The Dublin Castle

September 6, 2024Leave a comment

Another in the series of London drawings I did this summer after our trip, all of which have some meaning to me. This is The Dublin Castle, on Camden’s Parkway. I wrote some things about Parkway recently, but I did not stop by or sketch the Dublin Castle on that trip. I started coming here in the mid-1990s, and there were always live bands to see out the back. That famous sign on the right, with the black and white squares announcing who would be playing, is a piece of classic Camden iconography. It hasn’t changed in there, and that’s what I love about it. This is the pub that made Madness famous, giving them their first gigs and forever being associated with them afterwards. In fact, when I was in there one quiet afternoon ten years aqo I sketched the bar, and who should walk in but Suggs, the lead singer from Madness, who was chatting with the landlord. I didn’t sketch him (as I’d already finished most of the drawing) and I also didn’t go and say hello (what would I say? Would I tell him I once went to Aarhus in Denmark simply because if anyone ever asked where that was I could sing “in the middle of Aar Street”? I’d only embarrass myself). I like Madness a lot though, I never got to see them play live but I saw that they were playing in Oakland a few months ago at the same place I saw Belle and Sebastian, and I was very tempted. Lots of acts have passed through this pub, your Blurs, your Amy Winehouses, and all your up and coming Camden bands have squeezed onto that stage. I would go to the club nights there too, the beer soaked floor and sticky toilets, all my favourite music pumping those red painted walls, and you never knew what sort of conversation you’d get into with whoever you ended up being sat next to on those old pub seats, it might be some old geezer going on about John Lydon’s brother Jimmy and the four-by-twos, or it might be a conversation about Serbian poetry, to name but two things random people have started talking to me about in that pub. On our nights out in Camden in my 20s, usually with my mate Tel, this would often be the last stop, this or the Mixer, starting out at the Rat and Parrot (now gone) or the Earl of Camden (I think it was the Hogs Head) and on to the Spreadeagle (still there) or the Parkway Tavern (now gone). I’d avoid the World’s End, my mate Tel liked it there (though the Underworld was alright), and I always enjoyed sitting outside at the Edinboro Castle, though it felt a bit posh to be doing that in Camden Town. Speaking of the Edinboro Castle (not ‘Edinburgh’), that is one of the three ‘Castle’ pubs in this area, the others being the Dublin Castle and the Pembroke Castle, apocryphally to keep the railway workers from Ireland, Scotland and Wales separate in case they should start fights with each other. There used to be a Windsor Castle for the English too but that closed a long time ago, insert whatever clever comment here. Still, the Dublin Castle is the king of the old pubs around here, and holds a lot of histories.

This is the other of the drawings I have in this year’s Pence Gallery Art Auction, by the way, and bidding starts very soon on those. Get yourself a little bit of north London history for your wall, and next time you’re in NW1, pop by for a pint, and maybe some live music.

half moon bay

August 10, 2024Leave a comment

The first couple of pages of a new sketchbook. It was another stupendously hot weekend in the central valley of California, hitting the 110s in Davis, so we drove down to Half Moon Bay, on the coast just below San Francisco, where it was about 50 degrees cooler. While we have been to nearby Pacifica a few times back in the soccer tournament days, I’ve never been to Half Moon Bay. It was very foggy, and the cliffs were tall and rugged. The town itself was nice, we stayed at a hotel on the edge, and drove down to the walk along the cliffs nearby, and down to the Pigeon Point lighthouse further down the coast (it was all scaffolded up). Near our hotel, the walk to the seashore was made by a little hike through a spooky tree tunnel, created by the leaning of the fog-washed trees bending away from the ocean winds. It was an unusual place, I took many photos but had to stop and sketch, as best I could. I wandered back to the hotel, and managed to get lost on the way, daydreaming little chord sequences in my head and looking at fog. We never actually went down to the beach itself, we couldn’t find the path, but it was very damp, and those sneaker waves were looking a little bit fierce.

