Posts Tagged: fraser
Royal Festival Hall – 27 January 2015
Our HTA Sketch Club joined forces with the London Society for a trip to the Royal Festival Hall. I was inspired by some 1951 illustrations of the design, and by the characters who came along to draw and chat about it afterwards. 
It was a great pleasure to meet octogenarian former architecture tutor Maggie, who set me straight on a few things.
Earlier, I felt among friends with oldest pals Scott, Pete and Dougal…
…and alone hogging a big empty table in an otherwise packed west London restaurant.
Back home with Isla and Fraser.
How to Predict the Weather – 3 January 2015
On the first day of the Christmas break I read an article about how the Romans had used the Twelve Days of Christmas to predict the weather for the coming year, so I thought I’d take a look. 
Starting after Christmas Day (above), watch what the weather does each day and extrapolate that to the relevant month. Now I’m sure that the Augurs had a system to make it seem much more complex than that but that’s what I did. January isn’t looking great but March will be nice. 
Trouble is, it’s hard to keep track even of something as simple as that. Stuff happens: this is Fraser in the Sick Kids (he’s alright now). 
So I missed a couple of months through spending too much time inside. 
I’d recommend that if you’re planning to take a holiday in July you go abroad as it’s going to be very wet here, and if you’re going to visit Edinburgh for the Festival, go for the second half of August. September should be lovely.
Thinking about it, it seems surprising that the Romans would have had Twelve Days of Christmas. Perhaps two weeks of parties, family illness and little exercise have left me a bit confused.
Time to get back to work.
Heisker – 16 November 2014
Heisker is a wee island off North Uist, and a new face at Gran’s for lunch.
Before that, reading some funny French words.
Some Performers – 5 November 2014
First, on the left a kind of calibration setting: Alistair Darling, on his way to London, after announcing he’ll stand down at the next election. His likeness gives you an idea of how much/ little the other folk I draw look like themselves. He was nice enough to not object to my drawing him.
In the middle is our Richard Foxley reminding HTA London about the importance of post occupancy evaluation. How are you going to know what to design next if you don’t know what people really thought, and felt, about what you designed last time?
At the BPF dinner in London listening to Sir Howard Davies and an exuberant gospel choir.
Halloween Fraser.
Edinburgh Castle- 26 May 2014
Edinburgh Castle: a painful place to visit the day after you’ve run the Edinburgh half marathon. The half marathon route is down hill, and you feel that in your calf muscles on the countless castle steps.
Below is the Edinburgh 10 mile four weeks before. It had a much better route through the middle of town, starting and ending in the same place. The finish is overlooking Holyrood House, where the royals went when they realised the houses being built in the new town had better rooms than their old home in the castle.
Lot’s of exercise in the last few weeks and I’ve learnt that a strict rule of running is that the ladies wear lycra and the boys don’t. Perhaps cycling could learn from that.
Fraser feeling better.
Long Weekend – 3rd May 2014
Innes & I got to go to a party with a bouncy castle.
He had lots of fun, so hanging around with me next time big brother and sister go out will definitely seem like the short straw. We watched a film after, to recover.
One of the many extra things you get to do when there’s one more day in the weekend. It feels more like another week.
The chance to offload some old kit, and move on to the next stage.
HTA Design LLP is One 4 April 2014
It’s more fun on the train when you bring the family. We all went to London to help celebrate HTA’s first birthday. The bairns got a first experience of family holidays in big cities: traipsing around, sore feet, trying to find somewhere cheap enough that we could have a meal each…
We visited a house with a hole in it.
It’s a nice enough house characterised by fantastic vibrant colours, but we’re drawing up plans for it’s demolition.
Innes isn’t here, he’s looking for the funny man.
AJ Sketching Competition 26 February 2014
I was on the long list for the AJ sketching competition so went along to Saint Gobain’s innovation centre to see the work of the winners and talk about sketching. Felicity Steers won.
Watching football in the pub after.
Earlier in the week the kids dressed up to get into Deep Sea World for free and we visited the hospital (coincidentally).
My long listed sketch was this one.
http://www.saint-gobain.co.uk/infocentre.aspx
Uncle Ed’s Chair 29 January 2014
This is Uncle Ed’s Chair. Uncle Ed was born in 1908, so he was probably sitting in it about a century ago.
He was my Gran’s little brother. As we’re the folk left in the family with kids who fit it, we’ve inherited it. I like how the seat’s all scratched and the arms are shiny, a reminder of all the abuse it’s taken in the last 100 years.
Ours prefer sitting on tables or on the floor. Perhaps it’s unfamiliar.
I like that it’s useful and practical, and gives a physical connection to the past. It’s not the only connection: the watercolours that the sketches are done with belonged to my Gran. It’s nice that they’ve lasted.
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