There should have been a photo of Trafalgar Square here in celebration of my amazing cultural evening but I forgot my camera, so here's a photo I just like.
From the (almost) ridiculous to the sublime. On Monday I was seeking elephants to photograph, Tuesday night I was watching Carmen – amazingly a free viewing in Trafalgar Square where the opera was transmitted direct from the Opera House to the big screen erected between the lions. I hadn’t seen Carmen before and was absolutely transfixed. It was fantastic! I hadn’t realized how much of the music I knew, such as Toreador and others – someone said a lot of it has been used in adverts on TV.
It was warm at 7 when the choirmaster from that TV programme about getting people to join and/or start choirs locally, persuaded us all to join in and sing Toreador in English. Somehow it doesn’t sound quite so sexy in English, but it was great seeing the public (especially the normally reticent English) singing with gusto. He has such enthusiasm and charisma to manage that. One of the spectators sporting a red flower behind one ear said she had come because it was free and she knew it was about gypsies – a synopsis of the reasons most people came I think.
Got rather colder as the evening wore on and I bought soup for myself and two companions in the interval – we had a bottle of wine too so were in ‘good spirits’. We had to pour the wine into a plastic jug and use plastic cups to drink it – I suppose they were afraid of damage and/or violence.
The event was sponsored by BP but they were very low-key about it, perhaps because they are very unpopular just now. There were no baseball hats, plastic macs or cushions handed out this time. They are probably too expensive to provide now given the expense of trying to clear up the disastrous oil spillage.
Because I live in central London I was able to walk both there and back and because I was quite chilly by the time it finished, I walked/ran home with my disabled friend trying to keep up with her rather sophisticated scooter – no little runaround that only does 3 miles an hour! Hers is called a tramper and she rides it as if she’s a queen. If she had whips and knives she could be a Cleopatra. As it is, she makes do with calling out ‘excuse me darling’ as passers-by scatter in her wake. I told her she could be the pacer for someone in practice for races.
Then we come to the elephants – on Monday afternoon I started out with the map I had downloaded from the internet allegedly showing the whereabouts of them all. It is not exactly accurate and has clumps of elephants marked in one spot when they are in fact far more scattered. Anyway, I found a small group in St James’ Park and two much larger groups in Green Park, including one on the pavement near the tube station. All in all, I must have photographed about 20 and with the 15 I did a few days ago near the Mayor’s gaff, that makes 35 – only another 225 to go. Perhaps I need to co-opt my partner in my project – there is a limited time, because the elephants are going to be taken away in July. I wonder what they will do to them all – they would take up a lot of space if kept together. Maybe they will let each company have the ones that they ‘bought’ or sponsored.
I was disappointed to find, predictably of course, that I was not the only person determined to find/photograph all the elephants and a diverse lot they were – a young business woman, a pensioner and a young (professional?) photographer with a very sophisticated camera - not trainspotter types at all, although I may have been wearing an anorak (no, it was a yachtie jacket – not that I have a yacht, but that’s another story). I don’t mind having pictures with children on or by the elephants or adults looking/ stroking them etc., but people tend to get out of the way often when they see me with my camera or maybe I look scary!!! Of course, there is a lot of anxiety around strangers taking pictures of children, but I don’t think any of us constituted any harm. For a start, most of the children will be unrecognizable given the distance you need to stand to get the whole elephant in focus.
One of the best things about the elephant invasion is the conversations that spring up between complete strangers. We Londoners are not the most talkative of people (not because we’re unfriendly so much as there are more nutters to the square inch in a big city) so we are cautious. Anyway, in my quest I have talked with other photographers, children (parents in toe of course), businessmen, professionals, homeless people etc.
Oh well ONLY ANOTHER 125 TO GO!!!!! Below this I have put a photo of a few elephants just to remind me (and anyone reading this blog in the blogosphere) of their amazing explosion into London.
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