DC part 1 – the Federal Triangle

April 28, 2025May 1, 20252 Comments

And so, we visited Washington DC, the nation’s capital, for the first time. We had planned this about a year ago, before the Current Political Atmosphere (aka the Current Reality of American Politics, if we want acronyms), but we wanted to see some History. We took the DC Metro from the airport down to the Federal Triangle to find our hotel, which was right in the middle of History. The Waldorf Astoria was pretty nice – amazing what you can get with points – with top hatted men opening doors and asking us about our ‘driver’ (mate we came by tube), but was built into the old Post Office Building, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th. This place has real American History. It is also the second highest building in DC, after the Washington Monument – this is not a city of skyscrapers, more a city of lofty ideas. It was also the start of Cherry Blossom season – while most of them had not yet started really blossoming, the pink buds were starting to come out. Right outside the hotel was a statue of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most well-known of the Founding Fathers. I sketched him below, after drawing the hotel (above) on our first morning. We did actually go up the clock tower (properly called the Old Post Office Tower), which is a national historic monument (with a separate entrance outside the hotel) and admire the views across DC, though I did not sketch from up there.

I won’t post all my DC sketches in one go because it’s a lot of reading and writing, so I’ll just post these few and then we can take a sketched tour of DC after that, before sketching our way through New York City. Below is the view from our bedroom window. Our bedroom was pretty impressive, including a big chandelier and a very deep bathtub. The building across from us was the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building. This whole area is full of federal government buildings, all those ones you hear about constantly on the news. It reminded us very much of being in Whitehall. The IRS was next door to us. The FBI were around the corner.

I had to sketch at least one DC fire hydrant, for the collection, so I drew the one below opposite the hotel. I had been hoping that maybe the hydrants here had Abraham Lincoln style hats. We were very close to the Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was famously shot dead by John Wilkes Booth. I mean, if you are going to wear a big hat like that in the theatre. These days someone would film the argument and put it on Instagram for clicks and likes. This ended up being the only hydrant I drew in DC, but I did draw a lot of other stuff so join me next time to see some more.

the return to aix

July 24, 2024July 24, 20241 Comment

We took a few days away from London in the south of France. We went first to Aix-en-Provence, the very city where my wife and I met each other, 22 years ago. This was the first time we had been back there together in 21 years, and the first time our son ever went there. The last time I was in Aix was in 2015, I came here before my trip to Strasbourg, but it was great to finally come back here together, after all this time. The world is a different place now, though Aix hasn’t changed that much, give or take an Apple store and a lot less dog poo. It’s still a busy place, especially in summer, and we stayed in an apartment which overlooked the same street my wife used to live on when we first met, another flat up a steep narrow staircase. We ate dinner at our favourite old place, La Pizza, still there and still delicious, although the nearby Place d’Albertas has lost some of its charm, the little old fountain now looking clean and sterile. Aix still has a lot of character though. On our first morning I woke up early, as I always do when travelling, and went out to do some sketching. We were right by the Place de l’Hotel de Ville, and I had to sketch it, of course. It was here in Aix that I rediscovered my love of going out drawing, all those years ago before blogs and social media and Urban Sketchers. I remember doing a sketch of this on a trip back in the year after we left, 2003, and then again in 2015 on that last trip. An almost unchanging view. One day I’ll actually finish a sketch I do there! The town was setting up as I sketched, vans would occasionally park right in front of me, cops (‘les flics’) from the police station would greet each other with the little pecks on the cheek, restaurateurs would start slowly opening up their shades and putting out chairs. And then it was time for me to go and pick up pastries for the family, seemingly the one thing untouched by the beats of inflation, still the cheapest breakfast there is, and nothing tastes as good as freshly baked French pastry. When I lived in Aix, I lived above a bakery and the smell would waft up to my window.

The drawing from 2003, that was drawn in a Canson sketchbook I got from my favourite shop in Aix, Papeterie Michel. They always had the absolute best selection of art materials and sketchbooks, as well as everything I needed to make masks and costumes for the extremely silly play I directed. I am pleased to report, Michel is still there and even better than I remember. We all spent a long time in there, and I fought the urge to buy everything. I did buy new pens, many postcards, and a beautiful set of placemats. Elsewhere we bought a couple of new tablecloths, because we always loved the Provence tablecloths. Michel is on the Cours Mirabeau, the regal thoroughfare of Aix that separates the old town from the also old Quartier Mazarin. We walked around there, memories bouncing around those dusty old orange walls. The cinemas where we watched so many films; the first time I saw Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and of course where my wife took me to see Attack of the Clones on the opening night, playing only in French (VF) at the Cezanne because it wasn’t playing in English (VO) at the other place. People were dressed as Jedi and fighting with lightsabres (sabre-laser) in the aisles, we’d only been dating for a couple of months and she got me the tickets as a surprise. The music from that film still reminds me so much of those early days together in Aix. We walked down to the old Parc Jourdan, where we’d often hang out as it was halfway between centre-ville and the university where I worked as a ‘lecteur’. I didn’t walk down to the old Fac des Lettres building, I heard that it was knocked down and replaced with something more modern (and presumably, hopefully, a lot better). I also didn’t walk out to where my old flat was, our time was short in Aix, there were only so many memory lanes. I hoped to see some old men playing pétanque in the park but not today. So we walked back up to the Cours, mooched around Monoprix, and wrote postcards over cold drinks at a cafe. La vie can be pretty belle sometimes.

