By: Blonde Two
This week I took a little trip to London. It was successful and I’ll tell you more about it sometime. I have to say though, that it was a mighty relief to step off the train and smell Devon air when I got home.
This Blonde finds London completely and utterly bemusing. Well, not the tube, I can do the tube (probably because there is a map involved). What I need to do is buy an overland map of London, something like OL28 (Dartmoor) but with street names. I got lost again (several times). An eighteen minute journey on foot took me an hour and a half, and it was raining, and there were enormous puddles, and millions of cars, and umbrellas (oh the umbrellas), and cigarette smoke. Plus when the road said ‘Look Right’, the cars came from the left and when there was a cycle lane, the cyclists didn’t use it, and they sometimes crossed pedestrian crossings the car way when there was a green man.
But then, after a night’s (nearly) sleep, I stumbled into Regent’s Park and was instantly transported into a world of calm, orderliness and municipal bedding. Only this was municipal bedding on steroids, so beautifully crafted that I wondered for a moment if I had landed in the middle of the Chelsea Flower Show (if only I knew where Chelsea was).
A cup of coffee, a pastry (naughty) and a wander along the park’s avenues did me the power of good and I stopped feeling quite so sorry for the people who have to live in London. Did you know that 47% of London is green space and that there are eight million trees? I wonder how the percentages would work out in relation to the population. How many square metres would each person have and how many trees? I did try to do the maths, but failed. The website of Greenspace Information for Greater London might help and definitely makes interesting reading.
David Ellison is well known for his suggestion that London’s green spaces become a ‘National Park City’. I tossed the idea aside when I first heard it but can see his point now. Read what The Ecologist has to say about it here.
Off to London ourselves in half term! I have my London Pocket Map and my tube map in the hope of not getting lost! Sure it will happen though!!
I think the ability to see landmarks helps but they so often get hidden by buildings. Once I spotted Telecom Tower I did a bit better.
Such a good start… Round the next corner I expected your purse to be stolen, your garment rent in twain and you to be carried off to Limehouse by a one-eyed Lascar, there to be sold into the white slave trade. All because you couldn’t thoil (terrific West Riding word) to spend a couple of quid on an A to Z.
Then you went horticultural and the fire went out of your writing. Never mind. Perhaps next time.
The writing reflected my inner panic … and subsequent calming. I am a green maiden through and through. Although the one eyed Lascar might be worth meeting … ‘There’s a one-eyed yellow idol, to the north of Kathmandu …’
A kilometre walking on London paving is akin to hours of bastinado.
Oddly my feet felt okay – it was interesting to note though that the majority of people were wearing trainers.
When I worked on the edge of the City I loved going to Bunhill Field at lunchtime. London is full of green spaces that are hidden away. Have you ever been to Coram’s Field – it was created by the founder of the Foundling Hospital and no adult is allowed in without a child of 16 or under- you’ll have to borrow one! http://www.coramsfields.org/
What an absolutely amazing idea, will find a child immediately! I am starting to feel that I have misjudged our capital city. Maybe it is time for the Two Blondes to take a Green-Blonde-City-Break!