One Sketch 313) (Friday 1st Feb) Ideal Job - Coffee Sump

I hope that you won't think it's too obscene

If I confess my worship of the bean.

Prompt on Sketching Everyday - ideal fantasy job. This gets most of it, although not quite all. Ideally I want to be paid to sit in coffee shops and talk rubbish to people. So if by any chance you know of someone who is willing to pay to hire someone to sit in coffee shops and talk rubbish to people . . . 

One Sketch 312) Chicago Streetcar

My kind of trams
Chicago had
Now they're all gone
That's kind of sad.
Simple explanation - today's Sketching Every Day prompt was  Chicago, so couldn't resist taking this tack with it. This is based on a photo from the mid 50s.

One Sketch 311) (Weds 30th January) Westminster Abbey

For a thousand years
My bells have tolled
For kings,
And their dust,
Is my buried treasure.

Not a lot to say, other than I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the good old Abbey in my home town.

One Sketch 310) (Tuesday 29th January) Exeter Cathedral

A house of worship
Laying heavy bonds
On the surly earth,

Not sure what that means either, still, when I posted the York Minster sketch a few days ago, one of my fellow group members asked if I'd ever tried sketching Exeter Cathedral. Have now.

One Sketch 309) (Monday 28th) Carry Akroyd

The fox is always near
Lurking in the long grass, tall grass
Short grass
The fox is always near.
So the hare listens
To the song of the wind
And the song of the scent
For the fox is always near
Yet the hare
Fills his lungs and his heart
And his tune fills the long grass,
Tall grass, short grass
For he has jumped over the moon
And the fox was nowhere near.

Sorry, don't know what that was all about. Yesterday's prompt from Sketching Every Day  was the artist Carry Akroyd. I really liked the original of this, which has the quality of a wood cut. Muggins here did it with ink pen on white paper. Would have been a lot easier to use some kind of white medium on black paper. D'oh.

One Sketch 308) Train sketch

A steam choo choo
As wonderful and almost mythical
As a dinosaur
And pretty much
As extinct

This was the prompt on Sketching Every Day today - train.  I think I've probably told you enough about my love of steam locos in the past so I won't go on about it. What I was pleased with this was the fact that I set myself the task of sketching it REALLY quickly before I went out to the car boot sale - and  I managed it without making a complete pig's ear of it.

One Sketch 307) York with the Minster

Grand Old Lady
Beams down benignly
One the city which gave her
Birth.

I like York. I first visited in 1977. I remember that was the year, because it was on the very same day that Red Rum won the Grand National for a record third time - there were notices up in a supermarket we went into. The purpose of our visit was to go to the National Railway Museum, and let's be honest, I still haven't outgrown my love of trains. Yet there's so much more in York. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't go into the Minster that day. In years to come I would visit the Minster, and because I was studying Old Norse literature I got to visit Jorvik Viking centre. Then there's the Castle Museum, and the Shambles . . . I could go on, but the simplest thing would be for you to go and see for yourself. Go on then, go. I'll wait until you get back.