'It's snowing in Paris'

used to mean that your petticoat was showing. We didn't think then that petticoats were supposed to show.

I've blogged my recent Paris trip over here:

http://boulevardisme.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nicolas-yorois-stage-de-kinbaku-in-paris.html

Degrees of stalking at the Supreme Court

From the public seats it's about the backs of chairs. Their curves contain Hogarth's line of grace and beauty (on the palette in his self-portrait below). In his book Analysis of Beauty, he argues that sinuosity is more dynamic and gratifying than a straight line.

Hayes v Willoughby concerns harassment and examines stalkerish behaviour. Howlett v Holding, for instance, involves the overkill of leaflet drops and derogatory remarks trailed behind a light aircraft.

In today's case, a man tried to persuade law enforcement agencies to investigate his former employer. His allegations had no substance. Is the ex-employee shielded because his aim was to prevent or detect crime?

Lord Sumption

Clive Wolman is congratulated more than once on his performance. But when Robin Allen QC stands up to defend with silky elegance, Wolman's left arm's default position is gripping the chair.

Is there a danger that Robin Allen will exceed his time limit? No fear: 'My lord, I have applied a guillotine to myself.'

I try to examine the optical illusion that creates two desk microphones in the foreground when I look at Lord Neuberger in the background.





Lord Neuberger and an optical illusion

Oops. Fleeting eye contact with a law lord. That makes me feel stalkerish. I wish I were invisible. Can they hear the accidental snap of my charcoal, like an interloper stepping on a twig?

And do they get their own back? I'm told that at least one of the justices sketches during hearings. Which brings me to a fascinating book, The Art of Justice: The Judge's Perspective by Ruth Herz, herself a former judge in Cologne.


Pierre Cavellat, a judge in Brittany from 1929 to 1969, drew from the bench with the ruthless eye of a gagged social commentator (albeit with a weakness for a pretty face). The book painstakingly examines the emotional, cultural, forensic and aesthetic context of his work. He sees more than he says. I feel it's time for a Wim Wenders remake: The Judge's Fear of the Penalty. Which, for Cavellat, included capital punishment.

What would Cavellat make of today? I will have to try a Cavellat pastiche next time. Although French and Algerian criminals and Nazi overlords offer a more colourful cast than the Supreme Court on an average day.

The two illustrations here appear courtesy of All Souls College, Oxford.






Then with a sly, barely audible mechanical sound in my left ear, a tourist behind me photographs my half-done drawing. Twice. I stifle my instinct to bawl her out. And no, photography isn't allowed.

Afterwards in the cafeteria I buy a Supreme Court biro and pencil and, sitting by the merchandise showcase, use them to draw a Supreme Court teddy bear. 'Do you work here?' asks a tourist while I'm sketching.
'No.' Although my coat does match the curtains. It's camouflage.

We can all be stalkers now that Supreme Court judgments are on YouTube. But the 'Comments' section has been disabled. That's not cricket.

The Art of Justice by Ruth Herz is published by Hart Publishing (ISBN 9781849461276; Sept 2012; £35) http://www.hartpub.co.uk/books/details.asp?isbn=9781849461276

Crisis. Christmas.

Faery (with wings) bingo-calling, helped by Diego

'What are you doing for Christmas?'
'Going to Crisis.'

She thought I meant a nightclub. But it is a club of sorts. It has people who are guests year after year. Mostly single and homeless.

Volunteering for Crisis gives you a rare example - not found in corporate life - of people working together with a default position of kindness, because that's all we have. The centres are teeming with volunteers wresting happiness for themselves and others from the nation's distress/disgrace.

For years I heard the siren song of Crisis but thought no, I can't cope with all those scary people. But in 2011 I started to draw the scary people attracted to the Occupy protest camps. It was a doddle. This is my second year at Crisis.



Barbara, volunteer hairdresser
(in mirror, left)

The scariest person I meet is a Green Badge (Crisis High Command).

