Kensal House: shade of magnolia

There's a baby Magnolia grandiflora in the communal garden with just one citrus-scented blossom the size of a dinner plate.

This is an unusual choice for municipal planting so close to a dwelling: its natural ambition is to reach 90 feet, so if left unchecked it will obscure light from this listed Modernist building on Ladbroke Grove originally known as 'the sunshine flats'.

Teams of cheerful, un-sweary teenagers are slapping magnolia paint on the walls of a room in Kensal House community centre and washing down exterior walls ('A spider! Aargh!'). If you're a magnolia denier, then by all means get 'Tallow' from Farrow & Ball if it makes you feel better. (My previous endurance-drawing visit to Kensal House is logged here: http://isobelwilliams.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/ghosts-and-theatre-in-plaster-thirties.html.)

The teenagers are from SPID Theatre http://spidtheatre.com/wordpress/ and NCS The Challenge http://www.ncsthechallenge.org

Afterwards I walk along Portobello Road past jackpot shots in the gambling shop and a stall selling halal paella. I haven't noticed any rancour all day. Back on the street, it doesn't take long. One City type is whingeing to another: 'He put me in the second category of his guests. I don't even care.' Yes you do.

Turn the corner and there's an inexplicable outburst of redundant municipal planting around spindly new trees on the fancy York stone pavement in Westbourne Grove. Including clumps of sage. And please tell me that isn't euphorbia, the sap of which can land you in A&E if you don't know what you're doing.

More pictures if you scroll down.

Law, gender and eighteenth century drag

What can you do with a law degree if you don't practise law?

Well, you could ask the senior partner of Alabama 3 ('Sweet Pretty Muthaxxxxin Country Acid House Music'). I stumble across his former law tutor, Professor Chris Harding of Aberystwyth University, at a conference. Who needs a training contract?

The conference, 'Visualising Law and Gender', is at the new Centre for Law and Culture, St Mary's University, Twickenham, in the hallucinatorily gothic setting of Strawberry Hill (described as 'make-believe' by the architectural scholar Sir Nikolaus Pevsner).

Speakers include legal academics, an art historian from the University of Ghent called Stefan Huygebaert, and moi.

Ermine-enriched portraits of King George III and Queen Charlotte look down impassively while doctoral theses are aired. Bullet points come up on the screen. It's the sort of conference where 'the jurisprudence of buggery' (and presumably vice versa) goes unremarked.

My own talk has been triggered by Baroness Hale's inaugural guest lecture here in June. She began by saying how much she regretted not hiring an eighteenth century woman's wig to wear on her last day on the bench at the Court of Appeal, to make a point about the dress code. (Now at the Supreme Court, she doesn't have to wear antique male garb except on ceremonial occasions - and no more wigs, ever.)

Natalia Ohana-Eavry shows women's depictions of law

So, off at a tangent I go. What, as Baroness Hale's self-appointed eighteenth century personal shopper, would I have recommended as daywear for that last day at the CA? (The French win.) And what does the history of art tell us about women in the context of justice, given the absence of  judgesses in England and Wales until 1956? If you weren't there I'll go through my PowerPoint again, just for you.  

The trip to Strawberry Hill reminds me of the awfulness of commuting. And of the sleazy pleasure of applying make-up in an empty-ish bit of the train. Those little French Bourjois pots of eye-shadow have got a mirror in the lid.

In the evening I go to a Prom conducted by a woman, Marin Alsop, who wears a mannish black suit.

More pictures if you scroll down.

Notting Hill Carnival: day two

Wet. Cold. Slippery. Punters are buying plastic rain capes.

Preparation for the Elimu Paddington Arts Mas Band. Costumes, make-up. Boys being ticked off by their mothers. 'Put your shirt on! There are girls in here!'

This year's theme is Black in the Union Jack. Roman centurions, sequinned nurses, nylon mesh academic gowns, lace parasols, three-cornered hats. Red, white and blue ribbon garters. Tons of clever ideas on a teeny budget. Sweat and pelting rain are going to account for a man's blue body paint.

'Miss Trinidad's upstairs, being made up.'

