oxford’s treats

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026Leave a comment

I went to Oxford with my Mum, a city I’d not been to in years. It’s been on my to-sketch list for some time. We stayed at the Randolph Hotel in the city centre, which is where Colin Dexter wrote the Inspector Morse books, in the hotel bar. That bar is called the Morse Bar now, and the drinks all have Morse-themed names, pictures of John Thaw are all over the walls. I’ll tell you, before that trip I didn’t know who Colin Dexter was, and while of course I knew the Inspector Morse TV show (it’s really famous after all), I didn’t used to watch it, and can’t remember what the famous theme tune was. I know it was set in Oxford, and that his partner was that guy who played Neville in Auf Wiedersehen Pet. So I picked up a copy of the first Morse book from Blackstones (who had a first edition of the book, Last Bus To Woodstock, behind the counter) with the intention of reading it in that bar over a fancy drink, but I didn’t actually start reading it until after I got back to the US (I was still reading an Agatha Christie book, Lord Edgware Dies, and I’m a very slow reader). The book was pretty good, I didn’t feel like reading more in the series just yet. I did get out and draw before dinner, sketching the timber-framed buildings on Cornmarket. It was pretty busy in Oxford, this is a tourist centre, lot of people about. I saw a nearly-fight between one drunk guy and a busker, I think the drunk guy knew the busker because he kept calling him specific names. I had a conversation with one bloke who was really interested in learning how to draw and was asking me for advice, hopefully I gave good advice. Hopefully I was following it myself. I think the building I drew is actually a hat shop. This was page 1 (or spread 1) of a new sketchbook, the portrait format Hahnemuhle watercolour book. I really like their paper.

This is one of the most famous sites in Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera. I got up early to go and sketch it before the crowds came, and had a really nice view in some warm morning light. That iconic stone you see all over Oxford, which is called Headington stone, exudes a warm and highly academic feel. The amount of clever that has seeped into these stones over the years has probably supercharged it with particles of extreme knowledge. If you put your ear up to the walls you can just about hear the theme tune to University Challenge. Radcliffe Camera is a big circular library, and the building was completed in 1748. It’s not open to the public, but I saw quite a few academics going in. I believe it is part of the Bodleian Libraries; we had wanted to do a your of the Bodleian, but couldn’t get a reservation. It looked pretty incredible. I love libraries, I mean I know people all say that, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate them and apparently want them gone. I love public libraries, but I love a university library and spent so much of my twenties in them; I miss that quiet, spending all day hidden away there researching. I wonder if I would have done well if I had been a student at Oxford, or Cambridge, or Oxbridge wherever that is. I don’t know. I like to think I would have, but then I get bored with the mandatory training videos at work and I spend a month reading an Agatha Christie novel and I wonder if I ever really did have the mind for serious academia. Who knows. If life had taken a different path maybe I would be organizing ‘Let’s Draw Oxford’ sketchcrawls around the old cobbled paths. I still ended up working for a university in a college town full of bikes. As I sketched the Radcliffe Camera, morning tour groups were already passing by telling their stories to American and Chinese tourists. Radcliffe Square and its Camera are named after the 17th century physician and MP John Radcliffe, who treated King George III, and whose money helped found the library after his death. It sits in between Brasenose College and All Souls College. Just around the corner from there crossing over New College Lane is another of Oxford’s most famous sights, the Bridge of Sighs, which I sketched below (much more quickly in pencil and paint, while walking around the area with my Mum). Unlike the similarly named bridge in Venice this one does not go over a canal. Cambridge has a Bridge of Sighs too, and that one goes over the river Cam. The proper name of this one is Hertford Bridge (being connected to Hertford College).

I could spend weeks sketching around Oxford. When I retire, if my eyes and hands still work by then, maybe that’s what I’ll do. I bought a really good book of Oxford drawings at the second hand bookshop in Davis which I read to give me inspiration, and I’ve seen a lot of travelling urban sketchers drawing these same buildings and giving workshops there. It’s an attractive city. I think if we lived in England again it’s a city I’d want to live in, although I do have a soft spot for Cambridge. On the drive in, we passed through one suburb of Oxford and I saw out of the corner of my eye that house with the big metal shark sticking out of the roof. I didn’t draw it, but having seen it only online I was so excited to see it in person.

