2009-07-08

along the Thames


Yeah, I'm pretty smitten with this city -- as you can see, here on the south bank of the Thames lies a daily book market -- pictures taken Sunday night, when it was lovely. It has since been, well, raining. Which has prompted me to spend some browsing time -- confusing umbrella in tow -- in more typical book-buying shelters, like Waterstone's or Foyles.

(Nope, no books bought. I'm spending way too much time with school books and spending carefully. On tickets to the stage production of Dirty Dancing. Which, no, isn't very good. Although the final three or four scenes and fantastic live band make up for many of the failures of an unsurprisingly poor script.)
(But yes, I really want A.S. Byatt's new tome. And Sophie Kinsella's. But I'm working through my chick lit craving by very painfully slowly, reading the French version of Shopaholic. Henceforth, whenever in a dicey situation, I think I will always say, "Je jette un coup d'oeil soupconneux autour de moi." Partly because I had to read it three times before I understood it and have now decided that's vocabulary I need.)

By the way, you'll note a picture of a monument to my.... right? Hopefully? I'm such a dunce when it comes to website layout. Even though blogspot makes it as easy as humanly possible.... Anyway, that's a monument to journalism!
On the north bank of the Thames, to a man by the name of Stead, who apparently was devoted to the fourth estate. I specifically like a few things about this monument: 1. to his right, the word "fortitude"; 2. to his left, "sympathy"; 3. jammed in beside the fortitude statuette is an empty beer can. Now.... I don't know if a "spiritualist" who died aboard the Titanic at the start of the 20th century would have been a big drinker. But in general, drinking is not looked down upon in media circles, so I applaud someone's very quick thinking on this one....
The last pictures -- and really, I don't know where or how they'll land -- are pictures after the rain on Carnaby Street, Monday night. And, the last last one is of a 45-year-old woman atop Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth Monday night. For some reason I love love love this exercise -- I know it's supposed to be art, but I think of it more as a symbol of our society's painful over-reaching self-confidence.

I know, that evaluation makes me a bad person. But really, we're not all Susan Boyle. Sorry. The Guardian's been much more charitable.

(You're wondering right now whether you can not only watch the Plinth live from home, but also Twitter monitor, right? Why yes. You can.)

1 comment:

erin said...

Confusing umbrella??

You have 2 blogs, you twitter, you deftly handle a Blackberry, you are in an occupation which demands that you be sharp and on the ball with technology, but an umbrella bests you?

Please this to me, for I am simple.

PS... miss you tonnes, and hope everything is going tickety-boo.