I often think London serves its tourists rather badly so far as it’s well-known landmarks are concerned, and as it happens I was taking pictures in three of them on the same day, Trafalgar Square, Parliament Square and Piccadilly Circus.
Trafalgar Square was improved greatly when the north side of it was closed to traffic, and at least makes a try with the column, lions and fountains, and the National Gallery along the whole of its north side is an impressive building (though its new block is uninspiring – thanks to Prince Charles we didn’t get a “monstrous carbuncle” that by now we would admire and love, but instead later got the unusually timid and rather bland post-modern Sainsbury Wing by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. The square’s south end is still a traffic scheme, with poor old Charles isolated on his horse, and again St Martins to the east is on the other side of a busy road. It’s an area that cries out for a more radical approach, particularly to traffic movement.
Parliament Square is frankly ridiculous. Traffic flows around all four sides and there is not even a crossing for pedestrians to get to the central area – you need to study the traffic lights and take your chances when they stop the cars. Understandably one of the constraints on the area is the need for security, but rather than ugly tank defences above ground we could have some nice landscaping – perhaps even a moat… And of course redirect traffic around the east and north side only, with proper pedestrian crossings.
A ‘Reclaim Love’ t-shirt, dancers and Eros. It wasn’t posed
But Piccadilly Circus is just a mess. A rather shabby pedestrian area around Eros, and its main feature a wall of advertising, but again traffic is the real problem, and the congestion charge doesn’t seem to have helped much. Perhaps one problem is that it is a flat rate charge, and that once you’ve paid it for the day it acts as an incentive to drive around more. Perhaps road pricing that charged for the actual time spent on the road would be more efficient – and have a built in incentive to avoid congested areas.
I don’t have a lot to write about last week’s Valentine Party at Piccadilly Circus. Of course as well as photographing the people involved I wanted to show where it was happening, and make use of that aluminium statue (after all Eros was particularly relevant to an event about love) and also all that neon – as it was an event opposing commercialisation.
Historic Annual Earth Healing Circle at Piccadilly Circus
This year’s party was perhaps too popular, making it too crowded for there to be a great deal of dancing, and also often too crowded to take pictures. The 12-24mm did come in handy, though as usual it was often just a bit too wide. But I enjoyed taking pictures and meeting people. More about the event and a ridiculous number of pictures on My London Diary.
Getting the right speed (1/125) for a hula hoop was a matter of luck
