Daddy

'Yes, sir, that's my baby, 
No, sir, don't mean maybe,
Yes, sir, that's my baby now.'


'Go to sleep, my baby, 
Close your pretty eyes...' 
(he always gets the next bit wrong)


'There is a lady sweet and kind
Was never face so pleased my mind
I did but see her passing by
And yet I love her 'til I die.'

'So far I've kept my sanity. I said I’d never and I never have played bowls. Are you still left-handed, lovey? Good girl.’ 

I tell him to finish his lunch. ‘Get double stuffed,’ he says. But that's how we talk.

A portrait of a parent is essentially a self-portrait. I draw five over a couple of hours and he says that being drawn is like being on holiday. I am too shy to ask him to hold his portraits for a photo like all my other sitters.

I last drew him when I was 13, for art homework. He is reading The Times, which was in broadsheet format then.

My drawing at the age of 13

New recruits on the pavement

Amelia and Skye

Skirting the archipelago of fag ends and pigeon droppings outside the Royal Courts of Justice, I snap into my default position: sitting on the pavement to draw.

Amelia and Skye are at the launch of Occupy Faith, a summer pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury (think Chaucer, think Aldermaston) organised by Skye's mother Tanya. There are speeches, prayers, chanting.

The girls draw without inhibition. 'Why is everybody watching us doing it?' asks Amelia.

It's cold. A man crosses the road. He's wearing nothing but floral Bermuda shorts, a red baseball cap, sandals and his natural ginger pelt over his bare yellowish skin.  'Uurgh,' say the girls.

We retreat to the crypt cafe at St Paul's cathedral with Tina, Amelia's grandmother. Tina is energetic, undefined by national boundaries, direct, passionate.  If Starbucks' lav is shut she'll unlock it with a coin.

Amelia and Tina

The Occupy protest camp outside St Paul's had a scruffy romance. Bertie Wooster had the Drones Club, Jeeves had the Junior Ganymede, and lovers of tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited were welcome at the Information Tent. To the evicted occupiers it is Camelot, more real in their imaginations than the destination of Occupy Faith.

Your desperate internet search terms

How do people land on this blog about drawing? To find out, I go to ‘Traffic sources’ and look under ‘Search keywords’.

And an oracle speaks. Obscurely:

Wicked voyeur Izzy, Izzy pissing sex, pissing opaques, pissing in the bag, drawing pissing, military pissing.

Random acts of portrait drawing. Sad moment charcoal. Deranged drawings. Drawing of hell.

Mary Poppins sketch. Rasta fall out of window. Mickey Mouse rip off his face.

How to draw a camel. How to draw Adele. How to draw Mr Bean naked. Are there any white Jamaican constables.

Your blogger

Posh back of the neck tattoos.
Elderly couple holding hands. Man faces eternal troubles struggle.

Tina Van Slot. Cleavage cigarette. Adam’s apple in girls. Life in school uniform and bondage.

Emotionless wine bucket. My sternum pops when I stretch.

Army signalman. Edge of a wood constable. Foundling [sic] tits on bus tube.

How to stop a gazebo from blowing over. Can a guy break your hymen with his finger.

None of these search terms has appeared on this blog.

John Cooper QC, leading counsel for Occupy London

‘Many people think that if they’d had a jury they’d have won,’ says John Cooper QC. He was leading counsel for Occupy London in the High Court case brought by the City of London to evict the St Paul’s camp. He also argued in the Court of Appeal for the right to continue the case there.

‘The atmosphere in the courts was great,’ he says. ‘It was very much – not that I was there at the time – the sort of atmosphere you could imagine would’ve filled the revolutionary courts of eighteenth century France but without the violent connotations - packed with different people from Madame Defarge to the aristocrats.

‘Occupy instructed me to put some really good questions to the City and the church. When Nicholas Cottam [the Registrar of St Paul’s Cathedral] was asked, “Are you giving this evidence with the church's blessing?” he said yes. That's always mystified my clients, the church saying that they were neutral and then sending Cottam to give the damning evidence which helped to build the case against Occupy.

‘A lot of the general public were supporters of Occupy. One argument was that schoolchildren were unable to visit the church - whereas a lot of schoolchildren were brought to see Occupy.

