flags up

June 16, 2021June 16, 2021Leave a comment

“Who’s going to win the Euros?” you ask. I don’t care. Despite all of this, despite the elaborate chart I have made, despite my collection of shirts, despite that massive long autobiographical post I made with digital illustrations of players past, despite getting up at 6am to watch Scotland lose to the Czechs, despite all the flag banners I have put up and the paper mosaic flags I have painstakingly made (they go back several tournaments), despite hunting in vain for this year’s Euro 2020 Panini album here in California and then finally just spending money ordering it online just to have it with all the others, despite all of this I don’t actually care who wins the bloody thing. I don’t care who wins the groups, I don’t even really care who wins the games themselves, although obviously I want England to win theirs (yet I will wear the Scotland shirt this Friday when they both play, my son will wear the England shirt), and it would be nice if England actually won the tournament, there’s been too many years of hurt. Perhaps instead of “Jules Rimet still gleaming” someone could sing about the “Henri Delauney”, to the tune of Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely”. But no, I don’t actually care. Several reasons, firstly I am exhausted from football. It’s been a long couple of years. Imagine how the players feel. Secondly, Spurs aren’t in it, so I always feel differently about international football. Thirdly, watching Christian Eriksen nearly die on the pitch live on TV on Saturday morning scared and horrified me a bit. I was actually in a hotel in San Francisco at the time, and just couldn’t believe it. I can’t really comprehend all the feelings I have about that incident, all I can say now is that I am so glad he lived and is, as much as we know, ok. Alive. I was going to draw him in Illustrator tonight but I’m still upset thinking about him on that pitch, surrounded by his team-mates, trying to bring him back. I have a soft spot for Denmark having spent a formative summer there at the end of my teens, but I love Eriksen. He spent a long time at Spurs, he could have left long before but didn’t, when he finally decided he needed a new challenge he went to Italy and won the Serie A title with Inter, and bloody good for him. He was long part of my favourite ever Spurs team (maybe equal to the Ossie/Hoddle/Waddle/Allen etc team) and he’s still on my son’s wall; that Tottenham team forms part of the bond I have with my son, so I have a lot of affection for Eriksen. That’s all I can say on that. It wouldn’t be fair to say it’s made me not care about the Euros, on the contrary it’s probably made me appreciate all the players who take part in it more, they are human beings doing what they love so we can watch them. I think I don’t care who will win because I just want it to be all good and worth it. It doesn’t really matter who wins. Though of course, tell me that when England are in a penalty shootout in the quarter finals and I am in the kitchen eating a packet of Pringles too nervous to watch. As I write all the teams have played once; I drew this during the first match, Italy vs Turkey. You’ll see from the note that we had a plumbing incident, that would be the toilet spewing out sewage, which I was hoping wasn’t a metaphor for international football. However it was a really good start from Italy, and despite my reservations about this multi-country tournament I absolutely love that many teams are playing in front of home crowds. After this bloody year, it feels really fantastic, especially watching Italy in Rome with Andrea Bocelli banging out ‘Nessun Dorma’ (though of course Pavarotti was better; I said to my wife that it was a bit like having Ringo sing ‘Imagine’). The best bit was the little remote control car that drove out onto the field with the match ball on top of it. Star of the show. “Is that a Volkswagen?” someone asked; I said “I think it’s a Nissan Dorma”. Sorry, it’s late and I just needed to get that joke out of the way. Italy looked good, they could be Dark Horses. There are lots of Dark Horses in this tournament aren’t there. Why do we say Dark Horses? I mean, horse racing usually takes place in the daytime and a Dark Horse would be easier to see. Maybe we should say Green Horses, they blend in with the grass. Or Invisible Horses. Anyway it’s been a good tournament so far, some great names, there’s this one guy called Varcheck everyone’s talking about (or it may be his wife, Varcheckova). I know, just getting those ones out of the way. I was pleased to see Sweden have a player called Danielson, it reminded me of the Karate Kid. This will be a long tournament, honestly. I don’t care who wins.

