cc licensed flickr photo shared by Larry Johnson
It’s been a week since I got back from my London Calling trip– I was wondering what sort of prophetic paragraphs I could write, or somehow to try and distill all the senses and sounds of such a place into words. I #fail.
So down below I have lopped in my pile of media- flickr photos, some place tagging in a Google Map, and a video of my obligatory Abbey Road crosswalk walk.
In my time, I walked as much as possible- I did easily figure out navigating the city via the Tube, but there is something about being in cities and seeing them afoot that I enjoy best. Highlights? Many- photographing the city at night (out past midnight with larry the first night, jat lag, what jet lag? see his great photos); wandering into a pub and finding the sport on TV was diving, watching the night lights of the city turn on from a river boat bar, visiting futurelab in Bristol, river boat ride to London Tower Bridge (perfect lighting) and Greenwich, seeing Babbage’s brain at the Science museum, a fun meetup at Slu and Lettuce arranged by @GianninaRossini, plus meeting Matt Jukes and Rachel Bruce there too, doing my Beatles walk, getting tossed out of the London Geological Society, gins and tonics, Indian food, meeting André Avorio (thanks for a twitter introduced by Barbara Dieu), seeing Prom 47 at Royal Albert Hall (getting slightly lost walking back at 1am), meeting up and seeing the Tate and Soho with Josie Fraser, the British Museum…. well saying it like that filled the space.
Thanks to everyone who made suggestions on my Dog Calling London wiki– I annotated with what I followed up on. Here is a Google Map with a number of my stops:
View London Dog Calling in a larger map
And my photos are flickr-set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/sets/72157624634053489/
Last, what is essentially fan’s pilgrimage, I made it a point to go out and visit Abbey Road, the place the fab Four did that famous walk across the street. It’s chock full of people like me, taking photos, walking back and forth, as well as ordinary people just trying to get somewhere. I made a gaffe by not bringing something to write with, as they allow, even encourage people to sign the white wall out in front.
They even offer the The Crossing a web site that runs a live web cam pointing at the spot. If you go there the same day, you can find your own footage– I did that the night after my visit, and used software to grab a recording of my little segments, and mixed it into this little video:
That was a fun one to edit.
London is huge, epic, and has more museums per capita than maybe anywhere- how can one person take it all in? In small bits, and then get the taste to return.
I hope to do that.
