Tlönista

Happy Canada Day. Nothing makes your heart swell up with that patriotic pride like…a fuzzy snuggling cuddly pile of Canada goslings!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

They’re going to snuggle up under their mama’s (I can’t tell the difference, it could be their papa’s) wing.

WHOA HEY WAIT NOT ALL OF YOU

You’re really too big for this, you know.

…and resignation.

I love how that last gosling can’t even fit, so it just snuggles up and buries its FACE in its parent’s feathers.

Sketched this at dusk in the pasture at Mudchute Farm, straddling a row of tires. Four or five white-and-brown cows graze slowly across the field, snuffling wetly and chomping and shitting, big placid lawnmowers. It’s clouded over, although out where the O2 and Canary Wharf towers loom the sky’s still peach with sunset.

A trio of kids trip through the field on their way home. Curious and frank, they come up to me and look over my shoulder.

“That’s good. How long did it take you to draw it?”
“How old are you?”
“Are you from America?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Do you smoke?”
“Are you a virgin?”
“Did you go to art school?”
“What’s your name?”

They giggle a lot, harass the cows (who merely walk somewhere else and continue grazing), and traipse off again. Presently I finish up and head back home too. It’s not dark yet, but the sky looks like rain. There are a zillion different kinds of birdsong in the woods and I think about how if I wanted to I could learn which birds they all belong to.

Last Train to Caterham

Waiting at platform 5 at London Bridge, sometime past midnight, for the last train to Caterham. A man and a woman are sharing a narrow bench seat, huddled together. The wind blows her blonde hair across her face as she rolls a cigarette, holding the packet of tobacco and wrappers awkwardly on her lap, and hands it to him. It’s tender and understated in a very British way.