There are camera spotlights and fluorescent bulbs. I think I'm dazzled by them, then as I'm drawing I lose the centre of my field of vision and see peripheral silver lightning. It's OK, it goes in a few minutes. I'm tired, that's all.

This building is a place of safety, sheltered from the noise outside. Why do you do this to your hearing? This amplified beat. Earplugs don't have magic powers. You're doing permanent damage. Hello.

Eyes, ears. Built-in obsolescence.

More pictures if you scroll down.

Notting Hill Carnival: day one

Another anguished group email from the Ladbroke Square Gardens committee: builders are dumping rubble and bottles of urine over the railings. 

People with no allegiance to the neighbourhood are employing any old builders they can find.

Oh, and it's time for the influx of carnival tourists as well. I'm not going to describe the squalor or quote the more exasperating utterances of hipsters off their faces, because I'm avoiding them all today and people have bigger problems.

 

But how can I be curmudgeonly while watching happy and good-mannered children being made up to follow the slick, Transport-for-London-sponsored Elimu Paddington Arts Mas Band float?

I walk home the long way round in order not to get my ears blasted to hell. I'm going to the Prom tonight and want to be able to hear the Janáček.

A policeman stationed on our corner leans on his bike and sighs. In the old days we had a couple of mounted police there. 

More pictures if you scroll down.

Supreme Court art: thorns and spines

The Supreme Court café sells Tunnock's tea cakes, a Scottish delicacy, at a pound each. I buy one as an experiment. Its middle is white, fluffy, tacky.

I photograph it next to one of the cactus table decorations. I don't understand its mystique although I can get quite emotional about Wagon Wheels.

Today's case, Moohan and another v The Lord Advocate, has been parachuted in because of the urgent time-scale. Two prisoners serving life sentences seek the right to vote in September's referendum on Scottish independence. There will be a decision today - not the customary wait of weeks or months.

 

‘I’m being reminded that four members of the bench don’t have the right to vote,’ says Lord Neuberger.
‘I should like to offer my services,’ says counsel.

(Members of the House of Lords can't vote in parliamentary elections; the former law lords who became justices in the Supreme Court are prohibited from sitting and voting in the House of Lords until they retire from judicial office.)

Court is adjourned. The courtroom atmosphere is awkward. The legal teams chat and check their phones. We hear the ping from the airside lift.The justices return. The prisoners' appeal is dismissed. Reasons will be given in due course.

The carpet throughout the building has several thousand thistles woven into it.

More picture if you scroll down.

Supreme Court art: exam nerves

I'm drawing under exam conditions, silent and alone. There's a time limit. Fear. Risk. Self-doubt. Ultimate exposure. Latin. Just like old times.

The sitters don't keep still but I chose an unpopular subject - drawing moving people - so it's too late to complain.

Trinidad and Tobago is today's jurisdiction for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Lovell Romain v The Police Services Commission came about because the Commission refused to exempt Mr Romain from taking the exam for promotion to corporal although he'd passed the exam for promotion to sergeant.

Later on, I download a sample paper for the Police Service Entrance Exam (although I can't find a sergeant or corporal exam).

I'd clean up on comprehension, grammar and arithmetic, but is that enough to pass? The local knowledge section is a granite wall, e.g. "Which carnival band won the 2011 ‘Band of the Year’ title in Trinidad?"

Back in court, a teacher drawls in my head: 'Don't look at the drawing, that won't help you.' The teacher-pupil relationship that continues into adult life is symbolised for me in Kipling's story The Man Who Would Be King, in which the destitute cripple Peachey Carnehan is guided by an illusion of his comrade Daniel Dravot whose crowned head he carries wrapped in rags.

I check the ruthless clock. Twenty to ten. Too early. It's stopped. Surely that kind of thing can't happen here. (Later on, I learn that the clock in Court 1 also stopped at twenty to ten today.)

Counsel looks at requirements for taking other examinations: 'In honour moderations, my lord...' One of those tribal terms I go without hearing for decades. Along with 'battels' and 'sconced'.  A recent memory for him, whereas for me they are a dull, distant ache.

Rule one for exam technique is to read the rubric. For example: 'Write on one side of the paper only.' So why, when someone wanted two drawings last week, did I have to confess that I'd done them on both sides of the same sheet of paper?