I have been looking forward all week to seeing the Sultan’s Elephant up in London.

It even overshadowed the elections in my mind a bit – lets face it there are elections every year but the chances of getting to see another 40-foot high, time-travelling mechanical elephant again are pretty slim.

Jayne and I took the two youngest kids up by train (what a bargain! The child fare of £1 return includes travel on London Transport. It cost me a fiver just for a one-day 2-zone travelcard).

We had a look around the shops in Oxford Street, and then a bite to eat around Charing Cross and got to Trafalgar Square just in time to join the crowds for the elephant’s arrival.

I knew it would be a great spectacle but I did not expect it to be such an overwhelming, visceral experience. I don’t know if I am just over-sensitive to these things, but the sight of this huge contraption processing into the square, accompanied by a band on a truck playing a strongly rhythmic, drum-heavy, African-tinged tune made me feel very emotional.

I know it will sound like an over-reaction, and a blatant ploy to get in Pseud’s Corner but I had this feeling on first seeing the elephant, surrounded by such a mass of humanity, that I had been waiting all my life for that moment but just did not know it. It was almost spiritual.

Of course I had not a clue what was going on from a narrative point of view, but sometimes you just don’t need to. Its like listening to the song Mailaika, its powerful and emotional on a deeper level.

Another great pleasure was seeing Whitehall, Haymarket, Trafalgar Square, the Mall and other streets closed to traffic. It is always a strange feeling to see these normally busy streets reclaimed by pedestrians, who all look a lot happier to be there than the motorists normally are – and I have driven down all those streets in the past. This has always been an attraction of the various ban-the-bomb, scrap-the-poll-tax, anti-apartheid, anti-fascsist and other political marches I have been on in London, as well as the Gay Pride marches, and the millennium fireworks.

Of course the general mood was a lot better than at most political marches, although I can remember a reclaim the streets event in Victoria Street when I worked there years ago which had a party feel to it.

During our walking about, we did pass Downing Street, but decided not to offer any birthday greetings to Mr. Blair…

It was a great day out, despite having to travel up by train on one of my days off from the daily commute, these photographs of mine, and even the full-sized ones on Flickr really do not do justice to it.