65. It’s Just Some Gentleman

While I was drawing this, a man came out of the house, down the driveway, across the street and stood in front of me.
The man, who was in a black suit with white shirt and red tie, looked down at me and said, ‘I was watching you out of the window for a while – well, me and my wife were – and we wondered what you are doing.’
‘I’m drawing your house,’ I said, ‘for a project I am doing, drawing 100 houses.’
Then I smiled.
The man smiled too.
The man continued talking to me, but my attention was diverted by his wife, who was standing at the end of their driveway, her hand at her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun, looking over at us.
‘We’re just on our way to church,’ the man said. ‘I wonder if you will be here when we get back.’
‘No,’ I told the man, putting my iPad down on the grass and standing up.
‘I think I am about to lose the sun, and with that goes all the bright colors.’
I smiled again and the man looked up over his shoulder to the sun in the sky.
‘You’re right,’ he said, pointing skyward. ‘There’s a big, old cloud heading this way.’
I looked up at the sky, and he was right.
‘That cloud is about to gobble up the sun,’ I said.
The man then said have a good day, and I said the same to him, and he walked away.
‘It’s nothing important, honey,’ I heard him say to his wife when he reached the other side of the street. ‘It’s just some gentleman drawing a picture of our house.’

Today’s podcast- Unravel Juanita, about Juanita Nielsen who disappeared from Sydney’s Kings Cross in 1975, never to be seen again.

64. Chasing A boy

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While I was drawing this, a man in a car stopped in the middle of the street, right in front of me, leaned out of the window and said, ‘What colour would you paint that relief there up above the window on the right?’
I looked up at it.
‘I’d leave it white,’ I told him. ‘Otherwise it might stand out too much.’
‘Originally it was brightly coloured so I want to paint it,’ he said.
‘Well, maybe paint it the colour of the doors and window sills.’
The man looked up toward the relief, and then back at me.
‘I really don’t know.’
‘There’s a website called Kuler,’ I told him. ‘It’s an Adobe website, and you upload an image of your house and it will generate a palette of colours based on the house, and you could choose something from the palette to paint it.’
‘What was it called?’
‘Kuler,’ I said, spelling it out. ‘From Adobe. You know, the software company.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ he said, sitting there in the middle of the road, his car idling.
‘Where are you from?’ he called out to me.
I told him.
‘Thought so,’ he said. ‘My daughter’s just gone there.’
‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Where exactly?’
‘Sydney.’
‘What for?’ I asked him ‘Work?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Chasing a boy.’
Then he shook his head and laughed.
Then a woman came out of the house and got in the passenger side of the man’s car.
He turned to her.
‘She’s from Australia,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ said the woman, leaning forward.
‘Our daughter’s just gone there!’ she said loudly.
‘I know!’ I called back. ‘She’s gone chasing a boy.’
We all laughed at that, and then we said bye and they drove off down the road and I looked at that relief above the right window and pondered what colour I would paint it.

Today’s podcast: Casefile- The Churchill Fire

62. The Turned Around House

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While I was drawing this, a man pulled up in front in a Tesla.
Opening the door, he noticed me and called out, ‘Am I ruining your view?’
I told him yes, so he shut the door and moved.
‘Why are you drawing this house?’ he walked over and said to me after he’d parked on the other side of the street.
‘It has good light,’ I said, ‘and a lot of trees.’
I asked him if he lived nearby and he told me he lived in the house next door to the one I was drawing.
‘Is it from the 50s?’ I asked him.
‘1948,’ he said. ‘And all the houses in this street were designed by the same architect.’
‘Oh yeh?’ I said.
‘Gregory Ain,’ he said, ‘and all the trees were planted the same year by a landscape architect called Eckbo.’
I looked around at the houses.
‘They’re all the same design?’ I asked him.
‘Almost,’ he said. ‘But if you look at the one behind you, the front door is in a different place and the house has been turned around.’

Today’s podcast: Swindled- The Tour

61. Fucking Tesla

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While I was drawing this, a woman in a Tesla pulled up in front, obscuring more than half the house.
I thought she might have been waiting to collect one of the schoolchildren that were wandering across the park where I was sitting.
But no child got in her car.
She had parked in a red zone and this was the reason, I imagined, that she had her flashers on.
I surmised by the tilt of her head that she was looking at her phone.
It was a good 20 minutes before she pulled away.
Fucking Tesla! I thought.

Today’s podcast: Swindled- The Whistleblower, Karen Silkwood

60. I Doubt I’ll Ever See Him Again

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While I was drawing this, a woman driving a big, white car called a ‘Le Sabre’ stopped in the road in front of me, leaned across to the passenger seat, wound down the window and called out, ‘I’ve got some art stuff I’m going to give you. It belonged to a friend of mine but I doubt I’ll ever see him again.’
I paused my audiobook and said oh, okay, thank you.
She got out of her car and came around to the trunk, opened it and pulled out a large drawing pad.
‘Here,’ she said, dropping the pad down on the ground next to me. ‘There’s this.’
Just then a car pulled up behind her, but she didn’t acknowledge it and the fact that she was blocking the road.
Instead she opened the passenger door, leaned in, and from the floor, withdrew a pencil and handed it to me.
I looked down at it.
It was a carbon pencil and seeing it made me glad because earlier in the day I was contemplating buying one to start a drawing of my girlfriend Amy’s dog.
Then without further ado, the woman, who was in a blue singlet, had cropped, brown curls, and was wearing a sarong with tassels along the hem, got back in her car.
I watched her drive off as I sat fingering a page of the pad, which was newsprint.

