Artworks, 2025 Part 2

3 January 2026. Welcome to the second and final article showing my artwork over the previous year. 2025 was a difficult year in many ways, but in this second article we have to start with a stay in hospital. I had been suffering with some very painful leg ulcers for a year, a side effect so I was given to believe of my cancer which was still with me on my liver, but stable after an intensive course of radiotherapy at Christies hospital in Manchester in 2024.

I had had a fall on the stairs in early May 2025 after which I found I couldn't stand or walk. Five weeks in Blackpool's Victoria Hospital was followed by four weeks in respite at Clifton Hospital in Lytham St Annes, learning how to walk again. Whilst there I got Miss Franny to bring my smaller A5 sketchbook and used the only drawing tool I had - a ballpoint pen.

4 June 2025. Drawing from memory I found really hard. I don't like drawn art that is photographically realistic because I just don't see the point in it. If you want something so realistic just use a camera, but I've never just made up scenes before. So this is based on memory of more than one such meeting of streets in Italy and the island of La Palma in the Canaries, but I'd bet I'd never find an exact match!

11 June 2025. In 2023 we took a holiday up in the Trossachs and Highlands of Scotland. This was our hotel - the Loch Tummel Hotel - and I used the holiday brochure we had booked the holiday from to find a photo of the hotel. We were in a room around the right hand side as you look from this viewpoint.

16 June 2025. Another one from the brochure, although our particular holiday itinerary had not included Loch Lomond.

19 June 2025. I'd moved from Victoria Hospital to Clifton in St Annes. Not the easiest of places for Fran to get to for visiting but she did well thanks to good friends.

I wondered why nurses came into my room to look through the blind every night at 4:00am. It turned out that a family of foxes had their den between the two near trees on the right and came out at that time to play on the lawn. Which was unfortunately too low down for me to be able to see from my bed and getting out of bed was still not a thing to be contemplated.

23 June 2025. The Ward had a breakfast Club which met in the Day Room with this view of the garden. Patients could go out and sit there and have their meals in the Day Room which I did every day once I'd heard of it.

A nurse would transfer me via a sack truck type of affair into a wheelchair and I would sit with one chap who was suffering from Parkinsons and another, who would get up at all hours of the night wanting to come into the room for breakfast even at 3:00am, being convinced it was breakfast time, I dubbed us the Three Musketeers...

27 June 2025. I was progressing, from wheelchair to faltering steps using a zimmer frame and from that to crutches. The nurses were saying they could tell that my determination would carry me through. There were quite a few others who just gave up or who stopped at the first twinge of pain. I'd been in constant pain for almost a year and exhaustion since the first op on the cancer in August 2022. It wasn't going to beat me... The weather had turned nice and the three musketeers were accustomed to spend the entire day in the Day Room from getting up to going back to bed. This was loosely based on my memory of Livorno on the banks of Lake Garda in Italy.

2 July 2025. A Cotswolds scene, but don't ask me where it is... I was walking with just my trusty walking stick by now. Physio Therapists were having me climbing up and down a few stairs to see how I could cope and in this respect things seemed to be progressing well. It was quite an emotional time though. I was getting frustrated at being in hospital and at the same time humbled by what I was either being told or by what I overheard.

My friend with Parkinsons tended to dribble quite a bit and whenever I could I sat next to him with tissues at hand to help mop him up. He could also struggle to be understood and I often had to ask him to repeat something, whilst trying not to make a big thing about it which may have embarrassed him. One day he had a meltdown and was talking to one of the nurses who asked him about his friends. "I don't have any friends," he said, "just John..."

The nurse glanced at me and said quietly, "Yes, he's great isn't he?" So I found tears streaming down my face too...

7 July 2025. They weren't all good days by far. This one had me very emotional and one of the nurses took me in hand out to a quiet spot in the garden and insisted I sit with her and draw. It wasn't a great scene but it did calm me down and she was very kind. I think the idea was just to get me to a quiet place where she could talk to me. I was discharged to go home the following day.