Here is a sketch of another interesting detail, the Tumnus doorway. I don’t know if it is actually called that, but that’s what it is, a big wooden door with two gilded fauns holding up the awnings around it. The fauns look exactly as you imagine Mr Tumnus from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and of course CS Lewis was a professor here in Oxford (and used to meet regularly with JRR Tolkien at the Eagle and Child, which currently is not open). This used to be the City Arms pub in centuries past, closing in 1881, and the building is now part of Brasenose College. On the wooden door is the face of a lion. Now I don’t know if Lewis saw these and thought, yeah I’ll have that, but it might have been an inspiration for him, maybe passing up here on a snowy evening lit by gaslamp. I loved that story, and adapted it for the stage when I was in France decades ago.

Now these last two sketches are quick ones I drew while exploring the Ashmolean Museum, across the street form our hotel. The big head above is about 2000 years old, probably the head of Apollo (the Greek god, not the boxer from Rocky). The smaller head below is a lot older, the skull of Homo Georgicus, about 1.8 million years old and found in Georgia (the country in the Caucasus, not the state in the deep South). As I drew it I couldn’t get the voice of George from Rainbow out of my mind, imagining the skull talking with that voice, “Oh Geoffrey, Zippy has been so naughty”. I really enjoyed the Ashmolean Museum, but we didn’t stay too long. It was a brief visit to Oxford, and I’d like to go back some time. We did stop off at the Trout Inn, a beautiful pub by the river Thames just outside Oxford, which I knew from the Philip Pullman books (specifically La Belle Sauvage, it’s where the main character of that book, Malcolm, lives with his parents). If I ever go back to Oxford I’d like to go back there for lunch.

Richmond, by the river

January 17, 2026January 16, 2026Leave a comment

We met up with my friend Simon who was back visiting from Dublin, and took the Overground train down to Richmond. I was there last in the previous winter with Simon exploring the old pus and riverside walks, and wanted to go back in the summertime with the family. Richmond is London, but I hardly ever go there, it’s quite far but always worth a visit. I drew the White Cross pub, above, which we never went into but I know if it from videos I’ve seen online, apparently when the river tides get a bit high it cuts off the exits, and they lend you wellington boots to wade through to higher ground. I’d probably just stay in the pub. There are a lot of ducks around here, not surprising really. We had a nice refreshing drink at the cafe on one of the boats floating on the Thames. It didn’t go anywhere, but it was nice to sit and catch up. I sketched Simon (below; I was worried I was making him look like Pep Guardiola or Enzo Maresca, but it looked more like him this time, I always struggle sketching him for some reason). I was starting my new small Stillman & Birn brown paper sketchbook which would be my ‘people sketching’ book for this trip, and indeed I would get a lot of use from it in Poland at the symposium, Simon was a good page 1 subject. Some ladies were watching me sketch and asked if I could draw them, I respectfully declined (as they weren’t all that respectful themselves).

I tried to draw Richmond Bridge while sat on the boat but only got as far as outlines, I ended up finishing the rest off later on. The bridge dates from the 18th century.

On the train back into central London I sketched a little more in that brown book, this time using some interesting Derwent ‘Inktense’ paints I had picked up, fun to test those out, I don’t think I’ve used them since. I drew my wife, and also drew Simon again looking very different this time. Outside, it started raining, and got very heavy by the time we reached central London. Nothing more English than a mid-August downpour.

at the holly bush, hampstead

January 16, 2026Leave a comment

I should probably have included this in the last post about Hampstead but I didn’t, and it was drawn on a different day. A short but steep walk up Holly Hill from the tube station is the Holly Bush pub, tucked away in a narrow lane called Holly Mount. It’s a holly good pub too. This is definitely in ‘cute American-targeted movie set in Hampstead’ territory, and ‘random celebrity sighting’ land, but I like that it’s a little bit hidden and takes an effort to get to. I’ve wanted to sketch here for a while (I should draw the inside sometime) so one Saturday I was heading into London when I stopped off in Hampstead to buy some art supplies at Cass, sketch the Holly Bush, then met up with my friend who happened to be having lunch nearby with his girlfriend, we had a pint and a chat here. I used to enjoy spending the odd Saturday lunchtime down this way, another mate of mine used to live down here when I was in my twenties, though we would like going to the Haverstock down in Belsize Park, when the football was on. I miss this about London, even though it’s always so busy and crowded and expensive there are little places of relative calm and charm, and a Saturday afternoon pint and chat in an old pub can be so totally relaxing. After I left my friends I got back on the tube and headed into central London to explore some other areas, I’ll post those later. The Holly Bush is a Fullers pub which means they do London Pride, I always liked that beer, room temperature, nothing fancy. I got it once at a British themed pub in California and it was served cold, which was very odd (but tasted fine). As I sketched outside, a family of Americans all decked out in Tottenham Hotspur gear started to talk with me, they were getting ready to head over to N17 to watch Spurs play, which made me quite jealous as I wish I’d done that too (but couldn’t get a ticket). This was the day we beat Burnley 3-0 in an early season romp where we all thought, oh yes life will be very good under Thomas Frank, this season is going to be entertaining and full of wins. Spoiler alert: yeah not so much.

