London, dancing on its streets

More thoughts on London. 

I figure the city is so vast and historically-enriched, along with being culturally-stewed, socially-conflagrated, and many other adjectives, that I can devote more than just one post to its stupendousness.  At least, before I become so over-awed with London that my brain starts emitting television static and I have to be rushed to the local (free) hospital for a stupendectomy.

Last time I wrote about London I started trying to cover everything about it with the wide stokes of a paint-roller.  Madness.  What ended up happening was a rant about the London Underground, or as it’s modestly called: “The Tube”.  Calling the London Underground “The Tube” is like calling World War II a “Relations Hiccup”, it really doesn’t do it justice.  But I’ll stop myself right there.  I’ve already babbled incoherently about “The Tube”.  Let’s move on to slightly more focused items.

A few British People things I can’t get my head around:

As many of you know, they drive on the wrong side of the road here.  A problem that stems, no doubt,  from the driver sitting on the wrong side of the car.  As someone that has driven in countries where you sit in the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road I know the two incongruities cancel each other out.  The logic being, as long as your body is in the middle of the road when you’re driving, you’re okay.  Of course it helps if everybody else is following the same rule.

This sort of thing creates an interesting environment for pedestrians, of which I am one.  Firstly, when I’m crossing the street I still don’t know which way the cars are coming from.  This can probably be chalked up to stupidity, or ‘failure to learn’.  Which is fine if the mistake is mis-hitting the ‘enter’ key on my computer.  But this is the kind of thing where learning the hard way can involve you wearing your spleen on the outside like a fanny-pack.  I deal with the uncertainty by looking every possible direction anything could approach from, and observing when other people are crossing.

This last is also dangerous because the entire city — maybe the entire nation—ignores the green-man pedestrian crossing signal.  The result is a mild curb-side tap-dance on my part as I try to gauge oncoming traffic versus what other pedestrians are doing versus what the light says.  Needless to say, every time I cross a street in London I fully expect to be turned into peanut-butter.

The other aspect of the doing-things-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road thing is that I’m never sure what side of the sidewalk I’m supposed to be on.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve ended up doing the preliminary steps of a waltz with a complete stranger as we try to pass each other on a footpath.  I have never encountered this problem in any other country.  Where people drive on the correct side of the road pedestrians correspondingly do the same off the road — they stick to the right.  Logically, here, where people drive on the wrong side, you should take the left lane when you’re walking.  As a matter of fact, in most Tube stations they have signs that say “Keep Left”, but this could just as easily be an instruction for your political compass because above-ground these rules don’t apply.  I can only attribute this to the massive amount of foreigners in London which have reached such a critical mass they have thrown the “Keep Left” rule into confusion, and British natives have just given up trying.  Being larger definitely does have advantages in the on-coming pedestrian scenario.  On the other hand, I have, permanently imprinted on my chest, the concave dent of the average Londoners’ face.

Something that has started to cause me mild twinges of anxiety is the informal British greeting of “All right?” or, more accurately, “Awight?”

This is something you hear every time you encounter anyone in the service industry, whether it be store proprietor, cashier, or bouncer.  You hear it from English friends, and complete strangers in a bar.  And I never know how to handle it.

Presumably it’s a contraction of “Are you all right?” which, because it sounds a little too concerned, has been condensed into one —bordering on two— syllables.  When I first arrived, when someone gave me an “All right?” I replied with, “Huh?”

Awkward, because if the “All Right?” is repeated it suddenly puts emphasis on a question that’s not really asking for an answer.  Fear awashes the “All right?” askers’ demeanour with the sudden realization that the social transaction is going to go on much longer than they expected or wanted.

When I finally realized that they were saying “All right?” I started to panic because I thought it required an answer and I came out with a stuttered:

“Well, I ah, I’m okay.  It’s been a weird day, I almost got hit by a car, and someone fell on the Tube tracks—“

This would cause one of two reactions:  Their eyes would start to glaze over, or, again, a look of absolute horror would crawl across their face as they realized the can of worms they had just innocently opened.

Later on I tried responding much more simply:

“All right?”
“Yes.”

But, not only could you drive a freighter through the silence that ensued, I felt like a liar.  And then I felt resentment towards the person for making me lie, not only to them, but to myself, because I was not all right, nor am I usually.

Taking a cue from how the natives handle this I tried responding with my own “All right?”, but because I lack the appropriate accent to pull it off it comes out as a slightly accusatory, “Are you all right?” Immediately a cloud of unease envelops the conversation because I sounded like I actually cared whether the person was all right or not.   This leads to that person wondering if, in fact, they are all right, which causes them to wonder if I’m all right for asking a question like “Are you all right?”.   Then they wonder if I see something in them that’s not all right, and wonder if they don’t look  all right because maybe they are not all right which dregs up some deep childhood trauma causing them leave an imprint of their face on my chest. 