27 August 2025. It took me a while to get back into doing any artwork. After so many weeks away from home lots of things needed sorting. The home insurance was due to end. The company was going out of business. Just little things like that... No idea where this is meant to be, I used a photo off the Internet and went back to my favourite combination of coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

30 August 2025. Another Internet picture was the inspiration for this. I was particularly chuffed with the tree trunk closest to the viewpoint. Little things...

1 September 2025. The Croatian village of Skradin in the Krka National Park. Pencil crayon in the A4 sketchbook. Remembering some selfish twonk who after having been told we were to go straight to the coach to get back to the cruise ship, decided to instead go for a drink in a bar. His wife came to the bus apologetically to tell the guide and driver, who immediately went to find him and drag him back, this taking 20 minutes. Can you imagine anyone being so self-centred that they are willing to have everyone else on the coach wait for them? Some people just make your blood boil...

14 September 2025. Miss Franny came home from a shopping expedition with a present... I set to and tried them out.

Very different to work with but quite good fun. The Priest House was owned by Henry VIII and passed on to Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I.

To date that's it. The A4 sketchbook was filled and replaced by another which has yet to be sullied by crayon or pencil. I'll be back within the next few days to continue the tale of the cancer and ulcers and general grottiness BUT... The main thing is I'm still here, still thinking of mischief if not exactly capable of getting up to it and still determined to get to a stage where I can drag Miss Franny off on some foreign jaunt, preferably on the high seas with a couple of fellow musicians I know! Hello 2026!

Sketching and Artwork Index

Artworks, 2025 Part 1

Once again at the start of a New Year, we take a look at my artwork over the past year. Unable to get out and about much this year, most of these have been done from photographs, either my own or those taken around 100 years ago for the postcard industry.

This was one of those from an old postcard. I drew this on 6 January 2025. It is Budleigh in Devon. We had visited a couple of years previously on a coach tour from our holiday base in Torquay. Coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

1 February 2025. I don't think I've ever been to Lynmouth in Devon, but what a fabulous looking place it is. Modern postcard views I've seen are still recogniseable but the modern road surfaces do not add to the general peaceful ambience of this location. Once again (as many of the year's works are) coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

10 February 2025. The Edwardians were as fascinated with the taking of photographs from low-flying aircraft as we have been at the use of drones in the 21st century for the same purpose. I think this is my first attempt at a high viewpoint sketch but I think it turned out ok.

As always I did a search for the location on Google images, which is Withington in Gloucestershire with the Mill Inn. The greenery at the foot of the road bridge over the river has now grown so much that the trees and bushes totally block any view over the side of the bridge. Coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

21 February 2025.I do sometimes make a bit of a hash at these sketches. In this case I managed to turn the square tower of the church at Godshill, Isle of Wight, into a rectangle, Stupid boy... Coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook is getting to be a much repreated phrase...

This one was from one of my own photographs and depicts a quiet corner of Lake Garda in Northern Italy. At the northern end of the lake, the hills rise on both sides of the lake and behind the top edge of the lake rise a little more slowly but inexorably until you find yourself shivering in the Dolomite mountains. I was coming to the end of the sketchbook, with just a few pages left and was determined to finish it by the end of 2025.

28 March 2025. Back to the Edwardian postcards for this one which shows a road by a stream in Norden near Rochdale. The black blob in the road is supposed to be a cat and indeed was a cat in the photograph. I'm not really sure what the magic of my black crayon managed to turn him into...

12 April 2025. The ancient medieval city of Kotor in Montenegro is a fabulous stop on cruises up or down the Adriatic. Later in the season it is quiet, tranquil and wonderful to explore the streets, cafes and plazas with their open air cafes.

The last time we visited was in August and it was a nightmare of crowds and stifling heat that made us vow never to visit again during the peak summer months. I did this from one of my own photographs (taken during a previous visit!).

22 April 2025. Once again this was done using one of my own photographs as a reference. This is Geiranger in Norway, looking down the fjord with a ferry heading towards the town of Geiranger and a road snaking its way up the steep mountainside.

