Sunday, November 21, 2021

Building site

I do love a good building site - particularly when it's not destroying the old Dublin . This site on Adelaide road was a nondescript ESB building for a long long time. As far back as I remember, actually, and I lived on that road in 1987. I loved our flat on Adelaide Road. I shared with Máire and we've been friends since. We knew we would get on when I turned from cleaning the fridge the day we moved in together and said "that's clean enough for me, what do you think?" - Those were simple days.  I had lived in a flat on Leeson Street, round the corner, for a year, but the landlady needed me out. She had this other place on Adelaide road, and Máire was a friend of a friend of a friend. The flat was basic. We share a bedroom. The bathroom was separated from the kitchen by a very thin partition. But it was in an old Georgian house. The kitchen was South-facing and we had a view of the mountains. The sitting room was cosy and it had this wonderful fireplace that we stripped of its ugly red paint, revealing beautiful cast iron and tiles. And Máire taught me how to light a fire. And how to move a telly into the bedroom quicker than it took the TV licence inspector to walk up the stairs! We got a cat, Misha, who never saw a vet in his life and who used to think our coal stack was his personal loo. Kay used to live in the bedsit one level up. And Laurel and Hardy lived in a flat on the top floor. 
The memories kept flooding in!

And I do love a cement pump on a building site! And those yellow plastic caps they put on top of metal bars!

Full drawing done on location, colour added in the café later. Did I say it was cold?


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