Paella, jazz and the theatre: a cure for writer's block
I have to admit I’ve been suffering from a spot of writer’s block since moving to London, which I have attributed somewhat to my rather uninspiring and unhappy first week in the capital city.
However, I was (half-asleep and half-heartedly) listening to my radio wake-up call on Saturday morning which just so happened to be a discussion on the issue of writer’s block. That morning the station happened to be BBC Radio 4 but some mornings it is LBC (London’s Big Conversation) but I guess that just depends on which signal is stronger! Anyway, the panel were joined by a female author (don’t ask me who it was I wasn’t paying that much attention clearly) who told the panel and the listeners that the best thing to do in such a situation is to just write. Anything. So here goes:
This weekend has been a good one, which I really needed after my poor start up here. I have been a little overwhelmed by the size of this city and all its vast transport routes, the new East-end dialect that I’m getting better at understanding, my new living quarters, my new flatmates and then of course the fact that everything costs money here and always more than I have previously paid. I guess that’s just part of the parcel when living in London, one of the most expensive cities in the World.
So imagine my surprise when I headed into the city on the Saturday morning to explore that right under the London Eye on the Southbank there was a free weekend-long festival taking place. This occasion is was the turn of the London Mayor’s Thames Festival (http://www.thamesfestival.org/)* and there were stages and events taking place all along the South bank of the Thames from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge. 
It took me a whole day to get just half-way, what with all the crowds and everything that was going on, but I did get the chance to sample Ghanaian (yum) and an original Spanish sea-food paella (finally), listen to some 50s blues tunes by the jive tent, ‘win’ an EU t-shirt (see photo below), spend a few hours listening to jazz sampling fairtrade chocolate and fruit smoothies and watch some Eastern-European dancing in the ‘European Village’.
On the Saturday lunchtime I wanted to find a pub to watch the football (less said about the better as it was dire) and after much searching I crossed at Blackfriars bridge and found a delightful little watering hole just off Fleet Street.
As I despaired at the appalling performance of Manchester United at Anfield, I cast a thought back to all the other journalists that back in the Fleet Street days would have sat in that public house in a similar vein, struggling for inspiration and, unlike me, were pressured by deadlines. Sobering stuff.
Yesterday I decided I would treat myself and went to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to watch a performance of Liberty (www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/liberty)*, which in a word was simply fantastic. OK, so that was two but it merited it. I have always wanted to see a play there and the chance to see one set amongst the French Revolution, a period of French history with which I’ve always held an interest, was one not to miss.
Thankfully the rain held off and after the superb performance lasting three hours I left and crossed over Millennium Bridge just as the firework display begun to mark the end of the Mayor’s Thames Festival and my super weekend. Hopefully I’ll have many more similarly enjoyable weekends in my short-stay in the capital.
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