Today’s audiobook: Jen Sincero’s How To Be a Badass

57. Reversed

57 small While I was drawing this, a man in a white SUV reversed into the driveway.
I had no idea where he went after parking because the car was partly obscured by a large tree.
About an hour later, a man and a woman came out of the house and without even a glance, drove off.
How odd, I thought, such a lack of curiosity that you wouldn’t approach someone who was sitting opposite your house drawing it.

Today’s podcast: Swindled- The Implants

52. Sacramento

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While I was drawing this, nothing much happened.
A postman delivering mail said hello.
A man collecting his mail from the mailbox said hello.
A woman and a man passed by with a stroller and the man, who was wearing sunglasses, smiled and said hello.
And then later a man went up the red steps and spoke to a woman who came to the door holding a baby.

Today’s podcast: Stay tuned with Preet- What’s Life Worth with Ken Feinberg

51. Me Too.

While I was drawing this, an elderly man walking with a stick and wearing a colourful, checked shirt, grey slacks and a baseball cap, stopped on the footpath in front of me and asked me what I was doing.
I paused my podcast* and I told him I was drawing, and without me asking him, he limped over and stood behind me to have a look.
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, even though I had only made a few minor lines and hadn’t started with the heavy pastel.
Then he asked me where I was from and I told him Australia and he let out a yell and told me he had lived there for many years, that he had gone there from Italy when he was a young man.
‘Oh,’ I said, smiling. And – switching to Italian – ‘Ci sono visuto, in Italia per cinqe anni.‘ (I lived there for 5 years.)
At this revelation, the man became even more excited and kneeled down next to me on the grass where I was sitting and hugged me.
I thought for a moment he might cry, but he began to speak quickly in Italian, clearly and in a good dialect that I could follow easily.
‘Come ti chiammi?‘ he asked me, and I told him my name. ‘Mi chiammo Maximo,‘ he said.
‘Piacere!‘ I said, smiling.
From then on, Maximo and I spoke in Italian and he told me about his life in Australia.
‘They are so racist,’ he told me. ‘I had to leave. They call me “wog” all the time. They didn’t even know what a pasta was, an olive, the garlic, nothing – only the mash potato.’
We laughed at this and he told me how much the girls there had loved him and how his wife had recently died, that she was German and a wonderful woman.
He stood up and took out his wallet, which was black and leather and stuffed with bits of paper and photos, and showed me a photo of her.
Then he showed me a photo of his granddaughter.
Then I told him about the town in Australia where I was born and he told me he knew it, that he had worked there and that he had met a woman he had truly loved.
‘I regret so much I didn’t stay with her,’ he told me. ‘But you know, we didn’t have phone in those days, so I don’t know what . . . she lived near a pub, that’s all I remember.’
‘Maybe you could find her if you remember her name,’ I told him.
He frowned.
‘I think she got a baby by me,’ he said. ‘I pretty sure of that.’
Uncomfortable with his confession, I just said oh dear and waited for him to speak again.
‘After this I come to America,’ he told me, ‘and I get a job and I work too hard and now I stop to work. I don’t need to work, I got plenty money. I been all around the world, I got the movies to show it.’
Then he laughed and told me how much he loves life, how much he loves Californian weather, how much he dislikes European weather and how grateful he is that he came to America.
‘I love California,’ he told me. ‘Look at this beautiful day!’
Then he told me about his big house, his garden, and that he rents out rooms in his big house to doctors and students.
‘I understand poor,’ he said, waving his finger toward me, ‘but I don’t understand dirty. I ask only they be clean.’
Then he told me how he loves India and Thailand, but that it’s so poor in Thailand they sell their children, and tells me a story about a mother trying to sell her daughter to him.
‘She wasn’t even developed there,’ he said, pointing at my chest. ‘You know.’
And then he snarls and and waves his hands and mutters something about disgusting.
‘What work did you do, Maximo?’ I asked him. He told me he had 4 body shops and that when he closed the last one, people had cried.
‘I was so polite to everybody,’ he said.
Then he told me about his daughter who owned a restaurant and his nephew who was an opera singer and his granddaughter who was the captain of an ocean liner.
‘You know, I was one of 15 children. I left Italy, I had one pair of shoes,’ he told me, ‘and when I get to Australia they put me in a camp and then they send me to work on the Snowy River and I work so hard in 3 years – I got a house.’
He laughed and told me how happy he was, how much he loved life and laughing.
‘And affection,’ he said. ‘I need a lot of affection.’
Then he asked me if I would like to have lunch one day, or see his house, that he had a beautiful garden, so I said yes and he took out his phone – an old flip-phone with his number taped to the back and I called the number so he would have mine.
‘Do you like cruises?’ he asked me. ‘I been on 3 cruises this year. I love cruises.’
Then he asked me if I was alone in America, what I did for work, if I had any children, was I married.
‘No children,’ I told him. ‘I work in design, I’m not married.’
Then he asked me to come on a cruise with him, and I laughed and said no thank you.
Then he laughed and threw his hands up in the air and he leant in toward me and told me he was so happy and he kissed me.
‘Life is short,’ he said and laughed. ‘We need always to be happy.’
‘Yes, Maximo,’ I said, ‘it is.’
Then I told him I should finish my drawing and he said okay and, in a motion like an unsteady toddler, he stood up.
‘You call me, okay?’ he said as he started to walk away.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘For sure I will call you.’
Then he smiled and threw up his hands again.
‘You made my day!’ he said and he came back toward me and knelt down to give me another kiss, but this time he kissed me on the mouth with his mouth open, which made me lean away from him as far as possible without lying on the ground.
And then he stood up again and held his arms up and looked toward the sky and started talking about how gorgeous the weather was and how wonderful it was that he had met me and how perfect America is and how beautiful the trees are.
‘I’m going to walk once around the park,’ he told me as I stared up at him in a minor state of shock. ‘I walk every day.’
And then, all of a sudden, he knelt down toward me again – and when he was on his knees on the ground beside me, he leant in, and as I leant away, he put his arms around me and hugged me.
‘Oh, I am so happy I met you,’ he said. ‘So happy.’
‘Yes Maximo,’ I said leaning. ‘Lovely to have met you too.’
And just then, as I sensed he was about to let me go and stand up, he grabbed me on the tit.
And then he stood up as quickly as he could and began to walk off with his stick.
‘You call me, eh? I take you for lunch, you come to my house?’
And because I wasn’t sure how to respond to an invitation to lunch from an 80-year-old man who had just grabbed my tit – and because it might be impolite not to – I said yes, I’ll call you and go for lunch with you.
And then I put my earbuds in and stared at my paper for a while wondering what had just happened.
And then I went back to my drawing.

