sketching

My first dissertation extract is complete, and after three somewhat hectic days I can finally relax in the library and read whatever the hell I want for a little while. My field of research and my area of interest are closer than I could ever have imagined, but the very fact that I have to focus on them makes them a little less attractive than they were before. That’s natural, and it’s primarily why I’d never make a career out of art or music. The minute something you like becomes something you have to do, it loses a lot of the magic it once held, I find.

Perhaps the greatest roadblock to making great strides with my dissertation is the fact that, wherever I go, I carry with me a battered little red notebook chock-full of notes, sketches and observations from the last year and a half. I’m almost never apart from it. If it’s a knee-jerk reaction to years of being warned against electronic addiction, it’s a damned healthy one. And whilst it might have got in the way of focused academic research from time to time, it’s actually been responsible for guiding me to some of the most useful books for my degree this year.

Fresh from the Libreria Talia back in October ’15

At twenty-two, a one year old notebook seems like a strange object to consider my most treasured possession. You’d never know it was that young, looking at it now. It’s battered and bruised and dog-eared on all sides, and the binding holding it together has been heavily reinforced with generous layers of sellotape. But it’s been with me almost everywhere I’ve gone since I first tracked it down in a bookshop in Villafranca last year and, to me at least, it’s more than just a notebook. Leaving for Spain without a sketchbook was one of the more stupid things I’ve ever done, but the result is this absolutely priceless little book of memories. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The Red Book at the feet of Washington Irving, Granada

It’s been all over the place. It’s been carried over the holy ground of Moulay Abdessalam and watched the sunset over the Aegean Sea. It’s sat on the walls of the Alhambra, felt the sea breeze of the Atlantic from Cape Roca in Portugal and sampled tapas in Salamanca (with the olive oil stains to show). These days it contents itself with regular trips to and from the library, which is intellectually stimulating at the very least, but perhaps not what the Red Book was necessarily born for. I expect it’s just as hungry for another adventure as I am. The trouble is, there’s only thirty pages left until it’s all filled up, and with the rate at which I’m harvesting new ideas, Greece may have been my eternal companion’s last fling. When I stop to think about it, that’s more than a little bit saddening.

We’ve had some pretty special memories, the Red Book and I. But probably the most treasured of all was its first ever outing to the sanctuary mountain east of Cáceres where, as the sun set over the old city, I had an epiphany and decided to base my series of novels in Spain. And, suddenly, it all made sense. What had been for some fifteen years a mishmash of fantastical borrowings and cliché leapt out of the chrysalis into a vast historical saga. The moment was recorded with two simple words scrawled at the top of a heavily-smudged first page: it begins.

Full-page sketches like this one are not helping on the page-saving front…

Of those who have commented on my faithful travelling companion, the general opinion seems to be that I could get ‘so much money if I ever sold it one day’. Sacrilege incarnate. This little book and I have been on so many adventures now that it’d be like pawning off a loyal pet. But I suppose it’s more than that, because what the Red Book is, beyond a well-travelled journal, is an extension of my very soul. My whole world, the one I don’t tend to share with anybody, is stored within its pages in scrawled notes and sketches. Most of it wouldn’t make a jolt of sense to anybody else, but to me it reads like a map. I’ve kept a working notebook on me in various formats for the last five years – since I could hold a pencil, if you count the sketchbooks as well – but the Red Book is the prince of them all.

The sister notebook is already waiting, an equally eye-catching blue-and-gold journal of identical dimensions. It’s also a Paperblanks notebook. I swear by the things. It’ll be tough, starting afresh with a new book after all this time, like starting up a new relationship. Quite literally: all the memories I’ve stored in the Red Book are ours to share. The Blue Book will need new memories of her own. One day, many years from now, I’d like to think there’ll be a whole shelf of these things, tattered, bandaged and well-thumbed, but loved, and I’ll be able to take them down to explore them with my children, taking them into the worlds I have spent so many years creating.

