Bums at Buckingham Palace - Fashion Spotting in London
Aug 20, 2013, 12:16 pm
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Bums at Buckingham Palace - Fashion Spotting in London
Unwritten Travel Photography Rule #1: Never take a picture of a Bum.
Okay, so maybe it’s not Unwritten and maybe it’s not even a Rule, but the fact remains that there are certain ethical guidelines which all travelers should respect when visiting other countries one of which is – Don’t photograph their Bums.
Having traveled to a lot of different countries I’ve seen all manner of homeless, derelict, hobo. You name it and I’ve probably seen it. But as interesting a photographic subject as they are, I pride myself on having never taken a picture of a bum.
Nevertheless London presents an interesting case in that the local bums are seemingly non-existent until dusk when the doorways of closed shops on Oxford and other streets spontaneously fill up with patchwork quilts of flattened cardboard boxes and shortly thereafter a (usually) scruffy individual takes up residence for the night.
That isn’t to say that all of London’s bums are unkempt as evidenced by this…
Dapperly dressed tramp I spotted just below the Jubilee Bridge in Southbank or even this…
Herd of pot smoking, beer drinking guys I saw lounging in SoSo Square on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Whoa dude (cough cough) I’m so high it’s like I can see AussieOzzie taking our photo from that bench over there. He’s sooooo good loo….(cough cough)”
Yes, what was that you were saying? AussieOzzie is so good looooo-k; Come on man you can say it, He’s so good looooo-k, loooooooooo-k,
Oh Look! It’s Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowls.
“Charles dear, did you know the unemployment rate in SoHo Square is 99.999%?”
“Simply dreadful Camilla, those Bums should get off their Bums and get a job.”
And it is at precisely this point where we must take a quick flashback to the wedding of William and Kate where we see another definition of …
Bum - as in Pippa Middleton’s pert derriere which managed to both obscure and upstage her older sister Kate’s wedding dress train and attached Royal Bum. Now I’m not Royal bashing here, but simply pointing out that in BritSpeak a Bum merely refers to an arse, buttocks, hiney, posterior, rump, booty, etc. and not necessarily a derelict hobo as in America for instance.
But if you are worried that you missed seeing Kate’s Royal Bum during the wedding you can still catch a glimpse of it here at…
Hamley’s “The worlds loudest toy store” where employees are paid to shout at customers.
I asked a Hamley’s employee about a gravity defying wall climber toy and he immediately began shouting an answer to my query. I calmly told this employee that as I was only 2 feet away from him he needn’t shout to which he replied,
“Kind sir, Hamley’s pays me to shout so everyone (he made a broad all encompassing gesture around the 2000 square meter sales floor) can hear me”.
Go ahead and multiply that shouting by 30 employees plus the yells, screams and toy banging of 300 kids and you’ll have some idea of what the 4th floor at Hamley’s sounds like.
But I’ve digressed from my original thought which was that some artist at Hamley’s has cleverly rendered the Royal Wedding Party out of LEGO bricks giving us a detailed view of the Two Royal Bums which will some day sit on the Thrones at Buckingham…
or should that read,
The Two Bums which will someday sit on the Royal Thrones at Buckingham? Grammatically, it’s one or the other though I’m not sure which.
Anyways these figures also have very recognizable…
Front sides, seen from L to R: Kate Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William Duke of Cambridge, Charles Prince of Wales and Harry Prince of… Las Vegas? I forget.
Even Her Majesty puts in a LEGO cameo
I’m ready for my close-up. What a coincidence, I always am. Ooooooh! Awwwww!
At any rate, armed with this new definition of “Bum” and having found a loophole in Unwritten Travel Photography Rule #1, I decided to leave Hamley’s and walk down Regent Street to Piccadilly to do some bum spotting. It was…
Gluteus to the Maximus requiring me to quickly…
Wash my London Eyes, where once given the correct perspective I realized that my predicament was similar to that of…
The Temptation of St. Hilarion at the Wallace Collection.
“Whaaat?! You want to show me your Bum? No! I’m begging you… Not that!! Anything but that!!!”
Fortunately a quick trip across town to the…
Fashion Courts at the Victoria & Albert Museum gave me historical proof that…
300 years ago, some altruistic Fashionista found a way to protect people’s eyes by disguising oversize bums with a dress design called a Mantua. That’s all well and good, but it didn’t explain the origins of having a fashionable bum like Pippa. I needed more information so I headed off to the …
British Museum where I found that 2400 years ago a…
Shapely bare bum (see the figure on the right) was totally acceptable as a fashion statement as seen in this frieze from the Elgin (aka Parthenon) Marbles. Either that or it was an ancient wardrobe malfunction which reminds me of…
Dutch painter Willem Drost’s “Portrait of a young Woman”, who with an ambiguously placed hand below her bosom gazes at passersby from her wall at the Wallace Collection seemingly asking us …
“Am I flashing you as a fashion statement?” (or) “Am I having a Baroque wardrobe malfunction?”
Both of which are very contemporary questions which I pondered while enjoying a hot tea and raisin scone with strawberries and clotted cream at…
The Terrace Cafe behind Buckingham Palace where my lovely afternoon cuppa was fine except for the view I had of...
The bare Bum that was seated at the neighboring table.
Now granted, I’m not a fashionista (just damn good loo… cough, cough) and am unqualified to say whether that Bum was an only in London Fashion Statement or a Wardrobe Malfunction.
Butt what I do know is this – it’s probably a good idea to always heed Unwritten Travel Photography Rule #1 regardless of how the word “Bum” is defined.
P.S. For those of you who might be wondering, that pants went down another inch by the time I got up to leave.
Last edited by AussieOzzie; Oct 11, 2013 at 2:22 pm
