Friday 19th December
I have been fighting illness for two weeks. The occasion of my father’s funeral at the start of the month has seen people gathering from the West Indies, Canada, across Spain and France, the UK and much of Ireland. I myself have been carrying whatever germs I can back from the UK, where I attend my brother-in-law’s funeral the day before my own father’s final goodbye. That’s a lot of pathogens, and one by one family members go down like skittles. Mostly ‘flu, complete with fevers, dizziness and nausea, followed by a terrible cough. Many attendees fly back to their respective countries feeling terrible, with no choice but to go because of obligations at home. My husband and son succumb and spend days in bed. Not me! I walk amongst them, fit as a fiddle, feeling by turn saintly (cups of tea, dinners on trays) or impatient (that coughing is keeping me awake). But I can feel the lurgy creeping up on me.
Saturday 20th December
Marcel and Paddy have shaken off their respective respiratory illnesses. It’s the weekend before Christmas and I am travelling across the country to attend the Saturday night dinner my brother has arranged for months, and to help my mother settle into her new place, as she’s surrounded by boxes stacked to the ceiling. But on Saturday morning I start to feel a tingling in my arms and legs and a trickle in the back of my throat. No! Not now!
My eldest has had an emergency appendectomy the day before, and if she is to recover in time to join us for Christmas then I am going to need to collect her and drop her home. After a lengthy wait in her hospital ward we break her out (not really, she’s discharged) and we get her back to her own room in her house, where her housemates will look after her.
I make it in time for the dinner with my brother and his lovely friends. They are a truly lovely bunch. I give each of them a copy of my newest book, Reuben and the Gastrobeasts, a sort of art book-cookbook combination.
Sunday 21st December
I go to my mother’s apartment where I unpack a few boxes. I leave Dun Laoghaire, her new town, around 4.30pm to catch the Dart to Dublin, as I want to sketch something for my Monday class. I want to sketch something festive, but not corny; Dubliny, but something that can fit in my tiny A6 sketchbook; traditional, but also quirky. I have no idea what to sketch but I figure it’s a dry night, it’s not cold and I have lots of time before my train leaves at 8.30pm.
But I haven’t reckoned on the Christmas crowds. I keep to the “nice” parts of Dublin, which have shrunk as I have grown more curmudgeonly: pedestrianised Grafton Street strung across with lights, narrow Exchequer Street lined with posh shops, and the alleys and malls in between, which aren’t just nice, they’re absolutely gorgeous. Shop windows appear to be filled with gold and glitter, black and red velvet, and jolly little Christmas scenes, all lit up under the night sky. The atmosphere is lively and good-humoured, full of groups of friends and family standing in the street, guffawing, obstructing, blocking my passage as I look for something suitable. I have a great idea – I’ll draw a nativity scene in a crib! All I have to do is find a church. But the Dublin City Centre churches are all closed. I join a queue for coffee in iconic Bewleys, who are bound, I think, to have a Christmas-themed beverage on offer, but I can’t be sure of that so I peel off out of the queue and return to the thronged street outside. I walk up and down, still looking, resenting the boisterous crowds, enduring whacks by gift bags slung over the shoulders of hurrying shoppers…I still have lots of time but I am getting hot and tired, having overestimated the cold and wearing too many layers.
Then I remember: Molly Malone! She who wheels her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow! The statue is nearby. I will draw her! It’s years since I have drawn her. The last time was for my book Dublin In Sketches And Stories, back in 2020. There she is, surrounded now by a hedge in an attempt to quell the passion of the more lovelorn passers-by, who can’t resist groping her cold, brassy décolletage, now incongruously shiny. I open my SketchPocket and get started, and then a young man in a Santa suit arrives and starts to unpack his guitar and amp, ready for a busking session.
I wonder if I will have to endure covers of Christmas favourites, but within a few minutes the sound of Jimi Hendrix-style twanging floats into the night air. Then a blues version of Fleetwood Mac. More blues and rhythm guitar, if I have the description right. It’s great, whatever it is. Crowds stop to listen. It is a lacuna of calm in the mayhem of Grafton Street at Christmas. The young Santa is a talented musician and very handsome, despite his trendy black moustache. I draw away but I am sooo tired…in the end it’s not my finest sketch but the vibe is so brilliant and I want to share it with my lovely students in class. Plus, it’s the quintessential urban sketch: I have chanced upon a special moment, and captured it in ink and watercolour, all while leaning on a traffic bollard. I introduce myself to blues-playing Santa when I am finished, who tells me he is from the south of Brazil. I show him my sketch.