Sometime later, my phone rang and, seeing it was Maximo who had just – without invitation – grabbed me by the tit, I did not answer.
Then sometime after that, a car stopped in front of the house I was drawing and Maximo got out and walked toward me.
‘Ciao!’ he called out. ‘I come to take you to lunch.’
‘Hello Maximo, I can’t come to lunch, I have to go to work soon,’ I lied, ‘and I want to finish my drawing.’
‘Oh!’ he said, throwing his hands up. ‘I want to take you to a Brazilian restaurant, is very good food.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘I have to finish this.’
‘Lemme see,’ he said, coming over and kneeling down next to me. ‘Ah, look how beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, wondering what he might do next.
‘Okay!’ he said smiling and laughing. ‘I go.’
And then he leaned in once more for one more kiss and this time I turned my cheek toward him, but Maximo had the moves, and the next thing I knew, he was trying to stick his tongue in my mouth.
‘Con la lingua, con lingua!’ he said.
‘No, Maximo, no!’ I said, pushing him away.
Then he laughed and stood up, again like an unbalanced toddler.
‘I’m clean, I’m a clean man!’ he called out as he limped across the grass to his car. ‘I not dirty like other men. You call me!’
‘Yes, Maximo,’ I lied, wiping my face with the back of my hand. ‘I will call you.’

Today’s podcast Bear Brook, Episode 1.

32. The Boxer

While I was drawing this, a young man passed in front of me on the path leading a very large Boxer on a leash.
The young man, who looked to be between 28 and 32 and was wearing shorts and sunglasses and talking on his phone, seemed not to care that the animal had pulled him to a stop and was standing with its face about a foot away from mine.
‘Hello, nice doggy,’ I said, leaning back slightly, keeping my voice chirpy and dog-friendly.
The dog didn’t wag its tail, didn’t even move; it just stood there, as if it was made of concrete, staring at me intensely with a smile on its drooling lips.
Even though the young man was deep in conversation, he must have been paying attention to the animal because he held the leash tight enough to prevent it from licking, or biting, my face .
I didn’t want to touch the dog in case it was riled to strike, so I continued with the friendly words until the young man yanked on the leash, and him and his salivating beast walked away.

Today’s podcast: Oprah’s Master Class- Alicia Keys

30. Shawana!

While I was drawing thus, a woman came out of the house behind me and, on hearing her over the top of my podcast*, I took out my earbuds to listen to what she had to say.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Wow, that’s really beautiful.’
I said thank you to her and she asked me if I was drawing it for the people who lived in the house.
‘No, I just go about the place drawing houses,’ I said, and I went on to tell her about my hundred houses project.
‘What number is this?’ She asked me and I told her it was number 30.
‘Do you do other kinds of art too,’ she asked, ‘like big things?’
I told the woman, who had her hair pulled tightly back and was wearing shorts, Nike trainers and a pink tee shirt with the words of an educational establishment across the front, that I did big things, and waited for her to tell me what kind of big things she meant.
But she didn’t.
Instead she said, ‘You know, because me and my friends, we like art.’
‘Oh, okay,’ I said. ‘Would you like me to give you my website address so you can have a look at what I do?’
The woman said yes, and I gave her my name and number, which she put into her phone.
Just then, I heard a man’s voice calling from the woman’s house, and I turned around.
‘Shawana!’ I heard the man call out.
But I could not hear the rest of what he said, as Shawana had turned and was yelling something back to him.
After a few moments, their discussion finished and Shawana turned back to me and told me she would be in touch, and I said fine and we said our goodbyes and I went back to my podcast, slightly challenged at having to draw around the car that had been parked in front of the house about 20 minutes before by a grinning woman who had exited it carrying a coffee in her left hand while waving at me with the right.

Today’s podcast- Karina Longworth, You Must Remember This: Hollywood Babylon, D.W Griffith and the Gish Sisters.

29. No Story

*Today’s podcast: Every Little Thing- ARRRRR Pirate Legs really A Thing?

28. Woman In The Red SUV

While I was drawing this, a woman came out of the red door and walked down the yellow brick path.
Her hair was cut in a blonde bob and she was wearing a dark blue tee shirt stretched over a stomach that looked pregnant, denim shorts, and carrying a hand bag across her shoulder.
I could see she had car keys hanging from her hand and, without stopping, she looked over at me: a glance, really.
Just beyond the left edge of this drawing, a red SUV was parked in the street, which obscured the driveway in which must have been parked the woman’s car, because a few moments later I saw the back end of a car appear in front of the SUV, and then drive off down the road.
I went back to my drawing until about 15 minutes later when the woman drove back, this time in front of the house.
She did not, however, go into the house.
Instead she got into the red SUV, started it up and drove off, leaving me a full view of the large tree on the front lawn and the car she had originally driven off in, parked in the driveway.
For a few moments I sat there thinking about the woman, wondering if this was her house, and if it was, why she hadn’t come over to ask what I was doing.
Was she scared?
Did she not care?
Or perhaps she was the cleaner.
Or maybe she was too busy moving cars around and didn’t have the time.

