Запретный плод всегда сладок... или Свободу книгам!

В эти дни Американская библиотечная ассоциация в защиту вольного чтения (ALA) проводит неделю запрещенных книг.  Организуются мероприятия в поддержку открытого доступа к литературе.

Помнится. в Советском Союзе, в сталинские времена, во времена железного занавеса, ну практически, во все советские времена, почти всем советским людям казалось, что только им не дают читать все что им хотелось бы почитать, что проклятая цензура работает лучше всего в Советском Союзе. Ан нет! Смотрите, лист запрещенной классики! Запрещенной не на Советской земле, а там, где и трава зеленее и небо синее и свобода самая свободная.

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger 
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck 
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee 
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker 
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce 
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison 
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding 
9. 1984, by George Orwell 

11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov 
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck 

15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller 
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley 
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell 
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway 
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner 
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway 

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston 
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison 
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison 
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell 
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright 
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey 
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut 
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway 

33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London 

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin 

38. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren 

40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien 

45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair 

48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence 
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess 
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin 

53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote 

55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie 

57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron 

64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence 

66. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut 
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles 

73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs 
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh 
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence 

80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer 

84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller 

88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser 

97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike 

Мы то как раз, многое из этого читали, даже не подозревая, что где-то там, за бугром, эти книги запрещены или нерекомендованы к чтению.

Цензура, как мировая, так и местечковая,  не дремлет и сейчас. В прошлом году в тех или иных штатах или маленьких населенных пунктах Америки, или просто в отдельно взятых школах,  было запрещено, согласно ALA  (не поленитесь проверить здесь, правильно ли я посчитала!), 46 книг. Среди них опять наша любимая классика: "Бойня номер пять" Курта Воннегута и "Над пропостью во ржи" Селлинджера. Бедный Селлинджер пожалуй самый нежеланный. Где и за что его только не запрещали! Начиная с 1960 года и по сей день.

А знаменитый роман Олдоса Хаксли "О, дивный новый мир", написанный в 1931 году ("Brave New World by Aldous Huxley), который занимает пятую строчку в списке 100 самых лучших английских романов был нерекомендован к чтению в одной из американских школ по причине того,  что родителям показалось, будто в книге слишком много оскорблений на расовой почве, слишком много оскорбительных выражений и искаженной информации о коренных жителях Америки, слишком много стереотипов, а сам текст не представляет литературной ценности для читателя из современного общества. 

 В запрещенные попала повесть еще одного английского писателя. Книга   Марка Хэддона "Загадочное ночное убийство собаки" (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by British writer Mark Haddon).  Главный герой романа - мальчик, страдающий аутизмом. Роман был написан в 2003 году и был признан лучшей книгой на нескольких литературных турнирах. Кроме того, эта книга очень популярна среди студентов - медиков и психологов. А вот в одном из городов штата Мичиган ее изъяли из библиотек потому что посчитали, что герои книги иногда разговаривают на непечатном языке.   


У нас, в социалистичеких державах, запрещали не в отдельно взятых школах, а глобально - по всей стране. Но зато как хотелось прочитать, что запрещалось! И читали ведь как-то, в самиздатах, по очереди.  И были самой читающей державой в мире.

Правь, Британия!, Магна Карта и может ли Дэвид Камерон считать себя достойным гражданином

Мы недавно с горечью узнали, что наш премьер-министр Дэвид Камерон, выпускник Итона и Оксфордского университета, где он изучал философию, политику и экономику, не знает, что такое Великая хартия вольностей (Magna Carta) и кто написал гимн "Правь, Британия" (Rule Britannia).

Все средства массовой информации отметили этот позор Камерона на американском ток-шоу его тезки Дэвида Литтермана. Вот например газета Телеграф (The Telegraph) тоже стыдится невежества своего премьера.

