Nothing predicted the chaos that would follow on this bright sunny Monday morning in London. What a nice morning to stroll and sketch around before my afternoon flight! so I thought. Nope! Just as I was settling in to work on All Hallows-by-the-Tower (its spire was tentalizingly visible through my hotel window for 3 days) by borrowing a not-yet-open BBQ restaurant's storefront, my phone buzzed. My 2pm flight, it reads, has been delayed to 1:00. Has there been a mistake? How could there be a delay of -1 hour? Then it dawned on me that the flight is actually delayed from 2PM to 1AM. At this point, I decided to put my paint brush down on the palette and switched to 2-hand operation. 15 mins later, the intel of UK-wide ATC failure was obtained and a refundable back up flight for 7PM was swiftly booked. Cool, now I can refocus on this beautiful church!
Since my original flight was delayed and the backup flight is not until 7PM, I strolled aimlessly along the Thames until I spotted this perfect spot. Just off a promenade deck, away from the flow of people, and plenty of space. The Tower Bridge was in maintenance during the bank holiday long weekend, so you could see that the bridge was still lifted in the previous sketch (has been for a whole weekend). By this time, they finally lowered it. The rounded green bulbous is the city hall. I uhm...did not do it justice. Just as I started walking away from the spot and contemplating which view I should do St Pauls, my phone buzzed again. The delayed departure of 1AM has been re-adjusted to just 30 mins after the original time. Great! I thought! They must have fixed the problem, and so I picked up my pace and headed towards London Bridge.
You find me 1 day later still stuck in London. In the end, both flights were cancelled (thankfully early enough in the day that I could still find a decent hotel and have dinner at a reasonable time) Since I had zero work equipment with me and my new flight was not until 3pm, I decided to continue my stroll & sketch. I saw an excellent panorama somebody did of Trafalgar Square and decided to do it too. Uhm...turns out Nelson's column is a little taller than I expected...plus the National Gallery was half in construction. But still, it was not raining and I count that as a win!
This time I finally found the right door to access Temple Church (and it was indeed open!) This is the 3rd London church interior I did (not sure if I'm getting better or worse at it ooops) My phone was buzzing intermittently throughout the sketch, telling me my new flight is now 10mins delayed, then 20 mins delayed, 40, 50...I appeared calm, but I was definitely panicking at this point.
I ended up spending a little too long doing the interior (and panicking), so instead of having lunch at DTF Selfridge, I decided to stay and paint the exterior of Temple Church and then head to the airport directly. It was a quiet courtyard with some people enjoying their lunch break
Thankfully my flight departed only 90 mins later than scheduled
