Marie's Magical Mystery Tour- Banksy Style

I just wanted to say....Happy Birthday to me...Months ago I came to the realization that for my birthday I wanted to spend the day trying to find the Banksy artwork located around London. Banksy is a graffiti artist in London that does a lot of social and political issues. The best part about Banksy is that no one knows who he is and so it is fun when something new from him pops up in the streets. Much of his stuff has been painted over. I find it a shame because a lot of them are really beautiful and have a great message. Leigh found some current ones that are still around, and Abby worked like a maniac to organize a game plan. It was really neat not to have to worry about directions, organizing and instructions. Although it was against my personality, I got to just follow and I was lovin' it!

Our pre-Banksy stop: platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter. Harry Potter fans will know exactly what I'm talking about and for many in our group, it was a must do in London. None of us had done it yet, but now we have! We haven't confirmed it for sure, but it looks like we will be leaving the country 4 days before the last Harry Potter comes out. We would have loved to see the last one in England. Maybe we will get lucky and date will move up a week!

Stop #1- This was our first stop and after a long walk we were finally there. Banksy didn't put these in the most noticeable and easy to get to locations. Most are on a random wall or building around London. This one was on the side of an apartment building. This first one is a portrait of the Royal Family. It used to be bigger but a lot of the outer detail was painted over. That frustrates me. I don't understand why people want to paint over these... This image was used for the album cover of the band called "Blur".

 Stop #2- This one is called, "No Ball Games". While most of the Banksy artwork is getting painted over, this one actually was put behind, plastic or perspex to protect it from other taggers. I think Banksy brings mixed feeling in people. Graffiti is illegal, but Banksy is so good and clever it is hard to not like what he is saying...Like in this one, it's hard to see, but the kids are playing ball with the sign that says, "no ball games".

God gave me a poppy for my birthday! I love poppies!

Stop #3- This one is called "New Goldfish Bowl" and it was actually under a bridge that crossed a canal.  By this time the fact that we were 3 for 3 was amazing considering how fast these get painted over sometimes and the lack of up to date information about this illegal activity online...

Stop #4- This one was really fun because it was done on the Monday before we got there so it was only 4 days old! The paint was still wet in some places. How fun! I'm so glad that I have such good friends who were great troopers as I dragged them along around London.

Stop #5-  "Graffiti Painter" Not sure how much of this one is original. I know that some of it has been painted over and some may be added to it. Plexiglass covered this one too. We were getting a little tired by this point of the day.We thought we would try to find one more...

Stop- #6 After searching for what seemed like hours, we finally figured out that a Banksy used to be here, but had been removed. Sure enough, we took a quick look on E-bay and saw that it had been stolen and was being resold on E-bay for 17,000 pounds. Apparently, the seller is saying that he had written permission to remove it from the building, but it's hard to imagine that being approved because they cut out part of the metal building. This one was called "Sperm Alarm".

We didn't make it to all of the ones on our list, but we were out and about for many hours and we were successful on 5 out of 6 of them. I had a really fun time and it was nice to do something different and memorable for my 25th birthday. That night we got dolled up and I got taken to a Mexican restaurant and ended the night by having a Bulmer's in a pub nearby. It really was a perfect day!

June singing Happy Birthday to me in Norwegian at a Tube stop. This song is sometimes referred to as "rinky tinky tinky"... by Abby