Запись этой передачи вы можете посмотреть здесь:

Да, не удалось бы нашему премьер-министру стать гражданином Великобритании, если бы ему пришлось сдавать тест "Life in the UK". Вот простые бывшие иммигранты, а нынешние граждане если и не знали про Магна Карту и про автора Правь, Британия! то им  пришлось это выучить, чтобы сдать экзамен. Теперь они с удовольствие напевают припев этой патриотичной песни,  особенно в заключительный день Променадных концертов (BBC Proms)

Кенсингтонские сады как вертолетные площадки

В Лондоне много парков и скверов.  Почти все из них доступны для всех. Даже для вертолетов.

Снимок сделан в один из редких теплых дней только что ушедшего лета.

How we robbed the Bank of England

I don’t supposed you believed us when we said that we intended to rob the Bank of England, did you?

Well we did. This is how we did it.

But first, a little background. We had visited the Bank on the Open Day last year and realised, from the gold bar on display in the museum, that they are very heavy. Elena went to work in preparation for today’s planned heist. She created some specially adapted underpants out of leather ( unterlederhosen) for me to wear. These would play a crucial role on the day, but to see how we must return to the present.

Elena and I queued in the rain for an hour and a half on the Open Day, along with a couple of thousand other people.

Once in the imposing stone edifice, with its solid eighteen feet thick walls of windowless stone, and sparkling chandeliers and dark polished oak frames, we joined a small party of about thirty curious tourists. 

The interior is a marvellous and spacious example of British Upper Class, Enlightenment taste, designed to impress with great vaulted ceilings and delicate gold fig leaf decoration, miles of corridors and sumptuous silk tapestries from the 16^th Century, elaborate and deep carpets that match the ceilings in pattern and decoration – and most impressive of all – a vault containing the second largest gold reserves in the world!

Of course, the entire stash would be a bit of a handful, so we had decided that one bar, shaped as they all are like a coffin (a brilliant observation by Elena – how many have died for this barbaric relic?) would suffice on this occasion. Besides, there is a limit to the number of gold bars that my specially constructed unterlederhosen could carry.

All that was necessary was to create a distraction that would allow me to break away from the crowd. Our chance came when we spotted the sign prohibiting photography. Elena pointed her camera at an impressive statue of Charles James Fox. 

Two pink clad, yes, pink, security men pushed through the crowd and fell upon her, causing everyone to part and then stare at her as she mumbled her apologies. I darted away and unseen into one of the – another amazing fact – three hundred lavatories in the Bank. 

I still do not know why there are so many lavatories. But we had been given this knowledge by the guide as soon as the tour began. We figured that the work at the bank must be of the kind that loosens the bowels – international markets must have always been volatile I suppose, as the bank was founded in 1694, and that volatility must have always taken its toll on the alimentary canal.

It was a long and sweaty wait for me, cooped up inside that small lavatory. My unterlederhosen were not calculated to be either cool or comfortable, so I slipped them off and waited until I knew that the building would be empty. An eerie feeling - half naked, in a strange lavatory for seventeen hours.

Elena had left with the crowd to complete the second and crucial part of our plan. Using an e-mail gleaned from a friend we had made who worked at the bank, she mailed security to say that a certain outside member of the Monetary Policy Committee would be working late this evening to finish off some work for the meeting the following morning. It was not a co-incidence that I bear a passing resemblance to this man, and I was wearing a typical business suit. Nobody would worry about me shuffling around and popping into the museum where a genuine gold bar, worth about half a million Pounds, was on display.

Along the gloomy, cavernous corridors I strode, looking perplexed by monetary matters, and I even nodded at a security guard as I passed him!

I was alone in the museum. The gold bar glistened in the soft security light. My replica stand and bar was in my briefcase and soon replaced the original, whose legs I sawed off with a small hacksaw. This was one attack they were not expecting.

I heard footsteps. I adopted an even more academic and distracted expression and wandered with a lost look towards them.

“ Are you lost Sir?”, she enquired without suspicion.

Outsourcing was my saviour. Different staff all the time, she could not distinguish me from Mr _________. the well known economist.

“Er, perhaps, no, I can’t be, otherwise you wouldn’t have found me, according to the efficiency theory of markets anyway, but I’m not sure about that….er”

She smiled and I passed her and headed back to my lavatory.

At 9.30 am I was striding towards the main entrance and exit of the Bank. The gold bar dangled in its leather pouch from my reinforced leather underpants. A secretary gasped as I passed. Too much attention I thought – that’s never happened before.