Yosemite Slam

June 14, 20211 Comment

It takes a long time to get into Yosemite, but what a beautiful place that valley is. You do have to take some lengthy twisty roads with terrifying drops down into deep gorges just one swerve away, and then when you finally reach the environs of the park and the rocks start changing from a dusty ochre to a stern granite grey you see the line of cars going in at geological speed and start wondering about Fast Passes like at theme parks, and then you realize the drop to the valley floor, that is the Fast Pass. We arrived in the afternoon on a holiday weekend, therefore specifically requesting trouble on the form. You need a reservation to get into Yosemite these days to, ahem, stem the crowds. We had one, as we were staying at the Lodge in the middle of the park. You could see cars going the other direction and you just know they had shown up without one. It took the best part of two hours to get in, and it was hot. When we got in, we had planned to do the Mist Trail hike first and then go to the Lodge, but you couldn’t park anywhere near the Mist Trail. We found a spot about two miles or so away and then walked in, backpacks with hydration packs on, stopping to take photos of the amazing views, admire the immense rock walls of the valley, and also to question What The Hell. It was packed. It was hot. By the time we finally reached the start of the trail we were hiked out. The trail itself was fairly steep and a bit narrow, but mostly just jam-packed with people. I know why they call it the Mist Trail, it’s not the spray from the waterfalls but the clouds of other peoples’ sweat you have to walk through. I made it as far as the first bridge by a waterfall and we headed back. Massive headache. On the way back though, we saw a bear cub! I’ve never seen a bear in the wild. Not that I wanted to get too close to one, it was on the other side of the road, just minding its own business, I think it was in the collecting food business. Then I heard a very loud whistle. It wasn’t mama bear because they can’t whistle. It was some tall American dude in shorts and a big stupid hat, getting out of his big stupid car and approaching the bear like it owed him money, or honey, whatever. He was whistling to get its attention, while also exclaiming “do you see the bear!” to passers by. “Yeah leave it be, mate” I said. The bear disappeared into the bushes. The man looked like he was going to follow it in to try to get a photo on his phone up close. I mean, I don’t wish anyone’s face to be eaten by a bear for being stupid, but seriously, you don’t follow a bear into the bushes. Big Stupid Man in Hat then turned round and went back to his big stupid car still exclaiming “did you see the bear” to everyone who had been distracted by his ridiculous whistling. I’m pretty sure you can be fined a lot of honey for approaching the wild animals in Yosemite like that, at the very least his picnic basket should have been confiscated. Anyway now I had something to write about on my postcards, we got back to the Lodge. Our room smelled as if someone had been smoking in it, which was pretty unbearable (I see what you did there), so we opened up the windows and ran all the fans. I did insist we close the windows at night though Because Bears. They love to sniff out the food, they famously break into cars, I saw a documentary about it, Gone In 60 Seconds I think it was. Or maybe the Fast and the Furriest. Anyway, well fed and showered, and well rested, and safe from bears, I got up very early next day and headed out into the park before the heat, while the family still slept, and sketched the magnificent Yosemite Falls, above. It was not super busy yet, and this was the start of the trails leading up to the Lower Falls. Stunning sight though, and the absolute drama of the scenery is hard to describe, and not easy to draw either.

This was our third National Park this year (after Arches and Canyonlands). The colour scheme was quite different; before the Utah trip I did actually do lots of practice sketching so that I knew how I would like to draw once I got there, what colour palette I would use, even what style of sketching would work best for quickest effect. I didn’t do that this time; I wish I had in a way, but then the greens and blues are always tricky bedfellows in my paint set. The Yosemite light is overwhelming, like I felt there was no way to capture the sheer epic-ness of it, but even on the hot day I stopped and gave it a go. The one above was very quick and done with pencil and watercolour, and I was pleased with it. As we walked through Yosemite Village I happened upon a familiar face, Robert Dvorak, a Sacramento artist and art teacher who has joined us many times on our sketchcrawls in Davis. I hadn’t seen him since a sketchcrawl just before the pandemic, but I recognized his distinctive hat, he was teaching a small workshop on sketching. He was surprised to see me, and showed his students my sketchbook. I left and got the Yosemite National Park stamps in my sketchbook, and we continued exploring. The sketch below was drawn while standing on the Swinging Bridge (it didn’t swing, but I guess there were lots of 1960s British hip fashion-followers there at some point. I wanted to catch the colour of the Merced River and the silent giants behind it; I did the paint first and then pen over the top, which I never really like doing, and I can tell as it feels a bit awkward from about the riverbanks up. My green paints feel a bit dry as well. Still as a quick sketch drawn while balanced on a bridge with people passing by behind me, hoping not to accidentally drop my sketchbook and paints into the river, I still like it. It was a hot day, we explored the non-uphill parts of the valley, took a lot of photos, and headed back to the car for a drive up to Glacier Point.

