Weird … It's usually the colour of old Tupperware.
Here's another one for Ame:
There's plenty of places in London for you to do your morning runs, but if you want to work on your calf muscles head down here …
This is the Monument (sorry about the wonkyness of the photo). For a small fee, you can climb up (and down) it, and BOY does that wake your calves up!In case you didn't know it commemorates the Great Fire of London. A couple of hundred feet off to the left is Pudding Lane, where the fire started.
The view from the top is pretty spiffy.
Oh, and don't lick your lips at the mention of pudding; Pudding Lane (and later, Pudding Mill Lane in the East End) were where the night-soil gatherers wheeled their barrows of poo down to the river. Even nastier; there were people who sifted (squelched?) through it all, searching for lost valuables … Eww!
Hennyway … The old Clock Tower was bright and sunny this morning …
And even the St. James's Park pelicans perked up a bit (though the sun was still too low to reach them when I took this).
And in a burst of democratic generosity, the sunshine even lit up the Parasite House.
Mind you, it was still bloody freezing …
19 comments:
YAY! It's DB!
See? London KNOWS I'm COMING!!! Either that or it knew I was listening to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" tune on my iTunes! YAY! ;)
And OMG Dive...STOP it! How can I concentrate on these AWESOME touristy shots when you're showing me obelisky things and saying words like "winky," "up&down," "licklips" and "BOY!" ;)
By the way, my calves are twitching at the excitement of it all alREADY! How am I gonna contain myself until we GET there! Sigh~
Geeeeeeeeez, here I was working this mood and I read another word..."poo"--I'm back in my touristy frame of mind now!
Thanks for snapping me out of it Dive...I'm forever in your debt!
And seriously, I LOVE your travel blog...foreplay for the see-the-sights adventurer in me!
=)
xo
Let's hope the sunshine's just getting some practise in, Ame.
That's a gorgeous shot of the clock tower, dive.
I'm going to quote the fave chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, on February:
"I hate February. Basically it's a month longer than I'm prepared to tolerate of bon-chilling, icy winds and strength-sapping seasonal motionlessness."
But hey, it looks like you're having a good preparation for it! Hope it stays that way.
February's great, Vic.
We get ball-freezing cold, snow, wind, hail, sleet, wind, rain, hurricane force storms, bizarre heatwaves and more wind.
And it keeps the tourists away, which is great (at least it did until Ame discovered she could come over here half price).
I think I'll just be content with the fact that it's nearly 11pm and it's only just starting to cool off.
It's so nice to see a blue sky, I don't care how cold it is. Because I live in a valley, it's usually overcast here, and not just in winter. Our schools closed for the first time this year yesterday because of snow. I parked in front of the post office yesterday just in time for a big wind to shove all snow from the PO roof onto my car. Lovely.
But still, nice images of blue-sky London.
Thanks for that, Vic (damn this northern hemisphere weather).
And good morning, Robyn.
Yes, it's actually sunny in Olde London Town.
You should move to Norfolk; your car is bigger than my village post office, so you wouldn't have that problem.
You've reminded me of an incident a few winters ago when I was stuck in traffic in Norwich.
I was behind a Mini which was sitting under a huge cedar tree heavily laden with snow and you can guess the rest …
There was a terrific bang when the Mini's suspension hit the tarmac and then there was just this huge heap of snow.
We all jumped out of our cars and dug the poor woman out (while laughing hysterically).
Roll on spring …
hear hear for roll on Spring. I've always loved the Tupperware quote -('quote anorak' alert) I think it's from Bill Bryson, isn't it? England being "like living inside Tupperware".
Though I have to say that I didn't get that feeling last year, and this Winter has definately been a relatively warm one. Is this climate change? If so it's hard to knock it....
Did you know you pelicans are all white?
Australian pelicans are quite simmilar to something Tim Burton might come up with for his next creature feature cartoon.
Ours are black and white with orange beady eyes and I kid you not, if you happen to get stranded on the boat when the tide goes out they gang up on you and I swear they would try and eat you if no one was watching.
Your pelicans by comparison look so civilised.
It looks like you saw that strange yellow disk they call the Sun. Happy to see you have a nice day.
Stay away from the pudding.
"night-soil gatherers" oh my God! that is the greatest job title I have ever heard! I have tears rolling down my checks Dive! The image is almost too much to bear! Little hunched-over men with their socks tied over there mouths, work gloves covered in poo and big rubber boots, pushing a "honey wagon" down the bleak streets all the while, still whistling!
Right as ever, Pea; good old Bill B.
Kate: those aren't our pelicans. I don't know where they're from but they're certainly not native. Some sadistic bugger put them in the freezing lake at St. James's Park and they've been too stupid to leave.
Hi Sassy. Thanks for another uncomfortable journey in this morning. The pudding thing kinda puts a new slant on dinner, doesn't it?
Hoorah for the honey wagon, DP! The night soil collectors had it easy compared to the poor kids who had to hunt through it for anything they could clean up and sell.
Oh, and we had dogshit collectors, too. Children (I think their uniform was a green neckerchief) who gathered up all the dogshit and barrowed it off to make fertiliser.
Ah, the fragrant streets of Olde London Town …
Ooooh again, Dive, you keep doing it to me don't you.
If anyone's interested in reading more about the Great Fire, there can be no better than Samuel Pepys' first hand diaries. Copy and paste this here (still don't know how to do links on comments) http://www.pepys.info/fire.html
I've read many of his diaries, growing up as my father read them all. Fascinating.
A brilliant and surprisingly racy read, eh Lynn?
Sorry, Dive. I got tagged. I had to be honest.
Ooooh pelicans in London? Are they not freezing?
They certainly were this morning, MM.
And last week in the snow they looked REEEEALLY miserable, poor things.
And Sassy; please don't apologise for fuelling an old man's fantasies … hee hee.
Definitely Dive. He was a fruity old devil. Great diaries though, in all sorts of ways!
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