Today’s podcast: You Must Remember This- Dead Blondes Part 13, Dorothy Stratten

27. Joseph Campbell

While I was drawing this, a handsome, dark-haired man wearing a dark tee shirt, dark jeans, sunglasses and leading 2 dogs – one small and beige, the other large and dark brown – passed by on the corner and stopped and started up a conversation.
’What are you doing?’ he asked me. ‘You sitting there drawing?’
’Yes,’ I replied. ‘I’ve only just started.’
’Cool,’ he said. ‘I wish I could do that. I can’t draw a thing.’
I laughed but said nothing because this lack-of-talent lament is what I hear from most people, and I don’t care to challenge it.
’So,’ he went on, ‘are you drawing it for the people who live in the house?’
’No,’ I said. ‘It’s for my own project. I’m drawing a hundred houses.’
’Cool,’ he said again. ‘How many do you have?’
’Um,’ I said, ‘this will be 27.’
’Cool,’ he said, nodding his head up and down. ‘Awesome.’
’Yeh,’ I said. ‘And while I’m drawing if anyone stops to talk to me I write a story about them, so if no one more interesting than you talks to me today, then you’re it.’
The man laughed.
’Well make sure to tell them I’m reading Joseph Campbell,’ he said, holding up a fat book and waving it all around, which startled his dogs.
’Okay,’ I said. ‘I will.’
’Are you familiar?’ the man asked me, and I said very vaguely, that I might have heard the name.
’Well,’ he said, ‘he’s like this awesome philosopher, totally rad thinker, totally changed the world for me. Like, he talks about how Greek mythology, like Daphne and Zeus and all those Gods, they’re totally about us, and like how we don’t want to grow up, and that’s like why the planet’s like totally fucked up.’
’Is he a conspiracy theorist?’ I asked him, thinking he’s some YouTube crackpot.
’No,’ said the handsome chap. ‘He’s more like a philosopher, and like, you know, a psychologist, you know.’
’Okay,’ I said. ‘Well, I will check him out.’
’Yeh, right on!’ the man said.
And then he said okay, that he was going to keep on walking and I said okay, and that he could stop by on his way back if he liked.
’I might just do that!’ he called out, waving and leading his dogs away. ‘If we walk back this way later on!’

Today’s music: Spotify All Out 70s Playlist.

26. Secret

While I was drawing this, a person in the house next door to the one I was drawing came out to the front of his house, and with some kind of mechanised trimming machine, trimmed the grass at the edge of his driveway.
I turned my podcast* up to block out the noise, and then watched him for a bit while he trimmed the grass edge at the front of his house.
Then he moved to the garden of the house I was drawing and trimmed the grass at the edge of their driveway and the grass at the edge of their sidewalk.
After he had finished he stood, briefly, on the driveway of the house I was drawing and made a phone call, and I wondered if he was calling the owners of the house to report me.
Then, well after he’d stopped pushing his machine around the grass and I had stopped paying attention to him, I saw him reverse out of his driveway in a dark blue SUV, and drive away.
Then a good while later he returned, and so knowing he would be curious and probably tell the neighbours about a mystery stranger sitting in front of their house with an easel, I walked across the street to talk to him.
‘Hello?’ I called to him, as I walked up his drive with the finished drawing in my hand, ‘You clearly know the people who live in this house.’
‘Yes,’ said the man who was wearing a beige, rugby-style shirt, pleated blue trousers and a sunhat like Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island wore. ‘I do, yes I do.’
‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘I’ve been drawing the house and I’m going to leave it on the porch there, rolled up, so perhaps you could keep an eye out and make sure she’s picked it up.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I saw you there and wondered what you were doing.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a present for Maggie from her sister, Annie, who commissioned me to do it, but it’s a secret, so please don’t tell her before she comes out and gets it.’
The man said oh I see, and smiled and shook his head.
‘Okay, thanks,’ I said as I walked across the driveway to Maggie’s house to leave the drawing. ‘And I hope you can keep a secret.’
The man laughed and said he could and I smiled and said thank you and gave him a little wave as I walked back down the driveway to put the rest of my drawing equipment in my car.

Todays podcast: The Daily – ‘Charm City,’ Part 5: What’s Behind the Black Box?

25. Miserable

While I was drawing this, a car pulled into the driveway and an elderly woman got out, walking with a stick.
She looked back at me several times, but the angle of her mouth told me I should not wave hello.
So I went back to my drawing and podcast.
About half an hour later, a short man with dark hair and a moustache drove up and parked his car in front of the house next door.
He got out of the car and, while walking up the driveway, looked over at me a few times.
I waved, but he didn’t wave back.
As miserable as the old woman, I thought to myself.
Then around 10 minutes later a large, silver SUV stopped right in front of me and a woman leaned across from the driver’s side and shouted something.
Because I had my earbuds in and was listening to AC/DC with the volume way up, I had not heard what she said.
I took my earbuds out and called back to her, asking her what she had said.
‘I just love seeing creative people do their thing!’ she said, a big smile on her face.
‘Thank you,’ I said smiling back at her. ‘I just love creating.’
At this we both laughed, and then the woman said, ‘I’ll let you carry on then!’ and I waved and she drove off.