6 May 2025. Bibury in the Cotswolds is a wonderfully picturesque village and I've done a couple of drawings of it in the past. I've also stood, leaning on the sides of various bridges, watching trout rise up from the bottom of the stream to snaffle up some unsuspecting fly which had the misfortune to become waterlogged and trapped on the surface of the water. All sketches so far have been pencil crayons in the A4 sketchbook. Now for a change...

31 May 2025. Yes well... Several firsts... First sketch done purely with a Bic ballpoint pen. First sketch done totally from memory / imagination. First pic done whilst lying in a hospital bed.

I'd suffered a fall and by now had been in hospital just over two weeks. The whole stay in hospital was to be two months so there's more ballpoints to come. Details of the reason for being in hospital will come as I carry on the story of my cancer and its side effects... Ballpoint pen in the A5 sketchbook, which I asked Miss Franny to bring me to relieve the monotony and (I must admit) to take my mind off some pain...

1 June 2025. The final one for now, there's more to come in Part 2 both ballpoint and a return to colours. The housekeeper on our ward was a lovely young lady and was getting married later on in the year. With a honeymoon booked for Lake Como she asked if I could do a drawing of that. I had to do this from a photo on my phone screen - not easy to see detail, but she was quite taken by it and after taking this photo of it on the phone I ripped the page out of the sketchbook and gave it to her.

Sketching and Artwork Index

Artworks, 2024

Time to catch up on what artwork I've done this year!

We start with this one from an old postcard of a steep street corner in Bristol. I use a lot of old Edwardian postcards as inspiration for drawing - they are all black and white (or sepia toned) which allows me to decide my own colour palette and in this case a daytime view painted as though it were a night time scene. Done in oil pastels on A2 sized paper this took from 26 March to 3 April 2024.

Monday 20 May 2024. We were in Devon for the week on a coach holiday using Torquay as a touring base. This is Powderham Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire. In fact we did briefly meet the current duke as we gathered in the castle grounds by the main entrance to meet the castle's tour guide. A very hot day, I found a spot to sit as we left the castle that gave us this view of the gatehouse. Pencil in the A4 sketchbook.

11 June 2024. Done a few weeks later but a view from the same holiday. This was a free day in Torquay and the day had promised rain and grey skies. We managed to dodge the rain which arrived a lot later than expected, but it was cold enough to make us reluctant to sit long enough to do a sketch of the promenade, which in any case was covered in scaffolding and fencing as a huge project was underway to transform the seafront. I did this one at leisure sitting at my desk with a photo from the Internet open on my computer screen to use as a reference.

We managed to do a cruise in August 2024, though due to a developing leg ulcer which was very painful we stayed pretty much on the ship with just a couple of outings during the week. I spent some time on the sun deck sketching over the side of the ship, and this was the first such one, a pencil sketch of Rijeka in Croatia in the A4 sketchbook.

The day after, 22 August 2024, we were in Zadar in Croatia and I switched to the pastel pencils which I had taken in a roll up case. I started to get a small following of fellow passengers and crew members who came to take a look at intervals as the sketches progressed.

23 August 2024, Kotor in Montenegro is a lovely place to stroll around and we did get off the ship today. It was very hot though and absolutely crowded so we just ended up with a rather frustrating walk through streets so crowded I was worried about my leg being knocked and we had a drink in a street cafe and then returned to the ship to do this from our usual seat on the sun deck.

27 August 2024. We anchored offshore at Mykonos and again pain from the leg kept us onboard in one of our favourite places. That night we were in one of the ship's lifts and a lady said "Are you the gentleman that does those beautiful paintings over the side of the ship?" It took me a little by surprise and I paused and looked round before answering in case there was another artists about to take credit...