As crowds of suited workers surged in, and others waited to shoot out, I caught a cluster of these and was out without having to use a security fob to open the glass gates.

Another girl gasped as I turned into the street. It was Elena.

“ Let’s go home - now”, she said tersely, and I thought how untrue it is that money can’t buy you love!

 We got away with it.

But you won’t read about it in the media and we won’t be arrested – it’s too embarrassing for them to admit that the Bank of England lost some of its gold to Mark and Elena.

They’ll just say that we made it up.

Written and mailed from our new luxury villa on the Isle of Capri.

Три сестры на сцене лондонского театра Янг Вик

Мы с Марком подходили к театру сентябрьским субботним вечером, в надежде не разочароваться от этой постановки. Достаточно было разочарований от нового фильма АннаКаренина. Мы сами собираемся скоро в Москву и эта знаменитое «Хочу в Москву!» еще больше подгоняло  нас на  спектакль в постановке знаменитого австралийского режиссера  Бенедикта Эндрюса. 

Еще у входа было понятно, что не только нас – разноликая толпа осаждала билетную стойку и стойку бара. Публика была разномастная – белые, черные, молодые, старые. 

Публика была счастливая и оживленная, совсем не представляющая, какую трудную эмоциональную полосу препятствий придется ей преодолеть. 

Преодолев эту полосу, она выйдет из театра задумавшейся. Очищенной и, возможно, просветленной, имевшей счастье услышать чеховское предостережение, что жить надо сейчас, а не через три сотни лет, и то, что жизнь пролетает быстро и незаметно, что мы можем оценить ее только перед самым ее концом. Как, например, барон Тузенбах, заметил красоту деревьев, растущих вокруг только перед уходом на дуэль, на которой он был убит.  

Происходящее на сцене держало нас (я уверена, что и остальных зрителей тоже!) в напряжении, заставляло плакать и смеяться, страдать и радоваться. Нам казалось, что призрак Антона Павловича сидел рядом и аплодировал новаторской и современной версии Бенедикта Эндрюса. Я уверена, что Чехов кричал «Браво!».  

Лет пять назад я смотрела постановку Дяди Вани в одном из любительских театров на севере Лондона. Там были стилизованные под старину костюмы, сапоги в гармошку, бесконечные самовары и английский с неприятным акцентом (хотя все актеры были англичане). Три сестры Эндрюса, слава Богу, лишены всей это лубочной русскости. Одна эстрадная песня советских времен, ненавязчиво звучащая в начале спектакля, доктор Чебутыкин, держащий в руках русскую лондонскую газету Puls-UK, ну и самовар в подарок Ирине на ее 20-летие – вот пожалуй и все. Зритель на отвлекается и не раздражается от присутствия непонятных вещей и от неприятного, странного акцента. Вообще, ничего лишнего! Ничто не отвлекает внимания от героев пьесы. Нельзя не отметить оригинальное решение сцены – 160 сдвинутых в одну площадку серых столов, которые потом постепенно разбираются и уносятся. 

Английский рок, много сигаретного дыма, гитары – все это так органично, так кстати, так талантливо!

Главное средство этой пьесы – ирония. Надежды каждого персонажа пьесы на будущее высмеиваются или самим же героем, или другими. Они ничего не добиваются, но даже если они и осуществят свои мечты, то навряд ли это изменит их жизнь.

Единственный герой, вернее героиня, пьесы, Наташа, жена Андрея, добилась, чего она хотела. Возможно, потому что ее мечты маленькие и достижимые. Кстати, пусть не обижается Виктория Бэкхэм, но Наташа, на мой взгляд, точная копия ее – и походка, и манера речи.

Гениальность Чехова в его проницательности. Он знает, что трудно жить сейчас. Мы всегда любим все откладывать на завтра, или даже на 300 лет вперед, как Вершинин. Но мы должны пересилить себя и жить сейчас.

Да, игра актеров заставила минутами плакать. Особенно, когда Ирина говорит: «Я снова плачу. Почему я не могу не плакать?».  И это бессилие помочь ей...