Glacier Point (where I did the sketch below) is about an hour’s drive uphill from the Yosemite Valley floor. It is an overlook with a phenomenal view of the whole valley. The way up was a little depressing, as much of the landscape had been affected by big fires in recent years. In anticipation of this unusually hot holiday weekend there had been a controlled burn on the valley floor, we had passed the smouldering logs on the way in, but this was more of a sad beaten wasteland. Still, despite the fact that the past few years have been worse than anyone here has ever known, exacerbated by the rise in global temperatures, in the California wilderness fire is the way of things, nature’s way of renewing the forests. Still, it’s hard to see. It was another twisting rollercoaster of a road up. We have been to Glacier Point before; when we married in 2004 we came to Yosemite for our honeymoon, and we have photos of us looking much younger looking out at the view which is dominated by the otherworldly Half Dome, which resembles the cowl of a massive stone ghost. We could just about make out people on the top, tiny atoms in colourful hiking gear. It’s a dizzying view. There were a good number of people up there, but not as packed as the Mist Trail. I took a little time to do a quick sketch of the scene, but this one I did not fill in the gaps later at home, I just left it as it was. At this time of year the waterfalls are gushing and plentiful; in the western US we are in the midst of a potentially catastrophic drought though, so I expect that by the middle of the summer those will be trickles, if even that. When we were here in September 2004 Bridalveil Falls was not even running; this time that bride was running like she had just discovered her new in-laws were all death eaters or Hannity fans or something. It would be nice to come back slightly earlier in the year when it’s not already so hot, and the rivers are still booming, but even just a fortnight before there had been snow around here so it’s hard to predict. Maybe just when there are fewer people, not on a holiday weekend, it might be more fun to hike the trails. It just takes so long to get here. It’s worth it though, this Yosemite scenery is some of the best on the planet. We took a lot of photos of amazing backdrops, and the light always seemed to be just perfect.

I didn’t draw El Capitan, and it’s not in this panorama, but that was another geological marvel we passed by in awe. El Capitan is really massive. When we got home we watched the documentary film Free Solo, about the bloke who likes to climb up rocks with no ropes or harnesses or anything. They call that “free soloing”. “Freeing Solo” is when you dress up as a masked bounty hunter with a thermal detonator and sneak around Jabba’s palace at night looking for your carbonite-imprisoned boyfriend, just so you can ask him “what do you mean “I know”?” (Seriously Leia, when Han asked “Who are you” you should have said “Someone who knows you” and slapped him one.). So the Free Solo guy (Alex Honnold) was pretty bloody amazing. The movie was so good, and it detailed his journey to becoming the first – and so far only – person to scale the sheer face of El Capitan free solo, bottom to top, no ropes or nothing. Incredible film I recommend you watch it. (I also recommend the Return of the Jedi “Leia Says I Know First” special edition cut). It made me think, we all have goals, some people’s goals might be something huge like climbing a gigantic cliff with your bare hands, others it might be just drawing a picture of those cliffs and it turning out alright, but it’s an inspiration to see someone work on their goal, have setbacks here and there, but not give up, to really do it. No matter how big or small your goal, go for it. The only thing I didn’t like about the movie was the song that played over the end credits, which had a chorus that went ‘Gravity’s a Fragile Thing”. I mean, it’s literally not. Gravity is definitely the thing you can rely on not breaking. It will break you. Those lyrics were a pretty fragile thing. Still, the film reminded me of when I went rock climbing when I was 17, I went about 25 or 30 feet maybe, with ropes, and was absolutely terrified. I felt that Gravity pulling me down, and I was myself a very fragile thing at the time weighing about half a stone dripping wet, so it juts blows my mind to see someone achieve a feat like that. Mind Blown.