st.mary’s in hemel

January 12, 20261 Comment

This is St. Mary’s Church in Hemel Hempstead, which is a town in Hertfordshire outside of London which I had never been to before. I was up in Stevenage at my younger sister’s, and was planning to meet my friend James in the evening. Usually when we meet he comes into central London and gets the train back from there, this time I suggested we meet in Hemel and I finally get to see where he lives now (he’s from Watford originally, a little bit closer to London). We had some curry and beers in the old town, nice to catch up, and I stayed over at the house he and his wife own, I last saw them both in California last March when they were visiting San Francisco for their anniversary. Next morning I was up early, and before heading back to London on the train (a longer journey than I realized! Hertfordshire is bigger than I thought, and I grew up right next to it not thinking about it much), I walked back up to the old town and drew the churchyard we had walked through the evening before. St. Mary’s is a really old church, this building dating back to the middle of the twelfth century. There was likely a church here for much longer than that, it may even be where King Offa of Mercia was buried, though his grave is now lost. King Offa, there was someone who couldn’t be refused. Although in retrospect, cheap puns on his name probably should be. The tall pointing spire, too big to be included in this format of sketchbook, was added in the fourteenth century and for a long time was the tallest in Europe. The church contains a memorial to the 18th century surgeon and anatomist Sir Astley Cooper, who lived nearby. Unlike many disreputable anatomists of that time who employed body-snatchers or ‘resurrection men’, Sir Astley’s catchphrase was ‘Never gonna dig you up’. It was a really peaceful churchyard, next to a narrow park, and joggers and morning strollers passed me by as I sketched, only mildly hungover from the previous night’s trip to the local pub. Hemel Hempstead is commuter country, a place where people move out to from London while rebounding back in and out to work, like many other towns within an hour or so of the city. It’s bigger than I thought, with this enormous roundabout-within-a-roundabout system, nicknamed the ‘Magic Roundabout’, that functions like an Agatha Christie novel, full of twists and turns and red herrings, maybe a body in the library. There’s the old town, which had some interesting old buildings, and the New Town, a post-war development with a pedestrianized shopping district that reminds me of other such towns in England, with their 1950s concrete and shallow waterways, and made me feel oddly nostalgic for places I’ve never even lived. I didn’t spend much time here but it was quite nice overall, wish I’d sketched a bit more but glad I drew the old church.

Burnt Oak Broadway, corner of Stag Lane

January 10, 2026January 9, 2026Leave a comment

Here are a couple of drawings from Burnt Oak that I did last summer. Specifically, Burnt Oak Broadway. I mentioned in a previous post that Edgware High Street was part of Edgware Road which is part of Watling Street which was an ancient Roman Road running from Dover to Wroxeter, passing through London and running in a north-westerly straight line, give or take. The A5, in modern parlance. It was probably a route before the Romans came as well, used by the ancient Britons, and we don’t really know what it was called before the Saxons migrated here from mainland Europe and called it Watling Street, or Wæcelinga Stræt, after a tribe that lived around what we call St. Alban’s now, the people of Waecla, or Waeclingas. Watling Street also marked the border between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms under Alfred and the Viking-ruled territory of the Danelaw. Our side of the street, in Burnt Oak, that would have been in the Danelaw, which explains a few things about us (what’s the Old Norse for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”), with our longships and our Odins, while those posh Saxons lived over there in Harrow with their burnt cakes and their Wodens. Burnt Oak is where I was born and grew up, and supposedly has its origins in Roman times (what’s the Latin for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”) and refers to the old practice of burning an oak tree to mark boundaries (a simple sign would have probably been easier). When we say we are going ‘Up the Watling’ we are not referring to Watling Street, but to Watling Avenue which turns downhill from here. This part of Watling Street, Edgware Road, the A5 whatever, is called Burnt Oak Broadway. Hey this is Britain, we can have as many names for things as we bloody well like. One summer morning I got up and walked up to the top of the Watling, and stood on Burnt Oak Broadway looking over at the junction with Stag Lane. This junction is ancient, and you could grow ancient waiting for the bloody lights to change, and is probably named after the Bald Faced Stag pub which would have been to my left on the Broadway before it was closed about a decade or so ago. All the old pubs are closing, there will be none left soon. There are none left around here. That’s a different story. The large building on the left with the clock on top has stood there for many years, and reminds me so much of being a kid. It was a department store for a long time, but it reminds me of my Nan, because I would see it when going to her flat, which was just across the street further down the Broadway, or in the Stag, where she would spend most days. Across the junction on Stag Lane, that building painted an ugly blue is now an amusement arcade and casino called Silvertime, well I say amusement, who really knows. It’s in the former location of Nat West Bank, and this was my branch when I opened my first account as a kid, do you remember those porcelain NatWest piggy banks? My mum or dad still have them somewhere I think. Sad to see the bank closed. There used to be two NatWests in Burnt Oak, both closed now. There is another blue Silvertime across the street, also located in a closed down bank, where the old Midland Bank (later HSBC) used to be. Funny how these casinos open in old banks. I really don’t know why they have to paint these old buildings bright blue though. Next door is a Romanian food market, and a restaurant next to that. There’s a sizeable Romanian community in Burnt Oak now, that was not there when I left. My mum did have a friend from Romania when I was a kid, she used to work with him and we would often meet with his family. He had escaped Ceaucescu’s brutal regime in the 70s or 80s (hiding in a box, apparently), and was able to bring his family over after that. I still remember when the communist regimes fell, and he was finally able to go and visit his homeland. Last time I saw him he had opened a bakery on Burnt Oak Broadway, about seventeen years ago just down from here, and he gave me a massive plate of pastries, but that’s gone now. Everything changes, you can’t stop it, but we’ve all got our stories in these places.