Our hotel was located next to a British themed pub called Cameron’s, an older place full of all kinds of British themed stuff that was just begging for a pub sketch. Definitely not named after a useless former Prime Minister who gambled the future of his country on a referendum and lost, and then sodded off. Thankfully there were no pig-themed items about the place. I had a little time before going out for dinner so I got myself a pint of Smithwicks and sat in a little alcove ready made for sketching. At the bar when I ordered my drink, the barman who’d been talking with some of the people at the bar asked me if I was related to another man at the bar, and pointed to someone older, and they were all chuckling. I squinted to see any likeness and said, “oh right, we do resemble each other; in no way whatsoever.” Bit weird. Then again I’m always thinking people look like other people. Only that day I had been wondering if Half Moon Bay was in any way related to the Eastenders character Alfie Moon. Anyway it was nice to have a good pint of Smithwicks (since the Bull and Mouth in Davis doesn’t do that beer any more, unlike its predecessor De Vere’s). It was an interesting place, although all around the pub and the hotel there were British flags which were displayed quite obviously upside down. If you don’t know what way round a British flag should be displayed, well I forgive you I suppose, but the red diagonal on the top left corner should be touching the left edge, ie the flagpole. When you see it painted on the right side of an airplane or a ship it might look upside down but that’s just because the invisible flagpole is on the right and it’s flying against it, and that’s fine. If you see it displayed on a flagpole where the pole is on the left and the bottom red diagonal is touching the pole, then it’s upside down and it means you are a ship in distress, maybe you’ve been captured by pirates or racists or online trolls or something. So imagine my concern when I kept seeing the British flag displayed upside down, I mean we are right by the coast and you never know if there are pirates nearby. Even the logo of the pub showed an upside down British flag. I mean, it’s practically treason. I did want to point this out, but if this is a British themed pub the right thing to do would be to not point this out but to grumble about it to myself privately, in the proper British way, so that’s what I did, I grumbled about it privately for several hours to my family who didn’t really care. Nice beer though, and I’d liked to have spent longer drawing the pub and all the colours (all the flags in view were the correct way round, or maybe I corrected them), but they were setting up for karaoke, and we had to leave for dinner. IMG_1385(2)sm

a few more corners of London

July 22, 2024July 22, 2024Leave a comment

Before I dive into my sketches from the south of France, here are a few more London corners that I caught between doing other things. Above, a quick sketch of Neal’s Yard, while my family were looking through shops in Covent Garden, I decided to pop in here to draw. It was nice watching people move by, tourists getting an ice cream, people out enjoying the June afternoon. It was warming up. One weird bloke came through yelling obscenities at random people, though not to me thankfully. After sketching, I headed to my favourite map shop Stanfords.

Above, a quick sketch of De Hems, a well-known old Dutch pub in London’s Soho. I was meeting my friend here on a busy Saturday evening, we were watching the opening game of the Euros, Scotland v Germany. Alas, Scotland lost big time. I think the Dutch in there were for Scotland mostly, but it was a convivial atmosphere with Scottish and Germans together. As full-time blew though, the pub did decide to play The Proclaimers ‘Letter From America’, bit of a low blow given they’d just been beaten 5-1 without I think an actual shot on target (their goal was an own goal). The Scottish fans were popular in Germany though, as in most places they play well with the locals, unlike a lot of times when England play abroad. My friend and I stayed in the pub for a good long time and an old catch-up, with plenty of beers along the way. Central London has always been busy on a Saturday night, but I’m not wrong in feeling that it seems a lot busier than it used to years ago. I mean, better than during the Covid years of course, but still it felt pretty crowded. Summertime though, footballs on, weathers nice, good time to be alive I think.

The last one is a quick sketch I did while we were down in Spitalfields, my family and I had just eaten lunch in Spitalfields market (a much trendier and modern place than the old Spitalfields Market used to be), and were looking around shops and stalls, so I popped out to the street and did a quick sketch of the Ten Bells pub with Christchurch Spitalfields behind it. It was a hot day, and I just wanted to draw quickly and sketchily in pencil, and just added in a couple of colours for a fun effect. After this we walked down to the Classic Football shirts store to look at some great old kits, have a cold drink, and wander up Brick Lane looking for murals and public art. London’s great.

primrose hill

July 19, 2024July 18, 20241 Comment

This might be the best view in London, and it’s been many years since I went up there. Primrose Hill, just above Regent’s Park. After a day exploring the Spitalfields area of London, we were all a bit tired so took the Northern Line home. I had to go to Hampstead anyway to get some photos developed (totally 90s thing to do), but I decided to get out at Chalk Farm and explore this area first. I really like the walk down from Chalk Farm station, the parade of shops in Primrose Hill, it’s quite a well-off area. I went into a little bookshop, remembered afternoons out down here years ago, and made my way up the much-steeper-than-I-remember Primrose Hill itself. I’ve not been up there in over 20 years, so that skyline has changed a lot! This was the first time I have sketched up there in over 30 years, and it was even more different then.