Our lunch was the thing I’d been wanting most of all, the fabled Poulet Frites, which I got from a very busy little kiosk called Le Regal which has been operating there since I lived there, although it’s across the street now and looks much changed. The poulet frites were still amazing though, fresh and hot, although my favourite ones back in the day were from a little place by where I lived. This one is by the Place de la Rotonde, which circles around a huge fountain, which I drew above. I did not quite finish the sketch, but didn’t need to. It actually started raining while I was sketching; it had been doing so on and off, very lightly, for a little while once the morning sunshine had, er, dried up. This rain though was not like normal rain, as you can see from the little orange splotches on the page, made by sand carried all the way from the Sahara. I remembered this would happen occasionally, either through warm sticky rain or just blown up on winds from the south (winds that were not as fierce as the fabled Mistral). It didn’t deter me for long. There were a lot of tourists in town, many being herded around by guides telling stories of the great figures of Aix, the capital of Provence and once ruled by a king called Roi Rene, whose statue stands at the end of the Cours Mirabeau. The entrance to the Cours is marked by two statues, one dedicated to the Arts and Sciences (which I sketched below), the other dedicated to literature or maths or something (if I didn’t draw it, I don’t remember it). Aix is a big university town, packed with scholars and students, a bit like Davis (but otherwise nothing like Davis whatsoever). Between 2001 and 2002 I taught English there, more a learning experience for me than any of the students in my classes. I wonder sometimes about all the people I met that year, though I’ve not been in contact with any for years (except of course my wife!). As I walked about the streets I remembered people I had not thought about in two decades, but that’s all part of life, the scenes and characters change and you’re in a new play. Now I’m a man pushing 50 who wanders about with a sketchbook trying to catch the places while I can.

The Cours Mirabeau has these odd little fountains on it, covered in thick green moss, that sit slap bang in the middle of the street. Aix has been called the City of a Thousand Fountains; I don’t know if there are exactly that many, it seems a bit specific, but there are a lot around here. Aix is built on a thermal spring – its name comes from the ‘Aquae Sextiae’, which means ‘sexy waters’ in Latin. Ok fine it doesn’t mean that, it means the waters of Sextius, who was a Roman consul back when they were beating up the local Gauls and founding the city in 123 BCE. This fountain comes right up from those hot springs, and is very old indeed, dating from 1667. It’s older than St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s older than the USA. It’s older than (weak jokes about how old) Joe Biden (is). It’s called the Mossy Fountain (Fontaine Moussue) which I think you’ll agree is a good name. I drew it while my family were looking at clothes in Monoprix.

The most famous Aixois was definitely 100% without a shadow of a doubt the painter Paul Cézanne. Aix is wall to wall Cezanne obsessed. His studio was at the top of the town, uphill with a nice view of the big mountain, Mont St. Victoire, which I have climbed up twice, I never fail to tell people whenever we see one of his painting. “See that? Mont St. Victoire, I went up there, yeah easy, no sweat. Had to run down to catch the bus before it got dark though.” I make it sound like I rock-climbed up the face like that Free Solo guy, as opposed to just walk up the path along the less steep side, and peered over the edge. Cézanne loved that mountain though, he couldn’t get enough of it, drawing and painting it over and over again. I can’t relate to that at all, eh (Bike Barn, Varsity Theatre, Silo, these are all my Mont St. Victoires). Other famous people lived in Aix over the years, while I was there everyone kept going on about John Malkovich, “oh I saw John Malkovich at the market the other day”, “oh I sat next to John Malkovich at the cafe the other day”, “Oh I stood behind John Malkovich in the line for the toilet at the Red Clover the other day”, like let it go, Malkovich fans. I didn’t even know what he looked like, so I wouldn’t have known him from Paul Cézanne, but everyone had a Malkovich story. I was more impressed that the legend Nina Simone lived in Aix when we did, though she died in 2003. There should be a statue of her there. This statue of Cézanne though is nice, standing by the Rotonde outside where the old casino used to be, now knocked down and turned into a fancy shopping district. He’s there with his bushy beard and walking stick, and backpack full of art materials, so I had to draw him (though I did have to check I wasn’t unexpectedly drawing a statue of Malkovich). As a few more drops of sandy rain plopped on my page, I moved along. I have some more Aix sketches to show, even rainier ones, but that will be in the next post.

parkway places

July 17, 2024July 18, 2024Leave a comment

I found myself once again on Camden Parkway. I always seem to end up here. It’s like a default setting, like if you lose something and it’s down the back of the couch, this is where you’ll find it, Camden Parkway is London’s back of the couch. It’s changed over the years as has everything, but it’s still itself and I went looking for the things I know. I didn’t draw (or go into) the Dublin Castle this time, although I did do a bigger drawing of it when I got home, along with a series of other London locations). Some of my old haunts have gone, some remain. I don’t think I ever set foot in the Parkway Delicatessen, I think I developed my taste for panettone in recent years (thanks Zia’s Deli in Davis!), but this was a sketch waiting to happen. So many old places seem to be kicked away these days, but I love sketching an old Italian deli. I stood outside an estate agents to draw this. There was a lot of traffic on narrow Parkway, isn’t there always. I thought to myself, what if I drew all of Parkway, as one big row of drawings? I could do it if I had the time. Sure I would be wistful about the places that are gone, but places there now still need recording. Camden Town is of significant cultural significance to London, and enjoy it while it’s there. I was glad to see the Odeon cinema is still there (it’s strange to think of a chain cinema being something you need to save but so many have been closing). The last film I watched there was The Force Awakens! I used to go there all the time though when I lived in London, often on the way home from university, in the evening I would get out at Camden, go and see a film, head home to bed. Across the street, the old sign for Palmers pet store is still there, though the petshop itself is long gone and now a cafe. I remember going in there as a kid with my dad. It might have been a different petshop actually but going in there in my 20s I seemed to remember that. My dad loves pets. I even have the word ‘pet’ in my name!