Today’s playlist: AC/DC playlist, including Thunderstruck, Back in Black and You Shook Me All Night Long

24. I Suppose It’s Creative

BED686E9-970A-4446-9259-B4421AC92D04 While I was drawing this, a woman and a boy drove off from the house behind where I was sitting, and about 15 minutes later the woman returned alone, and came and stood by me and started talking to me.
I took my earbuds* out and said hello and she told me how much she liked my drawing.
‘Do you live there?’ she asked me looking toward the house, and I told her no.
‘Are you doing it for money?’ she said and I told her no again, and then as briefly as humanly possible, I told her about my hundred houses project and told her that she would be today’s story.
‘Oh, oops!’ she said, followed by, ‘I should get out and do some drawing, but I . . .’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘do you do some art?’
The woman, who was twirling her car keys and wearing what looked to be track pants, a flimsy tee shirt and bare feet, told me that she had done art a long time ago, but that now she worked on Photoshop, inside.
‘So I suppose it’s like, you know . . . creative,’ she said.
‘These are soft pastels,’ I told her. ‘Have you ever used them?’
The woman said no, but that she would like to.
‘You should try them,’ I told her, holding one up toward her. ‘You have to get really good ones, though, and really good fixative.’
‘I’ve never drawn on black,’ she said, nodding toward my paper. ‘That’s a good idea.’
Then she told me about a friend of hers who painted on trash, and who had then done an exhibition of made up album covers, and that Spike Jonze had come to his exhibition.
‘Michael Stipe came too,’ she told me.
‘Oh,’ I said, a feeling of minor envy rising. ‘Nice.’
‘Must be great to, you know, just . . . follow your dream,’ she said to me. ‘Do you draw all day?’
‘No,’ I told her. ‘I’m only up to number 24.’
Then I told her about my day job, and how and where I live, and that it allowed me time to draw, and she said oh that must be cool.
And then I asked her what she did in Photoshop.
‘I create layers, and colours, and you know, backgrounds so I suppose it’s . . . creative,’ she said, still twirling her keys. ‘But it’s not like what you do.’
‘But what’s it for?’ I asked her, and she told me it was for ads, mainly, and that once upon a time she used to come home covered in acrylics, and the bath would be covered in paint, but now she uses a computer and a stylus.
‘So you went to art school?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You should come drawing with me,’ I said to her. ‘I go out for a couple of hours at a time, and if you come with me you would be forced to do something.’
The woman smiled and asked me my name.
I told her my name and she held out her hand and I shook it and she told me her name, and then I told her my number while she put it in her phone, knowing full well she’d never call me, let alone come drawing with me.

Today’s podcast: Classic Desert Island Discs- Victoria Wood

23. Can I Help You?

While I was drawing this, a woman came out and stood in the driveway, hands on her hips, and stared at me for a few – maybe 20 – seconds.
I wanted to wave to her, but the idea of her coming over to talk to me and me having to explain to her what I was doing – telling the same story about my hundred houses project – was more than I could bear, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Eventually she dropped her arms and turned and walked away, and I put my eardbuds* in and got to work.
About 20 minutes later, a man reversed down the driveway behind me in a black SUV, stopped just before the road and leaned his head out of the window and asked me a question.
‘Can I help you?’ he said, his face expressionless, his voice authoritarian, like a government official with a small amount of power but a big head.
‘No,’ I said to him, sitting there on the curb on the edge of his land, ‘I’m just sitting here drawing the house across the road.’
Then I heard something I’d call a delighted squeal and a woman leaned forward from the passenger seat and smiled at me and gave me a little wave.
I returned the smile and wave, and then the man, who was wearing a black cowboy hat and had a little, goatee beard and spoke with some style of Southern accent, smiled and told me to have a nice day and finished his reversal out of the driveway and drove off down the road.
I sat there for a moment watching them drive off and thought about him asking me if he could help me, when what he really meant (from a primal perspective) was why are you on my territory, stranger, and are you here to kill me and my breeder and steal my fire stick.

