A very long walk.

Hello there!
In the end I didn't go exploring yesterday because it started raining rather heavily, and anyway I had the rather important task of deciding which postcards to put on my wall this year. I have a rather large collection of postcards (200+ at the last count!) and I am rather protective of them. This year I don't think I am going to have them all on my wall like I usually do, a) because I don't have enough blu-tac and b) I don't think we are officially allowed to have things stuck directly onto the wall anyway. But in any case, this post isn't supposed to be about my decorating habits, or indeed my postcard collection, as fascinating as it is. This morning I woke up with rather itchy feet as you can imagine, and felt, for the first time in my life, that London was truly open to me, a resident, not a tourist, and it is a marvellous feeling!

Sir Laurence Olivier

I decided it would probably be quite prudent to find my University as I imagine I will be spending rather a lot of time there over this coming year. I got off the tube too early and ended up wandering off in the wrong direction, the same direction strangely enough that I wandered off to the last time I was in London and had no idea where I was going. But I found The Strand eventually, and once I had worked out which direction I should in fact be going in, everything went rather smoothly. It is fashion week at the moment in London which I hadn't realised, and it seems something of importance was happening at Somerset House (which is next door to King's) and it was bustling with fashionable people of all types and announcements such as 'The bus for the Christopher Kane show is about to depart' and other such exciting information. But King's.... what can I say other than it is rather grand (from what I saw) and has a riverside terrace which looks onto The City to the left, and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament on the right. It was at this point that I was rather overcome with the fact I was in London, it was rather surreal and I had to call my Mummy up just to tell her I was standing on Waterloo Bridge. Must stop doing this sort of thing if I am to blend in (hah!)

A London Routemaster Bus

From here I had a little wander around the Embankment and went to say 'Hullo' to the statue of Laurence Olivier they have so thoughtfully placed outside the National Theatre. It really is very lovely around that area, not the most traditionally aesthetically pleasing buildings, but I really like them all the same, even though they are very utilitarian and Brutalist - I can't put my finger on it! From here I wandered a bit more in an unknown direction and eventually found myself in Lower Marsh which had some very interesting looking shops and cafés. From here I made my way to Westminster with the intention of visiting Poet's Corner, that was until I realised it costs £13 to get in. Not feeling particularly flush or indeed flash, I decided to move on and without really planning it walked through Horse Guard's Parade and onto Whitehall where I made my way to that ever familiar Leicester Square. On the way I saw a Routemaster bus, so, like an eager tourist I took a photo.

I went to .... The National Portrait Gallery (not a very big surprise) because it is my favourite and I wanted to see the special exhibition they have on at the moment called Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits. But before I did so, I went and said a quick hello to James Joyce and also found a lovely photograph of particle physicist Professor Brian Cox. Which was nice. The exhibition was very good, lots of fabulous photographs of Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth.... the list goes on. All in their prime. All beautiful photographs, and a couple of really interesting photographs which showed the retouching process. You see, they've been doing it many years! Unsurprisingly I bought three postcards; W. H Auden, Samuel Beckett and a very dapper looking Bill Nighy. By this point, I was rather tired as you can imagine (Mum if you're reading this I did have a sit down and a coffee at some point) but for some reason carried on wandering around for a while just to see what was around, and to try and commit some things to memory so I won't have to walk around with an A-Z all the time in the future.

So here I am, back in my room, drinking a cup of peppermint tea and having a bit of a sit down. And yet... there is so much more to see! I might have to go to the Tate tomorrow, but in the meantime I must find somewhere that sells coat hangers - how do Londoners cope without a Wilkinson's hardware shop? Bizarre.

Love, R. x