Another place I had to sketch was Jamon Jamon, a little Spanish tapas restaurant that has been on Parkway for ages. Although again, I never actually ate here. I don’t eat jamon, after all, so it probably felt like it wouldn’t be my thing, but I love tapas so I don’t know why not. I might give Spanish food a miss for a bit though, as I’m still sad from losing the Euros final, but I’ll get over it because I love Spanish food. Already I’m fighting the urge for a paella (how long did I wait in 2021 before eating Italian food? Two days, maybe?) I always wanted to sketch this place though. I stood just outside it rather than across the street, and the guy from the barber’s next door, Ossie’s, came out to have a look and said he liked it. I said I’d get around to drawing his shop as well at some point. I was worried it was going to start raining, he said if it did, just come inside! My hair was already very short though. I thought about going into Jamon Jamon for a bite to eat, but I knew I’d be meeting my wife for some dinner in Covent Garden before going to see Spirited Away later that evening. By the way, very important point here, even though this is really a 75%-finished sketch, with some colours and details missing (it’s enough for the general idea) I wanted to make sure I included the door on the right, because someone has written the words “I farted” on it, for some reason. Further down the street is Pizza Pilgrims, a newer chain you see around London that does some really nice pizza, I had some when I was over last year. I do remember a place called Parkway Pizzeria years ago that I used to go to, they had very nice pizzas, that was back when a sit down meal was a really big deal, rather than just the bag of chips in the rain or the reduced-price sandwich was Tescos. Every little helps. One place I was on that side of the street was a pub called the Parkway, which was later the NW1. I used to go there a lot, it was my usual meeting place for my birthdays, or to watch the World Cup, and even for my leaving drinks back in 2005, when most people I knew came out and shared several beers with me a few days before I was moving to California, a memorable night I still look at the photos of, how young I was, at the end of my 20s, about to start this new American adventure. Of course my last night out as a Londoner was at Camden Parkway, it couldn’t be anywhere else.

This last one was drawn that same day, much further down towards the park that the Parkway is named after, Regents Park. The buildings change from being the rough and ready Camden brick to the right regal Regent’s Park stucco. I was just wandering at this point. I considered taking a long walk through the park, listening out for the roar of the lion at London Zoo, but I just drew this old 19th century fountain instead, looking like the entrance to an underground world. It’s called the Matilda Fountain, on Gloucester Gate, and dates back to 1878. Leaf and stone, and doorways to the unknown, that’s what England is all about.

the rest of my Saturday, from USC to DTLA

April 7, 2024April 7, 2024Leave a comment

After the day at the Natural History Museum, the sun was starting to think about setting. It was a nice evening in South Central LA, around Exposition Park, and some fans were starting to arrive for the LAFC game that evening. I’d thought about going, because former Spurs captain and club legend Hugo Lloris now plays for Los Angeles, and I wanted to see him in goal, but I knew I wanted to go back to the hotel and have dinner at the downtown indoor Market. But before I got on my Metro back, I decided to take a look around the USC campus right opposite. South Central LA is famous for all sorts of stuff in popular culture, not least the gang-type stuff, but its home to USC, the University of Southern California (sometimes referred to by other Californians as the ‘University of Spoiled Children’ because it’s a rich private school, that’s what I was told), and it’s a pretty nice campus. I didn’t wander too far, I had wanted to go over to the film school where George Lucas (among many others) had studied, but instead I stopped next to this lovely fountain and looked out at the Bovard Auditorium building. There were graduating students in deep red robes taking photos by the statue of Tommy the Trojan; the USC nickname is the ‘Trojans’ (like UC Davis are the Aggies, UCLA are the Bruins, UC Santa Cruz are the Banana Slugs…) and the college football team is famous. As well my guy George Lucas, USC’s other famous alumni include Neil Armstrong, John Wayne, Frank Gehry, and former F1 Champion Phil Hill, plus loads of other famous people I’ve never heard of. It was nice to sit and sketch on a quiet campus. I like to draw other university campuses when I can, since I spend my days drawing every bit of my own campus. I drew only one other thing there, which was the statue below found near the entrance, a little dog called ‘George Tirebiter’.

George Tirebiter was apparently a little shaggy dog who was a beloved mascon for the Trojans back in the 40s and 50s. He would come onto campus and chase cars, biting their tires, and became so popular that the students would take him to the Trojans games in a limousine (yes a limousine, at USC) and lead the marching band onto the field wearing little sweaters and hats, and once biting the UCLA mascot ‘Joe Bruin’ on the nose. The statue was created by Michael Davis and erected in 2006, and people were stopping to take their pics with shaggy boy George. For some reason, little googly eyes had been put on him.

I went back to my hotel for a quick rest, then headed over to the Grand Central Market for a bit to eat. I’d walked through there once before several years ago and thought it might be a good place to grab dinner and maybe draw a bit. It was so busy! A very popular place on a Saturday evening. I eventually settled on a little fired chicken counter called Lucky Bird, and had what may have been the spiciest chicken sandwich of my life, stuffed with jalapeños. It was delicious, but wow it was hot. I didn’t end up doing any sketching there, but had some amazing ice cream and then headed back to the hotel. I didn’t fancy sitting in my room (though it was a very nice room) so I popped over the to the pub across the street, an Irish pub called Dublins. It may have had an Irish theme and name, but it was very much an old school hip-hop night, with a DJ playing some really cool old stuff from the 80s and 90s, and an accompanying MC in a glittery shirt walking about the bar with his mic really livening the place up, it was great. There was a good atmosphere in there, the staff were friendly and the drinks were great. My hands though they got to keep on drawing so I relaxed with the music and sketched what was in front of me, the bar itself, though it would probably have been better to sketch the people and the pub as a whole, this is all I could manage to focus on. I did chat a little to other people and enjoyed the music, before heading back to the hotel (grabbing a burrito from a street van on the way, I do like late night street food in LA). Spurs were playing early next morning, but I was having a good Sunday lie-in next day, before heading to Riverside. All in all, a nice Saturday in downtown Los Angeles.

“I belong to Glasgow”

August 10, 2023August 10, 20232 Comments

It rained hard on the train journey to Glasgow. I suppose you don’t come to Scotland for the sun. We passed by Falkirk, a place I’d like to have seen, mostly for the huge Kelpies. We arrived at Queen Street and the rain stopped for long enough to let us walk up hill to our hotel, further than it looked on the map. We sat in the hotel lounge watching the driving rain outside, eating those little Tunnocks marshmallow Teacakes I love so much, strumming on the ukulele. I could tell my family were maybe a little less wowed by Glasgow than by Edinburgh, but I’d been waiting most of my life to come and have a look around here, rain or not. I went for a little walk as the rain eased off a bit; we weren’t far from the Art School, but after the big fire they had a few years back, it’s still covered in this big white plastic while it’s being remodeled. Glasgow’s an artist’s town though, that is clear. Charles Rennie Mackintosh is the big name here, but he’s not the only one. Musically too, Glasgow is a creative city, and one of my favourite bands of all time are from here, Belle and Sebastian. I’ve always wanted to come here and explore.

