the elephants in london

I had my day off today. Had worked too long too hard over the weekend to make sure that the site was live. James who has designed it and was on the phone guiding me... and Juan who came in over on saturday to help. Poor little heart all aflutter with the prospect of getting all content in place... so, thank you both for being there. My reward however was an early night yesterday and having done sufficient packing today for my move later this week... my lovely couch surfer back from Denmark had to return my house keys and we had a catch up by Royal Festival Hall over a coffee this breezy and cold afternoon (at least it was NOT raining!!).

Cecil said she hadn't seen any parks in the city yet... I had to walk her to my favorite of them all, the tiny little St James Park. I recommend you too, experience the testosterone driven moor cocks making a big hoo n haa. In and out of the shallow lake trying to woo the moor hens with their bravado and flying feathers... the ladies were kind of going about their business saying hmmm... ha!

Out of the park and without getting too close or sidetracked by the grandeur we circumvented through Green Park.

"I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;"

... well daffodils they were not!! A bunch of fibre glass elephants - Indian Elephants... a crowd of them.

Stereotypes... love them or hate them... I can't live without them!

Being a visual anthropologist  she observed that these wild blasts of patterns and colours were by artists who had Asian sounding names. In all the variety and gaiety to attract enough funds from the auction of these colourful beasts, one stood out a mile. S/he is grey and is created by a couple that have a very English sounding name.

It looked a little sad.
I liked it though! Is it a tad too conservative of me??

... well sad indeed that around the same time large swathes of crowds were cheering another young grey elephant just a few streets away as it replaced an outgoing white elephant.