'Who are you and what are you doing here?' she barks, existentially.

A drawing is an experiment, a what-if. Most drawings should be thrown away. But when you're drawing the face of a guest at Crisis you have to do the best you can, every time, and you sweat on the result, because it matters to someone who has never been drawn, who is faceless, who sees the drawing which you will give them as validation.

Cate (top) and Faery

There are extraordinary volunteers. Inspirational Faery, aka Charlotte, makes up her own agenda - pop-up salsa, anyone?

Cate (of cyoga.co.uk) teaches yoga. A couple of men challenge her strength. She idly supports herself on her arms for a while, levering herself up and down.

Men gaze and sigh at women, with courtesy. I sketch a shaggy ex-punk/glam-rocker in a buttercup yellow suit.

'Do you believe in free speech?' he asks.
'Yes.'
'Give me your phone. Why do moths fly with their legs open?'

Two beautiful young couples in love ask me to draw their double portraits. I can't show you these, or any other pictures of guests, as their identities are shielded.

Cate

Boxing Day: Transport for London tweets that traffic is sluggish or stationary around shopping centres in east and west London.

At the Crisis day centre, the idea of using a holiday to drive to a traffic jam to buy stuff is...

Volunteer barber

I go home via Sainsbury's for a small bottle of wine and a large bar of chocolate. Serving at the tills are young men, strong and handsome like many of the guests at Crisis. Lucky bastards to have jobs, I think.



Cate teaching yoga

 

The Graham Fitkin Band and a sugar rush

I'm drawing the composer/pianist Graham Fitkin rehearsing his band at Kings Place in London. I try not to trip over anything and end up being the thing that can be tripped over.

There are musical fragments, moments of dynamism, longueurs during sound checks.

Last time Graham gave a concert here he finished his piano solo with apparent poise then left the stage to succumb to norovirus. There is no such problem today.

Graham never wrote anything for harp until he met his partner Ruth Wall, the harpist. Now there are two amplified harps centre-stage.

I don't know how to describe his music, which includes a string of prestigious commissions. Phase-minimal-troubadour-jazz-electric-acoustic-bouncy-mellow gives you completely the wrong impression.

New, that's what. New.

It's a last-minute concert with a full house. Graham has made meringues with Cornish cream which band members distribute to the audience after the interval.

Then Graham hands out party poppers which we're allowed to let off ad lib and on the beat. It's celebratory and we're sent home happy. Scroll down for more pictures.

 

Meringue in the hand of another gifted pianist,
Justin Snyder

 

 

 

The Supreme Court and a dream setting

Lord Neuberger, reading

Trying to view distant justices across the high-backed chairs is like being a child straining to see over the dashboard. I'm focusing on Lord Neuberger but he's an all-action judge who doesn't lapse into long poses.


Lord Neuberger's definitive image
continues to elude me

The case is Zakrzewski v The Regional Court in Lodz, Poland. Lukasz Zakrzewski's sentence was reduced before his extradition hearing; did that invalidate a European arrest warrant? Five law lords sit in the calm abstraction of Court 2, a white space relieved with flowery national emblems and the hint of a proscenium arch. 



I think of the sparse white box used by Peter Brook as the set for his legendary 1970 RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream - no photograph does justice to its stark magic. Court 2's plushy curtains, with their Pre-Raphaelite enchanted forest look, would have been dismissed by Brook as too obvious.

I am struck by the beauty of the judges' voices. Worthy of Alan Howard, Brook's Oberon/Theseus.

Counsel and judges benefit from discreet amplification. Their individual desk microphones have red lights at the tips when they are live. And after the judges go off stage, the legal teams really should check the red lights are off before going into a post-match huddle.

It's panto season, so I look behind me. And see Brendan Cotter, a pin-striped regular on the public benches. Now retired, he was the Principal Solicitor for Surrey County Council. He gives me an authoritative spectator's guide to the Royal Courts of Justice, the Old Bailey, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, and more.