‘The dynamics of the whole thing were fascinating, between the church and the state. The irony of ironies was that St Paul was a tentmaker. The occupiers didn't aim for St Paul's in the first place – it was the police who kettled them there. If one believed in such things one could say it was the hand of God – forget Maradona, look at the iconic nature of St Paul's, surviving the Second World War.

‘There were some very quirky moments. On the first day of the High Court hearing a group of Cambridge students passed an academic letter to the judge asking esoteric points of constitutional and ecclesiastical law. And in the Court of Appeal the Master of the Rolls said he’d rather read The Occupied Times than the Daily Mail.

‘I got involved because Duncan Roy, a former pupil here at these chambers [25 Bedford Row], rang me up on 15 October and said, “We're occupying outside St Paul’s and we need some urgent legal help.” When I first took it on there were a couple of people who thought I was some sort of City undercover agent. One of the individuals who challenged me about that had the good grace at the end to apologise.’

The named defendant representing Occupy, Tammy Samede, was originally too shy to speak at meetings. ‘I wondered at one stage whether she was confident enough to get into the witness box,’ says John. ‘But she was very good, particularly in her addresses to the camera, and she’s become very assertive. She’s grown as a human being, quite frankly.’

I (this is your blogger talking) was in the public gallery when Tammy gave evidence. At one point the cleanliness of the camp was at issue, and she was challenged about a hasty clean-up organised when the occupiers discovered that the judge would be visiting.

Tammy replied coolly: ‘I would always clean my house if I was expecting a very important visitor.’

‘I’m very flattered,’ said Mr Justice Lindblom, twinkling behind his specs as the public giggled.

John says: ‘They achieved an awful lot in the High Court and came away with great credit. There was a defined amount of legal material with which to work, but as well as the black letter law argument my clients were interested in raising the principle of the occupation.’ Occupy’s entire legal team was working unpaid.

(Two of the arguments were that the City’s demand for eviction was disproportionate to the effects of the camp, and that the occupiers’ right to a protest site outweighed any need for eviction. Some witnesses wept while giving evidence, one while denouncing global warming as genocide, an issue worth having a protest camp site for.)

John says: ‘The High Court judge and the three judges in the Court of Appeal all commended the integrity and decency of the Occupy clients, which was really important because when it comes to the debate in the future I don't think they're going to have the stigma that was unfairly placed upon them of being loony lefty hippies – not that there's anything wrong with lefty hippies – but it was used as a derogatory term to distance the argument. From now on people are going to have to treat them with respect.

‘It's been a great experience with a group of people from disparate backgrounds – a broad church just as society is. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in May.’

(Events are being planned although John is not privy to that aspect of their work.)

John has just been named as one of The Times’s Top 100 Lawyers: ‘The first I knew of it was being congratulated on Twitter. There are very few genuine surprises left and that was one of them.’

His latest press article is on circus animal welfare in Criminal Law and Justice Weekly @CrimLawJustice: ‘I'm reviewing the law relating to keeping captive wild animals in circuses, commenting that the Government should do what they keep promising to do. That is, ban it. The Government are waiting for a decision in Austria to make sure they’re not going to be sued. Which is disappointing because they won't be. So although Defra are going to issue some licensing procedures, wild animals are still being used in circuses. How long do they have to wait?’

Animals ‘performing’ for human amusement include zebras, lions, snakes, tigers, camels, a kangaroo and a crocodile. John is also the chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports, which campaigned for the hunting ban and helped to draft the Bill.

The conversation drifts. ‘My education was at a comprehensive school. I come from a working class background, so no lawyers in the family, and I was told when I went to the bar in 1983 that “people like you don’t become barristers.” Funnily enough it wasn’t the barristers telling me that. I must say that the bar was very inclusive and supportive, and I’ve recently been made a Master Bencher of the Middle Temple which I’m very proud of. One of my loves in life is history and it’s one of the best inns of court to be involved with for history. Shakespeare set the start of the Wars of the Roses in the garden, and the hall is a fine example of Elizabethan architecture. A table there is made from the wood of the Golden Hind. It was also the setting for the first production of Twelfth Night, in the presence of Shakespeare.'

He reminisces about acting some years ago:

‘Apparently I was a good Iago.

' “Now, by heaven,
My blood begins my safer guides to rule;
And passion, having my best judgment collied,
Assays to lead the way. 'Zounds, if I stir,
Or do but lift this arm, the best of you
Shall sink in my rebuke.”

‘That's Othello speaking – I even learned Othello's lines.’