Back in early 1994, still doing my A-Level in Art (for which I got a final grade of D, hooray, thanks for that), I had to work on a project and as usual was out of ideas. When I am out of ideas for anything I just go and draw, which is always the best idea. On that January day though, after a visit to the galleries at the South Bank Centre in which I saw some interesting sculptures with branches and umbrellas, I took myself to Primrose Hill, climbed up and drew the same scene as above, minus the odd comedy-shaped skyscraper. I remember looking out over London Zoo there, drawing that same shape of the Aviary (which is now ‘Monkey Valley’ apparently), drawing the Telecom Tower (the ‘B.T. Tower’ formerly the Post Office Tower which is what people still called it when I was a kid; I read that it was sold earlier this year to a company that will turn it into a luxury hotel), and of course St. Paul’s Cathedral (which as yet has not been turned into a luxury hotel but give them half a chance). I believe this is one of the places in London that has a protected sightline to St. Paul’s, so no building big towers anywhere between Primrose Hill and St. Paul’s, that means you, Euston, don’t even think about it. Primrose Hill actually has two ‘protected vistas‘, the other being the Palace of Westminster, but that was just off the page in my drawing, my sketchbook’s a little narrower than the panorama books I usually use, then again it’s not high enough to be that prominent (my eyesight’s not that great). Oh dammit it’s a protected view and I didn’t put it in.

It was busy up there this time, and much hotter than in 1994 (what with it not being January), and I was starting to bake under my hat. At least I had a seat, and the time to paint. A man had two huge colourful parrots and was flying them around for the amusement of the tourist groups up there. Most people were just enjoying the view on a really nice June afternoon. The sort of afternoon that makes you glad to be in London. This drawing is a lot better than the one I did in 1994, and I didn’t end up with frozen fingers. I don’t still have that drawing, though I remember I transferred it onto a screen to print onto a piece of cloth, which I hanged between two branches similar to what I’d seen on the South Bank, something to do with nature holding up the city or some A-Level nonsense. It was a good drawing but that wasn’t enough. For me now, it is more than enough, the meaning is just in the actual doing and observing. If there’s a story to tell too, all the better. This one is about frozen fingers and a decision soon after not to pursue art academically any further, but take a different direction, which I did, and here I am years later up Primrose Hill drawing the same view. That’s a comforting thought.

Speaking of years, it was 20 years ago this year that my wife and I got married! And therefore 20 years since my stag party, or ‘stag do’ as we say. That’s what Americans would call a Bachelor Party; a Bachelorette Party is called a ‘hen do’ in England. I made the joke that parts of London on the weekends are ‘Hen do Central’ (a reference to the name of a tube station; you had to be there). Well my stag do was up here in Chalk Farm. We had a lovely dinner at the now long-gone Belgo Noord restaurant, before heading over to this pub, the Pembroke Castle. Its a historic old pub around the corner from Chalk Farm tube on Bridge Approach, next to the railway lines. Local lore has it that there are three pubs in the Camden area that are very close to railway lines and were for the railway workers who came from other parts of these islands, but they would often fight after a few beers, giving it the old ‘Scotland is better than Wales!’, and so local authorities set up four ‘castle’ pubs where they could each drink separately and in peace, the Irish at the Dublin Castle, the Scottish at the Edinboro Castle (it’s always been spelled like that), the English at the long-gone Windsor Castle, and the Welsh right here at the Pembroke Castle. It is of course most likely bollocks, for a whole number of reasons (why would the Scottish be happy about misspelling their capital?), but it’s a nice story for the tourists, and those are all that really matter.

I liked this pub though, it had a good outside area for a nice Sunday afternoon beer with friends. I think Liam Gallagher used to go here, not that I ever saw him in there (I never notice anybody famous at pubs or anywhere). Well my stag night in there was fun, I know that was where my friends started doing that thing they do at stag parties where you get lots of shots for the groom-to-be, and basically it’s lights out after that. I remember very very little from about this pub on, but photographic evidence shows we did end up at another place in Camden, probably the Camden Head, before crashing out at my friends place in Tottenham. It was quite the hangover next day, but it was a good month before the wedding so plenty of recovery time. I don’t think I have been to the Pembroke Castle since moving to America, and didn’t have time to pop in for old time’s sake here, but of course I had to draw it. I love those London skies.