Further down the Broadway, opposite the flats where my Nan used to lived (when she wasn’t in the Stag), I stood under a tree and drew this on the morning before heading off on my trip to Poland. This building is in a sorry state, disused, boarded up. When I was younger it was a Mecca bingo hall, but closed more than ten years ago. We love leaving this big old buildings empty and derelict. Years ago it used to be a cinema, when my Mum was a girl, the Savoy, she remembers seeing Calamity Jane there as a kid. Someone contacted me to let me know that there are proposals to convert this space and the spaces next to it into new flats, with concerns about some more local history being lost to the march of redevelopment. Luxury flats are probably better than bright blue ‘adult gaming centres’, but London is at the mercy of big corporate property developers these days. Communities would be nice, and they still exist, if you want it. Pubs would be nice, and newsagents, and a post office, and banks with humans, and a cafe where you can get a nice cup of tea. It’s funny, I like drawing these big old buildings whose presence echoes so much through not only my own history but that of my family and local friends, yet I think I only ever stepped foot in here once in my life, when it was a bingo hall when I was a kid, and I am probably misremembering that for somewhere else. Memory and Nostalgia are funny things. I was considering writing a book called “I Remember When Things Used To Be A Little Bit Different From How They Are Now” but things keep changing and changing again. So I will just keep on drawing what I see, until it does. These were the only sketches I did in Burnt Oak in this trip but I did more around London, stay tuned for those, they won’t all come with maudlin’ nostalgic stories, but most will.

back to the railway hotel

January 9, 2026Leave a comment

The Railway Hotel in Edgware, at the end of the Northern Line in London, has been lying empty and boarded up for a long time now. It closed in 2006, twenty years ago, and it’s been in a sorry state ever since, even suffering a fire in 2016, which sometimes happens to old buildings that are in the way of new buildings. However it did survive, though it has spent the past decade with nobody sure of what will happen to it. However recent plans have been proposed to finally renovate the site as part of the lerger ‘Forumside’ development of the land behind it. That’s what it’s being called, Forumside, and this is that big plan to build tall towers with hundreds of flats, changing the look of Edgware, but the plan is that they will be keeping the Railway Hotel and restoring it, so we can still enjoy some older buildings in Edgware. Not that I live there any more, but I care what happens to this venerable old building, that goes back all the way to 1936. Ok yeah that’s not that old, you don’t have the ghost of Dick Turpin riding through here, but they don’t make pretend-old buildings like this any more. I stood in the graveyard of St. Margaret’s Church across Station Road, careful not to stand on anyone’s graves (I’m not superstitious, except when I definitely am, but I’m always careful where I tread in a graveyard). Those boarded up windows are sad, but it saves cleaning the windows. I love those big old chimneys. I remember going into the railway, it was a lovely pub and friendlier than most, and we had a nice dinner up there for my mate Terry’s 18th birthday (I remember his grandad making us laugh with his funny sayings). I drew the view below on the same day as the first sketch, just from a different angle so you can see more of the adjoining side building. It was that sky though, I loved drawing that last summer. Unfortunately that newer blend of Moleskine watercolour paper is not good at all and makes every wash look like it’s on textured bogroll, all those little bumps, this is why I have now stopped using the Moleskines, until they improve. I’m using Hahnemuhle now, which is much better.

