January 16/17 2016
It’s the weekend! After a little bit of a lie in and doing the social media stuff for this week’s episode of The London Ear, it was time to get up, get out and see what the world was like. To cut a long story short, it was bloody freezing!
We made our way to Spitalfields to grab a bite to eat. I also popped into Rough Trade and bought Bowie’s Blackstar on CD and Public Service Broadcasting’s Sputnick / Korolev on 12inch vinyl. So much music to buy, so little money to spend, there’s never enough.
Lumiere London
We’ve been making a conscious effort to leave the apartment, this time of year, I always feel like hibernating! ‘Lumiere, London’s Festival of Lights’ was on this weekend so we decided to check out Regent Street’s offerings.
It started at Oxford Circus, with what I believe was an installation to show the tsunami in Japan. Impressive, with subtle colour changes. As we walked down Regent Street, there was a Stick Man installation. Two stickmen chasing each other around the front of a building, then the shapes they made chasing were transformed into computer games, complete with a soundtrack.
Walking further down, two giant flying goldfish floated in the middle of the street. Getting towards Piccadilly Circus, an elephant was projected in a window. My favourite of what we saw.
While I’m writing about Lumiere, I have to speak about the crowds on Regent Street last night. I don’t know whether more people than expected turned up to the event, or it could have been organised better but there were at times when the crowds were so dense and so pushy, that I actually feared for our safety. Any busier and someone could have easily got crushed, especially at the area where the elephant was. People were pushing in one direction, while others were trying to side streets. It got to the stage where I wanted to get out of there. If someone had kids with them, I can’t see how it would have been an enjoyable experience. A pity but no lights are worth that. I wanted to go to King’s Cross to see the installations there but Tahlula checked Twitter and King’s X station had been closed to prevent over crowding. I couldn’t deal with going through that a second time.
So besides writing up all this, I also delved into my ‘Cook a new dish’, today’s was a diary free potato, mushroom, leek bake with a goat’s cheese topping. We tucked into a corner to try it out. Yummy!
Sidebar: I’m writing this as I’m sitting on the couch, Tahlula keeps glancing over to see what I’m at, she’ll read it later anyway so Hi Tahlula!!
A relaxed weekend, we even got a little snow!