And that was Yosemite. It was a long and winding drive back to Davis, and when we got home we decided against long road journeys for a while. We had 17 years between visits to Yosemite, and this was the first time since we moved to America. It’s a pretty long way, but it’s worth it.

in them thar hills of Sonora

June 7, 2021Leave a comment

Last weekend we went to Yosemite, for some hiking. Also some waiting in line in the car for ages to get in. It was going to be a very hot weekend after a hot week. I had been busy doing soccer tryouts every day, and it happened that our long planned weekend away in Yosemite coincided with picking the squad. Thankfully we got it done, with a fair bit of text and email back and forth between me and my assistant coach, who did all the legwork while I was gone. We had planned to go to Yosemite a while ago, because you need to make reservations these days, to limit the crowds. Plus we were staying at the Yosemite Lodge, which needs to be booked well in advance. It takes a long time to get to Yosemite, it’s full of long twisty roads, so we decided to stay the night before in Sonora, a historic town in the foothills of the Sierras. I had never been to Sonora; I didn’t really know anything about it, if I’m honest. so it was a pleasant surprise to find such an old town. It seemed very much like the sort of town that would spring up in the hills during the Gold Rush, you remember that, where they rushed with all the gold. Side note, I use to the think that Ian Rush was a historical time when people would go to Wales or somewhere and dig up nuggets of Ian, etc and so on. So I imagined Sonora as the classic frontier town, and since there were several bail bonds offices and criminal lawyers and courthouses and saloons, this was obviously true and this Burnt Oak lad was now in Cowboy Land. Sonora was in fact founded during the Gold Rush by Mexican miners from the Sonora region, and the town and area have been the backdrop for many films and TV shows, like the A-Team, Little House on the Prairie, and even Back to the Future III. On our evening stroll after dinner we passed by a few different bars, now that the CDC have said people can eat and drink inside no problem, masks were generally off and people were reveling. I didn’t go and revel anywhere, but if I did, I’d love to have entered with my mask on, and a cowboy hat, and have everyone stop talking as I stood in the doorway and walked slowly up to the bar. We stayed at the historic Sonora Inn, which we was once the Victoria Hotel (1895) before being remodeled in the Spanish style in the 1930s as the Sonora Inn. I drew in the bedroom after dinner (below), and down in the lobby there was an antique wall telephone like you would see in old Bugs Bunny cartoons or something. The woman at the front desk told us about the history, and we asked if it were haunted. “Yeah, it is, she said tentatively, as if to say “no it isn’t but I’ll say it is”, or maybe it was so haunted she didn’t want to reveal in case the ghosts caused trouble, I don’t know. I have an over-active imagination about ghosts and cowboys. Apparently though there were old tunnels underneath that connected to all the old buildings in town, and if they aren’t haunted then well I don’t know what is. For dinner, we ate at a pasta place (it is a shame that the chef did not also have imagination) and walked about the town. Outside one bar, a well-oiled man with a thick American accent heard my accent and called out to us, asking where I’m from. I told him, and it seemed he knew his England, and had gone to school in Cornwall. We didn’t stop to chat more, but we referred to him afterwards as the Cornish Cowboy, or the Pirate of Penzance, or the Bodmin Bronco, or Texas Truro, again the imagination running away with me like a stage coach pulled into a canyon by a pack of crazy mules. It would be nice to go there for longer and explore a bit more (if my cowboy obsessed mind could handle the excitement), but we only had the evening, and so I got up early next morning before breakfast to do some drawing (“I do my sketchin’ before breakfast…”), before we set off for Yosemite. Yee hah, varmints.