I actually did draw it back in 2015 and wrote about it in a blog post ten years ago, where I lamented the ‘End of the Railway’ and noted that it was not a listed building. That’s what I was told at the time, but maybe it was listed (in 2003); it was added to the ‘Historic England’s At Risk Register‘ in 2013. Here’s the sketch I did in 2015. By the way if you’re on Facebook and talking about this building and you use my sketch, please ask me first, ffs. I drew that on Christmas Eve, I remember it, I think it was the last Christmas we even spent in London. We used to go over every other year for Christmas, but haven’t done so in years now. I’ve been over in November and December, but not for the big day itself. I remember going up to Edgware, last bit of shopping at M&S and WH Smiths the Boardwalk (both gone from there now), drawing the Railway Hotel, and then getting the 305 bus (a route which no longer exists) back to Burnt Oak to get ready for Father Christmas. I don’t think it snowed that year.

You can learn about the new plans for this building at: https://edgwarerailwayhotel.co.uk/. They have an artist impression of what it might look like (and I swear it looks like I’m sitting on a bench drawing it). Whatever ends up happening, I hope the Railway reopens with a new life, and these big mock Tudor triangles and tall chimneys stay on the Station Road for another century. Well ok they haven’t been here for one full century yet but you know what I mean. Stay tuned for more sketches from my big Summer 2025 trip back to Europe. These are the last of the Edgware ones, but there are a couple more from Burnt Oak to come.

highwaymen on the high street

January 5, 2026Leave a comment

Time to get on with 2025, because 2026 isn’t starting too well. So, let’s go back to last summer and my trip back across The Pond. Just around the corner from where we left off (“Edgware and its Ghosts“) is one of the oldest buildings in Edgware, having been here long before it became part of Metroland. If there are ghosts anywhere in Edgware, surely it would be here. This row next to the old War Memorial on the High Street, around the corner from Station Road, are some of the oldest buildings still standing in Edgware. These date from about the 16th Century, others on the row from the 17th and 18th. Hundreds of years ago this was a coaching inn on the Edgware Road, which is the old Roman road of Watling Street that runs north-west out of London in a straight line across England. Imagine the people that would have stayed here. One of them was reputedly the infamous highwayman Dick Turpin. I don’t know if he stayed there, but Turpin and his gang of thugs (the Essex Gang) did commit an extremely violent robbery at the nearby farm of Joseph Lawrence in 1735. I won’t recount the whole story, but Turpin was a horrible thug, not a dashing hunk on a horse. Still, we grew up knowing that Turpin spent time around here. Turpin time. I had a Dick Turpin ‘Wanted’ poster on my bedroom wall when I was a kid that I got on a school trip to York, where he was hanged. His ghost probably isn’t floating around here anywhere, in a tricorn hat and holding one of those flintlock pistols, but let’s say it is, what the hell. Highwaymen were a big thing back in the 18th century weren’t they, and they all had similar-themed names, your Dick Turpin, your Tom Cox, your Willy Plunkett, and there was also James Hind whose middle initial may have been B. These days the old coaching inn is a restaurant called Himalayan Spice. So it went from ‘ave a rest’ to ‘Everest’. They went from ‘mounting horses’ to just ‘mountains’. Sorry, these puns are much, much worse than usual. Wait I have one more, they went from ‘Stand and Deliver’ to ‘Sit-Down or Take-Away’. That’s not bad, I might use that if I ever eat there. I didn’t eat there this time, but did poke my head in the door, it’s still pretty historic looking inside (and the food smelled really good). I haven’t been in there since I was a kid. Back then it was an Italian restaurant, the Vecchia Romagna, and my mum actually worked there. This building will always be the Vecchia Romagna to me. I’m amazed I have never sketched it before now. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a waiter like the ones my mum worked with, tea-towel over the arm, white shirt, handful of plates. Then I got old enough to actually do that, and that’s how I earned my spending money as a teenager. Not here though, but in many places around Edgware and across north-west London, waitering jobs, serving tea and wine, laying tables, washing up. Even though I’m still alive, there’s probably a ghost of me floating around Edgware carrying a small teapot and a platter of vol-au-vents. Or a sketchbook, there will definitely be a ghost of me holding a sketchbook on the streets of Davis. Since ghosts don’t really exist I say you can choose to have loads of them in all different places, even when you are alive.

