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The Roller-Blading Santas of Olde London Town
Sunday, December 17th, 2006 05:59 pmNext weekend is, of course, the final weekend before Christmas. Under no circumstances am I venturing Up West at any point on either Saturday or Christmas Eve. In fact, to coin a phrase, "Wild horses couldn't drag me."
With some trepidation and because Miss Furtle wanted to see the lights, we ventured into the West End yesterday, the penultimate Saturday before Christmas. Much to my surprise, whilst crowded, it wasn't half as bad as the horrors stored in my memory from previous visits around the same time of year during the past twenty-odd years. Maybe online shopping really is killing street retail...
Considering that we didn't really do anything, other than wander around, we quite enjoyed ourselves. I spent a little cash in Forbidden Planet picking up Ultimate Spiderman vol 1 in hardback.
Miss Furtle was unacquainted with London's seasonal light displays, so we walked from one to another, avoiding only Regent Street and Oxford Street, neither of which I could face. Oddly, however, I managed Covent Garden without committing murder. We had mulled wine and then ate sarnies whilst watching someone drive a watering machine over the out door ice ring at Somerset House - it would have been a bit better if we'd seen yer actual skaters, but it looked as though it was going to be some time before the ice was useable and the cold was giving me toothache, so we moved on. Much mooching later brought us back to Charing Cross Road where we obtained a book for Furtle Ma from Blackwell's. Thence down toward Trafalgar Square to look at the Norwegian Christmas Tree, pausing only to purchase a couple of take-out latkes from Gaby's to fortify our empty tums from the cold and hunger.
We noticed, during our walk around WC2 and the edges of W1, that there was an inordinate number of Santas to be seen. Inordinate even for the season and travelling in packs of 4-6. Very worrying and more so when we arrived at Trafalgar Square to find literally dozens of them outside the National Gallery and all wearing roller blades. Very odd.
We paused for a while to listen to the carol singers and admire the tree. The carol singers were some group raising awareness of (and I guess, money for) epilepsy. That would account, I suppose for the fact that the lights on the tree weren't flashing...
As we headed back to catch the Tube at Embankment, the Santas made their move and I remembered that I had my camera in my pocket. The pictures didn't come out very well, I'm afraid; out of five only two were vaguely useable, so here they are, behind the cut to preserve the sanity of the bandwidth challenged:
( The Roller-Blading Santas of Olde London Town )
When we got home we continued the Evil Santa theme by watching last year's Dr Who Christmas Special on DVD and drinking more mulled wine.
With some trepidation and because Miss Furtle wanted to see the lights, we ventured into the West End yesterday, the penultimate Saturday before Christmas. Much to my surprise, whilst crowded, it wasn't half as bad as the horrors stored in my memory from previous visits around the same time of year during the past twenty-odd years. Maybe online shopping really is killing street retail...
Considering that we didn't really do anything, other than wander around, we quite enjoyed ourselves. I spent a little cash in Forbidden Planet picking up Ultimate Spiderman vol 1 in hardback.
Miss Furtle was unacquainted with London's seasonal light displays, so we walked from one to another, avoiding only Regent Street and Oxford Street, neither of which I could face. Oddly, however, I managed Covent Garden without committing murder. We had mulled wine and then ate sarnies whilst watching someone drive a watering machine over the out door ice ring at Somerset House - it would have been a bit better if we'd seen yer actual skaters, but it looked as though it was going to be some time before the ice was useable and the cold was giving me toothache, so we moved on. Much mooching later brought us back to Charing Cross Road where we obtained a book for Furtle Ma from Blackwell's. Thence down toward Trafalgar Square to look at the Norwegian Christmas Tree, pausing only to purchase a couple of take-out latkes from Gaby's to fortify our empty tums from the cold and hunger.
We noticed, during our walk around WC2 and the edges of W1, that there was an inordinate number of Santas to be seen. Inordinate even for the season and travelling in packs of 4-6. Very worrying and more so when we arrived at Trafalgar Square to find literally dozens of them outside the National Gallery and all wearing roller blades. Very odd.
We paused for a while to listen to the carol singers and admire the tree. The carol singers were some group raising awareness of (and I guess, money for) epilepsy. That would account, I suppose for the fact that the lights on the tree weren't flashing...
As we headed back to catch the Tube at Embankment, the Santas made their move and I remembered that I had my camera in my pocket. The pictures didn't come out very well, I'm afraid; out of five only two were vaguely useable, so here they are, behind the cut to preserve the sanity of the bandwidth challenged:
( The Roller-Blading Santas of Olde London Town )
When we got home we continued the Evil Santa theme by watching last year's Dr Who Christmas Special on DVD and drinking more mulled wine.