6 December 2024. Bossington, Somerset, from an Edwardian era postcard. Pencil crayons in the A4 sketchbook. I had been looking for something to take my mind off the pain of the leg which by now had developed into a full ulcer looking like a gooey crater in the middle of my calf muscle. The leg was wrapped with compression bandages and fluid in the leg was adding to the daily wonder of shape and solidity of my upper leg. Not to mention my ability to resist some quite excrutiating pain... Normally I can ignore pain altogether, but when it's your own it's a bit harder.... Going through my collection of postcards, I came up with ten or so old postcards that I thought I might be able to do justice to. A project that is still ongoing...!

13 December 2024. This one depicts a narrow village street in Cheddar with a stream running down one side, bridged for each of the houses on that side, which are set higher up on the hillside.

21 December 2024. Bispham Village, Blackpool. Not often that I do one of a subject so close to home. I'm not sure why exactly. It's either a case of familiarity feeding reluctance or, in the case of Blackpool itself, the fact that it is so well known that people would spot any obvious errors. I did force myself to include a few figures in this one.

29 December 2024. The River Derwent at Matlock Bath in Derbyshire. Once again, pencil crayons in the A4 sketchbook.

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Rijeka, Croatia

Wednesday 21 August 2024. Today the NCL Pearl has docked in Rijeka, the first of three Croatian ports that we will visit on this cruise and the only one that we have not visited before on previous cruises.

We have breakfast in the Rose Garden buffet - "Washee washee, hungry hungry, yummy yummy!" as a squirt of sanitiser hits your hand from what appears to be a highly pressurised squirt gun - and return to the cabin to get our going ashore essentials. Passports and money mainly. You will seldom be asked to show passports, but if you are for some reason arrested or injured during the day or simply miss getting back onboard before the ship sails then you will need both it and money! Whilst ships may be able to make some small allowances, they cannot wait where a falling tide might leave them unable to leave the dock and so you will be able to wave goodbye to the ship, your fellow passengers who will be lining the rail shaking their heads at you and all your belongings other than what you have on you...

Pushing all this to the backs of our minds we get off the ship and walk down the pier we are moored at and into Rijeka. A couple of weeks ago I took a step short coming downstairs at home and scraped the back of my leg on the step, leaving a carpet burn that blistered. I'd been putting antiseptic cream on but Miss Franny had only packed the small tube we were halfway through so needed to buy some more. I know it sounds trivial but at age 70 and with diabetes, these things do not heal quickly and can be very painful.

The Botel (boat-hotel) Marina has been refurbished inside to function as a hotel and has 35 guest bedrooms and is rated 4-star on TripAdvisor.

We made our way into the shopping streets in search of a pharmacy. These are fairly easy to spot just about anywhere as they usually have a bright green cross on a sign at the front of the shop. There will usually be someone able to speak English too, though I do like to be able to speak a few words if only to say please, thank you, coffee, white wine, red wine, beer and to be able to count up to at least five. Most of which I can do easily in western Europe but in Croatia on this trip I learned my first Croatian word: "vala" means "thank you". The locals will appreciate the effort.

There were quite a few street works going on in the centre, we had several roads to cross and whilst the familiar lines denoting a pedestrian crossing can be found easily, the reaction of drivers will not be exactly as you might expect. Keep eyes open for approaching cars and don't assume they will automatically stop for you even if you are already three-quarters of the way across!

We came through a small street market with some yummy-looking fruits and then to this small park and plaza where we found a bit of shade to sit under for a while. Temps were pushing 40C and drinking plenty was on our minds. A local two-year-old girl was riding a tiny bicycle / scooter with no stabilisers up and down like she was born in the saddle. Her Mum was nearby and gave a warning shout if the little girl looked like straying too far away.

Then, just in time before we totally melted away, we were back at the portside and walking back along the pier to the NCL Pearl.

Looking back towards the city from ground level just before we got back on the ship. The yellow building just right of centre is the headquarters of the Jadrolinija state-owned ferry and shipping group. Croatia has over 1000 islands along its coast and therefore requires a large fleet of ferries both for goods, cars and pedestrian traffic. They also service other ports of call on the east coast of Italy.