А слова Андрея вызвали смех всего зала, когда он говорит: « Почему - вроде бы только начинается жизнь, а мы  превращаемся в скучные, неинтересные, банальные, ленивые, апатичные, бесполезные, ничтожные мешки с говном – почему?»

Были слезы и смех, потому что актеры были блестящи, пьеса была правдива и поэтична, и постановка высвечивала только то, что необходимо высветить.

Постановка настолько хороша. Что мы вышли из театра с желанием жить долго и счастливо, с пользой для себя и для других.

Совсем как Ольга, которая говорит под занавес, «Музыка играет и я хочу жить...»

А Чебутыкин добавляет : « Все равно. Все равно.»

Только для того, чтобы посмотреть эту постановку есть смысл побывать в Лондоне! 

Checkhov’s Three Sisters come back to life in London at The Young Vic

Elena and I were full of hope and expectation as we arrived at The Young Vic to see the version of Three Sisters by the acclaimed Australian director Benedict Andrews. 

The crowd was young, the crowd was old, very young and very old, black, white and everything in between. It was happy. It had no idea what it was in for, because it was in for an emotional assault course rarely encountered. 

Yet it would leave chastened, thoughtful, improved perhaps, and happy to have seen Checkhov’s warning – life has to be lived now, not in three hundred years time, and life can slip away so easily that you only appreciate it acutely, intensely, in the moments before it ends, just as Baron Tusenbach only notices the beauty of the trees around him before he goes off to die in a duel.

This performance gripped us by the throat, it held us tight to its chest, it caused us to shed tears and to smile and laugh in quick succession.

I felt the ghost of Anton Checkhov himself applauding the innovation and modernisation that Benedict Andrews had brought to his masterpiece.

Nothing distracted from the characters, the plot and the pathos, everything enhanced each of these. 

If rock music stunned and surprised us, it was with good reason, and as the ingenious 160-table set (counted by Elena) was dismantled, it added to our empathy for the characters and their predicament.

The play’s main device is irony, always difficult to pull off – each character’s hopes for the future are mocked – by themselves, other people or events – and even if they had realised them nothing would change.

The only character to get what she wants is Natasha, the vulgar wife of Andrey, and she only gets what she wants because what she wants is so grubby and small.

Incidentally, Elena pointed out that Natasha was played brilliantly by Emily Barclay as a kind of Victoria Beckham: opinionated, conceited, strutting on heels, tasteless and cruel -  Sorry Victoria, no offence, just going by media reports.

The genius of Checkhov is in the penetration he has into the way things are for all of us. It is hard to live in the present. We do tend to keep longing for tomorrow and tomorrow. But we can’t live any other way, we must press on despite the pain that our distance from the day we are in brings about.

It’s enough to make a grown man cry. And I did cry.

Irena say,’ “I’m crying again, why can’t I stop crying?’’

And I couldn’t help crying with her.

And it’s enough to make anyone laugh, as everyone did as Andrey says, “ Why,- when we’ve only just begun to live – do we turn into boring, grey, banal, lazy, apathetic, useless, miserable sacks of shit – why?”

We cried and we laughed because the actors were superb, the writing was true and poetic and the production shone only onto where it was needed.

It was a brilliant performance and we felt as if we would both try to live more in the fure.

As Olga says in conclusion, “The music is playing and I want to live….”

And Chebutykin adds, “ Who cares. Who even cares”

 This experience of this production alone would be worth moving to London for!

Libraries, Lenin and Coca – Cola

At the Russian Cultural Institute Rossotrudnichestvo in Kensington, on a warm Wednesday evening, 19 September, we sat and heard a distinguished panel of speakers from The State Library for Foreign Literature, based in Moscow, speak with wit, humour and penetration about their work in using books to build bridges between nations. 

And boy do they work – the numbers of books in foreign tongues they have published in dual format runs into millions and millions!

We were presented with some recent examples, which included a volume of John Keats – tricky stuff to translate into Russian – and Robbie Burns, which is tough for English speakers!

But one remark, from Ekaterina Genieva, struck me as both poignant and inspiring – Russia is still enjoying one legacy of the early idealism of the Bolsheviks in the vast number of public libraries across the country, even in the most remote regions.

Apparently, Lenin, inspired by Krupskaya, had said that everyone should be within walking distance of a library.

