A little lunchtime flanage

[oursin]

I'm not sure that this really counts as being a flaneur, as I was headed to and from the hairdressers, but it was a nice short walk through parts of Bloomsbury..

Along Endsleigh Gardens - possibly it gets this not entirely appropriate name from passing by Friends' House Garden for part of its length - this garden is meant to be a haven of peace, which is somewhat incongruous given that its north side abuts the Euston Road with its thundering traffic.

Down Endsleigh Street to Tavistock Square, where the monument to conscientious objectors is still draped with rather wilting white flowers from (I presume) International Conscientious Objectors Day, 15 May (a commemoration which did not pop up on any of my social networking sites).

Urban wildlife: one extremely confident squirrel perching on the back of a seat on which someone was sitting and eating his lunch.

Bloomsbury, of course, has a very high concentration of English Heritage Blue Plaques (and maroon Camden Council plaques). My hairdressers gets massive cool points for having a plaque to Kenneth Williams but close by are plaques to the actor-dramatist Emlyn Williams and two members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Only in Bloomsbury: person in next chair having her hair done telling her stylist all about her PhD on Assyrian artefacts.

Back via Gordon Square (which is all HAI BLOOMZBERRY GROUP WOZ ERE!!) where the roses were already blooming, and the back of the Godless Institution in Gower Street, famous (apart from its academic renown) for having Jeremy Bentham's taxidermied body on display, and in time to compose myself before an afternoon meeting.

Comments

[kake]

I was briefly in Bloomsbury yesterday, on a 38 bus heading from lunch in Chinatown to the Gunmakers pub in Farringdon. We went past Gray's Inn Gardens (perhaps more Holborn than Bloomsbury?), where there were some very large old trees right next to freshly-planted saplings. There's quite a lot of green stuff in that area, isn't there?

Also I didn't previously know about International Conscientious Objectors day, so thanks for mentioning that.

[oursin]

It's full of little pockets of greenery - some of which are only occasionally accessible to the public, e.g. The Sunken Garden of the University of London.