He studies the drawings. I’ve been talking too much, not concentrating on drawing enough. Still, ‘I love your style with the lines.’

Occupy London at Finsbury Square - bones and mudslinging

Life class model

I came under attack for writing this particular post, which must now read as follows:

'You've got balls to [censored], ' she [censored] at me, yesterday's make-up scribbling dejection on her face.

It's raining. The Finsbury Square Occupy London camp is a mud bath with a track of slippery decking partly covered in chicken wire. Some of the puddles are filled with shredded Christmas trees.

(The Occupy censor commanded me to delete the previous paragraph, but the meteorological records for London are freely available and I don’t expect you to believe that Stalinist sunbeams dance perpetually on the blithe upturned faces of occupiers.)

She is certain [censored] Twin Towers [censored] myth [censored].

Look, I record. This blog is subtitled 'drawing from an uncomfortable position'.

Here's an example of what I mean. Last week the life-class model apologised before undressing: 'I've been ill and I'm very bony.' My callous eyes lit up. 'Don't diss yourself,' I said. I should have filled her with fish and chips and Guinness but I revelled in the skeletal sight. We purred at her frangible beauty as we drew.

And now I think I've achieved the unthinkable - being told to get the hell out of an all-inclusive Occupy site. Then the Scouser Jimmy, who has slept rough outside St Paul's for the last ten years, assures me that I have some way to go: 'You're always welcome here, Princess.'

There are rumours of imminent eviction even though no formal notice has been served. A black duffel coat lies in the mud. In the crowded kitchen tent, damp Occupiers steam gently, eat curry and watch West Ham in a football tournament sponsored by RBS.

The municipal flower beds commandeered to grow food make me think of anxious, undernourished evacuees. There is no root-room for fruit trees as a multi-storey car park lies under the six feet of soil.

The Occupy guide to management without managers is waiting to be written, starting with the need for nominated press spokesmen. Today's Sunday Times has effected a stitch-up by quoting Occupiers who are decidedly off-message: one says he raises funds and then spends the money on drink and drugs.

Rosa, recovering from viral pneumonia, has a damp tent. I fetch some old copies of the FT from the car to sop up water. I explain to her that I don't feel welcome on site. Oh, I hear someone clomping up the decking to seek me out. The look is minatory. 'I DIDN'T THROW YOU OFF THE SITE, I JUST SAID YOU'VE GOT SOME BALLS TO COME BACK HERE AFTER THE WAY YOU WROTE ABOUT ME.'

I go to St Paul's Cathedral. In the crypt cafe is Gbola, decorating his conversation with snatches of hymns. He needs shelter following last week's eviction of the St Paul's camp. Obi, a gentlemanly Occupier and Star Wars fan with a vast social conscience, is fighting fatigue: he spent last night making sure Gbola was safe, first in an all-night cafe then, from 4am, on the concourse of Liverpool Street Station, among homing clubbers.

Gbola can't sleep at Finsbury Square because his wheelchair will stick in the mud. Canon Mark Oakley and two vergers take up his case; a member of the cathedral staff takes Gbola in a cab to St Martin's in the Fields, by Trafalgar Square, in the hope of finding shelter for him there. I reflect that compassion needs to be dispassionate in order to work.

Nathaniel

I go to Starbucks and draw three children. Their mother,Tammy Samede, found her voice as the named defendant in the High Court eviction trial.

Georgia

Nathaniel gazes at me with the ancient wisdom of childhood. He understands that being a sitter is a job of work and has an unnerving grasp of the collusion between sitter and artist. Unlike many adults he does not look down at my paper: he knows that he, not the picture, is important, because I have to look at him more than I look at the drawing.

Olivia

I drive home. On the car radio a choir sings: 'Keep calm and carry on' from Traditional Values, composed by Orlando Gough with words by Guyanese/British poet John Agard.

Gough tells an interviewer that the work reconsiders a 'warm beer, John Majorish' Britishness, focusing on tea, the weather and cricket. 

He's quoted on the internet: 'The tone is affectionate, ironic and celebratory, and the music is suffused with influences of pop, gospel, reggae, calypso, bhangra and qawwali. What is really being celebrated here, I think, is...stoicism, tolerance, adaptability, irony and...diversity.'

The choir sings:

Certainty can be a curse.
It can lead to bigotry or worse.