I wandered about a little, and then I heard some music, it sounded like flutes and drums. Marching up the road were the men and women of the Orange Order, decked out in their suits and their orange sashes with their big orange and purple banners, lads in Rangers shirts flanking them, as well as police clearing the road for them. I was glad I wasn’t in my Celtic shirt, nor my Ireland shirt. I had heard about the Orange Marches since I was a kid of course, the ones in Northern Ireland at least, usually in the backdrop of some news story, and I had forgotten that Marching Season was starting. I knew from my mum that it was big in Glasgow (she spent some time in Glasgow as a kid, I think some of our Ulster family lived up here), and of course I’m well aware of Rangers and Celtic and the whole sectarian thing. Still, I was actually surprised to see them in person. I did see them marching the day before in Edinburgh actually, going up the Royal Mile in the morning with their flutes, playing “The Sash Me Father Wore” (I am sure they have other tunes, that’s the only one I know). It didn’t seem as big (though I saw coachloads of other men in orange sashes arrive a bit later), and was certainly dwarfed by the huge Pride marches that were happening on the same day in Edinburgh. The Glasgow march seemed to go on for a long way. I got a quick sketch done, and went and looked at something else.

When the rain had stopped and we were filled up on delicious fish and chips (washed down with more Irn Bru of course) we walked about the city centre. The pedestrianized Sauchiehall Lane looked like it had seen better days, and could have done with a little less of those food delivery bikes careening down them, a scourge in many cities now. But I liked the city centre, and while looking at our map a young lad came up and said “you look lost, can I help youse find something?” This it turns out was a feature of Glasgow – the people are just willing to give you a hand, this happened several times. We explored the George Square area and found that statue of the Duke of Wellington on his horse with the traffic cone on its head, outside the Gallery of Modern Art. I have seen this before on my one super brief stop in Glasgow, in 1999, and its the only thing I remember. It’s a Glaswegian tradition to put a cone on the head of the Iron Duke. Incredibly they have tried to stop people doing it, yet the cone is way more famous than the statue without the cone. We took a bus out towards Glasgow Cathedral, and on the way an elderly fellow had overheard us tell the driver where we were going, and was giving us directions in that thick Glaswegian accent that I love hearing so much. Honestly, it’s always been my favourite accent. My best friend when I was 12 was from Glasgow, Ralph, I think we became friends largely because I actually tried to understand him, but as a result of his influence at a formative age I do slip into a kind of Scottish pronunciation of certain words when I hear the accent again. I also watched maybe too much Rab C. Nesbitt as a kid as well. It was Ralph who got me interested in the guitar, and we were both big Beatles fans; I remember we talked about starting a band called The Flies, and eventually I got a cheap pretty crap acoustic for a fiver at a car boot sale, and learned my first chords (and also taught myself how to string a guitar). Anyway, we got off the bus and followed the old man’s helpful directions to the cathedral, known as St. Mungo’s Cathedral, and also the High Kirk of Glasgow (I’m not sure if it’s technically a cathedral, as we learned with St.Giles in Edinburgh, but it calls itself cathedral and it looks like one and that’s good enough for me). The cathedral was not actually where we wanted to go. We were looking for the Necropolis, which is a large cemetery at the top of a steep hill behind the cathedral with amazing views over the city. See my sketch at the top of the post, that was from there. The views were remarkable, you could see Celtic Park stadium, but we didn’t linger too long. In terms of location, I think it’s up there with my favourite cemeteries, and I was even more pleased to find the grave of William Miller, the guy who write Wee Willie Winkie. I took this photo of an ivy-covered memorial to a young lad named John Ronald Ker, who in 1867 had drowned while shooting wild fowl from his boat at the age of 21, and this monument was erected by his friends and family in his memory. It’s a beautiful celtic cross, and a sad story.

After the Necropolis, we bussed it back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the night, eating more Tunnocks Teacakes. More Glasgow sketches to come.

“Bloody MacKenzie, Turn the Key!”

August 8, 2023August 8, 20236 Comments

A must-see spot in Edinburgh for ghost hunters (or ghost hunted?) is Greyfriars Kirkyard. I went there twice. The second time was early on our final morning in the city, when I got up and walked across the old town until I reached the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, outside the Greyfriars Bobby pub. If I had heard of Greyfriars Bobby before, I don’t remember it, but I probably assumed he was some sort of policeman, maybe one that wandered the spooky graveyard in the foggy night looking out for graverobbers and ghouls. No, it turns out Greyfriars Bobby is a dog, a wee little pooch, and Disney even made a film about him. The story goes that the wee Bobby was the dog of a local policeman, a little Skye Terrier who was so loyal to his master that when the man died and was buried in the kirkyard around Greyfriars Kirk, Bobby would guard his grave every night for about fourteen years. Greyfriars Bobby, as he became known locally, eventually died in January of 1872 (thereby missing the first ever Scotland v England international football match by eleven months). Such was Bobby’s celebrity, a small fountain was commissioned by Lady Burdett-Coutts, president of the Ladies Committee of the RSPCA, topped with a little statue of Bobby sculpted by William Brodie. It was unveiled in November 1873 (almost exactly a year since that first Scotland v England international football match, which ended 0-0 by the way). I had to add Bobby to my sketchbook, and I added the eponymous pub in the background so that you know his name (the pub I think came later, and in those days they did not show international football on TVs in pubs, due to the lack of international football, plus the lack of TVs what with them not being invented, though a Scotsman would later fix that too). You will notice that Bobby has a very shiny nose. If you ever saw him you might even say it glows. This is because of a very silly tradition that tourists have, perhaps told by silly guides in years gone by, that if you touch Bobby’s nose you will have good luck, because (and you have to say this in a Scottish accent) obviously that makes loads of fuckin’ sense, doesn’t it. The problem has got so bad that the statue is in danger of being permanently damaged, so locals have taken to making up stories of bad luck that will befall people that rub Bobby’s nose, and those stories I might actually believe. One thing we do not want is for Bobby’s nose to come off, because the absolute last thing Edinburgh needs are endless jokes from its tour guides about how Edinburgh’s dog has no nose, “how does it smell?”, “reeky!”, etc and so on. So people please, leave wee Bobby’s nose alone.

