Illustrated Epistle Plus: Things to do in London when you don't like big cities very much

I've spent a lot of this trip to Europe in London because that's where my sister lives and her accommodation rates are very reasonable (a couple of days of child care here and there). The older I get the harder I find it to be in places like London, which are so busy and so geared towards excessive consumerism. The best way I find to enjoy it is to seek out green spaces or places that have historic or cultural interest. London has incredible museums, galleries and parks and gardens (ranging from tiny private gardens to the miles of parks and ancient woodland that form south east London’s Green Chain).

Here are some of my favourites:

1. Exploring the South Bank. Walking along the true right of the Thames between Waterloo and London Bridge stations takes you past a lot of interesting sites, including the ever-changing London skyline. I make a point of going to the National Theatre's espresso bar because it consistently has the best coffee in England (IMHO). On this trip, I was happy to discover a garden shop en route.

2. When I'm in the area, I usually stop in at the Tate Modern gallery. Even if I don't appreciate the modern art, I always enjoy the views of London from the top floor.

Cous cous!

I don’t know why, but I like this.

3. The Guildhall in the City of London (that is the very central bit) has a lot more art that I can appreciate. You can also go down into the basement and see the remains of the 2000 year-old Roman amphitheatre.

William De Morgan ceramics in an exhibition at the Guildhall gallery

4. Many of the City's commercial buildings have small art exhibitions that you can have a look at for free. This was the way I discovered the wonderful iPad drawings of Linda Kitson.

5. Buying cheap and good bagels from Brick Lane.

6. I'm writing this in Briantspuddle in Dorset. Dorset's most famous author is Thomas Hardy. When I was in London I made a point of going to St Pancras Old Church, where the young Hardy (at the time an apprentice architect) had the unenviable job of exhuming and reburying human remains to make way for the railway.

I loved coming across this sign in an inner city garden.

Fleet Street is full of history, although some of it is sad considering the demise of newspapers and comics.

And then of course there are the pubs.

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This is an expansion of my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out in the middle of the month. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a cartoonist (specifically, mine). I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:

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Illustrated Epistle Extract: Crook Crockery

This month, I threw together the last of my pottery. Unlike the others in the class, I had very little experience and almost no natural ability. This was how things went:

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This is an excerpt from my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out in the middle of the month. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a cartoonist (specifically, mine). I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:

http://eepurl.com/cCOOeD

Illustrated Epistle: Predator Free New Zealand Though Not Yet At Our House

I write this as we have insulation pumped into our old villa's timber walls. I wonder what the rats and mice think of this. Apparently, New Zealand is having a rodent explosion and many of them seem to be at our house.

There is a government-backed committment to make New Zealand predator free by 2050 and Kiwis are being encouraged to trap and kill predators in their own backyard. The focus is on rats, possums and stoats, but they would also like to see the back of hedgehogs. I have to admit I couldn't bear to kill the two hedgehogs we found in the sump last summer. Hedgehogs are dying out in the UK but it seems they are thriving here.

We have however been trapping rats. We have 12 traps in the attic that Duncan checks on a regular basis and there are now 6 dead rats buried in the garden. Until recently I had three trap tunnels baited with peanut butter and set up around the house to catch rats. These didn't catch any rats, only sweet little field mice (which are also an invasive species).
Although I didn't like it, I continued trapping these poor mice until one of the traps caught and killed a sparrow. Another "exotic" species, but that was a the last straw for me and I've stopped using those traps for now.

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This is an excerpt from my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out in the middle of the month. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a cartoonist (specifically, mine). I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:

http://eepurl.com/cCOOeD

Illustrated Epistle: Learning to Cartoon

Another month has whizzed by, we're well into Autumn and we have been busy working on the house and garden while the good weather continued. Fortunately, the veranda was replaced before the weather turned wet this week. I'm also happy to report that I no longer get seasick going off to bed as the house has been re-levelled and new piles put in to keep it level-ish. 

This week, I have been working on the illustrations for Chapter 13 of the second FAB Club book. By the next Epistle the drawing should be finished, which will ease the deadline pressure somewhat.

I've also been busy running cartoon workshops in Lyttelton. The first was in the library with kids aged 7-12. They were enthusiastic and engaged and it was very rewarding to see how much their drawing developed in a couple of hours. The second was at a youth club that catered to 11-14 year olds. We started with about a dozen kids and ended up with four! All of them were the younger ones who weren't distracted by their peers. It was a good learning experience for me.
I think that peer pressure in the early teens is a big factor in which interests we take up. Most kids give up drawing at this point, believing that their drawing isn't good enough to impress their friends. I was lucky at that age to have friends who loved to write and draw and we created comics to entertain each other. Without that encouragement, I might have given up too, as I don't find that drawing comes naturally to me and I have to work at it. It is the reason I give myself deadlines in order to develop my work. Doodle Diary on gocomics.com forces me to to draw at least three sketches of my life every week, many of which debut in the Epistle.

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This is an excerpt from my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out in the middle of the month. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a cartoonist (specifically, mine). I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:

http://eepurl.com/cCOOeD