at froggy’s corner

May 19, 20242 Comments

It was a Saturday, I needed to do a sketch, I went downtown, yada yada yada. Same old story. I’m quite a boring person, truth be told. Oh well. I headed to G Street, which is still blocked off to traffic since the pandemic, so that it is more of an outdoor eating and drinking space, although a few weeks ago someone who had possibly done a lot of drinking and maybe other stuff decided to take a drive up that street and crashed into a bunch of seating. I would have read more, but I don’t subscribe to the Davis Enterprise so that was all I could really gather from the glimpse I could read before it vanished. Anyway, on this Saturday the was a little market going on, people selling second hand clothing, music was being played, there was some dancing but that might have just been the way they were walking out of the pub, and I got excited to see some old football shirts on one rack; one had a big hole in the front, the other was clearly fake. No thanks guv. I decided to stand on the corner of G and 2nd and sketch Tommy J’s, aka Froggy’s, I have drawn this place before. I used to like coming here, many years ago, and it’s not really changed much. I always loved their chicken burgers especially. They were one of several local food places featured on a TV show recently (one of that Guy Fieri guy’s shows, though thankfully he was barely in it himself) where they were looking for the best dish in Davis. I was surprised to see Sudwerk on there, having eaten there recently with the family and been quite underwhelmed (sorry Sudwerk, I still love your beer), especially when the dish they put on the telly was called fish and chips, but mate, that is not fish and chips. The ones who won it in the end was the Hotdogger, and I agree, they have some pretty great hot dogs, although I only eat the chicken variety (and not very often). Anyway, I was glad to see Tommy J’s on there, because their food always hit the spot. I must go there to eat again sometime. On this day, I sketched from the corner, standing outside the smoke shop. I had my headphones on for the most part, I was feeling a bit grumpy, and I wasn’t really enjoying my sketching. I don’t know why exactly, but I go through this, where I just don’t enjoy the process as much. Like, I love to sketch, and it does help me relax and divert my mind elsewhere, but some days I just feel like I’m chiseling away and just feeling awkward. You would think I’d be over that. I see some people’s works online, and look I don’t go comparing myself or any of that nonsense, but I see such confident lines in some people and get annoyed with myself for not being able to draw circles. I am feeling in need of a reset button, if that makes sense. I will find that again, but sometimes I am just in a funk about it. The one above I started sketching when it was sunny, but it got cloudy, so it looked a bit gloomier by the end. One guy decided to stand in front of the trash bin for a while, I didn’t want to add him in though. Another bloke came over to the little drinking fountain and started filling a large super-soaker type water gun up, but it looked like he was filling it with cranberry juice as well, so I watched him suspiciously. Another guy came up and said something to me I couldn’t hear, I took out my earpods and he was saying “come on you spurs” (I was wearing one of my many Spurs shirts) and holding his hand up for a fist bump; I still didn’t completely understand and was holding my pen, so he said it again and I got it, and was like, oh yeah, right. It was a couple of weeks after we had been thwacked 4-0 by Newcastle, and a day before we were about to lose 3-2 to the other lot down the road. I guess I’m surprised there are still fans out there. It was quite a busy afternoon, a good thing I suppose, but I got as far as I could with my sketch and went over to Froggy’s to sit and have a beer, and draw the inside. The last time I did was, I don’t know, must be over a decade ago. That is ages. I sat and drew with the brown fountain pen, but again, I wasn’t really feeling it. I didn’t eat, because I was having dinner at home shortly after, but I captured what I could. Not really a classic, but it’s me drawing what’s in front of me. I was a bit nervous thinking about Spurs v Arsenal the next day. We ended up going 3-0 down before fighting back at bit, and losing only 3-2. As I write the season just finished, and it got a bit worse for us, but then we still managed fifth, and the other lot didn’t win the league. Speaking of football, on the wall of the bar there is a mirror advertising Newcastle Brown Ale, with the famous blue star, which as you may know is the best sponsor of any football shirt in history.

playing with pure pink

February 6, 2024Leave a comment

After the downtown sketchcrawl, I wandered about the shops, and then popped into the Bull’n’Mouth (formerly De Vere’s) for a beer before heading home. I’d really wanted to get another sketch in, and I haven’t really used that ‘pure pink’ pen that much, so I sat by the beer taps and drew those in dark brown, using the pink for the background. It’s one of my uni-ball signo um-151 pens, I have loads of different colours, most of which I only use for the occasional few lines of another sketch. I really liked how the pink and dark brown worked together for the depth. This is always a good sketching subject, the shapes and different areas of light and shade. It didn’t take too long, and I cycled home before it was dark. I had done that big detailed panorama on 1str Street, and this, and a few people sketches, so that was a good day of drawing.