Speaking of tours, the first visit we had to spooky Greyfriars was the very night before, when we took the ‘City of the Dead’ walking tour. This started outside St. Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile, I sketched the little scene above while we awaited our tour group to assemble. We were met by our guide, a man dressed all in theatrical black with a spooky hat adorned with black flowers and crow’s wings,, round glasses, charcoal coloured paint around the eyes, and unnerving milky-white lenses in his eyes. He reminded me at first of the Crow Man from Worzel Gummidge, but with his white beard he also looked a bit like Terry Pratchett. He gave us an illustrative tour of the old town, full of ghosts yes but mostly full of bodies. Some of the stories were long, detailed and very gruesome, especially those concerning the infamous Old Tolbooth. We then moved through the city towards Greyfriars Kirkyard. It was not yet dark – it’s late June in Scotland, no chance – so we didn’t feel completely spooked out yet. Still the light was getting gloomy and the Kirkyard, packed with weatherworn graves, gnarly trees and mossy old monuments, was the perfect stage for this storytelling. It was also full of other guided tour groups, many from the Harry Potter realm. Greyfriars was a favourite thinking spot for JK Rowling as she came up with ideas for the Potter books, and she would write in a cafe just up the road from here. Many of the graves have names familiar to Potter fans, such as McGonagall (who was actually a poet, apparently a very bad one), James Potter, and the one everyone comes to see, Tom Riddle. It’s actually ‘Thomas Riddell’ but that’s close enough. On our tour, however, we were in for a very ‘real’ bit of spookiness. We were here for the infamous poltergeist, Bloody MacKenzie.

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George MacKenzie, aka ‘Bloody’ MacKenzie, was the enforcer of King Charles II’s punishment and persecution of the Covenanters in the late 1600s. He imprisoned about 1200 Covenanters – Presbyterians who supported the National Covenant in Scotland resisting Charles I’s changes to the Scottish Kirk – in a little field next to Greyfriars Kirkyard, in terrible cramped conditions, with so many either starving to death or being executed that George MacKenzie gained that ‘Bloody’ (or ‘Bluidy’ in Scots) nickname. MacKenzie died in 1691 in Westminster, but he was ultimately buried at a mausoleum right here in Greyfriars, mere feet away from where so many of his victims were imprisoned. Now here’s the thing. His ghost is not only said to haunt this place, but it’s been well documented in recent times. I won’t tell all the stories here, but a lot of people have encountered the dreaded MacKenzie Poltergeist. As our guide told us (after locking us into the ‘Covenanters Prison’ area; only official guides can access this part), many people have encountered this spirit, often feeling a strange presence or the sense of being attacked, or getting home the next day and discovering strange scratches on their body. It was getting gloomy when we entered one of the more sinister feeling tombs, where at the end of the 1990s a homeless man apparently encountered the restless spirit and started a new wave of hauntings. Our guide told us his tales. As he did, an American lady stood at the back of the tomb was becoming increasingly freaked out, interrupting him every minute or so to say that she felt something pressing down on her forehead, as if being pushed back. I thought she was going to faint. While I like the stories, I don’t really believe in ghosts being actually ‘real’ (though I will get shivers down my spine and feel very creeped out), but she certainly did and it was real enough for her. Our guide did a good job though not to freak her out more, but he performed a parlor trick to show us that Bloody MacKenzie can at least turn a huge iron key that was placed in the palm of his hand, making us all recite “Bloody MacKenzie! Turn the Key!” in the dim light while watching this key magically turn of its own accord. It was entertaining; as the guide said at the end, that’s just a wee bit of fun. Still, the American lady was sticking with this ghost tale. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Does anyone have any AirPods on right now?” Um, no I don’t think so, people mumbled. “Some AirPods have just tried to connect to my iPhone! This has never happened before. That’s so weird. What’s causing that? Is anyone else having this happen?” We were in a literal tomb at night. “Well the poltergeist can sometimes have an effect on electronics,” our guide said reassuringly. The lady was utterly convinced, Bloody MacKenzie was trying to connect his Bloody AirPods to her iPhone. As I wondered what music he might make her listen to, the theme from Rentaghost just popped into my head, mysteriously. (There was a Scottish ghost in Rentaghost too wasn’t there, Hazel McWitch?) It was a fun evening of spooky stories, and it was dark when we walked back to our apartment, our last night in Edinburgh.

So I woke up next morning and came back to Greyfriars, drawing Bobby, and then coming in to explore in the damp morning light. Of course I had to draw MacKenzie’s mausoleum. I wasn’t too worried about being attacked by a poltergeist, or getting mysterious scratches on my arms, or even of having random bagpipe music commandeer my AirPods, though I was a bit nervous of getting eaten by midges, the biggest terror in Scotland as everyone knows. I drew the tomb safe from any supernatural danger, and went home for our final Edinburgh breakfast. We were off to Glasgow that day.

