Regent’s Canal – ARKS, ADAM AND AXARQUIA

ADAM’S NORTH LONDON…

April 18, 2025April 19, 2025 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam and Dido, Adam Green, Alfa Romeo GTV, Covent Garden, Dido Nicholson, Edgware, Hampstead, Hendon, Holly Bush Pub, Jewish Households, Kiddush, London, London Mews, Marylebone Town Hall, Mural Painting, North London, North London Suburbia, Primrose Hill, Regent's Canal, Rosh Pinah Primary School, Saint Martin's School of Art, Soho (London), West Hampstead

the end of a close 65-year relationship*

Last month we sold our little flat in Hampstead, North London. In and of itself, not exactly an earth-shattering event, but in the context of my life, an extraordinary moment. The reason being, that for the first time in my then-64 years and 11 months I no-longer had even a toe-hold in the city of my birth.

Regular readers of these posts will know that I have always endeavoured to keep my blog as free from controversial subjects as possible, despite the fact – as those who know me well can testify – I am highly politically aware with a range of opinions, some strongly held.

Given the recent and current state of the world, this policy has not always been easy, but this blog, originally intended to publicise my books and my art, is not a forum I wish to use for expressing my views on putting the world to rights. Ultimately, from my own experience of sampling and following other people’s politicized sites, one inevitably ends up with a corrosive and destructive clash of echo chambers. Thus, our reasons for leaving London will remain known to only our intimates.

Presented here is a photo-record of the first 30 years of my own personal London life (several suitably grainy and scarred), from times past, when I could never have dreamed that I would ever cut my ties with my once-beloved city “north of the river”.

I was born in Edgware, in the county of Middlesex in 1960, strictly speaking, before it became part of Greater London. Famous for its eponymous Roman road, as the composer Handel’s temporary home, and being at the end of the Northern Line Tube, it was where I grew up. This picture shows me as a baby, with my mum, Hannah, older brother Michael and my great auntie Ray at my grandparents flat…

*My final day at nursery in 1963 with my mum (left) and a friend. I seem to be clutching a postcard though I have no idea who from…*

Apart from a bout of glandular fever when I was six, my childhood was exceptionally happy. Although my father had departed the scene when I was a babe-in-arms, my little family was a more than adequate compensation for his absence. Here we have Hannah and her parents, Becky and Harry, me and my brother Michael (my uncle Sidney took the picture), in my first home…

*Purim at my primary school. I’m a rather lame-looking Robin Hood sat between cowboys and GI’s*…

Between the War and my birth, my mum’s family lived in Hendon. Many of our closest family friends remained there, and this is Michael and I during a visit to one of them. We’re sitting on the bonnet of mum’s first Ford Anglia – eat your heart out, Harry Potter!

*We took our snowmen very seriously back then*…

*Our second house in Edgware had a large back garden and by “London-clay” standards, half-decent soil. Sidney and I were both keen gardeners, something I remain to this day…*

My studio space at Saint Martin’s, with friends and fellow students. The guy on the far left is my lifelong friend Simon – not an artist, just visiting. Next to him, looking at the camera is Robert, a hugely gifted portraitist, and the girl is Piyawan, another very talented painter and cartoonist. Judging by the coats, this was at the end of the day and when we would typically be preparing for a visit to one of the many local Soho pubs…

*My final act at St. Martin’s was to undertake this temporary mural commission (I describe the story here) in James Street, Covent Garden*…

My grandparents were moderately observant Jews (outside the Haredi communities – and even they differ from one another – there are as many nuances and degrees of “observant” as there are Jews who observe), and the traditional Shabbat supper was always partaken of. Here I’m “making Kiddush” (the blessing over wine) on one such occasion. By this time we had left Edgware and moved to West Hampstead, also North London, but closer to the centre…

*I lived at home (in West Hampstead) well into my late 20’s, and this was my painting studio, which we built at the end of the garden…*

I met my future wife, Dido Nicholson, in 1988 and we married two years later. This was her cute little mews house in Lancaster Gate, close to Paddington Station and Hyde Park. She inherited the Alfa GTV from her uncle Leonard, who sadly died while playing real tennis at Lords (the “HQ” of world cricket)...

Dido and I were married at Marylebone Registry office, attended by her parents, my mum and Sidney, and of course, our maid of honour, our best friend Aura, looking unusually sheepish for a large sheepdog…

*Like most Londoners, I was rarely happier than when visiting one of my local pubs, like the Holly Bush, here in Hampstead, which has turned out to be our final London Address…*

*A melancholic New-Years-Day scene on the tow-path of the Regent’s Park, one of our favourite regular walks, and a fitting image to end this homage to a lost city.*

The title picture is the top of Primrose Hill. It offers, arguably, the best view of London from north-west of the city. I always found the scene somehow reassuring, and no more so than one misty autumn morning in 2010, when my mother had just left for the airport on her way to Dignitas.

TEX-MEX SURPRISE – SAN ANTONIO

May 17, 2016February 15, 2017 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Regent's Canal, River Walk, Rorke's Drift, San Antonio, Texas, The Alamo, Uncategorized

I guess it was those repeated boxing -day viewings of John Wayne’s “The Alamo” throughout my early childhood, which formed my earliest imaginings of San Antonio. So much so, that all the travel books and all the Googling and all the acquired knowledge from numerous TV documentaries about the great modern-day city it has subsequently become could not erase those preconceptions. As ever, it was only by actually visiting the place that reality could finally trump the Hollywood representation in my mind’s eye.

Unlike most of its “fellow” mission station at Rorke’s Drift – the scene of an equally heroic-if-more-successful stand against vastly superior numbers – the original Alamo mission building is still standing, and remains the city’s main tourist attraction. But equally, in stark contrast to its South African equivalent where the scene of the battle has barely changed since 1879, the Alamo building, now stranded in the middle of a thriving, colourful modern city – rather like an old man at a rave – evokes little of its historical connection to the conflict of 1836.

For me at least, this did not prove a disappointment, as the city itself has so much more to offer the contemporary traveller than the murky history of Davy Crockett’s doomed and vainglorious encounter with Santa Anna.

Apart from all the culture – of which there is plenty, like most American cities – and the delicious Texan, Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine on offer, there is the beautiful “river walk”.

The river walk is an elaborately engineered system of canals and waterways by which the once lethal San Antonio River now flows harmlessly and elegantly beneath the downtown area of the city. Like a kind of sub-tropical Amsterdam-cum-London’s Regent’s Canal, the river walk by day offers a cooling and serene contrast to the stifling bustle of the commercial streets above, and at night transforms into one great waterside party. Long sections of the water walk are lined with countless numbers and endless varieties of eateries and bars, with plenty on offer for those not satisfied with merely tacos and beefsteak, from British style gastro-pubs and high-end French and Italian bistros and trattorias , to every type of Asian cafe and restaurant. It’s a simply wonderful place to while away an evening or several!

The images presented below barely do San Antonio – and in particular the water walk – justice, but they do begin to give the feel of the place.

PHOTO-CURIOS

January 14, 2016January 15, 2016 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Alcazar Garden, Art Photography, Coimbatore, Ein Hod, Greetings Cards, Hampstead, Regent's Canal, Seville, Sherwood Forrest, Uncategorized

I’ve been making greetings card designs and images for decades now – initially doing freelance work for greetings card companies and poster publishers and more recently producing images for my own Moody By Nature label. Over the years I’ve done everything from cartoon smut (professionally referred to as “erotic humour”) to soppy Christmas and birthday penguins and polar bears (yes, you can probably blame me for the proliferation of penguin cards from the 90’s onward). Lately though, I’ve been busy with more photographic based themes and images.

Here is a small selection from a series I somewhat blandly titled curiosities, for obvious reasons.

“Bolt Masala” is from a photo I took in a metal engineering factory reception office in Coimbatore in southern India – hence the “masala” connotation.

I spotted the old boots suspended by their laces for “Good Use” in the delightful artists village of Ein Hod on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. It’s proven popular both as a retirement and as an anniversary card…

…as has “Growing Old Together Gracefully” (as an anniversary card that is!) which displays two venerable phone boxes in Hampstead.

“Pond Life” was snapped in the exquisite Alcazar gardens in Seville.

I was struck by the image of “The Blue Cup” in the unlikely setting of Sherwood Forrest – more famous for hosting the “merry men” in Lincoln Green.

Finally, I saw the yellow balloon languishing in a puddle on the Regent’s Canal towpath (north London) on “New Years Day” 2011 – having lost my dear mother barely three months before it seemed like a poignant metaphor for the past year…