Strolling Around London – Leicester Square – Oh What Fun!

Hmmm… what to say about Leicester Square! 

The cinema and “theaterland” of London! The nightclub land! 

Or as it was to me…. a delightfull and busy square with the most delightful gigantic cuckoo clock!

Leicester Square will never be part of the romantic London that I hold so dear to my heart.  To me, it is the more robust, crowded and lively London.  A very small garden with a statue of Shakespear surrounded by Dolphins.

Of course me being me, I am not much impressed by 19th century statues or 15th century gardens.  What delighted me more were the small restaurants around Irving Street, leading to the square.  Eating in their small cramped tables arranged under striped awnings in the sunshine!  (It was warm and sunny one time, when I had visited!)

I remember making my way through the crowded square with large movie sign boards and lots of theater ticket booths.  And finally I arrived at the other corner that houses the swiss center.  A souvenier shop at the bottom and a BIG cuckoo clock on the building facade.  And oh what fun it was, when the clock struck the hour!  A delightfull procession of clay figurines started a procession across the building facade, moving to the beat of the big bells!  Yes when the clock strikes an hour it is a complicated mix of bells strung along the building ringing in a concert.  So for 10 minutes you get treated to a medley of bell rings being played out like an beautiful, melodious orchestra.  And of course you get routed to the spot, just watching the clay dancers dance, and play violins and cows moo and oh I can go on and on!

 

Strolling around London – Bankside

I wonder why I never wrote about bankside before.  A walkway of streets along the Thames, full of so many sights and sounds that sweep over you!  As one of the touristy descriptions of the area goes… its everything from Shakespear to Bridget Jones!  The walk where trade, money-making and merry-making were stirred together!

My favorite memory of bankside is a sunny weekend in June 2007, when quiet by chance we ended up spending an entire day, doing nothing except stroll along the Thames from the Millennium Bridge to the London Bridge station.

Unlike the other stretches of walkways along Thames (either side) on that sunny afternoon we saw a beautiful and colourful London life.  The square structures of the Tate Museum did not impress the romantic in me.

But thankfully we walked on, and came across beautiful cobbled streets with colourful flowers flowering profusely from the hanging pots.  The Shakespeare Globe Theater adding a touch of drama.

The hot afternoon spent licking different (even weird) flavors of italian ice-creams from a riverside ice-cream window… walking under a bridge, where a string quartet sat playing pieces of music that I did not recognise.  But which nonetheless thrilled me to bits that warm afternoon.

 

Happy New Year Son!

A red balloon flies across a blue sky

All out of breath chasing a butterfly

Dirt of the playground on his jacket

He falls and gets up to play again

Cold wind blowing in his face, lifting his hair

The hot sun taking bite out of the cold air

Sliding off the slides and see saws

Making new friends and shaking hands

Happily playing with his new friends

As his smiling mother watches, from the bench

A good day, this, the last day of the year

A new day and new year await you tomorrow!

New year, new days, new possibilities…

New bedtime stories, new discoveries…

A new world awaits you everyday!

A happy new year to you my son!

~Love

Mom

 

~Anamika

© 2007 Anamika



Happy New Year Son! by Anamika is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

 

Increase blog traffic with Google

If you’ve got a blog, this is a MUST SEE site; The Hottest keyword list on Google trends. Hot Trends, launched around mid may this year gives a listing of the hottest searches on Google on any given day, or in the last hour!

Plus it maintains a daily history! So you can change the date and see what were the hottest searches on a given date. Although, understandably, you cant search for a date before 15th May 2007. (Given thats when this kewl tool was launched!)

Now I don’t need to spell it out, but I will. If your blog or web site had a targeted audience (unlike this blog ), say web developers.

 

As good as it gets….

I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to reach the ideal figure, the ideal look, the ideal life…

But one thought just stopped me short. I am in the prime of my life. This is the peak. All my childhood was spent preparing for this. Then it hit me…that’s what my parents taught me wrong… “Study now, you have all your life to have fun….”, “don’t party, you can do that once you are married…”, “focus on your career, you have all your life ahead to enjoy…”

Or maybe they taught me well for that time, but I didnt stop following their advice when I should have.

 

The soothing power of the trivial

Had been literally loosing it lately. Till now the best way I had tackled emotional pain was to ignore it and it would die down in a while. But when it got too much decided to go the other way for once and examine my pain, and let it take over me.

Bad bad bad decision. I had been right the first time. When I let the emotional stuff take over, it nearly smothered me. I had been right in being cautious of the intensity of my emotions. Like a true Scorpio, the intensity of my emotions if allowed to run wild can be fatal. 

 

Yoga – Unchristian? Really?

Vicars ban ‘un-Christian’ yoga for toddlers 

Yoga, a form of  exercise methodology with its roots in ancient India has been banned by two vicars in somerset, UK.  It is very disturbing to hear leaders of communities have such opinions. All sects and religions have a right to believe in whatever they place their faith in. However, Yoga is just a form of exercise that relaxes body and mind.

Its origin is in Hinduism, but Yoga in itself has nothing to do with religion.

Each culture has something good to offer. And the global citizen should have the right to partake of whatever good things the human race has discovered, irrespective of which country and religion discovered it.