Supreme Court art: crumbs of comfort

Lord Mance comments on the Supreme Court in The Times: 'I don't think that we've become excessively activist as a result of moving to Parliament Square.'

Excessive or not, there are activists out on the square - Occupy, plus the street people who accumulate around any open-air community if it keeps still long enough. A haggard man in black harangues impassive policemen about article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights with more vehemence than is customary in the Supreme Court.

I pop over to Tesco's. What shall I donate to the Occupy larder? (Don't be like that - I've drawn them a lot and I owe them something.) They've got bread and water. I have a limited budget. What would benefit most people in the best way? A chunk of Stilton? It won't go very far and there are a lot of vegans out there. I settle for cherry tomatoes, grapes, orange juice and, in a moment of madness, Jaffa Cakes.

Do the same thought processes go through the mind of the Secretary of State when allocating EU structural funding? R (on the application of Rotherham Borough Council and others) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is examining his allocation decisions. Did they breach EU principles of proportionality and equal treatment, so close to Occupy's heart? What is his margin of discretion?

A vicious cough and cold is claiming victims on the bench. They are battle-hardened though. At the end, Lord Neuberger congratulates counsel on their performance.

I return to the cold damp earth of the square and draw a weatherbeaten rough sleeper. He writes down his street name, which he says is not to be spoken: STYX. I should introduce him to @charonqc.

The policing style here is inconsistent but they've dropped a hint: a blanket is camping gear, hence forbidden on Parliament Square under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, but cut a slit in it and voilà, it's a poncho.

After I go home, someone out there is arrested for feeding a police dog a biscuit. I console myself that it can't have been a Jaffa Cake which of course the VAT tribunal ruled was not a biscuit but a zero-rated cake.

In a departure from the norm for me, the final drawing is fictitious.

I am merely saying that bears are under-represented among the senior judiciary. As Lord Mance asked in court today, 'What is the point of this?'

There will be an exhibition of my drawings in the City next month.

Supreme Court art: the right to occupy

It's easy to mock Occupy when they tweet that one of their aims is 'free pubic transport' [sic], but something beyond a chippy sense of grievance motivates the core group to spend cold nights on Parliament Square without a tent.

I stop in the square on my way to the launch of The First Miscarriage of Justice by Jon Robins. It would appeal to them. 'Can I come with you?' asks Tom, who yearns for the glory days of Occupy camped on chilly cobbles outside St Paul's Cathedral three years ago ('I want to get my hair cut outdoors smoking weed').

The book launch is in high-security Portcullis House. I can't risk it. Tom goes back to playing the guitar under the statue of Lloyd George.

Next morning I'm in Court 2 trying to pin down an iconic profile. Michael Paget is great-grandson of Sidney Paget, the first artist to depict Sherlock Holmes (the deerstalker was his idea).

Reports that the model was Sidney's brother Walter have been denied; maybe Sidney just set up two mirrors to study his own profile. Michael has inherited it.

In 2012 Michael Paget acted on behalf of Occupy in Corporation of the City of London v Tammy Samede and persons unknown, the St Paul's eviction trial in the High Court.

This morning Tammy and the litigants in person from that case are protesting on Parliament Square in the fag-end of a hurricane, one of them with Occupy Baby in a sling.

While a melodrama of kettling, chanting and arrests is going on outside, 'the right to occupy' is a mantra in court. In The Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Lambeth v Loveridge, Harry Loveridge was replaced as a secure tenant while on a long trip to Ghana (he'd still been paying rent by standing order). Damages are at issue. 'Have the valuers got a stone which is set or some sort of blancmange?' muses Jan Luba QC.

I never told Occupy that the friend I brought to visit their Holborn squat two years ago was a judge, but I dare say they wouldn't have minded.

For the curious, this blog has many posts about the day-to-day life in the Occupy camps as well as this one about Michael Paget:
http://isobelwilliams.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/case-of-high-profile.html

More pictures if you scroll down.

Sidney Paget

Kancer Sutra

I did these eight drawings in response to transcripts of interviews with cancer patients in remission.

The anonymous patients were asked what kind of visual presentation might inform people about how cancer and its treatment could affect their sex lives.

I am particularly grateful to the patient who said: 'Is it in danger of becoming a Kama Sutra stroke sex video? You know what I mean. Because it’s so explicit, it’s not something you can illustrate in a sensitive way. I can’t think of a sensitive way to be honest.'

These pictures, created for Sheffield University's Phoenix Project, are in the current issue of Configurations, the journal of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (and the Oxford comma), published by Johns Hopkins University Press in the USA.

More 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?