Happy Easter, all. From what I've been hearing from everyone, just about the entire human race went camping somewhere / travelled somewhere / did something interesting and out of the ordinary with their mates. I expect nothing less, of course.
I know that saying this will inspire a chorus of "Screw you, you're in London, whingerboy"-type reactions, but I'm genuinely envious. I did nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nul. Sweet FA. I sort of had plans, but, to my complete and utter lack of surprise, they fell through on me. This is London, after all. Of course getting out of town wasn't going to happen. Cash - soaked up by my imminent journey. Friends - busy or gone or piked. Weather - raining. (**Cue World's Smallest Violin playing just for Matt**)
In all seriousness though, I was aching to escape for the weekend because the place has lost the ability to make me feel anything at all. I'm no longer frustrated to within an inch of slamming my nose in the door deliberately by all London's false promises and pedantry and Second-World failings like I have been. And the fun times have been far, far too sporadic to make a dent in the overall "whatever"-ness of the place either. Instead, day-to-day life in the Twilight Kingdom makes me feel like a character out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. I struggle to even write entries in this blog at the moment because of the general feeling of "blehhh" this place inspires in me.
So, after a weekend of involuntary solitude and consequent musings, I've concluded that, to enjoy living in London, you'd need four basic things:
(a) Extremely low expectations
(b) A job you enjoy and/or that involves working with people around your own age or who at least share an interest with you
(c) A decent amount of disposable income, and
(d) The ability to make friends quickly and easily.
Funnily enough, I strike out on all four counts, particularly (d). I've always had a mild disdain for people who can scamper over to a stranger mentally squealing "Ooo they look interesting!" to themselves, strike up a conversation about god-knows-what fluff and walk away with a new friend. I used to tell myself such people were mildly desperate and flighty and couldn't possibly build meaningful relationships with these new people they ensnared, but then I realised I was probably hating on them because I'm completely incapable of connecting with anyone new myself unless they make a monumental effort or there's a mutual friend involved, and even then I struggle badly. Substandard social and conversation skills, y'know? Hence the writing. And London without friends, as everyone knows, is about as much fun as going to a party at the Playboy Mansion and getting stuck washing the dishes all night.
But, to get to the tag-line of this entry, it hasn't all been mind-numbing dullness. The week leading up to Easter had some thoroughly-unexpected points of interest.
I got a late invitation from Matt to meet him at the free "Late at Tate" event at the Tate Britain art gallery last Friday night. Apparently this is a monthly event, and this month it was hosted by a music label called FUTUREPROOF.
Picture, if you will, sweeping high-ceilinged halls of gilt-framed portraits and landscapes, mammoth paintings of Classical scenes and great moments in history. Then picture those stuffy, refined halls darkened and filled to the brim with hordes of trendy, beer-sipping young artistic types clad in funky casual attire, watching live performances of leftfield/down-tempo electronica, "warm electronica", "performative sound collages", "ambient slip-licious beats" and even a giant three-meter high accordian played by three fetching lasses in rockabilly get-ups.
Add to the mix some bizarrely-interesting art installations (like a 20-metre high atomic bomb mushroom cloud made entirely of silver pots and pans delicately welded together that was just begging to be climbed) and you can probably picture how it all made for a truly unexpected and strangely enjoyable night. Yes, it was yet another course in the never-ending feast of booze-laced art-tainment that Londoners gorge themselves on like pigs at a trough, but in terms of breaking up my week it did the trick.
After a short night out in Soho the next night, Scott invited me to a barbeque in Brixton on Sunday afternoon that he'd been randomly invited to by a couch-surfer acquaintance he'd not yet met. Turned out to be at a commune house full of musicians and festival organisers and casually-avante-garde creative types. It had a high-walled back yard that felt like it could've been anywhere in the world, with a fire pit dug into the earth in the middle, and the sun actually shining in a clear blue sky (thereby guaranteeing everyone would be in a good mood). The obligatory Neolithic-era couch against the back garden wall, dreadlocks and piercings everywhere, djembes and beads, wicked tunes, you know the scene.
To cut a long story short, we both met a television producer who was fascinated by what we both do and individually have planned for the next few months. She subsequently organised invitations to a lunch and seminar event at the House of Lords. Random but flattering. Photos from the barbeque to come.
