The Peace Festival

I meandered into the Peace Festival quite late yesterday to be met by the sound of people drumming. Always atmospheric.

A lot of the people who had arrived for the weekend were packing up and getting ready to move on. I picked up a couple of leaflets from the United Nations stall and went and looked at a stall that had been set up to help provide information about how rebuilding was continuing after the tsunami. Bought a few cds from the stall and chatted for a while with one of the people working there.

United Nations

http://www.un.org/

http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/index.shtml

A site that kind of goes with it

http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/browse/owd3000



Oh look!!

http://www.littleexplorers.com/themes/dutch.shtml

http://www.littleexplorers.com/languages/dutch


As for the tsunami it's going to take time to get the places that were affected sorted out again.

http://www.wherevertheneed.org.uk/srilanka/index.html


Unlike last year there was a noticeable lack of stripey trousers at the festival. I'd moaned last year about the lack of variety, and I'm moaning again this year because of the variety which only included about five pairs of these wonderful trousers. Not to worry though, because I've got the Indian trousers that I found at Bee's at the Oasis to wear this year. I'd just got rather attached to these trousers. You know how it is.

Found some very nice badges. The "Feminists are cute" one will go very nicely with the Che Guevara one I thought.

I doubt if I'll visit the festival again because I'm moving. I do know a little about the days when it started and the Corn Mother was here as an alternative shop. It's been going a long time. Last week I found some postcards and cards in the local organic shop that they'd found in their cellar and had put out to sell. I remember these cards well. They've got a kind of rainbow backing and have symbols and pictures printed on them, mainly in black, but not all.

I've still got a few that I bought at The Silver Moon when it was open in The Charing Cross Road, slightly different from the ones in the organic shop. I bought one that had a picture of the Buddha on it, one with the eye of horus and a card that just said Love. Don't know when these were printed because the cards were available for quite a long time.



About Buddha

http://www.aboutbuddha.org/english/index.htm


The eye of horus

http://eyeofhorussymbol.homestead.com/



The Silver Moon bookshop used to be in the Charing Cross Road and grew from a tiny shop to taking over two shop spaces. It was owned by Sue Butterworth and Jane Cholmeley. Sadly Sue died from cancer about two years ago. It closed and sold it's name to Foyles a few years ago when the shops in that part of the Charing Cross Road changed ownership and the rents went up quite a bit. It's now a Chinese Medicine shop but it lives on under another ownership in Foyles, the large bookshop down the Tottenham Court Road end of the Charing Cross Road.

http://www.foyles.co.uk/foyles/sm/default.asp


Che Guevara

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1258340,00.html