and i’ll sing in your ear again

June 5, 2021Leave a comment

Last Year when the pandemic hit, De Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis took the difficult decision to shutter up, focusing on its Sacramento site, temporarily until the pandemic eased. Well, in California at least we are at that point now where more and more people are getting vaccinated, and we are preparing to All Go Back To Normal*. Last weekend we were in Yosemite (sketches to come) where they are allowing people in with reservations only to stem the crowds, and after waiting nearly two hours in line to get in after a two hour plus drive from nearby Sonora, we parked several miles away from where our first hiking trail began due to lack of spaces, and waded through throngs of people on a steep narrow trail to look at a bit of a waterfall among large groups of people all trying to take photos of each other (and it’s fine for strangers to touch each others’ devices now). The Mist Trail is so-called because of the mists of sweat from the hundreds of other hikers, not from the waterfalls. It was a hot, hot day, we were tired, and we gave up and hiked back to the car. But more on that story next time. This was the first day of June, I was working on campus in the morning for a bit, the weather was ridiculously hot. I had to cycle downtown to pick up a drawing from the Pence (the Covent Garden drawing I had done for their ‘garden-themed’ show, it hadn’t sold). Anyway, as I pulled into D Street I noticed my bike tyre was getting low. When I came back out, it was completely flat, so I wheeled it over to Freewheeler on 2nd Street, and grabbed some lunch on E Street. I then noticed that De Vere’s across the street looked a little bit different. They were busy finishing off the shiny new paint job, going from black to red, a new look for the reopening which I was told would be happening this week. If you have followed my sketchblog over the past decade you will know how much I like this pub, I’ve drawn it many times. I really like their pub chips, served in gravy. So I did a drawing of it. I stood in the heat waiting for my bike to be fixed up, and when that was done I cycled home to work the rest of the day, finishing off the pen and colours later on. I’m well pleased for them to be reopening, I hope business is good, and can’t wait until I get back for some pub chips, a paint or two, and an actual interior sketch of a pub for the first time since before This Whole Thing. Last weekend in Sonora we did eat inside for the first time, at a pasta restaurant that was not busy (and going by the food wasn’t much of a pasta restaurant either), and yeah I’m still a bit anxious to go inside a pub, it’s been so long, but something about seeing these guys repainting and reopening made me feel pretty optimistic. It’s been, well not an easy week, news of other people I know losing family members in other countries to Covid, plus just being so far away from my family in England, my dad’s birthday was this week, it would have been nice to be over there but it’s still very hard travelling (on top of the restrictions and the quarantines and the expensive required non-NHS tests, I’m still not comfortable about being stuck in a plane with lots of people for eleven hours and then stuck in line at Heathrow for more hours). I’ve been generally feeling exhausted. But signs of optimism make me feel good, and when I’m up for it, knowing I can get some pub chips and a pint or two is pretty nice, maybe with a comic from Bizarro World next door, like I used to. I hope the reopening goes well.

walker hall latest

May 23, 2021Leave a comment

Another one of Walker Hall at UC Davis; this one was going to be a panorama, full colour, but I stopped and never finished. This is the brand new Graduate Center, which if you’ve been following this blog you’ll know has been built into the newly renovated historic Walker Hall. It’s all finished now, except for some bits in front of the building, and there are even staff working inside now, albeit at the limited no-more-than-25% capacity. I was even given a special personal tour of the building a few weeks ago, which was really exciting; the last time I’d been in there it was a demolition site, I wore a hard hat and was told to be careful I didn’t fall into big holes in the floor. It’s lovely in there now, I can’t wait until it’s properly opened up for the graduate students. I will do a proper ‘final’ sketch of the whole building though they have planted these trees in front, which will make it a bit harder to see until all the leaves fall off; might look nice in the Fall actually.

Davis Arts Center

May 22, 2021Leave a comment

This is Davis Arts Center, which is really close to where I live in north Davis. I popped over to the park at lunchtime and drew it from a high grassy verge, underneath a tree, while listening to a podcast about the car industry in Coventry. I’ve drawn a two-page panorama of the Davis Arts Center before, quite a long time ago, when the leaves were different colours and the building was painted differently too. I need a sketching vacation, one like where I’d go to a city for a few days by myself and just wander about drawing everything. It’s been too long. This is also the longest period I have ever had without going home to London. That is tough, I miss London. It’s still not easy to go there from the US, with quarantine and expensive testing when you get there, plus long waits to get through Heathrow. I’m feeling very unrelaxed right now. Drawing helps, though even drawing feels a little stressful at times, if I’m short on time or if I’m running out of things I want to draw; sorry Davis, I need to draw somewhere else for a bit. I finished this at home after drawing all the penwork, I can’t see it from my house but it’s close enough.

old metal bones in dusty sunshine

May 14, 20211 Comment

UC Davis is a huge campus. You look at the map and you see all the buildings clustered around the bit that hangs off the edge of downtown Davis and you think, yeah that’s a decently sized campus that, yeah you need a bike to get about, but it’s not massive. And then it’s pointed out that what you see on the map is like looking at a camel and only seeing the humps. Or going to a Barcelona game and only watching Messi. Or eating a 99 ice cream but not eating the wafer cone. Actually it’s not really like that, I just really want a 99 ice cream cone. A 99 is a soft-serve vanilla ice cream in a cone but with a chocolate flake in it, popular in Britain. It’s very hot in Davis this week and one of those would be nice. But it’s not like a map of UC Davis, unless the cone part is really far away from the flake part. The point is, UC Davis is much bigger than you think. We are an agricultural school, and to do that you need lots of fields, and space. Cycling around campus this week I have compared it to a game of Carcassonne, do you know that game? I’m a little obsessed with it. Several roads on the main part of campus are currently blocked off due to ongoing construction work, which makes cycling around quite a journey of discovery, but I do always think, “my opponent put that there to stop me from completing my city! Where will my meeples go?” So, campus is actually huge. In fact it’s so huge, we have our own airport. We are the only UC with its own airport. Useful for the crop-dusters, you see, and there are plenty of those. Side-note, until I moved here I did not know what a crop duster was. I’m from London, not really a thing, not really a big farming city. So when Han Solo says that travelling through hyperspace is “not like dusting crops, boy” I honestly had no idea what he was on about. I had images in my head of someone going through fields of maize with a little cloth wiping down everything. Similarly when I was a little kid I used to think skyscrapers were called that because they had people on the upper levels poking brooms and rakes out of the window to, I don’t know, get rid of clouds? I still have actual drawings from when I was six showing this obviously wrong and stupid misconception. With crop dusters I was 29 when I moved to America so it’s entirely conceivable that if I’d stayed in London, I’d still assume farmers would go out into the fields with little feather dusters and cans of Pledge. Also, what crops did Han Solo think Luke was dusting anyway? He was a moisture farmer in a desert. It’s literally all dust. Han is from Correllia, not really a big farming planet.

Anyway, during this pandemic our offices have been closed and we’ve been working from home, but mail still has to come in and be picked up, and our campus Mail Division is located right on the outer rim of the university. If there’s a bright centre to the campus, it’s on the road that it’s farthest from. I needed to collect some checks for an urgent visa application for a new scholar so I cycled all the way over to the Mail Division building, while big tractors rumbled past me on the road, and loaded up my bike with several weeks’ worth of mail and packages, all strapped with elastic onto the rear basket. Opposite Mail division, near the entrance to the UC Davis Airport on Hopkins, there are a bunch of old farming machines, iron skeletons of ploughs, old small tractors, all plonked by the road among the long yellow grass. I’ve always wanted to draw them, so while I was on this long round-trip I thought, well why not now. I didn’t draw the whole thing there as I was busy and had things to do, and I could waste time with my pens when my chores were done. So I finished it off at home later. This is some sort of farming instrument, but I don’t know what it’s called because as I say, I’m from London and the only farms I ever knew were Chalk and Broadwater. I like the the words “On Your Left” were written on the side, it reminded me of Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. Like I said I finished this off at home, and while I drew I watched “The Crystal Calls”, which is about the making of the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance show, one of my favourite things ever. This seemed appropriate, as much of the program was about how the puppets and props were put together and used, and this looked like the framework of the Skeksis carriage. I want to go and draw the other old metal farm things, but it’s a very long way to ride out to. Maybe next time I get the mail.

positive latitude

May 12, 2021Leave a comment

This is Latitude, a dining hall at UC Davis which opened last year. I first drew it just before the pandemic. I was on campus recently and cycled past this on the way to or from my weekly Covid test, and really wanted to stop and draw the unusual shape. I like the name Latitude. If it were a 1980s band it would be called L’Attitude. If it were at a higher elevation we might call it Altitude. “With a latitude like that you’ll go all the way round the world”. Etc and so on. This was drawn the end of April; it’s the middle of May already. How did that happen? I mean I know literally how, but these days time runs in bizarre directions. I genuinely got the day wrong last week. I contacted someone at work to see if they needed me to sit in on a meeting in case they need extra reference information which I like looking up, and they were like, um that was yesterday. I’m like, why was it a day early? Then the penny dropped. I get that a lot now. You do too, I bet. Years ago I turned up for a meeting with the dean a day early. I’m sat there in the meeting room getting my notepad ready, nodding pleasant hello at those coming in, people I didn’t recognize, thinking this is weird, where are the usual lot. The dean came in, sat down and looked at me, confused. Yes, wrong meeting, my one was the next day. Ironically it turned out that my department chair at the time had done the exact same thing the week before, turned up a day early, same meeting room. Well we like to be ahead of the game in our department. So, Latitude was closed for most of 20/21 but opened up this spring, and features a menu of international-themed dishes. I should eat there some time, it sounds nice. When I’ve been back on campus I’ve still been eating at the Silo, and in fact earlier this week I had lunch there and even sat indoors, the first bit of indoors eating in well over a year. Apart from dinner at home obviously. A little bit of normality sneaking back in. I can’t wait until I can finally go down the pub, sit at the bar and sketch with a pint, and not worry. That’d be nice.

