A very special day

As we assumed that Royal Wedding would receive enough coverage anyway, today we attended a street party organised by British republicans.





A typical street party with souvenirs, some attractions, food, drinks and talks:



The place wasn't very crowded but there were more people than I first expected:





Interviewers didn't look like representing top titles:



Later, musicians arrived:



I liked the event. No aggressive speeches (at least while we were there), decent amount of irony, smiles, nice music.

The initial location proposed for the party was somewhere in Camden, but then it has been rejected by the council. Still, the Red Lion Square turned out to be very relevant to republican ideas with its memorials to Bertrand Russel and Fenner Brockway:



P.S. Also to note, Guardian.co.uk's front page was absolutely awesome today.

P.P.S. The Guardian on this party: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/30/not-the-royal-wedding-republicans

Morning

A blast from the past

If anyone is interested, I have received a comment to my post of 2009 explaining why I wasn't able to find lion sculptures described in the old textbook.

Competing with myself

When I found myself in Kensington Gardens today with pencils ready I had no usual doubts about a spot offering the best view.



As I had sketched the same fountain a year ago, I was tempted to give it another try:



Time flies :(

Also here are some other pics. The day was so sunny and marvellous that my phone's white balance got even worse than before:

"Death is terrible, tho' borne on angels' wings!"

While taking a short cut today through what was looking like a small garden we have stumbled upon these two monuments:



They are only a couple of paces away from each other:



Speaking of Daniel Defoe, I had been struggling back in the old days remembering "The Treasure Island" and "Robinson Crusoe" authors (more precisely, remembering author of one book as the one of the remaining and vice versa). I was blaming the fact that both books are read by Russian kids at the same age, often one after another and also translation made them look more similar than they really are.

However, today the myth was busted - apparently, British people have the same problem. At least I witnessed a British company arguing near Defoe's memorial if he was the author of the "The Treasure Island" or "Robinson Crusoe", until they noticed the engraving.

P.S. While browsing Wikipedia before writing this post, I learned that Bunhill Fields cemetery is an "ascendant" of our local Abney Park being probably the first London burial ground which tolerated Nonconformists.

Shoreditch