January and February are very much café-sketching months, when it’s too cold and wet to be outdoors. This is good news for me, as I do love a cup of fancy coffee.
The first sketch was drawn in a local café called C’est La Vie. The owner, Fabienne, is a lovely Frenchwoman who has been a client of mine in the past, and so supportive is she of my work that once, many years ago, she hosted me in her superb restaurant, Rouge, where I sat at the bar with a glass of wine and sketched the diners; the idea was that they might like to buy the resulting sketches. They didn’t – we don’t have a massive artistic sensibility in Ireland, so I wasn’t surprised – but they were also there to dine with a loved one, and not to buy art, particularly. Fabienne was disappointed but insisted that it was not a question of accepting defeat, but rather finding the formula of tying art and French food together. Not too many months later the pandemic came along, and that was the end of that (and, for a long time, her wonderful restaurant). But Fabienne remains wonderfully supportive, and rarely lets me pay for my coffee and pastries when I visit her café and restaurant. If you do happen to visit C’est La Vie soon, you may see this sketch on the wall, as Fabienne wants to buy a (hand-drawn) copy of it.
You can see my sketch of Fabienne’s lovely restaurant Rouge at the top of the page, drawn around this time of year: see the Valentine’s Day decorations and loved-up couples…
The second, in tones of grey and brown, was an attempt to capture the main street running through Galway City whilst sitting at a window seat in McCambridge’s. I was there for at least an hour, and so I overheard the baristas interacting with the customers just behind me, as they ordered their takeaway coffees. The more senior barista was Irish, his assistant, clearly not long in the job, was from another country, and his English wasn’t fluent: the more senior fellow was explaining how things worked to him. The senior lad (still only in his early- to mid-twenties) addressed all the male customers who came in with a loud and hearty “Yes, sir! What can I get you, sir!” and “Thank you, sir! Enjoy!” whereas the female customers got a mumbled “Enjoy…” with no form of address. This is not the barista’s fault: while men are always addressed as “sir” in Ireland, women get no form of address at all. Not Miss, not Madam, not Ma’am. The reason might be clear – you’re alway safe addressing a man as sir, but could be regarded as making an assumption on a lady’s age depending on whether she’s a Miss or a Madam to you, but unfortunately the result is a lack of respect in the tone of the server (especially when they’re male) and a concomitant lesser treatment. I worried the younger server would follow the lead of his superior, and go about life blithely un-addressing female customers. As the Sir count rose and the Madam / Miss count remained at zero, I became more and more annoyed. That, coupled with the fact that my sketch was not working out, and the silly chatter of the two men who were having coffee beside me, meant I soon wore an expression of thunder. In my mind, I dared either of the men to talk to me (we were cheek by jowl). Then one of them raced outside to talk to a friend he saw passing in the street, and I was left with the older of the two men, a fellow who had clearly fielded a few of life’s slings and arrows in his time. Just try starting a conversation, I said to myself, and you’ll see what you get. He turned to me.
“I’ve never got the hang of watercolour,” he said in a rough, gravelly English accent (“wo’-a’-culla”). And that’s all it took. My ill-temper dissolved in an instant and I told him, helpfully, that he only needed to know a few things and the rest would follow, that there was very little to it. I summed up what I could. He wanted to know what I did for a living, and I told him about teaching. He smiled through deep wrinkles, his reddened cheeks bright on his weathered face, straggly wisps of nicotine-stained hair hanging down, and said how pleased he was for me. I said it had taken fifteen years of constant rejection before I landed my first book, and that now I had three books out in the world, which had been for sale in the very bookshop we could see across the street, but which were now all sold out, their second editions hitting the shelves round about now. The man beamed, clearly delighed to hear of my (eventual) success. “I never took no for an answer,” I said, and turned to leave. “That’s the motto for the day,” he said, pronouncing it “mo’-o” in his south London twang.
As I walked through the rain back to my car, terrible sketch open and upside down to not become even worse in the rain, I pondered on how irritable I am compared to every other person I ever meet in Ireland. (Note I specify Ireland: we’re particularly easy-going here.) Must try harder. Must calm down.
The third sketch is one I made sitting at a window in Café Nero, trying very hard to capture the beautiful blonde hair of a girl sitting outside the window (“she’s a WOMAN”, as my youngest would correct me). She was silhouetted and it was tricky to capture the light, so I hope you think I did okay. Could have been better. The plump girl beside her (another WOMAN) was there for ages, but I spent so long on the blonde adult that I missed my chance with the redhead. Perhaps I shall take the sketchbook with me when I return there someday and get a bit of background in. It’s the grey buildings of Eyre Square, in the drizzle, if you’d like to picture it.
The fourth sketch was made on an outing with Urban Sketchers Galway, as easy-going and affable a bunch of sketchers as I am mean. The group was founded in 2014 and has gone up and down in attendance in the years since, but thanks to the commitment and dedication of the group as a whole, has gained a wonderful momentum. It was so nice to have nothing at all in my mind apart from the three lads (“they’re MEN” as my youngest would not correct me) who sat and drank their pints for just long enough to allow me to capture their shapes. The dark, warm and cosy interior of The King’s Head, and the assembled company, was as soothing to my soul as the relative lack of respect shown to female customers was in Mccambridge’s a few days earlier.
(Once, in Aldi, a burly manager started processing the customers’ shopping baskets, taking his seat at a till with an air of “all hands on deck, even me when it’s called for!” He made the dual error of addressing all the men in the queue as Sir and the women with no address, and coming across me in the line. I remonstrated with him about the lack of respect shown to the female customers. “If you’re going to address the men as Sir, you must address the women in an equally respectful way,” I said. To say he was furious doesn’t describe the anger that was written on his face and in the red colour that rose to his shiny pate…an impotent rage, as he couldn’t do anything at all in retaliation to this pesky woman, who, to make things worse, was right. By the way, I fight a lone battle, and no one else in Ireland cares – see comment above about the Irish being easy-going.)
Lastly, I know I promised an update on the SketchPocket, and I will make good on this, but the daylight is fading and I need to get a lungful of fresh air – I will definitely be the calmer for it, which is to the good of the citizenry of Ireland – and I have gone on long enough! I beg your indulgence until another day. But I will say this: it’s closer to becoming a physical reality than it was last week…
Until very soon, happy sketching!
