Sketch | The Daily Norm

Mar 28

The Daily Sketch – Property is puzzling

Property is puzzling – that’s the generally accepted adage about buying or selling a property, obtaining or extending a lease, or dealing with annoying neighbours. And things are about to get all the more puzzling what with the UK Chancellor’s new rises in stamp duty for houses over £2 million, along with penalties for home owners whose home is sealed within a “corporate envelope”. All of this will undoubtedly lead to more and more complex tax avoidance schemes, warped prices, and a mass exodus from the London mansion market. Nonetheless, for the Norms, the most perplexing thing about the property puzzle is where to find the missing piece…

Property Puzzle (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Mar 26

3 Comments

The Daily Sketch: Summertime begins in Brighton

Record March temperatures have been recorded in the United Kingdom, and for most of the population, this means for unabashed sun worship whenever the opportunity affords. And with the start of summertime now upon us, we may even get a little time to sun ourselves after work. For the Norms, a quick trip down to Brighton at the weekend was the obvious choice. For worn out Father-Norm, a restful afternoon in a deck-chair on the seafront promenade was his chief desire, leaving time for the little norms to engorge themselves on ice creams and candy floss. Ahhh Norms do like to be beside the seaside!

Start of Summertime, in Brighton (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Sunday Supplement – Metamorphosis: Pond Life in the Afternoon (normsonline.wordpress.com)

Mar 1

1 Comment

The Daily Sketch: Bikes, windmills, and other Dutch clichés

As clichés go, those adhered to The Netherlands aren’t bad at all. While the English are ascribed with being larger louts, football hooligans, eating big fry-ups for breakfast and imperialistic tendencies (notably continuing into the modern day with the British takeover and generalised destruction of infamous beach resorts all over the Med such as Magaluf, Benidorm and Corfu) the emblematic symbols of The Netherlands include environmentally friendly windmills, fragrant and colourful tulips, and even more conscientious bicycle travel. All very appropriate at this time of year, when we seek to cast off our winter blankets and look forward to the Spring (it is March 1st after all!).

Being, as ever, the traditionalist, when Norm is in Rome, he does as the Romans do. Well then, in Holland, Norm has hopped on to a bicycle, purchased a bunch of tulips, and is surveying the local flat Dutch landscape with its fields full of multicoloured tulips and canal side working windmills. The only problem is, Norms can’t ride bicycles like the rest of us do by virtue of the fact that they don’t have legs. Their solution? Why, a motorised bike of course, puffing away, giving the bicycle all the kinetic energy it needs to traverse these pancake-flat lands. All the Norm has to do is steer (although with only one arm, steering can be a struggle too I might add). That motor does somewhat takes the environmental out of cycling though. Well it was a good try Norm.

The Daily Sketch: The age-old problem of how a Norm should wear a Clog (normsonline.wordpress.com)
Fields of tulips (apostcardaday.blogspot.com)

Feb 28

4 Comments

The Daily Sketch: Norms in Amsterdam

When I don’t have time to paint, I try to sketch – at least once a day. I used to sketch a lot in my diaries which I have been keeping for 16 years. I still do in fact. But nowadays, my priority is to sketch on little cards which I hope one day to exhibit as a whole, or at least hang them collectively in my hall. In a week which may well include a few sketches (time permitting), I’m reliving last week’s Amsterdam trip through my Norms, keen not to let go of the memories of that trip which remain so strong and leave me caught in daydreams throughout the day, thinking of clogs, and canals, and those pesky cyclists. Here are Norms visiting Amsterdam. Now I’m going to ponder how a Norm would wear clogs. More on that later in the week.