Supreme Court tree
decorations for sale

I'm back a few days later for The Financial Services Authority v Sinaloa Gold plc and others and Barclays Bank plc. 'What is a freezing injunction?' asks a judge, rhetorically. 'White goods,' mutters another.

Lord Neuberger is all movement again, so I abandon a portrait and look at the judicial assistants who sit behind him, like putti.


Héloïse, Charles Coypel,

1742

The bench are discussing the concept of recklessness as I start to draw a jug of water recklessly (glass, air, light, reflection, shadow). One of my teachers speaks inside my head: 'Don't look at your drawing. That won't help you.'

Coats are slung on the backs of chairs. The man second from
left is drawn as if transparent.

Counsel's hands are sometimes behind his back when he's on his feet. He sits down and has a glass of water.




 

Other counsel

At lunchtime the Treasury Singers come in to the foyer. They sing carols, accompanied by the bleep of the body scanner, and raise money for Centrepoint.

(Scroll down for pictures.)






Air, floating and Graham Fitkin

The model is Gorgone,
draped in gauze

Some composers serve up meringues. Airy confections that disappear. Delibes. Walton on occasion. Anyone involved in the score of La Fille Mal Gardée. A musicologist just said Saint-Saens. Hmn.

By contrast, the composer and performer Graham Fitkin is making real meringues, ones you can eat, to share with his audience after his next concert with the Graham Fitkin Band (Kings Place, 11 December 2012). I am not aware of any other composer who does this.



Graham has composed the music for Not Until We are Lost, a show by aerial theatre company Ockham's Razor which is touring England until spring 2013. And I'm already thinking about airy things and suspension because I drew Japanese rope bondage for ten hours over the weekend; it involves people floating in ropes.

Ockham's Razor members



Un Re in Ascolto, an opera by Luciano Berio, was worth the admission price for the harness suspension of the chorus alone.

Sentences can also be suspended, both in court and thus...

The Supreme Court - Rembrandt and part-time judges' pensions

The panel of judges

'Have you got a knife in your bag, madam?'

The X-ray in the Supreme Court picks up the Swiss Army key fob which I forgot to leave at home.

John Cavanagh QC,
11 King's Bench Walk,
on his feet

John Cavanagh QC

O'Brien v Ministry of Justice is about judges' pensions. Dermod O'Brien, a retired Crown Court Recorder whose work was counted as part-time, is alleging discrimination. A recently retired immigration judge watches intently: a favourable outcome could be retrospective.

Ian Rogers,
Monckton Chambers

Law students file in. They are of the generation which says 'awesome' a lot. Why do so many of the people in the public seats exhibit something like awe? Do people not go to cathedrals any more? Or is it panic - in the original meaning of the word, sensing the presence of the god Pan, or rather the presence of an inexorable justice system? An implacable god requiring sacrifice if people get some code of living wrong?

A few of the girl students flick and preen but attention is not on them: it's on the clock, as it has been all morning. The students have decades before them. Counsel has two minutes left to bang in his remaining points, like nails.

Postcards are on sale at the till. I buy a team photo of the judges. I think of how Rembrandt exploded the conventional group portrait with The Night Watch.

Rembrandt's The Night Watch

Several storeys above the café is a spotless glass roof. So the Supreme Court is protected by something immaculate, incorruptible. The cynic will say this is fanciful, that there is an obsessive-compulsive clean-up squad or a pigeon-zapping force field. But today it is without blemish. I'm told that the glass will take a body's weight.

And  now I have to do a drawing which is going to be looked at more keenly than the others. One of the security staff has offered himself as a sitter.

This has got to work in the watchful eyes of the whole security team. Word of mouth could destroy me here.

I'm lonely. I haven't got long - their shift pattern is relentless. Look, I never said I was Rembrandt. I just draw in society.

One of my sitter's colleagues comes over to look.

'If this was made into a poster the police would arrest you, man.'

Robin Allen QC,
Cloisters

I get my knife back.