2026-25

I enjoyed a day out in Cambridge with my Go Free Range colleagues on Wednesday. We had a coffee at Bould Brothers, a ploughmans at The Free Press and then a walk along the river to The Plough where we watched some of the May Bumps.

I was struck by Orchard Street as we walked past and took a quick photo. I made a sketch from the photo the next day.

I’ve been following the drawabox drawing lessons for a little while in an attempt to learn some more fundamental drawing skills. I did a fair bit of technical drawing at school but not so much “artistic” drawing. I’m taking the courses advice to sketch for fun regularly and go straight to ink (as above) rather than draft with pencil.

I took N- and F- to the New Forest at the weekend. We camped for a couple of nights at Ashurst Campsite with my brother, Neil, Jack and their kids. The campsite is very close to Ashurst station with direct trains to Waterloo. My brother took a bunch of camping gear for us to use, which made things much easier. The weather was great and the kids loved climbing tree and watching the ponies exercising their free-roaming rights all over the place.

A- and the boys bought me a copy of Replay by Jordan Mechner for Father’s Day, which I’d heard about through a Guardian interview. I really like his sketching style and Replay is a real treat. I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into it.

My friend George sent me, in the actual post, an actual mix-tape complete with handwritten track list. It’s full of stuff I haven’t heard and has given me an excuse to get my cassette deck home from the office and set up for some evening listening.