another world, another time

May 8, 2021Leave a comment

I’ve drawn this before. I’ve always thought it looked like a magic portal. Where would it go? This sculpture is actually called “Shamash” by Guy Dill, and was made in 1982. I’ve always wondered. 1982…I always say that my memory pretty much goes that far back, although I know I have memories from earlier, flashes really. In 1982 I was six, and I remember some things from that year clearly. The FA Cup Final replay, Spurs v QPR. I remember my older brother Johnny, who was at the game, came back from Wembley shortly before our neighbours, who were also at the game. We are spurs fans, they were QPR fans. My brother went to every home game at White Hart Lane in the 1980-81 and 1981-82 seasons. So my brother got the Chas’n’Dave songs on his record player, “Tottenham Tottenham, No One Can Stop Them” and “Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley”, turned up the volume full blast, hung the speakers out of the bedroom window, and waited for the neighbours to get home. Everyone in the street came out, not to complain, but also to watch the QPR neighbours get back from Wembley. It was all good fun, we were a pretty close street. I do remember the Royal Wedding, Princes Charles and Lady Di, and that was 1981. We had a street party. Us little kids running around waving flags and everyone’s dinner tables lined up in the middle of the street with sandwiches and fizzy drink. There were games, and I distinctly remember my dad winning the “dad’s piggy-back race” with me on his back. I do have vague memories of the 1981 FA Cup Final win, the great Ricky Villa winning goal. I certainly have even earlier memories, I remember my Grandad, and he died in 1980. All I remember is him at his house on Blundell Road in Burnt Oak with my Nan and my uncle Billy, and I remember when he was ill, before he died. He was from Belfast. I have an old photo of him with me sat on his knee when I was about two, I’ve had that photo all my life. I have other memories from 1980. I had a small part in a BBC TV serial called “A Little Silver Trumpet”, and I remember going to the big round BBC TV Centre every day, I remember the sets, having greasy make-up put in my hair, I remember going to film in Brighton, I remember them just letting me draw and they just filmed me drawing, holding my pen in the same funny way. I have even older memories than that, I definitely remember visiting my Dad in “the Big House” which was where he lived until I was 4, and he’d always get a milk and a Yorkie bar. I remember walking around Burnt Oak with my big sister Jacqui and going through fields behind the houses with stingy nettles. I remember my uncle Billy taking me to see a film at the pictures that might have been Spider-Man. Memory is a funny thing, there are so many photos in albums and stories from others of events I have not really any memory of, but these things I always remember, things that belong to me. I’d say that from about 1982 though, when I was six, memories become a little clearer. I remember getting stuck in the snow with my mum down in Hendon, and it took a long time to get home, and we had oxtail soup when we did, and to this day I think of that when I taste oxtail soup. I remember that was the year we got central heating in our house. I remember getting chickenpox that year. I remember cutting up my pyjamas and pretending to be the Hulk, and getting into trouble because “my days of being the Hulk are long gone”, whatever that meant. I remember seeing pictures of the Falklands War on TV. I remember reading all of my brother’s Beano and Roy of the Rovers comics. I remember in 1982 going to meet The Tweets (the ones who wore bizarre bird heads and did “The Birdy Song”) with my friend Daniel, and I remember they wore big leathery gloves and did not talk. I even have a photo of that meeting. I remember my uncle Billy singing Come On Eileen in our kitchen. I remember playing in the sandpits at Welwyn Garden City. I distinctly remember going to see the Dark Crystal with my Dad and my next door neighbour Barry, and dropping all of my popcorn when Fizzgig appeared. At school the next week my friends all played Dark Crystal. “Another world, another time.” I am still obsessed with the Dark Crystal (I loved the recent Netflix series so much). 1982 was the last year when I was the youngest in the family, my little sister Lauren being born a year later. In my life 1982 was a really long time ago, and this sculpture has been around since that year. I’ve drawn it before. I’ve always thought it looked like a magic portal. Where would it go? Back to 1982? I mean, at least Spurs won a trophy that year. I always forget not to write posts like this, those “I remember when I was a kid” posts, but I suppose it’s part of getting older isn’t it, trying to keep remembering. Another world, another time.

