Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Bloomsbury Festival


And so I'm back in London! Surprised? Maybe not. I haven't posted in about a month after all. Just really busy with work lately. 

We went to the Bloomsbury Festival last weekend. It was good fun! A brilliant little excursion out of our flats and into the sunshine (I make us sound like hermits, don't I?). The weather was perfect. It had been quite cold for the past week, but this weekend the cold went away for a little while. A comfortable temperature of 15 degrees Celsius. 

There were lots of things going on. Walking tours, galleries to visit, exhibitions, little fairs at the gardens surrounding the Bloomsbury area. We went for the fair at Russell Square Gardens on Sunday. 

There were groups performing at different sections of the Gardens. A choir group at one side, a dance group at another. Music was playing everywhere. It wasn't as crowded as we thought it would be. 

There was an exhibition going on as well. I'm not very sure about what the name the exhibition was, but the point of it was that members of the public could pick up individual words from the set which they keep at the side and put them together to form poems. They can then hang the poems up on the space provided. They look like the picture below. 


This one says "on and on and on". Clever, no? The 'author' made it really long and hung it in a circle (instead of letting it hang from the top like the others did) to emphasize even further that it's never ending. 

There were lots of tents set up too. People selling arts and craft, bookstores selling books, a children's corner, a photobooth. It was really quite cool. Lots of things to see. I bought a book called "Wreck this Journal". It's a journal in which the pages will tell you lots of random and silly things to do, such as, 'bring this journal into the shower with you and get it wet'. hahaha. It's been pretty amusing. Good way to release stress I suppose. 



After walking around, ZW felt a little hungry because she hadn't eaten lunch yet. So we walked over to the food tents and bought some Churros. No pictures unfortunately, but I can tell you that they were really fresh and really good and really worth the money. They make the Churros on the spot (with a nifty machine that churns the dough out!). I talked to them and they said that they are at Portobello Market every... Saturday was it? I think they said Saturday anyway. 

Churros in hand, we sat on the grass at the other part of Russell Square Gardens, where they had set up a stage. The SOAS World Music group was playing. You could see old people dancing to the beat, some families just sitting around on the grass (some on the table provided slightly further up), people playing with their dogs, couples snuggling... and like us, friends just sitting around and enjoying the music. 


We decided to go home when it got a little chilly. We walked back towards home, but stopped by one last tent (the children's art and craft tent). Little kids showing off their works by hanging them on the trees. Some had inspiring and touching messages written on them. 


And that wraps up a perfect weekend.