Occupy London: the last Thursday at St Paul's

I'm dissed by a man in candy-striped hold-ups and a miniskirt with a fabric flower in his hair as he puts red and blue flashing lights on his head before cycling home: 'You're jealous of Princess Diana because she had something you don't have. Compassion. She cared about everyone. You're just here for your own interests. I showed you my book but you didn't like it.'

Debbie

The camp has shrunk. A patient group of Occupiers cuddle together on the cathedral steps keeping vigil with tea-lights and flowers; someone is intoning into a microphone. They expect eviction any minute.

Debbie works in welfare benefits and is here because of the cuts: 'I've always been protesting - in the late 90s there was Reclaim the Streets, Stop the City. It got violent and that was horrible. My daughter came here first and told me that it was a completely different kind of protest, non-violent.'

Debbie is with the Anonymous group who wear the masks. She dispels my assumption that Anonymous is a blokish hackers' movement: 'I see myself as being a hippy. They're very peaceful, there's a nice vibe about it.

'I've never been drawn before. When we get raided by the bailiffs I'll grab my picture.'

I'm sketching in the cold, by the light of a lamp post, unable to discern colours clearly, at one point being filmed making duff decisions about how to draw by the guy from Channel 4 who's been haunting the camp. I am naked. Yes, her face is narrower, yes, I did eventually notice, come back and film the corrected drawing please.

Jimmy, the gallant Scouser who has slept rough outside the Cathedral for ten years, has filed a legal claim to ownership of St Paul's Cathedral on behalf of the Occupiers.
He's carrying his rolled-up portrait which I drew on 11 December.

E, Occupy's answer to Clint Eastwood, kisses my hand. 'You're a beautiful woman, Isobel.' We are both intoxicated in our different ways.

Tigger

Tigger lay down under a police van during the recent eviction of Occupiers from the Bank of Ideas, the squatted UBS building in Hackney: 'It all kicked off when the bailiff punched two people. It was stressful and I smoked a cigarette under the van. A St John's Ambulance man warned me that I was near something extremely flammable [the petrol tank] but I didn't care. After the building was cleared I gave the bailiffs the run-around.' He managed to get back up onto the roof of the building from the outside: 'There's a little church next door.' He's a  free-runner, using walls and roofs as gym equipment.

'I'm from Hinckley in Leicestershire,' he says. 'I used to work in a hostel for young people with mental health problems but it got shut down by the government. That's why I'm here.'

Two men comment while I'm drawing him: 'Draw the big knob on his forehead. Get a permanent marker, quick. What kind of bell end does he look like?'

Chrissy

Chrissy, from Dusseldorf, was on holiday in New York with two friends when Occupy Wall Street started so they spent time in Zuccotti Park. 'There was a pizza restaurant close by and people from all over the world were contacting it to order pizzas for us. They made a special Occupy pizza - a big one, with meat. There were lots of pizza packets on the site, used to make signs.'

She's with Occupy in London for the duration: 'I'm a media analyst so I can work anywhere freelance. All I need is a laptop and a signal.'

Charlie

I'm struggling to find enough dregs of observation to rescue my drawings, too tired to talk properly to my sitters. The Che-lookalike, Charlie, is a Sinhalese Sri Lankan. He works in the tranquillity (euphemism for security) team. There's a red cardboard heart pinned to the tree trunk behind him.

Michelle

Ye Olde London on Ludgate Hill is shut so for the first time I'm going to have to use one of the camp's portaloos. Michelle mimes how to make a Z-shape so that no part of you ever touches any part of the interior of the portaloo. She kindly stands outside because I am claustrophobic and don't want to lock myself into this imagined hell. But it turns out to be a banal experience.

Obi

There is even a supply of loo-paper thanks to the vigilance of Obi, a purposeful and quietly motivated presence in the camp.

It's 1am. My observation is such that I have parked in a disabled parking space without noticing either the road marking or the yellow sign on a pole by the space. I await a letter from the City of London Police.

Not the last Sunday for Occupy London at St Paul's

'Jesus said before he went, "Have love among yourselves," ' says Tammy Samede. She is the named defendant, representing the Occupy camp at St Paul's in the eviction trial. 'I love Occupy. Here there is honest to God straightforward love for each other. I don't need anything while I'm here and there are hugs everywhere. I've got a few changes of clothes and a couple of books but I'm happier in 33 years than I ever was before.'

She feels that the cathedral has given Occupy a mixed response: 'Sing like an angel and act like a demon.'

'My benefits have been stopped because I'm not seeking work that the government thinks I should doing instead of  trying to change the world. My flat's being repossessed. It's too late to change that now.We're not going to stop when the tents have gone. It's just going to get more and more amazing. It's a scary moment, losing my flat and stuff. But I don't deal with sacrifices. It's the right thing to do. My belief is that the universe provides and it sure did.' 

Tammy was pragmatic about legal costs: 'I thought, I ain't got nothing. They can have a pound a week off me for the rest of my life and I'll have a long and meaningful relationship with the City of London.' In the event, the Corporation has waived costs against her.

'Occupy is about hope, it's about change, it's about people getting together,' says Tammy. 'All different kinds of people. Like Giles Fraser. Where else in life would I become friends with a canon of St Paul's? And they say the homeless services aren't able to cope. We've fed 'em. We've managed. I get angry about it.'  

Formerly inhibited, Tammy has grown into a fierce public speaker and in court I saw her earn the judge's respect for her confidence under cross-examination.

Tammy recently embarked on treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, caused by her troubled childhood. After seeing her poised performance on TV, one of her counsellors called her to say that further treatment wasn't necessary. (I am naturally wary of long-distance assessment.) 

'Our brothers and sisters in Syria - they walk into the bullets.' says Tammy.That's how strong their desire is to change things. Here we are squabbling about a few tents.' 

Tanya Paton, a catholic working on Occupy's 'multi-faith, believer and none' working group, charmed half a dozen free Portaloos out of suppliers and is arranging for them to be restored to their owners before the anticipated eviction. The cleaning is not free and has been a big part of the camp's budget. 

Tanya is working on plans which include an interfaith Occupy pilgrimage to Canterbury in June. Her daughter Skye is a serious, happy eight-year-old whose rabbit is called Pebbles. 

Back in the long-running sitcom which is the info tent, Lee studies his portrait: 'I look like a commissar.' He kindly gives me a SACK BORIS Oyster card holder produced by the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association. 

Lee is a legal observer at demonstrations and a children's entomological entertainer: 'I take giant spiders and cockroaches into schools - The Big Bugs Show. We have cockroach racing and sometimes the kids eat bugs from Fortnum & Mason. The spiders are called Barbie, Hayley and Cayley - nice girlie names. A giant spider's feet feels like a hamster on your hand, or the paws of a kitten. It helps kids to feel good about science.'

'Can I find you online?

'Someone's stolen my website,' he fumes.

Constable 673 has never been drawn on duty before: 'It's amazing!' I've done a too-hasty sketch: she was standing in front of a bare light bulb so I couldn't see her clearly but my street rule is to be a passive instrument and draw whatever's in front of me without manipulation.

She is not permitted to accept the picture, as my other street sitters do, or to be photographed with it while on duty. 

She turns politely to a woman with a dog off a lead. 'You know what I'm going to say,' she says, with quiet charm and instant effect.

I pop into the kitchen tent. Music blares from a laptop: You blocked me on Facebook. And now you are going to die. Lilias, a relative of H. Rider Haggard, who wrote King Solomon's Mines, is doing a limb-thrusting-out dance to keep warm. 'You should go up Ilford on a Friday night,' says Tigger, a female kitchen helper. A man carrying a red rose comes into the kitchen tent, smoking. 

'You always break the laws of the kitchen,' sighs Mohammed. 'Please smoke outside.'

'And shove that rose up your arse,' says Tigger.

A man looks dubiously into a mug of pale coffee he has just made: 'There's something missing. I don't know what.'

Reuben [left]

I sit in on a general assembly - one of the amorphous meetings, open to anyone, which aim to produce consensus for the leaderless patchwork movement.

I sketch in the icy tent, my clockwork running down, and the talk is like a baroque opera: exposition, development, a return to the beginning, polite groans at the repetition... But the facilitator, Tina, grabs the sense and propels the makeshift orchestra to a conclusion.

I'm giving a lift home to Liz Beech, a Greenham veteran. She's lugging her portable manual typewriter, the vessel for visitors' comments over the past four months. The Museum of London want it, but she's keeping it.

I've been coveting the badges and in return for a sketch Reuben, with white beard and black fur hat, gallantly procures one for me: I leave camp with a hug and a kiss.