Oh so where do I start? It was an unexpected but very welcome text from a friend with an invitation to go to a literary festival. I had no plans. I like books. It’s fun to spend time with friends. However, it ended up being way more than that; it was inspiring.
One thing I really love about London is there is history everywhere you look and pockets of almost-hidden things to do. For the Scot’s birthday, we discovered some history in our neighbourhood and went back to one of my favourite places in the city to get a little fresh air and some peace.
It’s been seven years this month since I moved to London from my little (cheap) studio apartment in Pittsburgh. It’s an anniversary that is getting scarily close to double digits. I found a photo I took on Waterloo bridge, about a year after I moved, and I feel a very strange sensation.
I was sitting in the back of my parents car on my way home from college for some holiday or another. I grew up in Central Pennsylvania and have seen more fields and farmhouses in all kinds of weather than I could count. One of the more memorable times involved watching grey-green clouds slowly swirl and rotate in the sky above my school bus, listening to the roar of thunder and the bus’ engine speeding up to get out of the storm. For some reason on that day, the scene outside the window struck me as particularly beautiful. It struck me as a moment worth digging my camera out of the bottom of my backpack filled with mostly unopened chemistry text books. It struck me as a scene worth, nearly 10 years later, to still have on my hard drive. Maybe at the time, it was all the changes going on; the moving away, my utter disinterest in what I thought for years I wanted to study that prompted me to capture a moment. Maybe I sensed this scene is very different to where I would end up. Maybe it was just the aesthetic factors: the brilliant white snow, the red barn glowing in the pastel winter light or an accidental yet pleasing composition.
Hosting the Scot’s parents for a week usually means many things: family time, new stories about the hijinks of the dog, nice meals, getting a little bit spoiled. This time we decided to escape the city on a day trip to the seaside town of Whitstable.
So to recap, I bought a new camera and then ignored it for the better part of 4 months. In order to remedy this sorry state of affairs (and to prevent myself from going into winter hibernation), I set myself some goals.
1. Take the camera out of the house
2. Take photos along the river near my flat.
3. Go for a stroll along the South Bank
4. Go somewhere new and take photos.
It took a bit more than a month to achieve all four, but I did, finally.
One fine Sunday in London, perhaps the last warm, sunny day of the year, we decided to escape the nice weather and, if for a little while, the Earth itself.
Teacup and Mouse 