Trafalgar Square -- jcarolek

With the recent water dumping on my laptops, courtesy of the Holiday Inn in San Diego, I have been working through attempting to back up "stuff" from my hard drives....lest things go further south with the laptops that are still limping along. Of course, many of the items being backed up are photographs, and as I back them up, I find myself looking at the albums again ... this naturally makes the process a lot longer, but it also makes it more enjoyable.

I came across some photos I took in 2004 when I had to travel to London for business. I stayed at a hotel right in Trafalgar Square and took pictures of the pigeons there. I recall my husband chiding me for wasting time taking pictures of this common "pest bird," but the scene had brought back memories of when I was a young girl living in England...so I snapped away and didn't concern myself with whether the birds were picture-worthy to others...they certainly were to me.

My memory that I was recapturing was of a school trip I had taken while attending Charlton Park Convent in Cheltenham. We went to London to see the opening of the movie, "Oliver." Of course, we also did a little sightseeing along the way and Trafalgar Square was one of our stops. I recall the sea of light blue "summer" uniform dresses, with the navy blue blazers, and broad brimmed straw uniform hats (boaters), knee socks and sensible brown leather "outdoor" shoes, that identified us as Charlton Park Convent students. I'm sure there were at least 100 of us on this outing.

We purchased little cups of birdseed from an old vendor there and marveled as the pigeons came immediately to us to be fed. We put seed on our boaters and delighted in the birds landing on our heads...LOL..we were 11 years old and our pleasures were simple.

Eventually, we were rounded up and proceeded to the theater to watch the show. There, I discovered my first schoolgirl "crush" on an actor. Yep, Mark Lester played the role of Oliver and I thought he was adorable! I was certain I was right when, in reading the bios of the actors as they ran across the screen, I discovered that Mark and I were exactly the same age. We shared a birthday, he sang beautifully, he was cute as the dickens (no pun intended) and I knew I would be in love with him forever! LOL egads! Of course, the other girls all liked the more flamboyant "Artful Dodger," but the sweet little boy Oliver would forever be my favorite.

I saved the program from that day for many years, finally tossing it in one of my moves as an adult. I suppose it might have been a worthy item for sale on eBay, but I did not know about eBay then, so, it was tossed. But the memory of that day lingers, and my pictures of the pigeons in 2004 were evidence of the living memory of that day 35 years earlier.