Me and Dave went to Birmingham today to sea (sorry) the Sea Life center! I brought my “good” camera with me but I’m very bad at using it. Luckily some of my photos look maybe like they’re blurry on purpose?
But I did manage to take a handful of okayish/good ones!
Not just in the aquarium but around Birmingham too. Birmingham is utterly beautiful. And it has a giant mechanical bull now!
The rest of the photos I took where you can actually see anything are regular old iPhone photos, but, never mind!
I went on a photo-gathering trip to London yesterday, while preparations for the Queen’s funeral were in full swing.
The train station was warning people not to join The Queue.
Shop windows were full of Queen Elizabeth images/merch, and also Paddingtons. It infuriates me how Paddington has become associated with the Queen but more on that some other time.
This is not just public mourning! This is M&S public mourning!
Flowers and flags popping up in all sorts of places.
The Marble Arch area was packed with people. I did get this nice picture of a bird though.
Onto Hyde Park. People and police everywhere, and a load of screens and portaloos set up for the funeral.
(other crowds, cops, & the odd yelling person not pictured.)
Found a weird beehive type thing and an unbothered raven.
Apparently this also happened in Hyde Park:
The Holocaust Memorial Garden in Hyde Park has now become a makeshift Queen Memorial Garden pic.twitter.com/1UNG54mXLv
and I’m glad I didn’t see that because I would have lost my fucking mind. Just a really, really shitty thing to do. (The part of me that still has a shred of optimism about human nature wonders if some of those flowers, the ones unmarked by any Queen pictures, genuinely were for Holocaust victims but I suspect not. I mean, I hope so, I just suspect not.)
On lighter notes…
I do like this pic of the Union Jacks at half-mast, it came out really well.
This shot of a plane going past a statue isn’t too bad either.
Oh look more Paddingtons, Paddingtons everywhere. Wouldn’t it make SO MUCH more sense for these to be given to refugee kids who arrive in Britain with no toys?
So Buckingham Palace itself was closed off but the area around it was MENTAL.
The tributes from children I suppose are touching in a way, but only in the same sense any children’s drawing left out in the rain is.
Those photos probably don’t give the full scale of everything but hopefully this video does.
Absolute chaos I tell you. So were the surrounding areas.
Piccadilly Circus looked beautiful but police were everywhere.
There was a moment of silence for the Queen on the train! ON THE TRAIN! Madness. A voice came over the tannoy asking for a minute’s silence but most people in the carriage were asleep anyway.
Got home and was informed shortly afterwards that my grandmother had taken a turn for the worse. Apparently, she can’t even recognise her family members now. It absolutely sucks. But the country won’t stand still for her, will it.
