As you can imagine, the London summer has be dominated by the cheering of Olympics aficionados all over my city. Well, to tell you the truth, I somehow managed NOT to see any of the actual games. I have never been a big sport’s fan or a good patriot, I didn’t cheer when France won a world cup in 1998 – I was actually playing Bowling in Italy that summer – and so I was again originally planning to escape the city during the hectic Olympic times. It however turned out I didn’t and I was fearful of what was coming….
The reality is that it was the calmest, most relaxing atmosphere I have ever seen in London. People were either watching the games in pubs or public events, at the games themselves or probably enjoying a dip in the pool in Greece or other european destinations. So London was empty. So here I was in July, ready to go around London and explore the city while everyone else was celebrating the games.
Unfortunately the punishment took a whole different shape: advertising. Every brand was jumping on the Olympic brandwagon and I was surrounded by sports metaphors and stories about achieving your goals and dreaming big. I felt trapped.
After 3 weeks of brainwash, I even felt compelled to blog about the Olympics myself. I had gone around to the Olympic site, taken loads of abstract pictures of signage and the overall crowd atmosphere in the street of London and then realized I was doing the exact same thing every single poster was doing to me: jumping on the bandwagon. So I decided I was going to show you my summer vibe instead with no signs whatsoever of what was going around me.
Barbecues at friends, park rides with my newly fixed bike, drinks along the canal and pretty much in and on top of anything, be it canals, roofs, gardens…
I love London in the summer: the light changes and the clouds turn into on dramatic shapes, everyone is out and about and in a cheerful mood. Girls wear tiny bikinis in the parks and swim in the London freezing ponds.
We don’t get much sun here but we sure know how to enjoy it when it finally shows up.
Cheers to that!
Malika x