old sac at christmas

December 23, 2023September 26, 2024Leave a comment

Still in Old Sacramento last Saturday, I went and stood by the big Christmas Tree on Front Street, where people were gathering for photos, and there were different singers nearby filling the street with a range of sounds. I’m often reminded that I don’t always appreciate the qualities of street performers, this was one of those moments. It was a busy Saturday in the festive season, there were the classic cars riding around, people handing out flyers, musicians, all sorts of people out and about. Then there’s me, standing there with my sketchbook trying to draw it all, soaking it all in like one of those people that goes out and watches the world go by. I suppose I do. I leaned against a barrel, but my legs were like, mate can we go and sit down now?

So I decided to go and find a pub and sit down with a beer. Then I saw this old cart and decided to stand a bit longer, and draw that. I also popped into a shop full of every possible type of novelty sock known to man. I love a novelty sock, but even I was overwhelmed. There are all types of cheesy shops down here in old Sac, and I’m all for it. These days, just having physical shops of any description with interesting things in them is a bonus. One of the reasons I decided against going to San Francisco is because the Lego store downtown has closed, and I always loved going there. I don’t want to have be driven out to some far-flung mall to visit the Lego store. It was accessible and on the way back to the Amtrak bus, so I’d always go in and look around at all the stuff I didn’t need. Now we just shop online, and I’m a big offender, it’s so easy. That said I always make a point to spend quite a bit of money in the downtown shops in Davis at Christmas time, we still have some lovely little independent shops.

I headed to Fanny Ann’s Saloon. I don’t remember the last time I came in here, maybe a decade ago? I know that I last sketched inside here in December 2009, if you can believe it. It’s got a lot of old stuff to draw, yet I’ve not sketched it since. I sat at the bar and got a beer, and started to add a bit more detail to the cart sketch, before realizing that my inside up-close eyesight is getting worse (I went to the optometrist this week and have ordered some very expensive glasses to help with that). So I thought, let’s just sketch the bar anyway, and see what comes out. I was being picked up my wife to head back to Davis soon so I had a short amount of time to observe a large amount of detail, in quite a busy bar area, and I think I did alright. If I had sat further back and had another hour or so (and a couple more beers) I might have done a more detailed and colourful wider scene. The bar staff were friendly. My legs were happy to be seated for a bit, and sketching with a beer definitely helped me unwind. More than that, I am nearly done with the current sketchbook, which I had been hoping to complete by Christmas. I needed a day out drawing, I got one, and I was able to be home in good time for a curry.

i turned my face away, and dreamed about you

December 16, 2023Leave a comment

After a busy week, and after we’d just had our annual Holiday Party at work (my belly filled up with hot chocolate), I popped downtown to have a festive pint in honour of the dearly departed Shane MacGowan, as it was his funeral that day in Dublin. I never drink Guinness, but I felt I should have some Guinness to mark his memory (MacGowan being famously fussy about what he drank), and I don’t like whisky. I went to the Bull’n’Mouth, the bar that was formerly De Vere’s Irish Pub. It’s not Irish any more, but the bar itself is, having been brought over from Ireland in 2011. I found that spot I like in the corner and wrote out some Christmas cards to friends in England before sketching the bar. There were quite a few people out that night; one of my work colleagues who’d been at the party was performing a brief gig with his band and his red Rickenbacker in the plaza across the street, I had just missed it. One of the professors from work, who’d also just been at the party, was having dinner in Bull’n’Mouth with his family and a group of students from his summer course in Cork, it was nice to bump into them. My wife and son were out at an orchestra concert at the High School, so I had a couple of slow beers and got on with the sketch. I overheard a man nearby at the bar ask a woman how to spell “fascist” which was an interesting chat-up line, I probably heard out of context. I was thinking of Shane MacGowan’s funeral, and caught some of it on YouTube. Singing and dancing and music and a priest holding up a box of Barry’s Tea, that’s a great funeral. I loved Shane MacGowan. When a famous person dies and they’ve meant a lot to you, even if only at certain times in your life, it can definitely touch you, and with MacGowan it was that whole thing of being London Irish in the late 80s, all the music and people and that was like our voice right there. And not just London Irish of course, the Pogues weren’t just from London, but all over Britain where Irish people had come and settled. It wasn’t always that great in the 80s for Irish communities in England, but voices like Shane MacGowan’s definitely made it ok to be who we were, at least that’s how I felt when I was a 13 year old listening to this hundred-mile-an-hour band with folk instruments and a drunken frontman from London with missing teeth and a Tipperary-twisted singing voice singing songs about my London, Soho and White City and being down by the Thames. So I have definitely been feeling sad about his death, and he was unapologetic about who he was, and his huge flaws, and I always admired that. His funeral showed how much he was really loved, and the impact he had. Would that any of us get a send-off like that. Slainte, Shane!