The idealism and egalitarian optimism of this ideal warmed my soul but saddened me too as I reflected how this idealism metamorphosed into a bullying dictatorship and crass censorship, but I could not help compare it to the stated aim of one of America’s great global corporations – The Coca-Cola Company.

Their governing strategy is summed up in the line that a Coke should be, ‘Always within an arms reach of desire’.

Here we have the most vivid contrast between political ideologies : Consumerism and laissez-Faire vs Communism and control.

I happen to believe that there is a middle way, but it’s getting harder to find people who agree with me, especially if they are politicians actually running countries!

Surely Coca-Cola is selling adulterated products and ought to be put in the dock?

And surly we can build public libraries without telling everyone what to read?

In conversation after the talk with Irina Kirillova from Cambridge University about her new book The Image of Christ in the work of Dostoevsky I heard the view that her topic resonated in Russia but not here, because there is no interest in questions about the image of Christ here. She maintains that you simply cannot understand Dostoevsky without understanding his struggle with Christ.  

The same theme seemed to re-appear – a Coca – Cola secular west and a more spiritual east.

I think she is wrong, and that these polarities don’t amount to so much as people are much the same everywhere, but I hope these observations give you a glimpse of what a wonderful place the Russian Cultural Institute is.

An intellectual Russian will always feel at home here!

Transcendent Jazz in Hoxton, London – A Love Supreme

It was a Thursday night, the odour of Donor kebabs intruded against the will and the soft Autumnal sunlight slanted across Old Street, N1.

From a pub, its doors open to the street, came the stench of a blocked urinal, and vested big bellied men managed to quaff lager with this clinging to their pint pots.

Elena and I put our heads down and leaned forward towards Pitfield Street, where we knew nestled Charlie Wright’sClub offered refuge: jazz and the blues.

That same night in London, musicians doing no more than following orders were making good money and customers with tin ears were paying good money to watch them.

Thomas Beecham said that the English don’t really like music but they love the noise that it makes. I have much fear that he was right.

But here at Charlie Wrights, a great young jazz musician and his brilliant quartet would play to a small gathering of the elect, those who had risked the taking of a turn off the musical motorway of mass distraction, those who were willing to open their hearts and expose their souls to the divine sound of another human possessed of complete mastery of an instrument and an idea.

But would the elect arrive?

Just like Calvin’s Elect, or Luther’s, maybe they are carrying the light but see not its feint glow.

My fears were groundless.

The lager was cold and crisp.

Binker Golding and his young crew were unpacking their instruments. 

Founding Father of the club, John Nash, rattled the cash box and took his place on the stool by the door. 

Hands were shaken, kisses were given, drinks were bought, jokes were told and trials relived and then came an insistent beat, fast, percussive, turning heads.

 A deep, sonorous, and then stabbing tenor tore and slashed through the chat and all eyes were on the quartet.

Open mouthed eighteen year olds stared in amazement, their fingers compelled to tap the beat, their minds tingling with the intimations of a hunter gatherer ancestor hearing the bellowing of an elephant from afar.

Knowledgeable veterans struggled and laughed as they failed to count the chord changes underway in a Coltrane inspired number that was testing the rafters of the building, but caressing the ears of everyone there. Strange genius indeed!

Moses Boyd, the 21 year old drummer of endless imagination and exquisite control, played with his head tilted back, eyes rapt, and women wondered at the lightning swift and gentle strokes that sent silken sounds across the room. 

Binker Golding’s tenor sax seemed to assert, then challenge, doubt and reformulate every belief you ever held, but still left you a level up on the rocky road to Nirvana. 

Every player in the quartet – Binker Golding on Tenor, Rick Simpson on Piano, Moses Boyd on Drums and Max Luthert on Bass, every guest player in the jam session, including the sublime Peter Edwards guesting on Piano, seemed clothed in golden raiment, and they shone with sound that dazzled the senses.

A spirit soared away and a heart beat faster and I knew it was mine but I saw that it was others too.

All for £3.00 at Charlie Wright’s Club, 45 Pitfield Street, N1 ( www.charliewrightsclub.com )

Every Thursday, The Binker Golding Quartet has a residency. Be there if you want to know how it feels to belong to something special, very special, a love supreme!

