Champions League meant the most difficult team we faced was Eintracht Frankfurt. Even Manchester United making the final was a bit of a fluke, they were even more terrible than us this season (though in the end they finished a couple of spots above us, we did beat them four times over the course of the season which is amazing). So we go into the final, the teams 16th and 17th in the Premier League, the worst version of Spurs and the worst version of United I have ever seen in my lifetime, teams with records that in any other season would probably have seen them relegated, and yet one of them would get into the Champions League?! That is the prize of winning this easier Europa League, and we did it, with a goal scored by accident by Brennan Johnson, and an off the line clearance by Van De Ven that will go down in the history books and probably some of the physics books, and just for now, I don’t care about being 17th, about losing more games in one season than ever before, we won the cup. Bilbao will live on forever for us Spurs fans. It was like the end of Lord of the Rings. We had beaten Bodo in the semi before Pippin a sorry Man U in Bilbao by a nice goal and getting Merry at the Lane, Baggin’ the trophy and opening more doors as we soar on to the Champions League. The return of the Kings. My brother and nephew were watching at the Spurs stadium on the big screens set up there, and it sounds like it was a fun night. I felt relieved more than anything, after the disappointment of 2019. But a trophy is just a trophy. We came 17th in the league, we kept losing so many games – I like watching Spurs win games, and entertain as well. Big Ange who does not change his style refused to change it in the league, and we nearly got relegated, but for some reason changed it in the Europa and we won the thing. It was fun seeing the big parade, and now we can get all those people off our backs who say we never win trophies (Newcastle can do the same now too, and it’s been way longer for them). But 17th man, it ain’t good enough. So less than two weeks later, Big Ange got the sack. I’m fine with that, he would have been sacked by October anyway. He leaves as a trophy winner, no hard feelings, now we start again with our new guy, Thomas Frank. Come on you Spurs!

kerr

June 11, 2025June 11, 2025Leave a comment

April seems like such a long time ago now. Last week does too, and yesterday, even this morning feels like so long ago. What did I eat for lunch, I don’t remember that far back. Even the start of this paragraph feels like another age, and the start of this sentence feels like some sort of golden epoch before the ever increasing cycle of doom/gloom sets in. Even the time between the start of a word and the end of a word, something else has bloody happened. I can see what’s coming in the very near future too, to the point where I can’t even finish a. Even w. The most accurate sentence is actually only three letters long anyway, WTF. But here is a look back to April, after our trip to DC and NY, I have a few April sketches to share, then quite a few May ones, several June sketches, and by then it will be like time for the next election right, haha, only joking. Anyway it is good to keep posting my sketches on my site, adding to the story, so if anyone looks through my site in days to come they will see the progression/regression/nongression, hopefully not looking for aggressions/transgressions, and definitely no John Grisham. Anyway, this is Kerr Hall. Named after Wayne Kerr, sorry no it wasn’t. It wasn’t Juan Kerr either. Or Jo Kerr, Mark Kerr, and not Plon Kerr because that makes no sense. Kerr Hall is where my department used to live just before I came along and joined them, so I never got to work inside here. In fact I have never once been inside, I suppose why would I. I would only make silly jokes about the name. It’s next to Wellman, which is where my department used to live before it lived in Kerr Hall. I’ve never been inside there either. I would only make silly jokes about the name. “How you doin’, man?” “Well, man. I just came form Illman Hall, and before that I was in Sickman Hall, and before that I was in Healthyman Hall.” “Fine, whatever.” This is why I work in a building with a name that is not applicable to silly jokes, the Mathematical Sciences Building. Anyway as I sketched Kerr I listened to a podcast by some bloke talking to some other bloke about some stuff, it was so long ago I can’t remember.

Imagining Central Park quite a bit

June 5, 2025June 5, 20251 Comment

Big fan of Central Park. It’s another of those places with very imaginative names, but it fits the trades description. It’s pretty massive too. Places that Central Park is bigger than include the entire country of Monaco, the entire Vatican City, all of London’s Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Green Park and St. James Park combined, though still slightly smaller than the gap between Tottenham’s most recent two trophies (by the way, Come on you Spurs! More on that later). I have walked through it in the Fall, when the leaves were golden and crunchy like a bowl of Corn Flakes, I have walked through it in the Winter when the lakes were frozen and my eyes turned to glass, and now I’ve been there in the Spring when the leaves were still slightly autumn-coloured or wintery bare but the Sun was out and the flowers were getting ready for the bee season. Central Park is special though, surrounded by all those tall buildings. There were more of them than the last times I came. I was waiting to meet up with my family there, so spent some time walking about and sketching. I drew the Gapstow Bridge above, while sat on a bench by the water. It was a bit chilly, but really not bad. A lot of people passing by and taking the old selfies there, as they do. You don’t see as many selfie-sticks these days though do you, I think they need to make a retro comeback. Maybe I have just stopped seeing them. It was clam on that bench though, peaceful. That’s why I love a park. I walked about, heading in the general westward direction, until I came to the busy street on the West of Central Park, whatever that street is called.

I found the Dakota Building, where John Lennon lived and died. I have wanted to sketch it for years. It was sunny on the path where I stood but it was view I liked best. I love the Beatles, and felt a lot of sadness about how John was murdered right here. As I sketched I could hear the sound of someone murdering the song Imagine, over and over. Imagine if they would sing something else, I wondered. I had bought a postcard of John Lennon a couple of days earlier at a shop in Greenwich, and had been taking it around with me taking some photos with the real New York backdrops. I did the same here (below). He was a complicated fellow, but we love him. Me and him, we both moved from England to America, though in his case he was never able to set foot back home again. He will always be part of New York City now, and the area of Central Park nearby to the Dakota that was dedicated to him is called Strawberry Field, and has that little circular mosaic that says ‘Imagine’, often decorated with little flowers and Hershey kisses. It is nice.

I went over to Strawberry Field to wait for my family to show up, and I found where the music was coming from. There was a guy with a guitar singing Imagine, and a lot of people sat on benches imaging stuff, and a lot of people standing next to the big mosaic also using their imagination. The pained renditions of ‘Imagine’ aside, the singer was pretty good when doing his own stuff, but was clearly sick of singing that song over and over for the tourists. I assume it’s a requirement of the gig. I imagined Han Solo singing it, and saying he “can Imagine quite a bit”. Then I imagined Michael Caine (as Han Solo) singing it. Then I imagined a version of Star Wars where the main characters were played by the Beatles, John as Han, Paul as Luke, George as Obi-Wan, Ringo as Chewie, Yoko as Leia. Mal and Neil as C-3PO and R2-D2. Allen Klein as Darth Vader. Billy Preston as Lando. Brian Epstein as Yoda. George Martin as General Dodonna. Dick James as Jabba the Hutt. I really want to see this now. Maybe John could be Luke, so Aunt Mimi could be Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen combined. I sketched while I imagined, and then got my own photo taken next to the sign, because I too am a tourist.

metal pipes of manhattan

June 3, 2025June 3, 20252 Comments

I can’t go to a new city and not record some of the hydrants and other metal pipes sticking out of the ground, can I. I have sketched a New York hydrant before (on a well-below-freezing day) but there is quite a diverse selection. However I am at the stage now where I see a movie or TV show set in ‘New York’ and I see the hydrants and I just know it’s filmed in like Cleveland or Toronto, because the hydrants are all wrong. I don’t care that much, but it’s like when an American Hallmark movie is set in Scotland and everyone has a fake Irish accent. Anyway, here are some of the ones I drew in New York. I liked the pipe above spouting out of the ground like a metal worm down on 23rd. The New Yorkers like to put stickers on their hydrants and pipes, it makes them look a bit more personalized, like your water bottle. The hydrant below was also on 23rd, sketched on a Chelsea morning. Nice to see the hearts around it, scrawled into the concrete. I saw that yellow ‘SK’ sticker on a lot of pipes around Chelsea.

This one covered in stickers and rust was on 6th Avenue, one of those hydrants you see with the two little poles next to it like bouncers, protecting it from errant cars banging into it. “Geddouddahere!” There was a pizza place near here where we ordered a massive New York pizza on our first night and ate it in the room, bloody delicious. New Yorkers know how to do pizza. Sorry Chicago those big deep dish pies were a bit much for me, tasty though they were.

This one above was on West 28th, sketched as I was walking out toward the High Line one afternoon. I like exploring the city, seeing what I come across along the way. This hydrant had those bouncers as well, but it also had a little metal X on its head that reminded me of a hot cross bun. Now the thing below, on the corner of 23rd and 7th, I drew on the way back, it’s obviously not a hydrant but is some sort of telecommunications post. I saw some others dotted around. Do they still work? Probably, but I just liked the look of them so I had to sketch one. “We are the Future” says the graffiti”. There’s that SK sticker again. It was busy here at this intersection, a lot of interesting characters about, I could have sat and people sketched for ages, but hydrant sketching is easier, and hydrants don’t complain if you get the size of their nose wrong. I didn’t see anyone famous, but I never do. My family did spot Michael Emerson – Ben out of Lost – on this very street while I was still sketching Brooklyn Bridge, out walking his dog with his distinctive little glasses on (on him, not on the dog). As big Lost fans this was a big deal. But that is just New York for you, and to paraphrase another former New York resident, not seeing famous people is what happens when you are busy sketching fire hydrants.