window on my world: Easter in London

Before I understood what globalisation was or what the processes of cultural diversity involved, there was London. The city for one reason or another has remained a constant in my immensely changeable existence. The only other place I spent as much time during the summer months as a child was my grandparents home in Tipperary. It was a world like no other Di and I had ever experienced. A world of excitement and intrigue. Within the city, parts of it have featured more at different periods of time spent there: it was the museum of natural history as a younger child where the life like models of primitive man left an imprinted visual memory on my mind. The markets of Shepard Bush where the only Bank of Ireland outside Ireland was once located. Di and I ran through the stalls downing balaclavas against the cold of January 1991having been evacuated from Sudan. It was a different time when two children shouting in Arabic proudly sporting our balaclavas raised not a single brow. It was the triple room right at the top of the Jubilee B&B near Victoria train station, where the floor sloped down from the centre of the room.
A few years later it was the house in Eltham with its 120 foot garden where we spent many bright summer evenings amusing ourselves with our prizes won playing camel racing in the arcades of trocodero on Picadilly Circus. It was Greenwhich meantime and the Cutty Sark.
When I had just turned 19 and Di was thinking of the possibility of the UK for architecture, we spent an Easter holiday in Eltham with Jo and May. It is a time I don't treasure as I experienced for the first time in my life British prejudice behaviour towards Irish. This was not the reason I did not visit London again for many years but it is interesting on reflection as it marked a long period of absence. Upon returning from Bangladesh and embarking on the PhD in Brighton, it seemed only natural to reacquaint myself with the heaving metropolis. I discovered musicals, the Tate, Saint Pauls, Spitalfields, Soho, Goodge Street, bookshops and Edgeware Road - the list could go on! I currently live across the water, but whenever I get an opportunity to go I dive into a world that offers a different experience every time.
This Easter weekend I jetted over to see my Pa, who is currently living in a quaint English town of Woking 20 minutes by train from Waterloo. Of course a trip into London was a must to create new memories in familiar places. Most of the visual memories are imprinted on the canvas of my mind but on this trip I attempted to capture some of the images of my London.