*Today’s podcast: Desert Island Discs- Kirsty Young with Annie Lennox

21. The Wife

While I was drawing this, the man from the house behind where I was sitting came out to ask what I was doing.
‘Drawing,’ I told him, taking my earbuds* out and smiling up at him. ‘I go around the place drawing pictures.’
I asked him if he had an issue with me sitting in his gutter and he said no.
The man didn’t seem to have much more to say to me, so he didn’t say anything, just goodbye and went inside.
An hour or so later the man came outside again and called to a man who was arriving in a pickup truck.
‘I’ll move my car out of the driveway and you can put it in here,’ he said to the man in the pickup.
Then the man reversed his car out of the driveway, all the way across the street, and parked right in front of the house I was drawing.
I watched him for a minute or so, thinking he would drive forward, considering that he knew I was there drawing the house.
But he didn’t.
Instead he got out of his car, locked it, and walked across the street toward me.
‘I’m going to have a bit of difficulty finishing my drawing now that you’ve parked your car there,’ I said in a lighthearted, jokey way, thinking that he would probably slap his head and say, ‘Oops, sorry about that!’ and trot back across the road to move his car.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he walked straight toward me, and as he passed he said, ‘Sorry, I’ve got the electrician here and I didn’t plan on you being here this morning.’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stared at the man’s car: a dark-coloured, SUV-type thing, which now obscured the house from the driveway to the start of the living room window.
After a few minutes I felt myself get angry, and I was just deciding that I would get my revenge by posting the man’s house and street number in this story, when a woman came out of the house with some keys in her hand and said, quietly and sweetly, ‘Would you like me to move my husband’s car?’
I smiled at her and said yes, and she crossed the street and reversed the car so that I had an almost full view of the house again.
Then the woman, who was wearing shorts and a grey tee shirt with the word Hawaii across the front, crossed the street again and began talking to me.
Firstly, she apologized for her husband, and I told her I understood – that he was most likely stressed because he had an issue in the house as he had an electrician in.
Then she asked me where I was from and I told her I was Australian, but that I had lived in the UK for many years, and she told me that she had always wanted to go to Australia, but had never had the chance.
‘And I love your accent,’ she told me.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘everybody does. I could get away with murder with this accent.’
Then the woman told me how much she liked my drawing and asked me what medium it was.
‘Pastel,’ I said, and then I told her of my hundred houses project and we talked for a while about drawing.
And then, when I asked if she drew or painted, she told me that she had once, but that now she didn’t have time for much as she was caring for her elderly mother who was very poorly.
‘I used to work as an Ayurvedic practitioner,’ she told me, ‘and alternative therapies, but I gave it up. Too much money and it became all about how much money we could get out of celebrity clients.’
Then she explained that she’d designed and planted the garden along the side of her house – a beautiful garden in well-balanced, muted tones that looked like it was planted for maximum water efficiency.
‘Are you a garden designer?’ I asked the woman, whose pixie haircut I was coveting. ‘Is that your job?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I used to work for a company that designs, but I had to give it up because of my mum.’
Then we talked for a while about doing lots of different kinds of work, and I explained that I had tattooed briefly for a living, that I had once been a creative director, that I had shuffled wallpaper rolls in a hardware store, and that the job I was doing now I had no real qualifications for.
‘Thing about the USA that I’ve learned,’ I said, ‘is you really can be whatever you want to be. You could get a business card printed saying you were anything, apart from an astronaut or a neurosurgeon, and people would throw money at you.’
The woman thought for a moment, and then laughed.
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘with my accent, they’d probably hand me a scalpel.’

Today’s music: playlist I made on Spotify, featuring Supertramp, Bruce Springsteen,Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Loudon Wainright III, Amy Winehouse, Annie Lennox and AWOLNATION.

20. Olivia Newton-John

While I was drawing this, a young man dressed completely in denim and wearing an Olivia Newton-John-style sweatband from the ‘Physical‘ era, stopped right in front of me and began to question me about what medium I favoured for drawing.
‘Pastels,’ I told him, taking out my earbuds* and looking up at him and smiling.
‘Are they soft or oil?’ he said, and surprised that he would know the difference, I told him soft.
Then he came around to my side and looked down at my drawing.
‘Wow!’ he said.
‘I’m only about halfway through,’ I told him. ‘I have a fair bit left to do.’
‘I’d take it just as it is,’ he said. ‘It’s awesome.’
Thanks I told him, as he stood there nodding his head up and down and saying yeh, yeh softly.
‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll let you get back to it.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ I said, and I smiled at him.
‘Awesome,’ he said, smiling at me and waving goodbye. ‘Yeh, awesome!’

Today’s podcast: Anne-Marie Duff | Desert Island Discs

18. Your House’s Story

While I was drawing this, I was so engrossed that it took me quite a while to realise there was a man standing behind me, until I heard his voice over the top of my music*.
‘How do you choose the houses you draw?’ he said to me when I took my earbuds out and looked up at him.
‘I drive around until I find one I like,’ I said, ‘and this one has good light, and it’s white, and the plants stand out.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said.
Not knowing what else to say, I squinted and said, ‘Do you know who lives there?’
‘I do,’ he said, looking right down at me, without expression.
‘Ooooh, I see!’ I said, surprised by his unexpected response. ‘It’s a lovely house.’
‘I know,’ he said, without a smile.
‘What is it, 60s, or something?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ said the man, who was wearing a baseball cap, greyed beard, glasses, jeans and shirt, and a piece of soft, blue cloth draped around his neck, ‘1948.’
‘Were they built for returning servicemen, then?’ I asked him, and he told me no, they weren’t, that they were built by a developer who ran out of money.
‘There’s a park behind the houses where there should have been more houses,’ he said.
As we talked I continued to draw while the man gave me some more information on the development of the tract houses, like the names of streets and so on.
Then he told me how beautiful my drawing was, and then told me he had no idea how to draw.
‘I could teach you,’ I told him. ‘In just a few lessons you’d be surprised how good you’d be. It’s like a recipe, you know, learning to put things together the right way.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ he said.
‘I presume you’re retired,’ I said to him. ‘So you’ve probably got the time.’
He made a little huff of a laugh.
‘Ha!’ he said. ‘All the time in the world, but not the money.’
I was about to tell him I would teach him for free, just for the challenge of it and to show him I was right, but he got in before me, telling me about the woman living in the house behind where I was sitting, and that he was surprised she hadn’t been out to talk to me.
‘Would she be grumpy that I’m sitting in her gutter?’ I asked him.
He made a little huff-laugh again and said no, that she was an artist and would probably want to have a look at what I was doing.
Then, because there was a bit of silence and I wanted to be alone with my drawing, I tried to wind up the conversation by telling him about my hundred houses project.
‘Only 82 to go,’ he said, and we both laughed, and then I took his email address so I could invite him to my hundred houses exhibition.
And then we said goodbye and he’d started to walk back across the street to his home.
‘And, oh,’ I called out to him as he was halfway across, ‘I write a little story about the people I talk to while I draw, and today you’ll be your house’s story.’