We made our way up to the side of the Pool Deck on Deck 12 where we settled at a table and I got out the sketchpad for a pencil drawing of the port and city. The only pencil sketch of the week, as for the remaining days when I did sketches they were all in colour using pastel pencils which I carry in a roll-up canvas holder which has a loop to hold each pencil, a sharpener, an eraser (long since lost) and a small case containing extra leads for my propelling pencil.

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Great-Gt-Aunty Lucy's Autograph Book Sketches

Sorry readers - a few months flew past there. My last entry was back in March. Since then I've been enjoying the delights of high-doseage radiotherapy on the cancer, courtesy of the wonderful people at The Christie Hospital, Manchester. I can't praise them enough. Treatment started late in March and ended mid-April after eight treatments. Had it been a normal dose it would have been 30 treatments. The side effects are starting to wear off now and hopefully I should hear whether it has been successful or not somewhere near the end of July.

Anyway, enough about the woes and the excuses for not writing regularly! As generations die away and descendents either accumulate far more "stuff" or just get rid without looking through it, I took the former option and have finally got round to sorting and looking at "stuff" some dating back three or four generations. Autograph books and photo albums can be full of nostalgic photographs and memories, whilst older ones tend to be filled with biblical quotes and the odd sketch or watercolour.

For this article, all of the sketches came from an 23 x 18cm size autograph album that belonged to my Great-Gt Aunty Lucy Metcalfe. It was a Christmas present from her brother, my Great Gandfather, Frank Metcalfe in 1904.

I do not recognise the names of many of the contributors to the pages of my gt-gt-aunt's book - even where some have the family surname (My mother's side were the Metcalfe side). Nellie Metcalfe, for instance, added a few inspirational and biblical lines of poetry in 1907 but always signing herself "Nellie Metcalfe" without any expressions of family love or relationship. No "Cousin Nellie" for instance.

This pencil and wax crayon drawing was the work of Emily Lord who added it to the album on the 5th January 1906.

On the facing page is a pencil drawing of fishing boats, coming into - or leaving - an unknown harbour. It is signed A Pollard and was added to the album on 28 December 1905. Such albums were not filled in order, but by contributors opening a page at random. The latter quarter of the album is mostly empty save for an entry on the very last page, written c1950 in a large and dramatic child's hand. My Uncle David, who wrote: "By hook or by crook, I'll be last in this book!"

Here is gt-gt-aunty Lucy. Born on 27 October 1884, she lived an incredible 104 years, passing away in 1989. She never married and lived the vast majority of her life in Haddenham, a small village in Cambridgeshire, at the ancestral family home, Porch House, which was an old coaching house, built in 1657. Her father Charlie Metcalfe had had the distinction of being the oldest person in Haddenham when he died aged 93 in 1949. He had been a member of the Foresters Society for 74 years.

Here members of the family stand outside Porch House c1910. In the porch is my 3x great-grandad, Isiah Metcalfe. In front of him is my great grandad, Frank, whose wife, Mary(?) holds my grandad, also Frank. Charlie is to the right of the postbox and Aunty Lucy is dressed all in black under the window. The picket fence survived into the 1950s, somewhat warped and shrivelled and I have a bit of cine film of an aged Frank snr, jumping as he gets a splinter in his hand from it!

Back to the album! A watercolour of an eyed hawk moth, (Smerinthus Ocellatus) rendered by Edward Pearce on 26 June 1918.

A beautifully delicate pen and ink drawing of blackberries, added by L.E. Farthing of Haddenham in December 1913. The quote is a slightly misquoted version of a verse by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

"Earth crammed with Heaven
And every common bush aflame with God
But only those who see take off their shoes
The rest sit round it and eat blackberries."

A pencil drawn sketch of a rural street by F. Lord aged 13. It is undated.

A pen and ink drawing of Porch House drawn by J Wilkinson on June 18, 1911. He adds the line: "May time deal kindly with those who dwell there."

Great-Gt Aunty Lucy towards the end of her long life, I think taken on a trip to Scotland with my Grandad.

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