Hopefully I get around to posting the rest of my sketches from Edgware and Burnt Oak soon, because I have some more. This is a really interesting document from 2013 on the London Borough of Harrow website (because this side of the street is in Harrow, not Barnet), which goes into the history of this part of Edgware and focuses on a lot of the historic architectural details of these old buildings. I really should get around to sketching Whitchurch Lane, just around the corner from here, that has some really interesting old buildings. Next time.

by the stream in Watling Park

January 16, 2025January 17, 2025Leave a comment

And so, the last few sketches from my short trip back home to London last month. While at home at my mum’s if I wasn’t out on a sketching day or visiting my dad in hospital, I’d sometimes go for a walk around Burnt Oak to see what’s changed; quite a lot, some good, some not really. I still look for what’s the same. The park at the end of the street has never had the best reputation, but Watling Park is where I spent my childhood with my friends from our street and the kids from all the other streets, so I thought I should bring my sketchbook back down there, since 2024 was all about drawing trees after all. It was a damp gloomy decembrous day, my tummy was full of mince pies. I stood by the stream and drew trees going across it. The sketch below is what I drew first, a tree that had fallen across the stream, I sketched quickly in pencil and added paint right there. Across the stream a very excitable dog was running around and up to people, I think it was a Staffy, and the owners weren’t bothered if it jumped up at people. I wasn’t keen on it jumping up at me while I painted so I worked fast. They didn’t walk on this side of the stream though. The one above was drawn in pen, but I didn’t colour it in until the plane journey home. This part of the stream has walls into the stream (see below), while the section above does not, though I was in roughly the same place, just turned around. The tree that had fallen, I think that may have been the one when I was a kid that had a Tarzan rope attached to it so we could swing across. The stream is so narrow that a kid can jump across anyway (well, usually) but the Tarzan rope was always the more adventurous way. I spent so much of my childhood here, when I wasn’t indoors drawing. So did my older brother and sister, and my uncle Billy, I always think of him when I think of the Tarzan rope. The view above, that’s the park I know. That little arched bridge, this is the middle one, there are three in the park. The stretch of stream between that one and the one by the old Bowling Green was full of bushes and hideouts, an adventure playground for us. There were stingy nettles, but also dock leaves, that is where we learned that old medical trick to heal the stings. That stream is properly called Burnt Oak Brook (we knew it as part of the Silkstream, though didn’t know the word ‘tributary’ in those days); we just called it ‘The Stream’, and it ran over towards the Meads, past the allotments. It was full of little stickleback fish, shopping trolleys, bits of old bike. We used to try damming it up with sticks and mud and whatever we could find, to see how long the dam would last. The stream always came back.

The Silkstream itself flows through various parks and underneath Burnt Oak and Colindale, and was sometimes treachourous. We grew up knowing there were dangers when playing by the waters; I don’t mean in those public service shorts that would go out on kids TV in the early 80s, “Charlie Says” and so on. When I was about five or six, there was a horrible day when some children died in different parts of the Silkstream, not in Watling Park but further down in Silkstream Park and another park in Hendon I think. The water was high from the rain and deceptively strong. One of them was a boy, also called Peter, who lived in the next street over from us, he was in my year at school. It was the first time I’d really experienced knowing anyone who had died, other than my grandad, and at such a young age I didn’t really understand. I remember a lot of kids at school crying, and kids in our street being in shock. I think I was playing down Watling Park myself that day with my neighbours, in those days that park was our babysitter, if we weren’t at home or in the street outside, that’s where we could be found, don’t go beyond. What I didn’t know until recently was that when this happened, and people started to hear about it, some kids heard ‘Peter’ and assumed it was me (there weren’t many Peters in our area, a lot of Marks and Lees and Davids but very few Peters). They went to my house and told my sister they heard I had died in the stream. I can’t imagine what she must have thought. I think she went straight down Watling and found me, we don’t remember now, she always knew where to find me, and I was probably in my neighbour Tasha’s house, the other place I spent my childhood. She was close to Peter too, and his family, and we found it difficult to talk about it back then, we were all so young. It didn’t stop us playing by the stream, but only in this part of it, which always felt safer and closer to home, but that day definitely stuck with us. We as kids in the area never stopped thinking about him.