bull’n’mouth

October 16, 2023October 16, 2023Leave a comment

I went downtown on Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago; I had a big drawing to do on short notice, and had to scout out a few locations to preliminary sketch for it. Of course this was the day we finally decided to have some rain, after another seemingly endless hot spell, finally some cooling down. So while it was raining, I decided to pop into the Bull & Mouth, the pub which is formerly the location of De Vere’s Irish pub on E street. I had not been into Bull & Mouth (it might be ‘Bull’n’Mouth’, I’m not sure) since it’s opening; De Vere’s originally closed at the start of the pandemic, as so many places did, before a fresh paint job outside in the summer of 2021 followed by a slow reopening later that year; I went back in once then for dinner with my wife, and that turned out to be the last time because it closed down again shortly thereafter, this time for good. The spot has been closed ever since, until this summer when the new Bull & Mouth took over the space. I had not been in yet, so I took this opportunity to finally check it out. I was pleased to see that it still looked a lot like De Vere’s, but with a few added TV screens (thankfully not overbearing), a lot of different wall decorations, long displays of beer cans above our heads, and the wording on the long black strip above the bar now referencing something about bulls rather than what it said before. The fantastic old wooden bar was brought over from Ireland when De Vere’s first opened in 2011, I remember going in there that first week and drawing a panorama while in the middle of the busy place. On this rainy Saturday afternoon, it was not too busy but there were a few people at the bar and I took a seat and ordered a beer. The guy behind the bar recognized me, “it’s been a while!”, it certainly had, about four years since I’d been in there for a beer and a sketch (dinner with my wife in 2021 not included). It didn’t feel that different from De Vere’s. I don’t know what it’s like in the evenings (I don’t go out much in the evenings any more). I had to do a sketch of course; first I worked on my prep sketches a little for the other big drawing, I was still working out the composition of that one as it was of three Davis locations all in one (I’ll post that soon), and then decided to play with the Lamy Safari fountain pen, I had not used it for a bar interior like this. It worked well, moving quickly across the page, and I added a bit of a wash too, though it took the ink a little longer to dry I think in the slightly damper air of that rainy day. I had a couple of very nice beers, and then once the rain had stopped I went across the street for a milkshake (diet be damned) and walked home (there’s my exercise). The last day of September.

deacon brodie’s tavern

September 4, 2023September 4, 2023Leave a comment

The other drawing that I’ve put into the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction was this one of Deacon Brodie’s Tavern, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. I wanted to draw an old pub, and I decided to go beyond London this time and draw one I never got around to sketching while I was in the Scottish capital. I didn’t even pop in for a pint, I’m sad to say. The one evening I went out to sketch a pub, I didn’t go further than the block near our apartment, but this was just a little way up the hill. I had taken a few photos of it before, as I remember seeing it on one of Rick Steve’s many shows, so I knew it was famous. It dates back about 200 years or so, and was named after a well-known local character, Deacon Blue Brodie. Sorry, Deacon William Brodie. He was an upstanding Edinburgh citizen, a maker of cabinets, but boy did he have things in his closet. Do you see what I did there. By night, he would turn to a life of crime, becoming a burglar to pay off his gambling debts, trying not to ‘drawer’ attention to him ‘shelf’ and fall foul of the long ‘armoire’ of the law. Ok enough cabinet gags. The point is, Deacon Brodie led a double life, eventually leading to his being hanged in 1788 – ironically, as the sign outside the pub states cheerfully, on gallows he himself had designed. There’s a lesson for you. His story however inspired a much more famous one, when Robert Louis Stephenson created the characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (Spoiler alert, Jekyll and Hyde are the same person). The pub sign on the corner shows the respectable Jekyll-like goodie Deacon Brodie on one side, with the Hyde-like villain Deacon Brodie on the other.

As I say, I never went in this time, but I guess it’s one of the stops on the literary pub tours of Edinburgh, when you presumably go to literally every pub. I had to draw it, and this will be in the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction this year; details are at: https://pencegallery.org/events/art-auction/. As I said in my last post, 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.