Today’s music: Amy Winehouse Back to Black

17. Heating

While I was drawing this, a woman with long hair and glasses, holding a postcard for an estate agent, crossed the road and stood off to the side of me, and asked me how it was that I had chosen this house to draw.
‘Is it your house?’ I asked her, pausing my podcast*, and she said yes it was, so I went on to explain how I chose.
‘I choose them because of their light or colour, and the garden, or the style,’ I said looking up at her from my position on the edge of the gutter. ‘Or for a bit of sunlight for me to sit in.’
Then we talked for a few moments about my drawing, and I asked the woman if her house was built in the 60s.
The woman said yes it was, and that there were a few more of this style on this street and neighbouring streets.
‘That house over there has a sunken lounge,’ she told me, ‘and I think they were all designed by an Italian.’
Then we talked on a bit about the development of Los Angeles, and the architecture, and the gardens.
‘You can tell the ages of the neighbouring streets by the trees,’ she told me.
‘That makes sense,’ I said.
Then the woman told me when she had first moved into the house, that she had lived for years with winter cold.
‘When we moved in, we had no heating,’ she told me, ‘and then my mother died and we got some money and so we finally got some heating.’
Then she told me that when she’d moved in she’d had trouble with the neighbours complaining about some of the plants in her garden, which she had chosen water-wisely with the environment in mind.
‘So I went to the garden centre and bought those wispy ones there,’ she told me, pointing to a waving bush being disturbed by the gusts of wind that were also disturbing me.
We chatted on for a while longer and the woman told me she was going out and wondered if I’d be here much longer, and perhaps still be here when she got back.
‘I’m about to leave,’ I told her. ‘The wind is a bit cold and I’ll finish off the rest of the garden when I go home.’
Then the woman asked me what I would do with the drawing when it was finished, and I told her about my hundred houses project and said I would send her a photo when the drawing was finished.
‘Great!’ she said. ‘My name is Leigh,’ she told me as I put her number into my phone, ‘and I’m really looking forward to seeing it when it’s finished.’
‘Bear in mind,’ I told her as I stood up and began to pack up my colours, ‘I do use some artistic license, so don’t be disappointed if the garden looks different.’
Leigh smiled and said okay.
‘I’ll put in those plants that annoy your neighbours,’ I told her, and we both laughed.

*Today’s podcast: Cold Case| Criminal

15. She’s Just Observing You.

While I was drawing this, a woman came along behind me, pushing a small girl in a stroller.
I could see out of the corner of my eye that they had stopped just past where I was sitting.
I was fully engaged by my music* and I was getting chilly and losing the light because I had spent a good deal of time watching the police interact with a young, black man in a SUV that they had pulled over.
So I did not want to stop what I was doing to talk.
But a few moments later, distracted by the presence of the woman and child, I paused my podcast and turned to them.
‘Hello,’ I said to the woman, who was looking down at my drawing.
‘That’s very nice,’ she said to me, nodding.
I told her thank you, and then waved my hand toward the child.
‘Hello,’ I said, and smiled.
But the child, who was holding a soft, brown monkey to her chest, its arms around her neck, did not respond.
‘You don’t want to talk to me?’ I questioned the child who, without expression, was staring back at me.
‘No,’ said the woman, leaning her hand forward and touching the top of the child’s head. ‘She just wants to observe.’
Okay, I thought, 2 can play at that game.
And so I said goodbye and turned around to my drawing board, putting all of my attention back on my music, the house that was in front of me, and the police car that had been left parked in the street after the young man in the SUV had finally been allowed to leave.

Todays music: Annie Lennox, Diva

14. A Hot Child

While I was drawing this, I was distracted by something from the corner of my eye, and turned to see an older woman standing there watching me.
The woman, who was wearing a grey fitness outfit that looked like it might be made of fleece, was carrying an aluminum baseball bat and had a small, grey dog at the end of a long, red leash.
She also had on big, black, ‘Jackie O’ style sunglasses, and what looked like a fortune teller’s turban on her head.
The dog, which was long and white and had very short legs, stood completely still looking away from us while the woman spoke to me and absent-mindedly tapped the end of the baseball bat on the sidewalk.
‘Is it empty, that house then?’ the woman said to me as I put my *music on pause.
I told the woman that I had no idea about the house, as I was just here to draw.
The woman said nothing in response, so I elaborated.
‘No one asked me to draw it, that’s what I mean,’ I said. ‘I’m just doing it because I want to.’
The woman, who had a Caribbean or similar accent (I couldn’t tell), stared at the house for a few moments, and then looked down at my drawing again.
‘Nice,’ she said.
I said thank you, and she nodded, said nothing more, and walked away.
Then a few moments later I was distracted again, this time by a woman with a stroller containing a small child.
The woman, who seemed – even when standing still – to be in a great hurry, had long, dark hair, was wearing a running outfit, and a smile, showing off some great teeth.
I said hello to the woman, and she said hello back, but when I said hello to the child its expression didn’t change, so I didn’t make any more effort with it.
‘Wow,’ said the woman who was shielding her eyes from the sun with the back of her hand, and looking back and forth from my drawing to the house as I watched up at her from the gutter in which I sat. ‘Just, wow.’
I said thank you to the woman, who continued to smile.
Then on the woman’s back I noticed there was another child, a baby, this one strapped on by a cloth.
The woman was slightly hunched forward, and the baby’s face was pressed flush against her back, and its eyes were open, so I stood up to get a closer look.
‘Hello baby,’ I said, bending my head down a little bit and smiling and stroking the back of its tiny, white left hand that lay just below the mother’s shoulder blade.
But the helpless infant’s expression didn’t change as the poor, bound thing just stared back at me, intermittently blinking and squinting into a baking SoCal sun.

Today’s music: Midnight Oil- Blue Sky Mining … and I found this about it.
Try this video from the ABC. Blue Death.

13. Foul Mood.

While I was drawing this, a woman came out of the house a few meters away and, for a few moments, stood by the driver’s side of her car, one hand on the handle, one on her hip, watching me.
‘My uncle’s an artist,’ she said when she finally approached and stood staring down at me. ‘But he doesn’t sit in the gutter painting.’
I paused my *podcast but left my earbuds in because there was something about this woman’s tone with her hip-length grey hair, tie-dye tee shirt and pickup truck that I did not like, so I was hoping she wouldn’t stay long.
‘That’s pretty,’ she said of my drawing, and though I could have slapped her for the adjective, I lied and thanked her for her compliment, and made small talk about the weather until my easel blew over, my hat blew off and she walked away.
Eventually the wind and cloud stealing my light put me in a foul mood so I packed up my equipment and walked back toward my car.

Today’s podcast: 99% Invisible- Right to Roam

10. Benji

While I was drawing this, what turned out to be a very cheery woman came walking along the road with a medium-sized, curly-haired, white dog on a leash, and stopped and struck up a conversation.
The woman told me she lived in the house behind me and I asked her if she was the woman I had seen cleaning the front door earlier on.
‘No,’ she told me, smiling. ‘I’ve had someone come in for about 20 years – and if you saw us together, you wouldn’t think we looked at all alike.’
Then the woman, who was dressed all in dark blue, dark sunglasses and had light brown, shoulder-length hair, laughed
‘You have similar hair styles,’ I said.
Then the woman asked me what I was doing sitting on the curb outside her house.
‘I go around drawing houses,’ I told her.
‘It’s not often you have an artist sitting outside your house drawing,’ she said and laughed.
‘I suppose not,’ I said, and we both laughed.
I told her I also write stories about the conversations I have with people I talk to while drawing, and that because she had come along, she would be today’s story.
‘Oh!’ she said and laughed.
Then we got back to the conversation of the house drawing.
‘Why this one?’ she asked, looking at the house I was drawing. ‘It’s empty and it’s going to be torn down soon.’
‘Well, it had good light. I look for houses that have good light and no cars parked in front of them.’
I then asked her if the house is torn down, will she get a McMansion, and she said she didn’t know.
‘I think they’ve been banned,’ I said. ‘I remember hearing a radio program about them being outlawed.’
The woman again said she didn’t know.
‘And what will you do with the drawing?’ she asked me.
I told her about the hundred drawings I would do, and that I would have an exhibition when I had the hundred.
‘And what will happen at this exposition?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘To the drawings,’ she said. ‘What will happen to them when you have this exposition?’
‘People will just hang about and look at them and maybe I’ll sell some,’ I told her.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Does that happen?’
‘Well, it is Los Angeles,’ I said. ‘Anything can happen.’
She laughed at this, and then her curly dog, which had been intermittently standing close to the woman or walking in doggish circles near her, came over to me and stood right next to my leg.
I asked his name.
‘Benji,’ the woman said.
‘Oh, like the film,’ I said, and the woman told me that yes, she’d named him after the film dog.
‘We found him in the street 5 years ago,’ she told me. ‘He hates the postman. He still barks at him after all this time. But he likes you, it seems.’
I rubbed Benji’s curly, furry head and talked to him, telling him how lovely he was – and how sweet – and how I wanted to take him home with me until the woman said she was going inside.
‘I’ll leave you the name of my blog before I go,’ I said to the woman as she walked away.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Bye, Benji,’ I said, as I put my earbuds* back in and went back to my podcast.
Later on, after putting my drawing equipment back in my car, I found a piece of brown paper and wrote ‘ahundredhouses.com’ and left it hanging out of the cheery woman’s mailbox.
And as I crossed the lawn on the way back to my car, a postal truck drove past and I heard Benji start up his barking.
I smiled.

*Today’s podcast-Weekly Economics Podcast; Middletown America

7. Bright Red Car

While I was drawing this, a man pulled up in a bright red car, got out of the car and without acknowledging me, passed close by on my right and walked up the driveway of the house behind me.
The man, who was dressed in a tidy shirt (open at the neck), slacks and brown shoes, then came back out of the house, crossed the street and got back in his car and drove away.
Then for about 45 minutes, nothing of note happened and I continued to draw and listen to my podcast* until about 40 minutes later, when the man in the bright red car came back again.
And this time, he had a woman with him.
And this time, they both got out of the car and passed by me, walking up the driveway of the house behind me.
And this time, the woman ignored me too.

*Today’s podcast: WBEZ Chicago- Making Obama Part III

1. Tony

While I was drawing this, a woman driving a small, teal SUV stopped in the middle of the road in front of me.
She had short, ginger-blonde hair and a frown, and was waving her hand.
I paused the podcast* I was listening to and called out hi to her.
‘Have you seen a dog?’ she called out to me.
‘What kind?’ I called back.
‘Small! White!’ she said, her tone high-pitched with dog-loss anxiety.
‘Nope, I haven’t seen a dog!’ I called back to her. ‘And I’m sure if there’d been a dog running around I’d have seen it!’
‘Yes!’ she called out. ‘So if you see him, his name’s on the collar. And the phone number.’
‘Okay,’ I called calmly. ‘I’ll look out for him.’
‘His name’s Tony!’ she called as she started to drive off.
After she’d gone, I sat there for a few moments looking up and down the street, hoping to see Tony come trotting down a driveway or out from behind a bush or from under a parked car.