An ode to a notebook… Well, it was a strange post for Valentine’s Day, I’ll give you that, but with all the time, care and attention I’ve lavished on this little book over the last year and a half, perhaps today’s a fitting day for such a post after all. BB x

There are some places that you come across that feature on almost everybody’s wish list. The pyramids of Giza, the lost city of Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China, the name a few of the standout examples. Ask for more and you might encounter a few more classics, like New York’s Central Park and the bustling canals of Venice. Extend the list a little further and you’ll probably find a small Moroccan town nestled deep in the Rif mountains of some forty thousand inhabitants. Why? Because a large part of the old town is painted powder blue. Introducing Chefchaouen, the blue pearl of Morocco.

I should point out, it’s currently under scaffolding in anticipation of its upcoming designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Just like the Fes tanneries last year, that’s another visit hamstrung by the UNESCO beetles. Fortunately, I’ll be a mere hour away all summer, so I’ll be back when they’re done. It promises to be spectacular.

It’s a strange experience, wandering along an entirely blue street. The whole medina looks like something out of a picture book. You can almost hear the suspicious mutterings of the locals when the first travelers stumbled upon the town a century or so ago; a four hundred-year old refuge from the zealous rage of Castile. There are some doorways and passages that are instantly recognizable from the travel guides and Instagram accounts, and with good reason: they practically scream out for a photo.

And that’s where the trouble begins.

Chefchaouen is, at the same time, a photographer’s dream and nightmare. Not only have you got some of the most beautiful colours to play around with that architecture can provide, but the villagers themselves are extremely photogenic and set off any street scene like saffron – if you feel like risking it.

Chaouen has been in the mainstream tourist trade for some five years now and it’s inhabitants have had plenty of time to develop their own opinions about being posted all over the global social media on a daily basis. Being the cautious type, I’d rather avoid trouble and settle for those unoriginal empty street shots, taking proper dioramas only when all backs are turned. But even that, it seems, is sometimes a little too much to ask.

‘No photos! No photos!’ cries an old woman, rounding a corner just as I press down the shutter on what was mere seconds previously an empty street. I hastily stow away my camera as she grumbles to herself in Arabic about the likelihood of it cropping up on Facebook tomorrow morning. True to self, I’m left feeling so guilty for taking that snap one second too late that I end up doing the rest of Chaouen sans apareil. Thanks for that, jaddatii.

A common joke bandied about by Moroccans – aimed almost exclusively at people like me, I shouldn’t doubt – is the ‘no paranoia’ jibe, reserved for all those travelers who assume indifference when hailed in the street. I had this two or three times after my run-in with the camera-shy abuela, when I bemused a few stallholders by passing by a gorgeous Chaoueni door without reaching for my camera.

I tried my luck again the following morning, having recovered from that little stumble, only to run into exactly the same problem when I was quite innocently photographing a lantern. ‘No! No!’ says a villager, climbing the stairs towards me. ‘No photos!’. Jesus, Chaouen, what am I allowed to photograph?

The result? I spent the entire day sketching instead.

Sketching appears to be harmless. I’m not entirely sure what the difference is between a sketch and a photograph – a true craftsman puts just as much work into both – but people don’t seem to mind you standing on a street corner and scribbling away for twenty minutes or so. You’d think after a couple of minutes that it’s fairly obvious that you’re the subject of a doodle when the artist in question keeps stealing a casual glance over your shoulder to the mountains behind, and that that might bother some folks… but apparently not. It even has curious passers-by stop and talk to you.

Perhaps that easily-offended old Chaoueni did me a good turn after all. It’s all too easy to become lost behind a camera.

I have mixed feelings about Chaouen. On the one hand I do admit that it is rather gorgeous, as Moroccan towns go. For me it’s not a scratch on the more authentic Taroudant or Imoulas, but that has more to do with the thriving tourist traffic than the town itself. My main problem with it, it must be said, is what I term the Petra effect: when something receives so much hype that the reality can’t help but disappoint. It’s unfair to say that you shouldn’t rave about an especially beautiful place, but sometimes I’d rather make my own discovery than find the path trodden down before me by the world entire and the locals already soured by thousands of camera-toting holiday-makers. One almost misses the hippies.

Like Petra before it, I’d heard so very many enticing anecdotes and seen so many beautiful photos of Chaouen that I wasn’t as bowled over as I probably should have been. I will, however, be back. There’s more to the town than I had time to see… and I have all summer. BB x