gimme some Leuven

September 4, 2022September 2, 2022Leave a comment

I woke up and it was raining hard. There was no way I was going to Charleroi to draw old factories if I was sitting on top of a hill getting drenched. I spent enough time getting drenched in Charleroi between 1999 and 2000 for a lifetime. So I had a little lie-in, and then hopped on a train to the nearby university city of Leuven (Louvain in French, but this is in the Flemish region). I have only been to Leuven once before, and that was an even rainier day, meeting up with one of my fellow year-abroad teachers. Always thought it would be a good place to go back to a less rainy day, but since it was raining anyway I thought, what the hell. This was my last day in Belgium, I was going to be catching a Eurostar that evening back to London. Originally I’d planned to stay another day, but as much as I like Belgium, an extra day in London is something I knew I’d love more (and I did). I dashed from shop doorway to shop doorway to stay relatively dry, until I reached the centre of town. I spent a bit of time in an interesting bookshop looking at Flemish books, including one very big volume all about the various dialects of Flanders, complete with detailed maps. If I could read Dutch better that would be a fascinating book. It’s hard for foreigners to sometimes pick up the subtleties of accent and dialect in a language where they struggle just to understand the words (I said that very thing to someone when I first came here in 1999, they asked if I was having difficulties with the accent, I said no it’s the vocabulary). I didn’t for example realize that the French of Charleroi was a particularly peculiar version compared to many other places in Belgium, such as my friends in Liege who told me they couldn’t always understand Les Carolos. Meanwhile they are struggling to understand my French, and then when I went to Charleroi, people told me “oh you have such good French!” so I understood, right, I learned it here, that’s why nobody else comprehends me. That’s my story anyway. So, I got to Leuven and had a waffle, and tried to figure out what sort of drawings I would do. I was faced with this big church – I’d go inside later – and the extremely ornate Stadhuis (Town Hall) building, which I knew I’d need to draw, but wasn’t sure where to start. I walked about, and found a covered passage by the Grote Markt where I wouldn’t get splashed on too much. I drew the panorama above. This took under a couple of hours, though I added most of the paint later. Click on the image, you will see it in more detail (on Flickr). It was a reasonably busy Wednesday lunchtime. As I drew, a girl crashed her bike not far from me, sliding on the watery street, and she seemed pretty hurt. I went over with some other bystanders and she was helped up into the dry, and her bike put to the side. I got back to my drawing, I couldn’t really help much more with my limited Dutch, but someone else was able to help her get her phone to call her mother who came to collect her. I felt really bad for her, I don’t think she’d broken anything but she was pretty upset. As much as I enjoyed this drawing I do think of that poor girl falling from her bike now when I look at it.

Leuven is an important old town, the historic capital of the Duchy of Brabant. Its university goes back to the 1425 (as the old University of Leuven, though that was abolished in 1797, and its successor KU Leuven was founded in 1834). The university’s library was atrociously burned to the ground by the invading Germans in World War I. The enormous St. Peter’s Church (Sint-Pieterskerk) is opposite the Stadhuis and dates from the 1500s, though it too was seriously damaged in both world wars. I stood at the rear of the church sheltered from the storm, and drew the sketch above. I liked the shape of those rooftops. The flags were above a bar called Leuven Centraal, where I would stop in for some food before heading back. there was a young couple seated nearby who were if not on a date, seemed like it was a kind of date, they were having that “I like this music, do you like that music” sort of conversation (from what I could gather of their Flemish; I may have misunderstood, they could have been talking about horse racing for all I know). So I went into the church, walked about, was a bit overwhelmed to do a proper big sketch int here, and drew this big wooden pulpit thing that looked like a magic tree. I bet the priest loves going in there, it’s like walking into a fantastical sculpture, like you become some sort of wizard on the other side.

A couple of different things. The first was outside a friterie, and is an anthropomorphized bag of frites eating a frite. He only has one arm so maybe another bag of frites ate his arm. Maybe cannibalism is a thing in the live-action-frites community. Either way this was CREEPY as hell, but not the creepiest frites related image I’ve seen in Belgium (that would be the odd three-legged feminine-frite, a ‘frite-fatale’ if you will, seen in Charleroi next to an image of, for some reason, Dopey the Dwarf). Still it is a bizarre figure. Yet it still made me hungry for more salty frites. The next statue is a more well-known Leuven fixture, ‘Fonske‘, or ‘Fons Sapientiae’. I would presume this is Leuven’s version of the Fonz, is telling kids “eeeh, be smart, be cool, read books, stay in school” and then for some reason pouring a drink on his head, which Fonzie would never do, unless the drink was hair gel. I don’t know, I’ve not seen Happy Days for a long time. Fonske was created in 1975 to commemorate the university’s 550th anniversary, and the name means “the fountain of wisdom” in Latin. Just like Mannekin Pis in Brussels, the statue is sometimes dressed up in costume. I really hope that one of those costumes is of the Fonz. (Side note, when I first met my wife in France, I would sometimes make her laugh by singing the theme tune to Happy Days in French, “Dimanche Lundi, Heureux Jours…” etc).

Well there was no goodbye grey skies, hello blue just yet, so I popped into the cafe Leuven Central (my guidebook recommended this place) for a late lunch. I got a veggie curry and drank a Kasteel Rouge, which to my surprise was a kriek (or cherry beer). Krieks are popular over here, I’ve never been a big fan of them but this was quite nice. And that was my day out in Leuven. I had to get back to Brussels and back to London, and this little sojourn in Belgium would be over.

“thou Scheldt not pass”

September 1, 2022August 30, 2022Leave a comment

I weaved through the streets of Antwerp heading for the river Scheldt, to use that brilliant “thou Scheldt not pass” line I had thought of in my previous post. I might use that as a title for this blog post. I headed for Het Steen, the little castle on the banks of the wide river that is the oldest building in Antwerp. It dates from the early 1200s, and means “The Rock” (though “Steen” is a pretty common word for a stone castle in Dutch). There was a castle on this spot right back in the 9th century Carolingian period. It has a decent tourist information office in there now, where I bought some chocolates for my son (little chocolate hands from Antwerp). I had a good spot to sketch from across the busy street, up some stairs, but it was starting to spit so I sketched quickly. You know I love a street sign, so I made sure to include the blue crosswalk sign in the bottom right corner. Some people might think no, you leave those out, takes away from the historic castle, but I say thee nay, give me modern metal street signs and old medieval buildings any day. Back on my 1998 train tour of Europe I became a little bit obsessed with crosswalk signs, because they were a little different in every country. I liked the German ones in particular, wearing the little hat, as do the ones in the Czech Republic which look a bit like spies. I would always get obsessed with things like that.

