A buzzard circles above the wood then heads over the meadow and garden towards the house. Looking up through my sloping roof-light window I can see it almost vertically overhead as it passes over my studio, the pancake patterns beneath its wing picked out by the afternoon sun.
However many times I see it fly over, I don’t think that I’ll ever get over the excitement that I feel when I see a buzzard. Even when it’s flying over our suburban street, that circling silhouette conjures up wild places for me.
I saw my first buzzard in the Lake District, aged nine, on Wednesday 31 August 1960. I know the date because I still have the I-Spy Birds booklet that I started on that holiday.
Birds of prey in general made a big impression on me, so much so that I chose them as the subject for a school project.
Aged of nine or ten I already had big ideas about the kind of books that I’d like to write and illustrate. The gold label and ambitious title suggest that I was aiming for something authoritative.
I was struggling to work out how to produce the stand-out illustrations that I saw in books and on the Brooke Bond tea cards that I collected. Using large hogs-hair brushes and school powder paints wasn’t going to help.
The method used for teaching joined-up writing or ‘real writing’ at my junior school was to keep the pen in contact with the paper throughout the word then go back to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s. By the age of nine I’d already given up this method for my personal projects, preferring more compact block capitals which allowed me to fit my text in amongst my drawings. 
I treasured a copy of The Observer’s Book of British Birds which I kept in my gabardine pocket, even though it was unlikely that I’d spot a Montagu’s harrier or a Dartford warbler in the school playground.
Unfortunately I found myself unable to emulate Archibald Thorburn’s elegant illustrations in the wax crayons available to me in Mr Lindley’s class. But I’ve added my own touch with the background; the Lakeland hills and crag where I’d recently seen that first buzzard.
There are carved heads on keystones above the entrance and the windows of this Venetian palace style branch of the Wakefield and Barnsley Union Bank (now occupied by Barclays) built in Ossett in 1870. The Santa Claus lookalike above the door seems to be a portrait, perhaps of the first manager, but this woman over the window has classical proportions and probably represents a mythological figure.
You wouldn’t want to mess with this guy. As he’s one of two bronzed characters looking out from the kitchen in Frankie & Benny’s, I’m assuming that this must be Frankie.
In this 1950s ambience, I feel as if I’m being regressed under hypnosis. I have an impression that we were eating soup (cream of mushroom?) from white pyrex bowls somewhere towards the back of the long and airy coffee bar.
I enjoy drawing bits of buildings, often the side that the architect didn’t intend us to see. This window showroom at the top end of Cluntergate, Horbury, was drawn with a fine Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen as we sat in the Caffe Capri opposite.
As I said the other day, the more I practice doing this, the better my memory should become not just for the telling details but also for overall shape and character of each figure.
At first sight the gable end of a house might not seem the most inspiring of subjects but it’s surprising how absorbing such a common sight can be if you keep looking at it for half and hour or more.
At last I’ve got on to my new sketchbook, the one that I’m going to use for trips around town. We’re heading for Leeds on the train so it’s ideal for trying out Una Stubbs’ approach to drawing surreptitiously in public places;
I try memorising the people in the Costa Cafe at Wakefield Westgate. A list of details such as pin-striped grey suit, Hawaiian shirt and two-tone shoes isn’t enough in itself to conjure up the pose, body shape and character but, if I keep practicing, my visual memory for these subtler traits should improve.