The new Anna Karenina Movie : A remarkable achievement!

My sympathy lay with Karenin himself, and by the time Anna threw herself under the train I was relieved indeed, she, or rather Keira,  had been getting on my nerves for some time. In fact, I nearly left the cinema to throw myself under a train.

Here was pedigree too : Tom Stoppard the screenplay writer and Joe Wright the director.

How could they have reversed every reader’s feelings since the great novel appeared in 1878?

The reader puts the novel down, upon completing it, with a profound sense of both fate and chance in the affairs of men and women. For some, Anna was bound to end up under the train the minute she set eyes adulterously upon Vronsky – for Tolstoy himself, certainly. But for others, the novel has the breadth and depth of real life, it is complex and ambiguous, and all possibilities exist until they are consumed by choices or accidents.

The tone or mood of any film that attempts to capture or -  why not, it’s a movie – amplify the emotional range of this subtle and emotional novel must surely exclude the light hearted frippery of vaudeville theatre or the carousel of the fairground for the majority of its scenes.

The techniques jump around in patronising style – real life settings for the good Levin living authentically in the countryside, cutting hay with his peasant workers from Yorkshire; a theatre stage for the ‘artificial’ courtly life of the city and model trains to get them from one to the other. Spare me the symbolism of the pumping train rods driving the wheels of fate!

When, for just one example, the film cuts to a model train rushing through the snow, my disbelief is no longer suspended and I am jolted back to wondering about the technique. T.S Eliot said, of poetry, that technique should be as a transparent material over the meaning of the poem, serving only to make clear the meaning. Hear, Hear, and this applies for movies too.  

In this effort, the technique kept jumping up out of the tale, distracting me and snapping any empathy with the characters or attention on the unfolding plot.

Vronsky was played as a toy boy lover, but Anna was played merely as a sexually and romantically frustrated young married woman – I would have been less surprised if she had taken an older lover, not the fop that sashayed around this set, pouting his lips and smouldering his eyes at every woman whose hand he kissed. He was on his knees kissing hands throughout the film – I wonder there weren’t patches on his knees.

Oblonsky as the thoughtless and jolly voluptuary and adulterer was superb, except that I’m sure he was genuinely upset by his loyal wife’s discomfiture, uncomprehending, not cruelly dismissive as he is here, but I at least enjoyed his company in the film.

Levin bored me to rigor mortis and Anna was irritating throughout. Karenin elicited sympathy. No wonder he clicked his fingers. I’d have pulled mine out completely if I’d been stuck with this Anna. The film concludes with Karenin as the virtuous victor, but despite our sympathy for him,  we don’t feel he quite deserved this prize.

Kitty, Levin’s child bride, managed a metamorphosis from giddy teenager to wise matron we know not how.

If you had not read the novel you would have been baffled by this version on the screen.

If you had read it, like me, you were forced to conclude that it achieves something remarkable indeed : it bores and frustrates and there was not a wet eye in the house.

No, honestly, I never got close to a single tear.
It would take a heart of stone, as Oscar Wilde said of the death of Little Nell, not to laugh at the conclusion.

And that is a very remarkable achievement! 

Наш репортаж с на лондонского Парада Олимпийцев и Паралимпийцев

Вчера, 10 сентября я  была на лондонском Параде Олимпийцев и Паралимпийцев!!! Было здорово! Вот мой отчет в фотографиях

Полиция на входе  на Молл, где было место для волонтеров Олимпиады - Game Makers, London Ambassadors и других.

Заняты лучшие места вдоль дороги, по которой должны проходить (вернее проезжать на машинах) олимпийцы.

Очень веселая и доброжелательная полисвумэн. Она ходила вдоль ограждения и всех фотографировала, кто только ни попросит.

Все следят за происходящим на Трафальгарской площади, где началось шествие по большому экрану

 Мне надоело стоять возле ограждения и я присоединилась к моей команде Паддингтон -  где я была волонтером в течение первых 6 дней Олимпиады.










Снимков сделано много.  Полный репортаж здесь:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.392846097447691.89722.392775220788112&type=3

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce