Almost a year ago, a curious thing happened in London – elephants began to appear on pavements and in parks. Finding these elephants (there were 260 of them) became something of an obsession for many Londoners, myself included, and for the weeks that they lived among us, stumbling upon a new one was the highlight of a day.
Quite extraordinarily, despite my interest in them, the Flickr set I created or the many, many photos I added to Facebook, I never blogged about the Elephant Parade. They even nearly made me late for my cousin’s wedding…
As with many of my obsessions, I had rules:
- Initially, elephants were to be found without the aid of the map – going by word of mouth was fine, but it was better to find them by chance. However, the determination to find more, in a short period of time and in a logical fashion, required a map – first used on a day when my sister came to London when we managed to locate over 30 of them in an afternoon.
- Two photos were needed of each elephant – side on and profile. Plus, any ‘interesting’ features it might have.
- Ideally, there should be no people in the photo.
London was a less colourful place without the elephants and I remember them with fondness. At the end of the parade an auction was held at which you could – if you so wished – make a bid for your very own large fibreglass elephant. Sadly, I had neither the disposable income nor the space for such a purchase.
However, just recently I’ve found myself in places where people did find the means to house an artistic elephant. The first ‘wild’ spotting was in Bryanston Square garden – a gated private garden of a type common to central London (as depicted in Notting Hill) accessible only by residents in possession of a key. It just so happens that my church is the parish church of the square and thus it has a key, so we were able to spend a very pleasant Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago engaging in some frisbee.
Entering the garden I exclaimed rather excitedly on spotting an elephant in the bushes – hearing these, someone mentioned that there was another at the other end of the garden. Out came the camera and my friend Joe and I went on a brief elephant hunt.
In case you’re interested, the top elephant was originally located on the Embankment, near Embankment Station while the other one was part of the herd outside City Hall.
Three days later I was surprised to come across another wild elephant, this time in the jungle of South Kensington. Walking through Onslow Square, I spied one in a front garden (I was not surprised that residents of Marylebone and South Ken are people who could afford the reckless purchase of a fibre glass elephant).
Another former member of the City Hall herd.
I’m sure there must be others and I’ll try and keep my eyes peeled to spot them. Obviously, they’re fairly large and colourful so shouldn’t be difficult to miss – but saying that, I managed to stand in front of one at Paddington station for over 15 minutes and not notice it until my sister arrived, highly excited at having found an elephant before she’d even left the train. My observational skills are sometimes really not what they ought to be.
Things people have said: