As a result of starting a blog I now try to take photos of the things and places that I would most likely have overlooked before. Everyone goes shopping but when do we ever take photos of things like supermarkets? I wish I had in the 70's. I remember my local Tescos having frozen flies in the ice cream cabinets, a real dive - that's a far cry from the carefully cultivated image it has today! I've been going to Oxford Street, above, since the 60's but I don't think I've got any photos of it. You see quite of few of these little rickshaws now but, you can also see, they are great at holding up the traffic!
There is nothing you can't get in Oxford Street but it is a bit of a nightmare, pounding the pavements with millions of others, and now there is an alternative - Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush. I discovered it when I went back in the spring and the scale of it is amazing! I didn't think anything would have as much as Oxford Street but it does and - a big plus - you stay dry in those typical British summer downpours!
Here's the view that greets you as you come out of the tube station and turn left to walk towards the entrance. The scale of it blew me away the first time I went there but strangely it seemed to shrink with every visit!
4 comments:
I can't believe that's Oxford Street, Felicity, didn't recognise it without all the buses and taxis! Since when did they install rickshaws? I usually go there at Xmas - glutton for punishment! - you don't walk, you just get pushed along with the crowd!! I do love shopping there though. Interesting about that shopping centre in Shepherds Bush...must remember that.
I remember the supermarkets from the 60s when people could smoke in there. The weirdest thing I ever saw in a supermarket was seeing former president Richard Nixon resign as Pres on an old tv hanging over a half-empty open meat case in a small market in a town named Happy Camp in the California Sierra mountains. Talk about incongruous!
Felicity, I've been catching up with your trip to London. The city feels like a foreign one to me these days even though I used to work there previously. I rarely go in except to a few galleries and museums from time to time. So it is interesting to see your photos.
I so agree with your comments about old age. My mother lives with us now, and I am forced to ask myself what will my husband and I do when we reach her age and state given that we have no children (!) and friends only of our own age or older. I suspect that there may well be euthanasia by then.
There speaks a woman who has never been to Bluewater!
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