On Thursday I fronted up at the Black Rod Garden entrance of the Houses of Parliament, met Scott at the security check, then got ushered inside. There, we mingled with the high-flyers in the Cholmondeley Room, had lunch in the Thames-level marquee terrace, and engaged in some seriously interesting activities. On our table of ten we had the CEO of Born Free Foundation, a high-flying banker and a solicitor considered one of the top 100 thinkers in the world, amongst others. It was a fundraiser for the Craig Bellamy Foundation in Sierra Leone, working with the Right To Dream charity and the Edward de Bono Foundation, with Dr de Bono himself there presenting (got to meet the man afterwards too).
The whole thing was filmed by Positive TV (the online tv channel that Caroline, the producer who arranged our invitations, works for - http://www.positivetv.tv/) and will be on their website. I think I did a horribly earnest-yet-sombre piece-to-camera halfway through that I'm hoping won't make it past the editing stage. Very inspiring event otherwise though. Scott took some photos as well , so they'll be posted here after this too.
Following the seminar, we somehow got talking to the Lord who hosted the event, Lord Laird. He had nothing better to do and ended up giving us and a few other seminar attendees a free tour of the entire Houses of Parliament building. The House of Lords, the House of Commons, the spectacular Lobby, the cloaking room, the whole shebang.
We saw THE English throne, close enough to reach out and touch (which would have resulted in swift removal of limbs by the watchful security staff), saw the bar from which the word "barrister" derives its name from, the line from which the phrase "to toe the line" comes from, the bag from which the phrase "it's in the bag" comes from, as well as gorgeous architecture, statues and busts of every English Prime Minsister, the Magna Carta, a box containing sands from all of the D-Day landing beaches, blast damage from Nazi bombs in WW2 and heard just about every interesting historical anecdote about the building there is (Lord Laird is a historian par excellence). Nice surprise. And all of it unplanned and free. Did I mention we were shown around by a Lord?
No photos from that part of the day, unfortunately - Scotty can't run that fast.
NEWS FROM THE UK I CAN BE BOTHERED REPORTING:
- For the past two weeks people have been finding body parts all over the south of England. Some parts have been verified as being from the same person through DNA testing, others are spares, so to speak. They just found another arm today. Make your own jokes there.
- The G20 Summit here in London last week was sphincter-clenchingly disappointing. Not the summit itself, which seemed to produce some semi-positive direction (depending on your viewpoint), but the protests. There were about 8 different protests happening during the two or three days of the summit - climate change, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, anti-capitalism, etc etc etc. Each protest's route and final destination was helpfully mapped out for the apathetic public with brightly-coloured diagrams in the free newspapers the day before the start of the summit..... in case any of the jaded w*nkers who live here wanted to go and stare at the crazy people, I suppose. My god, how unbelievably London.
Only one person died, and even he was just some poor old hostel-living underemployed gent who was on his way home from work and had a heart attack after being roughed up by 'roid-rage police officers for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The tv news crews were beside themselves with the need for footage of something even moderately incendiary, so of course, when a handful of smugly-guffawing Nelson-like teenagers smashed their way in through a door and a window and got into the RBS building, that footage played every 2 minutes on every single channel and was regurgitated by every news crew in the world as representative of the "protests". Look closely at that footage and you'll realise the "crowd of protesters" around these punks consists almost entirely of news camerament and snappers, to a man, egging the gormless lumps on. What an utter crock of sh*t being fed to us yet again by the world media. Here's what really sums up the G20 protests - a massive 2-storey-high banner reading "Smash Capitalism" was still hanging across the top floors of a building that faces my gym across the river, next to the Tower of London, a week later. No-one in that building noticed. No-one bothered to call it to their attention. The message I'm getting loud and clear from all of this: No-one in Western society really cares any more, despite the lip-service.
- Also in the news today was the revelation that bouncers and ex-soldiers are being hired as security guards at primary and secondary schools around London. Naturally a number of groups have spoken out against the fact that the feral, knife-weilding, classmate-torturing kiddies at said schools may feel intimidated. Poor little dears. Someone get the tissues and legal forms ready. Wonder what all those teachers who've been beaten up, stabbed or even attacked outside their own homes by their students have to say about finally getting some protection? Must be furious, I'm sure. Yep, absolutely ropeable.
Hope you're all well. May write one last blog entry next week before I depart the UK and end The London Experiment.
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