I tell you what, they can’t get enough of those Flemish giants here in Antwerp. This is a statue of a big lad called Lange Wapper. It’s right outside Het Steen, and shows Lange Wapper doing that Tory-party conference stance and looking down on two smaller people, crotch out, threatening them with his Lange Wapper (I’m so glad he is clothed, unlike Silvius Brabo). Lange Wapper is a Flemish folk tale, about a boy who started out as a bit of parsley and cabbage and then became a bit of a trickster. He apparently saved an old woman who had been thrown into the river Scheldt by a gang, and the old woman gave him the ability to shape-shift, for example turning into a massive giant who could leap between towns. He got into all sorts of antics; he would probably be cancelled now. He is kind of like a bogeyman figure of Antwerp. This statue was put there in the early 1960s.

Not far from here I found another hydrant I needed to draw. This one had a peculiar sticker that said “Love the game, hate the business” and “Against modern football!” on it, which must really make the firemen think. Haha, a fire hydrant talking about sportswashing, the irony. Anyway I drew this down a fairly quiet street. Those few drops of rain I felt over at Het Steen were coming back, we were definitely going to get wet today. It’s good to keep adding new city fire hydrants to my big collection.

This is the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Kathedraal, in the heart of Antwerp. As well as fire hydrants, and crosswalk signs, I am obsessed with drawing cathedrals, though one subject generally takes a lot longer than the other. I drew this one looking upwards from a standing spot, all the benches in that particular square having been taken, and those clouds were pretty ominous. I did about 75% of it and finished the rest later when I was sitting down not craning my neck. The hours of the day were moving along quicker than those clouds, and I wanted to go and sit inside somewhere before getting the train back to Brussels, and have another hearty Belgian beer. I had a place in mind, but it would be a walk to get there. It took a while, but I beat the incoming rainstorm by bare minutes.

and on to Antwerp

August 31, 2022August 31, 2022Leave a comment

After my morning pain-au-chocolat I took a train from Brussels Centrale to Antwerp. It’s been 22 years since I set foot in Antwerp, and even then it was at night, and the one time before that it was a rainy dark grey autumn day. So I’ve never seen Antwerp in actual daylight. It wasn’t very sunny today though, but it was dry and good weather for sketching and exploring. It was a city that always interested me though, full of places to discover, and lots of shops as well. I don’t actually remember the train station being all that interesting, but my Belgium guide book put Antwerp’s Centraal Station as one of the big architectural highlights, and they weren’t wrong. After eating a quick waffle, I sat down on a bench and started drawing the scene below, but decided after about ten minutes that this would be just too much to attempt, I should do this later. In the main interior ticket hall there was a big basketball court set up with TV cameras, filming some famous Belgian basketball players bouncing balls about. Basketball is popular in Belgium; my local Charleroi team Spirou were quite good (and named after one of the local comic book characters). I went outside in the fresh North Sea air and drew the exterior (above). It’s pretty magnificent. Inside the mainline platforms are all on several levels, it feels a bit like a huge deep shopping mall underneath a Victorian exhibition hall. The building was finished in 1905, designed by architect Louis Delacenserie, and is sometimes nicknamed the “spoorwegkathedraal” (“railway cathedral”). I left the outside sketch unfinished as I wanted to move along and get some frites (it was nearly lunchtime already!), and as for the drawing below, I kept the outline I’d already started but ended up doing the rest later on from photos. So many details.

And so, into Antwerp. It was a fairly long old walk from the station to the main city centre where all the shops are. The first time I came here, on a gloomy day at the end of 1999, I was pretty excited by all the big shops, because it was better than what Charleroi had at the time. This time I was most excited to find a really cool art supplies shop, and spent longer in there than I meant to, buying quite a few little things. The woman behind the counter spoke to me only in Dutch, and I did manage a few words myself (I tried to learn Dutch twenty years ago but found it hard to speak because every Dutch speaker would only ever reply to me in English). I didn’t completely understand her, but I did my best. I really should get learning that language again, and it’s not hard to read. The Dutch of Belgium (which is usually called Flemish, or ‘Vlaams’) does sound a bit softer to my ears than the Nederlands of the Netherlands, and I really enjoyed listening to it while I was out and about. I discovered that even the garbage bins speak Dutch. As I put something into a bin, it made a funny sound, like I was feeding it. When I threw something else in, it made another sound, saying something in Dutch. The bins are very peculiar.

On Meir though, it was too noisy to listen to anything. Meir is one of the big shopping streets of Belgium, like the Oxford Street of Antwerp. I did pop down the adjoining street called ‘Wapper’ (they really need to put a Burger King on that street) to have a look at the Rubenshuis museum, where Antwerp’s greatest painter son Rubens used to live. I didn’t go in though, just mooched about the gift shop. I mean I like Rubens I guess, but I also really like drawing fire hydrants and there was one I saw on Meir that I really had to sketch. Meir was just so noisy though. There was some construction going on in a building nearby, the echo of the pneumatic drill bouncing off the buildings. There was a fire alarm in a nearby Primark, and the shop staff all stood outside. People passed by on their phones, dogs barked, and it was one of those moments when I have a bit of audio-sensory overload and can’t fully concentrate. I got through the hydrant quickly (there was a sticker on the hydrant that said ironically “Take Sides – Silence”) and went looking for somewhere a bit calmer.

I headed over to the Grote Markt. That’s where you’ll find the statue of Antwerp’s most famous hero – no not Rubens, no not Romelu Lukaku, no not Toby Alderweireld. This is the statue of Silvius Brabo. Now we enter the realm of mythology and city origin stories that we all love, like Romulus and Remus (Rome), King Lud (London), and He-Man (Manchester). Brabo was a Roman soldier, who cut off the hand of a giant and threw it in the river. The giant in question was a big lad called Druon Antigoon, and he would demand money from people who needed to cross the river Scheldt. (I really hope he would say “Thou Scheldt Not Pass!”) If they didn’t pay up, their hand was chopped off and thrown into the water. I would have thought that made it more difficult to put their hand in their pocket after that but giants might be big but they are not clever. He tried it on with Silvius Brabo. Brabo, who as we can see was stark naked, clearly had, um, balls. He told Druon Antigoon to go and do one, and while he was scratching his head to see if there was a pun on his name, Brabo beat him up. It’s not clear whether he had clothes on before the fight or if they came off during the fight, but in the end Brabo sliced off Antigoon’s hand and slung it into the water. Everyone thought that was hilarious, except Antigoon, who left the story at this point. So the people decided to honour Brabo by calling the region ‘Brabant’ (dubious mythology klaxon #1), and calling the town ‘Antwerpen’ (dubious mythology klaxon #2). Antwerpen means, so the tale goes, ‘hand throw’, from ‘hand-werpen’ in Flemish. Ok, let’s be fair, Antwerp is almost certainly not named after this event (poo-poo on your parade klaxon #1) but it’s a much more fun story than the likely real etymology (something about wharves or mounds on riverbanks, nobody knows for sure) but it’s a fun story and even if it’s not true, we can say it is because who cares.

