Merry Christmas

This is it!
The last blog entry from me for this year. Tonight and tomorrow will be a fratic hustle to pack my stuff for our trip to France, clean the house, somehow find enough clean clothes to last a week, survive the last day of school tomorrow, go to my work Christmas party, come home, sleep, and magic myself onto the Eurostar to Brussels at some ungodly hour on Saturday morning.

Finally it's the holidays. I can't wait to sleep a lot, to sleep a lot every day and not wake up at 6.30am.

Merry Christmas everyone! See you in 2008.

Wishlist

Holly Berries, taken by Lauren Weinhold

Dear Santa,
This Christmas I am giving you the day off.
I don't need any presents.
But I kind of just a tiny bit wish I had:

A day of lying in bright sunshine, so bright I can see it through my closed eyelids
Some iittala cups
that brown leather couch I saw on High Marylebone St.

I'd like to go home for a day and
I'd like one of those fruitcakes my mum makes, all to myself
A lazy afternoon spent in a quiet coffee shop reading and drinking tea and then I'd like to walk around sunny streets and run into people that I know.

It would be quite nice if I could have a new lens for my camera - a sharper, faster one that could have a wider range of apertures
and a summer.

Santa, I haven't been entirely good this year
there have been too many crisps
and times that I have frowned a lot at Lauchlin when really it was not his fault that it has rained so much and been so very dark.

But I have tried hard and surely there are points for trying.
Have a warm and happy Christmas.
Love,
Lex.

Sunday Afternoon

Sloane Square, 3pm

I went to meet a friend at Sloane Square today. We had hot chocolate and talked about caring for the elderly (her) and the pressure of Oftsted reports (me). Then we scurried along Kings Road looking at shoes and trying not to let our fingers go numb from the cold.


Chestnut Tree, Kings Road, 3pm

I love all the bobbly chestnut trees. They remind me of Christmas trees with little baubles hanging off them. Just near this tree was a group of five or six women with santa hats on singing the most beautiful carols in three-part harmony. Then just down the road in a doorway a homeless man was settling down for the night with his plastic bag of stuff and his not-warm-enough coats. I can't believe I went shopping for shoes while some people don't have homes.


Sloane Square, 6pm

This whole square was bitterly cold and beautiful, with fairy lights strung through all the trees.

Pashonable Rocket

Rocket painted by me, inspired by children's drawings

"Miss, what's that word, pashonable?"
"Pashonable?!"
"Yeah, you know that word it means when people get all excited about something?"
"You mean passionate!"
"Yeah, of course, pashonab.. passionable, that's what I meant."

Trees for Sale

Christmas trees, Turnham Green, 5pm.

They're selling Christmas trees on the street now. They smell rich and foresty. A darker and more mysterious smell than the pines we get in Tassie. When they sell trees here, they shove them into white nets that make them look like snowmen trying to escape.

Story of a Bomb in a Suitcase

Hammersmith Bridge

The Hammersmith Bridge is possibly the most beautiful bridge I have ever seen. Maybe the appeal lies in the khaki green exterior with little star shapes stuck all over it and big strong-looking bolts holding it together. It is somehow something more than just a bridge. It was first built in 1824 and was rebuilt once in 1887. Which would make it at least 120 years old.



This bridge was nearly vanished when the IRA put a bomb on it in 1939. Luckily a man called Mr Childs was walking past and noticed a lonely suitcase with sparks and smoke coming out of it. He opened the suitcase - a brave act in itself - and threw the bomb into the river. The explosion made the water go 60 feet in the air. A few minutes later, a second bomb went off, collapsing girders on the west of the bridge and smashing windows in houses nearby. Mr Childs was awarded an MBE for his amazing act of bravery. Really. If I'd seen that suitcase I would have run away screaming. Hats off to him.

Hammersmith

The Dove, Officially London's Smallest Pub, Hammersmith.

When I opened the curtains this morning the first thing I saw was the flash of blue sky. The sun was out, for what felt like the first time in about a month. I had to get outside.

I took myself down to Hammersmith, walking underneath blue sky and then rain and then blue sky. The wind scattered raindrops across the river.


Houseboat on the Thames; Building with Flag, Hammersmith.

I meant to walk around and explore Hammersmith but by the time I got to the river it was 3 o'clock, the sun was setting like a Turner painting and I had to go home.

Hello, December

Shepherd's Bush Christmas Trees, Shepherd's Bush. Taken at 4.30pm today.

Trailer

I just got back from watching 'The Darjeeling' at the movies. (Loved it!) Thrown in with the twenty minutes or so of ads and movie trailers at the start of the movie was what seemed to be an ad for a movie starring Jude Law, thinking about the meaning of life at Borough Market. It ended by saying “Come, See, Experience, Real Time Movie, Borough Market, 30 Nov 07, 11.30am”.

Of course I was intrigued. I wanted to watch the rest of the movie. I wanted to see Borough Market in film.

Turns out, the trailer is actually for a movie which doesn't exist. It's an artwork. Great concept! Read about it here - and you can watch the trailer that I saw, too.

I love the way art mixes in with real life here.