The Greenwich and Docklands Festival, London’s most spectacular free festival, started today. Different themes were held throughout the city: a medal ceremony in Greenwich, tango at Canary Wharf and a theatrical track event at National Maritime Museum just to name a few. The festival brought together sports and arts by fusing South Asian dance with football, marathon running with music and swimming with sway pole choreography. Sounds cool, right?
One had to choose where one wanted to be on opening day, as events around London and area happened simultaneously. I chose Time is Like Water Flowing at the o2 arena, on the North Greenwich tube stop.
Imagine a Chinese landscape painting brought to life on an epic scale in a specially commissioned production with aerial performances, martial arts and innovative multimedia effects. It was put on by Les Passagers, a French performance company internationally renowned for vertical theatre.
It was quite cool and a crowd pleaser with the costumes, make up and acrobatics. I would imagine running, swinging, jumps and leaps up and down a wall is not as easy as it looks, but man, do I want to try it! Where can I sign up? Ropes, harnesses, rappelling up and down a vertical surface would be a fun challenge.
Time is like Flowing Water was the main attraction at the o2 today, despite the red carpet set up for the UK premiere of the movie, The Prince of Narnia set for later tonight.
But the real highlight of the day was hopping on the train to go see my good friend Mat in the country. I spent 9 days driving/camping with Mat last summer and I LOVED it. Yes, a city mouse like me. Although I love London for all the cultural attractions it offers, there’s something about the English countryside that’s truly spectacular. It has a piece of my heart because I love the colour green in nature, and in this countryside, you see so many shades of green.
There are 2 things that I’ve said aloud and meant whole-heartedly from my trip last year:
01. I fell in love with England’s clouds and sky
02. The english countryside can make me give up being a city dweller
And it hasn’t changed one bit, I found, as I rolled into the station.
Mat picked me up and we headed for what else? A drink at The Fleece in Bretfordton. He took me here last summer and it was exactly as I remembered. It’s this quaint little pub with a huge backyard and picnic tables for the summer nights.
There’s even a spirit attached to The Fleece; the original owner named Lola. Upon her death when she left the pub to the National Trust, she had requested that The Fleece never serve crisps (or chips in North American lingo) on its menu. And it complied for a while. When they did try to serve chips, that’s when mysterious things started to happen and Lola appeared several times. Since taking it off the menu, she’s been at peace ever since. How’s that for pub history?
Actually, there’s a lot of things I remembered – that’s how much of an indelible mark the countryside left on me. I can’t emphasize enough how truly stunning the country is. We drove around so I can take pictures of the scenery. We stopped off in Snowshill in the Cotswolds with its honey coloured stone cottage homes. It was also the film location used when Bridget Jones went to visit her parents at Christmas. Only today was a gorgeous sunny day.
The thing about Mat is that he’s probably the most outdoorsy friend that I have. He’s a country mouse through and through and could never even entertain the thought of living in the city. He’s becoming a tree surgeon, drives a diesel car, eats organic as much as possible, growing his own fruits, vegetables and herbs.
Like me, he’s sensitive to leaving as small a carbon footprint on earth as possible. Unlike me, he can hunt prey for food in the wild or if equilibrium needs call for it. (eg. the havoc brought on by the overpopulation of bunnies). Although that is something I can never get onboard with, I know that he understands balance in nature. He never kills for the fun of it and loathes people of that mindset.
I like that we both have staunch principles about what we won’t contribute to and we both try to live an environmentally aware existence in our own ways. Mat teaches me more about the wildlife, nature and the outdoors, while I extoll on the horrors of factory farming or the absurd global de-forestation taking place, all in the name of filling demands of raising cattle for steaks. And like me, we can both get into these heavy and heartfelt discussions on these topics we’re passionate about.
Mat took me up to his family friend’s private 1,000 acre plot of land, used to grow apples and plums. It was amazing to see all the brown bunnies scuttling about who also calls these hills their home. We walked up and down and around the hills and the view just went on as far as the eye could see. I even asked if the idea of camping up here was do-able. To lay down and watch the stars twinkle between the orchard trees would be heaven on earth. and come August, the apples and plums will be ripe for the picking. Can you imagine, waking up at dawn, after a blissful sleep of fresh country air and reaching up for a piece of fruit to greet the morning?
The city will never have this.
And for that I am truly thankful.
View more photos of my trip on my Flickr album.
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