A Little Activism and a Little Singing

Don't worry --- it wasn't me singing.  

First, the activism piece: Greenpeace had an event to bring awareness to the environment changes that are going on in the Arctic and how those changes impact the animals that live there ---- more specifically, the polar bears.  As part of the event, they held a parade that started at Westminster and went through the streets to Jubilee Gardens.  The main attraction to the parade was a thing called "Aurora".  I say "thing" because it wasn't a float.  It was a giant mechanical polar bear.  That's right -- a mechanical polar bear.  

Aurora

The thing was huge ---- it was the size of the a doubledecker bus, but it wasn't motorized.  It seemed to operate by people picking up the legs of polar bear.  I don't know how you got that lousy job.  If you look closely at this picture, you can see the woman at the top of it.  You could enter to win an opportunity to ride in it for a while.  I was pretty content to just watch the thing walk by.

I cut in front of Aurora to book it over to the Tower Bridge area later that afternoon.  Thankfully, I'm pretty quick in the boot and Aurora was a bit slow.

The city has been celebrating the Thames for the past few weeks.  There have been boat shows, street festivals, etc.  On this particular afternoon, there was a choir celebration.  I missed the 600 children's choir because Aurora was rerouted due to high winds (damn polar bear).  I did make the 800 person choir.

Choir at the Scoop

It was pretty cool to hear all of them singing "Moon River" in the shadow of the Thames and the Tower of London.

Fair by choirs

Unfortuntately, as it happens a lot here lately, the rain came and put a damper on things.  If I didn't have the boot and run the risk of walking around the rest of the day with a wet sock, I would have stayed around and listened for the rest of the afternoon.  Well, a little bit of culture was better than none.