“Hand-throw”, yeah alright. Imagine you are one of all those people Antigoon dismembered, and then they go and name the town “hand-throw”, well it’d be a bit of a slap in the face. More likely it was already called “hand-throw” before Brabo showed up, maybe Antigoon himself named it so people knew what they were getting themselves into. The Grote Markt is a pretty nice square. The statue of Silvius Brabo (after whom the Duchy of Brabant is definitely NOT named; if anything his name comes from that) is in front of the town hall. Around the square are the old guildhall buildings. Antwerp is a historic Flemish merchant port with a rich history. I sat at a little tavern (‘Den Engel’) on the square with a delicious Maredsous beer, wrote some postcards, and drew this. I remember coming here on that damp and gloomy day in 1999; I also remember coming here in early 2000 after a day out in Ostend, and spent much of the evening at a nearby pub where people were singing karaoke. Chatting with locals, I was encouraged to sing too, and I did a version of the Pulp song ‘Help the Aged’, a version in which the words had been replaced with football-themed lyrics, called ‘Help the English’. That version was written by me and my friend Roshan, along with many other popular songs that we had re-clothed in football colours. ‘Help the English’ was probably our favourite, all about how England might need help because they can’t win trophies (no change there then, though the caveat now of course would be that it just means the men’s team). “When did you first realise / You’re never gonna win another World Cup? / Sixty-six, don’t it make you sick / Funny how you’ve won nothing since.” Anyway the Antwerp crowd in the room, well some of them liked it, others were either England fans convinced that Euro 2000 would be their year (spoiler alert, it wasn’t), or people who disliked football and assumed it was just some English hooligan chant, or massive Pulp fans who really wanted to hear the right lyrics. Still, it got a cheer (just one cheer) (and I probably misheard it). There were these two women who walked out, and then came back inside right after I was finished. They actually told me (in that straight-talking Flemish way) that it wasn’t only because I changed the lyrics, or that it was about football, but because I just couldn’t sing at all. I mean, yes, this is true, but ouch. I’m surprised they didn’t throw my hand in the river. Instead, they brought me some sandwiches, for some reason, and I chatted with them all about music until it was time for my train back to Charleroi. The year 2000 was a long long time ago.

jog on

January 16, 2021January 16, 20211 Comment

We live near the North Davis Green Belt, and that’s where I walk or run most days. I started running a little bit in 2019 but after the Turkey Trot I picked it up a lot more by the start of 2020, intending to do all these 5k races, and I did the Davis Stampede no sweat and signed up for the Lucky Run, and then coronovirus came along and that was that. So I started running more in general, as if training for these runs that were not going to happen, building up to not just 3 mile but 4 mile runs (I never managed further than that), improving my times each time, usually getting up and running just after sunrise so the hot weather wouldn’t drain me. And then when the fires came and the sky got smoky from August to October, that stopped all of that, and it’s taken me a bit of time to get back to running regularly, but as 2020 ended I decided to get back out more, and I’ve been doing 2 mile runs each time, not fast, but as regularly as I can. I managed a 3 mile run yesterday. It’s the shower afterwards I look forward to most. I couldn’t run marathons, at least I don’t see that in my future, mostly because I don’t want to. Running for more than 26 miles! At some point it’s like, ok this is a bit pointless. At least, this year’s London marathon looked a bit pointless. Due to the coronavirus, rather than being an epic journey in the rain through the streets of Britain’s capital dressed as a kiwi fruit, crossing over Tower Bridge, doing the Lambeth Walk, going down the Strand, having a banana and running up the Mall to Buck House, this year they just had a few proper runner starting before dawn and just running round and round and round St.James’s Park like the Indy 500 or something. They told everyone else they had to run virtually, in their own areas, dressed up as mangoes or peaches or whatever. You do feel great after a good run though, even when not dressed as a fruit, and with all the fun stuff in the world happening, running helps because it’s like you are trying to outrun it, like Brave Sir Robin. “Run away! Run away!” You have to be mindful on the paths though, trying to keep a good distance from everyone else, so I always end up verging off when there are people on the path. I remember early in the pandemic, everybody gave everybody a wide berth, people crossed the street or went around parked cars. That was my favourite time in the pandemic, people crossing the street to avoid you, it was like “finally this is ok”. Back then, they told everyone to stay home, so there were suddenly more people outside walking than ever.

Anyway I drew that sketch above whilst walking the Green Belt, I was stood off of the path and on the grass, I like this intersection of several paths and that big old wooden house in the background. This is probably my favourite sketch of this year so far, I like this one. It reminds me of all the walks we’ve done this year.

This isn’t a real dog, it’s one that was turned into metal by a wizard or something, probably because it was off its leash. Riding a tricycle. Or as Yoda would call them, a docycle. Bit of Star Wars humour there, cheer us up in these dark times. These trying times. Or as Yoda would call them… Down below is another sketch from the path, this time of a neon yellow sign, indicating “bike” “person” “go down left slightly”, not necessarily in that order. Along with another sign lower down that says “wear a mask” “stay 6ft apart” and “wash your hands”, not necessarily in that order. I like the shape of that building in the background, it’s like an opera house made of cereal boxes. I like the way it forms triangles or as Yoda would call them etc and so on. Honestly Yoda give it a break mate, it’s been a difficult year for everyone without you giving it all that. I haven’t even got the energy to shoehorn in a joke about this week’s impeachment trial or as Yoda would call it impeachment do-al (the joke there being ‘dual’ impeachment I suppose?) because we’re done with the Yoda stuff now.