“Amazing!” he says, “can I keep it?”
I tell him he can’t, and decide not to explain why I need it (not that I ever give my sketches to anyone anyway) but I tell him he’s welcome to take a photo. Off I go and make my train in good time. I am soooo tired on the way home, no sooner do I pop in my earbuds than I am sound asleep.
Monday 22nd December
The students enjoy the little vignette of Dublin and Santa playing the blues that I share with them, and I love to see Brazilian Santas and bronze Molly Malones done in the hand of people across the entire globe.
Christmas Eve
My family and I are invited to dinner in the nearby home of our dear friends and their adult kids, who have grown up with our young ones and have remained firm friends through the years. We have a lovely time and when we are getting ready to go home my friend cuts an entire quarter off the beautiful Christmas cake she’s been given by a sibling, and wraps it up in tinfoil for me. She makes sure to include the snowman on top in my piece “because you like to draw them”. She’s right – I drew the Santa figurine on the piece she gave me last year – and off we go home. I look forward to drawing the little snowman on top of the cake.
Christmas Day
Like my mother before me and hordes of mothers today in Ireland, I do not sit down for a minute while preparing the wonderful Christmas meal. It’s all worth it and we sit down to a mountain of oysters fresh from the shore just a mile or two away (I collect them on my bicycle). Just in time for the start of the extreme relaxation period, after the meal is over, I finally succumb to a cold. I spend the next three days drowning, trying to get better, dragging around duvets at various points between the sofa and my bed.
Saturday 27th December
I draw Honor, my eldest, tapping away on her phone. She is in MY place, which I have graciously given to my daughter for the duration of her visit as she is recovering from surgery! How magnanimous of me! She is doing really well and is her usual funny, outrageous self, which is exactly what I want to see. It’s not in the slightest magnanimous as I have recently developed a new, better seat in the house, and I have even chosen a little coffee table as my Christmas gift to put beside my new spot.
I finish Honor and draw my son Paddy, who has not taken off his Santa hat since about the second week in December (and is still wearing it) and his favourite Christmas mug – a fat snowman – that looks really nice reflected in the glass of the table.
Sunday 28th December
But by Sunday I give up and decide to stay in bed ALL DAY in the hope of avoiding the cough that everyone seems to have some down with following their illnesses. Reuben the terrier is completely faithful and I draw him on the bed beside me. (The book is a social and political history of Cuba, seen in the context of the Bacardi family, and even though it’s intimidatingly chunky and the font is very small, it’s a really good read so far.)
I arise from my bed at 6.00pm and the four of us – Marcel, Paddy, Honor (now recovered) and me – head out to Moran’s, a thatched, 18th-century seafood restaurant and pub across the river for a pint. It is, as always, perfect, with turf fires and friendly staff.
Monday 29th December
I make buttermilk pancakes for the family, and lose one, which I find when no one can manage another bite, leaving me free to sketch it. I bring it to my class later on, a little worried that they might look askance at my choice of subject. I have nothing to worry about, of course, and they are as game for it as I suspected deep down they would be. They also make beautiful sketches.
New Year’s Eve
I am better! There is a very small piece of Christmas cake left. The snowman is still there, balanced precariously on the last remaining slice like a daring person sitting too close to the edge of a cliff. My kids know I intend to sketch the snowman, and they have eaten as closely as they possibly can. Bits of gnawed white royal icing lie around the living room, and although the snowman is still there the cake is no longer able to stay upright. So I prop it with a plate while I sketch. When my back is turned my husband clears it away – he has a nervous tic that makes him clear everything away as you are in the middle of using it – but by then my sketch is done.
You can see it on my YouTube channel and on an Instagram reel but I don’t think the latter can be much good, as the Instagram editing app called Edits helpfully told me today that the reel has a 61% skip rate, which information I did not ask for, and which prompted me to immediately turn off my Edits notifications.
Later, I spend an hour and a half with my lovely students in my illustration class, in which we draw a classic scene from an old Disney movie, 101 Dalmatians. I am very happy to be there and at the end I make a silly little speech about how grateful I am to everyone for allowing me to take the role as teacher, which causes me to choke up. I am embarrassed but there’s nothing wrong with a little weeping at times…
And I wish for each and every one of you a really wonderful 2026. I will be here every step of the way to share my world of sketching with you.
Happy New Year!
