Back to life

Just some moments from the life room.

Jah Rastafari

I go up Portobello Road for a quick drawing hit. Kili is drinking and smoking sociably under the Westway.

Kili

I shake my fixative spray too vigorously and the sea-green glass beads of my bracelet scatter. I gather up the ones I find. Gather. Last night I overheard this in the Army and Navy Club:
'Are your parents still alive?'
'No, they're gathered.'



Rastafari

Overheard outside Tom's Delicatessen:
A: 'I have a yoga class now.'
B: 'Oh, do you go to the Life Centre?'
A: 'No, someone comes to my house.'

B looks as if dashing her brains out against the nearby lamp-post will be the only cure for her humiliation which is going to be life-long.

Clifton aka Kili

I'm in army fatigues searching among the street people for a man without a telephone. Egbert, the St Lucian Rasta, my most reliable and loquacious model. I find him holding court outside a cafe on Portobello Road, all cheekbones and diminutive elegance.

Egbert kisses my hand fervently and calls me empress. I feel like one.

'Wie geht es Ihnen?' says Egbert to Kili.
'Es geht mir gut.'
'Heil Hitler.'
'Sieg Heil.'
'Whatever.'

Egbert

Egbert gets up to go. He whispers in my ear: 'Her name is Doreen. She is short and chunky with bow legs. She is a wonderful cook. She's cooking me fish. One love.'

A vicarage tea party

...might have been more racy but to spare certain sensitivities I have blogged about drawing Japanese rope bondage on http://boulevardisme.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/japanese-rope-bondage-at-bound-in.html

Drawing Pandemonia

The paparazzi shots of Pandemonia don't prepare you for her breathtaking sweep into the room.

Flawless, kind to animals and sought-after for the front row - Pandemonia is a post-modern fairytale princess. I have been invited to her airy white central London penthouse, where the clear light bounces off her milky skin.

She shakes hands delicately. I feel gormless but Snowy is an ice-breaker. Pandemonia was enchanted to find him left on her doorstep one day. 'His bark is worse than his bite,' she purrs. 'At fashion shows you never get a squeak out of him. Even people who are terrified of dogs are not scared of Snowy. He is an ambassador for the canine world.'

Is it possible to make acquaintances in the front row? Pandemonia gently refers to Jake Chapman, Harry Blain, Margo Stilley, Agyness Deyn, Livia Firth... 'Brix Smith and I swapped dogs. She has a little black pug which got its grubby pawprints on me! I was glad to get Snowy back...' 


Pandemonia is a stranger to dishevelment. Her plumptious hair inspires envy. She has ambitions to create an eponymous scent when time allows: 'It will be an improvement on nature, more perfect than perfect can be.'

I ask how much Pandemonia owes to Hitchcock blondes.
'Of course, blonde hair shows up better on film. I've been offered a few roles but so far they haven't been quite right.'

She glances down from her penthouse window and sighs: 'I am a walking logo.'

'Look at that Burger King logo on the poster over there,' she adds alarmingly. 'Blue, yellow, red - you can see it right across the road.'

I admire the simplicity of her accessories and she points out: 'My blue handbag is a symbol of power.'

Does her disciplined chic owe something to an earlier icon? Pandemonia is reluctant to go down this road.

I am using the wrong materials to draw her. I think of Jane Eyre, when her self-esteem is at its worst, forcing herself to draw her glossy rival Blanche Ingram:

...draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.'

Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory...mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines...

Pandemonia surveys my lumpen drawing: 'Are you overcooking it?'

http://www.pandemonia99.com

On the pavement with the chewing gum man

Ben Wilson paints enamel miniatures on the flattened discs of gum defiling our pavements.

When he meets me in Notting Hill I'm in attention-seeking mood. I suggest setting up outside an embassy. 'I want a quiet life,' says Ben, so we compromise on Bayswater Road, near the Russian visa office. Two policemen approach.

Are we in for a rumble? No chance. One officer beams and hails Ben: 'Hello! I'm from Haringey!' He tells his colleague that Ben is well known for his street art there. Ben wants inspiration. 'Ah,' says the colleague, 'if it helps, we've just won our first gold medal. Ladies' rowing.'

Ben prepares his white enamel ground: as he sets it with a blowtorch it blisters like frying egg white. He builds up layers of colour fixed with a cigarette lighter and car lacquer. We don't know how many women are involved, so Ben paints six naked ladies. It turns out there are just two - Helen Glover, Heather Stanning.

'I'm trying to make sense of representative art in the twenty-first century,' says Ben. 'I thought about hiding a little Russian in the picture but I can't be arsed.'

We have fish and chips at Portobello Gold. The barman glances at Ben's Jackson Pollock trousers and asks: 'Did you manage to get any of it on the canvas, sir?'

Then we settle outside Themes and Variations, a furniture shop in Westbourne Grove downwind of the in-store fragrance pumped out by Ralph Lauren's air conditioning. A pair of tourists pounce on Ben: 'You're famous in Italy!' A uniformed Olympics volunteer from Lincoln bounds up: 'Wicked! I've seen your programme on BBC3!' A Dutch couple admire his work: 'Here's something for a cup of coffee,' says one.

He has notebooks filled with requests for street miniatures. The people asking range from teenage boys in graffiti gangs ('If I don't tag the pavement they tag me - I end up with tags all over my clothes') to the bereaved seeking to commemorate the dead.

'I get to know everyone,' he says. 'If I get on the bus I know all their stories.'

Ben paints on bricks as well. His next exhibition is at Julian Hartnoll, Duke Street St James's, in October.

Westbourne Grove

To the Supreme Court, then veering away

Lord Sumption 
from afar

Fry's Five Boys was a chocolate bar which offended me when I was a child. There was only one grimacing infant, photographed five times. Bar and wrapper said: Desperation, Pacification, Expectation, Acclamation, Realization - "It's Fry's". 

I learned from it that life was about some foolish grown-up imposing the wrong words in the wrong order. It was discontinued when the Sex Pistols arrived. There is nothing of the chocolate bar about the five law lords but I have an atavistic moment. 

Lord Hope

I'm sitting at the back, unable to see faces clearly, miles away across the tundra. 


British Airways plc v Williams and others is about pilots' holiday pay. QCs are hurling the kitchen sink at the issues. 'Habitats Directive'...'dredging rights'...'complicated Dutch competition case'... Three people notice that they are being sketched from afar. Each puts a hand up to his face. 

Lord Mance

At lunchtime I clean charcoal off my hands, face and shoulders. I eat a prawn sandwich and a Kit Kat in the basement cafe. The leading QC is asked, 'Still or sparkling?' He comments to his colleague that sparkling is a bad choice when you're on your feet. 


I meet a friend who has come from the volunteer Olympic drivers' Park Lane operations room. Things there are tense: it's the phoney war. Her Swatch Olympic watch, designed not to set off security alarms, sets off the Supreme Court security alarm. 

Lord Walker

Out in the sun we spot shiny Olympic BMWs being driven round Parliament Square en route to the stadium. Their Munich-controlled satnav has a left-leaning tendency. You can tell which drivers give the satnav credence: they are the ones who suddenly barge to the right (desperation) to avoid being swept up to Trafalgar Square and ignominy. 


I am off topic. But the volunteer Olympic drivers have each been issued with a time-killing 'game' (pacification) of such crassness that I reproduce the first page here: