[Photo Journal] Rainy Streets of London

Myra here.

We are excited to share photographs every Tuesday about our recent or long-ago travels, or just everyday stuff that appealed to our mindful eye and sharp sensibilities as captured through fleeting images.

Walking through the Rainy Streets of London

A few weeks back, I did a short side-trip to London after moderating a session and presenting a paper at the University of Birmingham for the IRSCL (International Research Society for Children’s Literature) 2015 Congress. Considering how expensive a UK visa costs, I thought I might as well stay a bit longer and visit my good friend, multi-award-winning author Candy Gourlay who was generous and kind enough to host me while I was in London. Here are some pictures Candy took of me while we were walking through the rainy streets of London:

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” 
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3

“Mind the gap!” 
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” 
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning. I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.” 
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew –
Wanted to know what the River knew, 
Twenty Bridges or twenty-two,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that River told:” 
― Rudyard Kipling

“Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It’s the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom…” 
― Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?” 
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.” 
― Anna Quindlen, Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City

“Unreal City, 
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.” 
― T.S. Eliot