There are a lot of changes happening in the park at the moment. The big playground by Cressingham Road has been taken out, hopefully another one will go in because that’s the last playground in the park. However there are three big ponds being added, and new paths across what used to be the big fenced off sports field, but is now part of the park proper. and on top of the hill, it looks like a little bandstand or something is being built. Hopefully not just a place for the junkies to sit out of the rain. I hope these are positive updates for the park, what they have done to Montrose Park looks great, although they did build a sports centre over part of it too. London is great for parks and they need to be both protected and improved; Watling Park has a bit of a wild feel to it, but it wasn’t always that way. When I was a kid there were still tennis courts, beaten down though they were, and when my brother and sister were younger there was a putting green, I always wondered why they referred to the little patch of grass where we’d play football as a putting green. There used to be another playground near Abbots Road, I would be there every day on the swings or the see-saw, and that huge tall metal slide with the cage on top that would never pass a health and safety inspection these days, and whose metal slide surface would heat up to about 500 degrees on a hot day. Still better than those horrible plastic slides that generate enough static electricity to power a small car. We’ll see what it looks like when I’m next back. The drawing above is of another tree I saw on that walk, next to a row of houses on Fortescue Road, I really liked the ramshackle fences. I only had time to draw a quick outline, so in fact I drew most of this a few days later. I think I remember a schoolfriend lived on Fortescue and I went to their birthday party when I was about six or seven, but that’s all part of the blur of childhood.

Ok, back to posts and sketches from California. Until next time, Burnt Oak. See you in the summer.

pretty seven dials and ugly pink riders

January 13, 2025January 12, 2025Leave a comment

A different day in London now, and after doing some work at home in the morning I made my way to Covent Garden to meet up with my friend Simon, who I had not seen since his stag party a year and a half before, and who was visiting from Dublin for a couple of days. We met at the cafe of the London Transport Museum, I love going to their shop and I picked up a fantastic festive hat. I wish I had bought the matching scarf too, but instead I settled on the socks which I wore on Christmas Day. You don’t need to know that. We then popped into the Freemason’s Hall, which I had heard you could go into, and looked around at all the masons’ stuff. You can’t wear hats in there, so my new hat was not allowed, yet there were lots of other items of silly clothing on display. We felt a bit out of place. I don’t really understand all the Freemason stuff, the secret handshakes and whatnot, but it was interesting looking around at the museum, all the information about past famous members and all the trophies; we are a Spurs fan and a Newcastle fan respectively so the well stocked trophy cabinets made us feel a little awkward. We went and had a little bit of lunch and a Belgian beer at the Lowlander Cafe, before he had to go and meet up with his dad for some shopping (and I had to go and meet my dad for hospital visiting hours). Before I took the tube up to Barnet though I walked through Seven Dials (which I kept calling Nine Dials) and sketched the pretty scene with the golden-leaved trees. It was very nice, until about seven or eight of those bloody awful unlicensed rickshaws pulled up outside a theatre, presumably to catch people coming out of a show, and all started blaring ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba at the same time on their individual speakers. I say at the same time, they weren’t all in sync, so it was just an aural mess of Abba, completely ruining the xmas atmos. Each one of them was decked out in garishly pink frills, designed as if to say “we think you are stupid and will stupidly ride around on this stupid tricycle for stupid money”. I hate these things. If I were Mayor of London I would ban them, and anyone caught doing it would be forced to ride their tricycle all the way to Scotland, going on all the B roads and everything, and then ride around the hardest estate in Glasgow or somewhere, playing bloody Dancing Queen. They prey on tourists, I always read stories about people getting in them and then suddenly being charged 300 quid to ride from a hundred yards up the road by a threatening man with a frankly scary pink vehicle. And sure people might say, well they are part of London now, that’s just what you do, we’ve had pedicabs for ages and tourists want the loud colour and music and don’t mind paying for ten minutes of dodging traffic and pavements and pedestrians. Personally I think they’re awful ugly noisy things, and they ruin any charm Central London still has. You won’t see me in one any time soon. Bah humbug indeed.