What I do now when I get an “All right?” is not say a word, maintain an expressionless face, keep eye-contact, and wait for the thrill of the question to subside.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling mischievous in a store or a bar, I’ll throw an “All right?” over my shoulder as I walk out the door.  That confused them, I think smugly to myself.

Okay, so far not too much about the city, more about cultural nuances.  So here:

Every time I walk out the door, I’m happy to be here.  From a purely “things to do” perspective I haven’t felt this good about a city since Prague, and before that, Montreal.  The problem is I rarely walk out the door because there is too much to do.   Ever see a cat chase a laser dot on a wall?  In London, I’m the cat, and there are about a hundred different laser dots all dancing and shifting around me, just out of reach.

A day off from academia, which, granted, rarely came until recently, was like Henry Kissinger with Narcissistic Personality Disorder shuffling though his rolodex to find friends to talk to, “Okay who do I call today?  The British Museum, The Tate Modern, a walk through Kensington, a visit to Daslton Market, some food in Brixton, a lecture at LSE, a photographic exhibition at the Natural Museum, check out the London Eye, an art gallery in Shoreditch, hot chocolate on Brick Lane, a look at Battersea power station, the Observatory in Greenwich, a bookstore on Oxford, a film at the Ritzy —“ until I become so exhausted just thinking about the possibilities I collapse on the floor like I had spent the day actually doing these things.  All the work, but none of the value.

I won’t even try to address the nightlife, suffice it to say that the average “what’s on tonight” poster pasted on your average wall looks like a page torn out of a Dickens novel — if Dickens smoked crack and he had access to any font he wanted, and a colour printer:

PALE HORSE NAMED DEATH @ Borderline, Manette St, Soho, 19.30'Brainchild of Type O Negative's Sal Abruscato, sounding something like Alice In Chains mysteriously sneaking up behind Type O Negative with a butcher knife while being filmed for a future episode of Law & Order.' (Borderline)ANITA MAJ, CAT BEAR TREE, MORNING WIRE plus more @ New Cross Inn, 19.30, £3Anita Maj is 'Feisty power pop likened to 21st century punk Bangles/Suzi Quatro...a Brit with attitude, pro-active, independent, nu asian force of female positivity.  A public, (grrrrrl powered) announcement, with guitars'THE ARCADIAN KICKS plus more @ Vibe Bar, Brick Lane, 19.30The Arcadian Kicks 'solid rhythm, ethereal melodies and honest lyrics delivered with a powerful audacit, RIVAL, VITREOLIC, MY PHAEDRA @ Dublin Castle, Camden, 20.30.  £6'Awooga C-Reverbed vocals and stonky glammy punk indie rocknroll- The Sweet meets The Electric 6 with some debluesed White Stripes elements' (Bugbear)BILLY VINCENT, EYES ON FILM, MISS NEEKS & TH EMASQUERADES @ Barfly Camden, 22.30, £5adv £6doorBLACK DANIEL, BOW MODS, NEON HIGHWIRE, URSA MINOR, THE MANNAKINGS, YOU ME AND THE MOON - Birth Records & Venue flyers.

It also seems that I’ve been lied to about London weather.  In fact, the entire world has been lied to about London weather by people like Charles Dickens, and films like 28 Days later, which constantly depict the city as sitting beneath clouds so thick, and a fog so dense, that people often have sex without any idea who their partner is.  London is painted as gloomy, wet, and as both Dickens and movie director Danny Boyle have noted: teeming with zombies.

Totally untrue.  Sitting here at the tail end of January I have seen it rain about 10 times in 6 months.  It also has been sunny at least twice every week.  I have never once seen one of those gothically fogged-out mornings (or evenings, or afternoons) that people who have never been to London imagine.  The closest I have come to fog here is because I was sitting too close to the smoke-machine at a musical concert.  A concert venue which, by the way, looked more like London inside that what London is supposed to looks like outside because it was teeming with zombies.

So why the darkened image of London perpetuated in the media?

I think it has something to do with keeping people out of London.  There are enough people as it is here, trust me.  There are so many people in London that  a trip to any outdoor public place — like the appropriately named Oxford Circus — becomes a maddening trek through masses of humanity that could only be improved with a cattle-prod and a bullhorn.  To deal with all the people the city has slowly devoured tiny hamlets and villages surrounding the place and renamed them ‘Greater London’ leaving the locals confused as to where they live and where they’ve just come from.

This raises some interesting questions in terms of how the city will perpetuate the gloomy-London myth the media has worked so hard to create when the Olympics get here.  One thing is for sure, if the myth proves to be true during any of the outdoor events it will certainly raise the comedic value of the Olympics; the pole-vaulter disappearing forever into the fog, the long-jumper with no idea where to land, the referee getting speared by a badly aimed javelin.  And if there is anything that could make speed-walking any funnier, dense, immovable fog is it.

All right?