d street, mid-april, davis

May 2, 2021May 2, 20211 Comment

The thing about using the watercolour Moleskine sketchbooks again, I just love how the pages open flat making me think, I really need to draw a two-page panorama on this one, I just have to. But of what? I wander Davis sometimes not sure what I want to spend time drawing over two pages that I haven’t already drawn. Not everything works. The time of day makes a difference. How long I have to draw is fairly essential. How interested in the shape of the buildings I am. I mean the buildings aren’t going to be too unusually shaped, this isn’t the world of the Dark Crystal or something. With this one, on D Street at the corner of 3rd, I’d not drawn these two buildings before (at least from this angle, I’ve drawn the other side) and I had never realized what a pair they make. So I stood in between them and drew. I didn’t finish it all there though, I coloured in later. Style Lounge, and Myland Nails and Spa. Until very recently Style Lounge had these large ornate mirrors parked outside, which is where they would have their outdoors work with clients (I’m sorry my vocabulary for style stuff is limited, me having no style at all). I never did draw one but they looked really cool from the street. The other side of the building is painted all different colours, it adds a bit of life. Myland Nails and Spa, again not really aimed at me, unless they are actually a hardware store that sells nails and spanners, but part of the sign has fallen off. But they only sell nails and spanners, nothing else. Maybe I should go in there like Ronnie Corbett, asking for nails. No, I won’t do that. I bet that happens all the time though. No, I don’t bet that. This is what happens when I just write without really thinking, I can’t be bothered coming up with any actual jokes or interesting things to say. I can’t even come up with a good blog title. My last post was actually fairly well written I thought, little bit of history, bit of emotion, bit of metaphor linking the theme of the drawing to the wider world and my longing to get back to see London, while this one is more “I’m sure I have a lot to say, but this ain’t the time”. Sometimes my blog posts veer off dramatically from the theme of the drawing, like I’ll post a drawing of a bookshop and use that to launch into a story about when I got chased by a dog in Namur. (There was not such post by the way, and anyway it was two dogs). Sometimes like this one they are literally about nothing. I’m always a little worried when I write a post like this that someone who knows me will read it and think, oh that guy hasn’t got a clue, what’s this? What is all this? Like, they may have Googled me because I coached their kids soccer and found all my drawings of Davis, which are nice, and then read some of the stories, which are funny, and then read a blog post like this where it’s not really saying anything. “‘Nails and Spanners’? Is this guy nuts?” Or perhaps they were forwarded a link to my sketchblog after my drawings were shared across the university or in a newspaper somewhere and they read the words bit and go, ok nice drawing but do we need the words, what are these words and do they even go together? Years ago, when I had my old ’20six’ blog, I would often write blog posts with just words and no drawings – what a concept! – and act like I knew how to write things and have ideas. And then when I would post drawings, I would include some text but in a much smaller font, in italic, and it would typically be nonsensical gibberish that I felt it necessary to include but didn’t want to distract from the drawing. These days I just ramble. I don’t re-read them. And now WordPress can also convert your blog posts into audio podcasts through Anchor. It is possible to have the posts converted into a generated voice. Now for me this doesn’t make a lot of sense as I am posting drawings, but I suppose if someone was listening to me talk about the drawing in more details and the experience and all of that, it might be interesting. But probably not. So I decided to test out the service and converted one of my long posts about Dublin, if you remember I did that virtual Dublin sketchbook last year. The generated voice is Male American, and my words said in Male American auto-voice sound absolutely hilarious, to me alone. Now, this has been posted just as a test, ok, and I will very likely delete it if I actually want to publish any of these stories on that platform in the future, in my own proper voice. But hearing my words in auto-generated non-ironic Male American is quite a thing: https://anchor.fm/petescully/episodes/Dublin-Part-2-literally-littered-with-literature-eqslqo. Especially the bit where the Male American voice keeps pronouncing BERNard as BerNARD specifically in a bit about pronouncing BERNard in that way. Twelve minutes of fun.