Into town to see The Sultan’s Elephant. Only the French could put something on like this. Over four days, a story based on something that Jules Verne wrote, was played out across London. Enacted by Royal de Luxe, the highlight was the aforementioned elephant that stands 40 feet high and is a wonder of mechanisation.
I got a copy of The Elephant Echo to try to understand a little more what was exactly going on, and fortunately, that contains the full story. I haven’t read it yet.
An awful lot of effort has been gone to putting this thing on. We wandered down Pall Mall looking for the elephant and found the above “smashed” cars. They’re French and the rope (or thread) runs through them very cleverly, right into and out of the road’s asphalt.
Having watched the elephant turn up into Haymarket, after performing a three-point turn, we retired to a pub, before finding the elephant in The Mall.
The crowd got regularly doused in water. I did too.
By the end, we’d reached Horse Guard’s Parade where there was a rocket ship. The tale would be concluded on Sunday, but I had other things planned.
A great day out – that really is a spectacular elephant. Only the weather let it down.
As an aside, I couldn’t help notice that The Guardian’s been very supportive with a large picture in the paper, another report piece and a five-star review. I’m not saying that it didn’t deserve its five stars, but surely there’s a teeny-weeny conflict of interest if the writer of the review has also written the front page puff-piece for the Elephant Echo?
More photos at my Flickr stream.
