Imperial Leisure

Imperial Leisure - jumping, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

A week ago, a lovely sunny day in London. Fiona and I would go for a picnic and we thought about Regent's Park, for a change, but they did not allow dogs off the lead. We had Fiona's chocolate labrador, Oona, with us. so we had to go a bit further to Primrose Hill, with its great views across the capital and across to the City and Canary Wharf in the east.

We spent the first hour or so under a tree having our picnic, all bought that morning in Tesco for less than ten pounds: pita bread, humous, guacamole, yoghurt, bananas, taco chips and so on, water, no wine. However, we were a little bit too close to a gobby scouser girl, so decided to move on after a while. Not so much shade so I had to sit on the grass with a tea cloth over my head!

Great to see all aspects fo London life pour out into the parks on a lovely summer's day. What a multi-cultural city London is!

Fiona went home after a while, whilst I walked into town to get a new sim card for my mobile, and walking through Regent'Park, I came across the Camden Green Fair/Bike Fest, with group playing on a stage. Lots and lots of people there and the group sounded excellent, so I stuck around, really getting into the music.... a sort of ska, mixed with hip-hop, punk, latin sounds, two rappers, a singer, a very energetic trombone player and a few others. It turns out that they are Imperial Leisure and you can hear their music on this link. Bloody good they were and well recommended. They do guerilla gigs around the country in car parks and shopping centres and, even, on Newquay Beach, last month! Their music and their energy is infectious! See them if you can and I dare you not to dance or jump up and down!

It was too late to get Fiona to come over, so I had to enjoy it by myself. It was interesting to look around the stalls after the concert to see so many green ad organic organisations encouraging people to consume this green product or that... whereas the point of a good green is not to consume or to consume much less. I was handed a leaflet for a naked bike ride through London for this weekend... a protest by bikers against the lack of cycle lanes in London. I wish them luck... but despite the congestion charge the roads of London seem to be quite full enough... and mostly full of large modern red buses, all queueing up one after the other. Great that there is so much public transport available but it is becoming a victim of its own success, with the buses clogging up so much of the space on the roads. Not much room for bicycles. London will never become an Amsterdam in that respect!

Tags: imperial leisure, bike fest, camden green fair, london