advance to mayfair

January 12, 2025Leave a comment

Mayfair is one of those parts of London I’ve frankly ignored for too long. Last year we nearly walked around there, to find the Mercato that we’d heard was cool, but after looking walking over to Savile Row to see where the Beatles played in 1969 on the roof, we ended up catching a tube to St. Paul’s for a walking tour of the City (those Blue Badge guides know their stuff). So I had it on my list to explore this area finally, for the first time in I don’t know how long. It’s that big area full of big super expensive buildings and flash cars, embassies and posh hotels, more Rolls Royces than you can dream of, all bounded by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Regent Street. That’s a big area and it’s not all the same (I am not even sure all of it is ‘Mayfair’, except in the geography of my mind, but we call it that). So on this trip, I decided to make an effort to explore Mayfair again. I actually used to come through here almost every day, twenty-five years ago, on an open-top tour bus, telling the same old stories, waving at the barber, humming the Nightingale song in Berkeley Square song because I didn’t know the words (or the tune) (or the title, evidently), pointing out where the Queen was born (not the original building) and where Jimi Hendrix used to live before he died. Those well-rehearsed yarns have faded in the memory but not as much as the streets themselves; walking around it was like reading a book I had not read since I was a kid, knowing the lines and the characters but still being completely surprised by the story. I was certainly surprised by the little red Mini parked outside a fancy hotel, covered in a Christmas tree, people were stopping to take photos and so I had to grab a sketch. All along the street were expensive cars, this was Grosvenor Street. The Grosvenors are the big cheeses in this part of central London, and many other parts too, they are the Dukes of Westminster. The Grosvenors built this whole area, as well as Belgravia. This street leads up to Grosvenor Square, formerly the location of the massive U.S. Embassy, and the last time I was there, and in this part of town, was in 2005 when I completed my application for Permanent Residency, and had to go to the Embassy, hand in all my paperwork, have a little interview, pledge allegiance with my hand up (that was odd, did that happen?) and then it was all good, I can go ahead and live in America, and I’ve been doing that ever since.

I found the Mercato Mayfair, an incredible food court inside an old church. There are lots of different options from around the world as well as a bar over where the altar would have been. It was done up all festive for Christmas, and I grabbed some south-east Asian food and a fruity soda and had a late lunch/early supper. I still had a lot of drawing I wanted to do in Mayfair, and the daylight was already getting short. I walked over to Duke Street, near the magnificent Ukrainian church (how had I never seen this building before?) to the unusual Brown Hart Gardens. I’ve seen these on walking tour videos (tall tales about elephants being kept here) and one of the Urban Sketchers London events was around here a year or so ago, and I had really enjoyed all their sketches of these domes. I stood among the rich people in nice clothes and sketched. Behind me three suited men talked loudly about work, all business and deals and masculinity. I would have found it hard being a Man of Business, not the life for me guv. The sunset was causing all sorts of colours to appear in the sky, and made the buildings look as if they were made of gold, which they probably are.

A lot of the buildings nearby do look pretty golden. I found myself walking down past the Connaught Hotel, which is a five star hotel that looks like it needs a few more stars added to that description. I didn’t draw it this time, but I did stand outside the Pasticceria Marchesi across the road on Mount Street to sketch the beautiful window display. Their cakes were more like crowns or ornate cushions, and there was a line out of the door. This terracotta building was designed by William Henry Powell and I seem to remember having to say something about Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee when talking about it on the tour, back in the days when Queen Vic was the only one who’d ever had one.

The next stop was Berkeley Square, of the aforementioned song about a nightingale. I had forgotten how big this square is, and even though it was already dark I was amazed at how beautiful it was. I’d honestly not been there since swinging past on a Big Bus pointing out all the Ferraris. The one story I always had to mention were the London Plane trees, as there are a lot of them here, trees that were strong and particularly resilient to the infamous London pollution. I had to sketch one of course, in pencil this time, another tree for the collection. I imagined walking through here on a smoggy evening in Victoria times with horse drawn carriages and top hats and gas-lamps. Now it’s Bentleys and Maseratis, and I did notice that many of the map-posts have been converted into special chargers for electric cars, they just plug them into the lamp-post. We live in the future now my friends. I pressed my nose against the Ferrari showroom checking out a car that costs a quarter of a million quid.

Finally, a famous old pub on the corner of Bruton Street, near where the Queen was born (I suppose these days I should say ‘Queen Elizabeth II’ rather than just ‘The Queen’ in case you think I mean Camilla, or Taylor Swift), at Number 17. The Coach and Horses is the oldest pub in Mayfair, and history pours off of it. I didn’t go in this time, but I’ve been inside many years ago with my mate Tel. I have wanted to sketch this pub for years, another in the mock Tudor style (see my sketches from earlier that day for more of that) so it was always going to be my final destination, but as I stood on the other side of the street drawing the outline, and red buses and taxis passed between us, I ended up just drawing the outlines and scribbling the rest in later, as I had to catch a tube and a bus to Highgate Village. It was a nice stroll around Mayfair, well worth the 400 quid in Monopoly money. I mean, pound for pound, square foot for square foot, it’s the cheapest place on the board.