Jolly Old England? Hardly
by Kate Zimmerman for the North Shore News
IT’S amazing how easily a London shop clerk can make “Have a nice day” sound like “F---- off and die.”
I don’t mean that his or her accent makes the expletive resemble the salutation. It’s all about the tone of voice. To characterize the London attitude as hostile would be to give it more heft than is probably intended. But “cool, bordering on frosty” is forever the forecast.
This is my most outstanding impression from a week I spent there lately, combining a solo trip to London with an overnight jaunt to Glasgow. The difference between the demeanors of the English and the Scots was apparent from the second I boarded the Easyjet (cheap) flight to Glasgow and the flight attendant’s sunny disposition and Scottish accent both hove into view. The Scottish people I met put the lie to the strangely pervasive stereotype in North American TV commercials (and on The Simpsons) that anyone with a tartan in his past spends most of his life screaming insults at baffled wastrels. In Scotland, the odd person even asked where I was from and wished me a pleasant trip. In England, nobody was interested.
And why should they be? London is jam-packed with people from every single place in the world, most of them a lot more exotic than Canada. We like to think of Canada’s big cities as sophisticated “melting-pots,” but the multi-cultural feeling in London is incredible ‑‑ you breeze past Africans in full traditional costume chowing down in Chinese restaurants, watch gaggles of Londoners puff on hookahs in the cave-like basements of jam-packed Egyptian cafes, buy Moroccan slippers from Eastern Europeans who trekked to Africa to get them, and haggle over paintings with Pakistani art dealers in the crowded Portobello Road Market.
You’ll navigate around a crowd of strangers who probably have no language whatsoever in common at the cheesy “Memorial to Dodi and Diana” inside Harrods. (I define it as cheesy that a wine glass that was supposedly the last one Princess Diana ever put to her lips is featured at this memorial, lipstick stain intact. I’m surprised that Harrods, which is owned by the late Dodi Al Fayed’s father, doesn’t identify the lipstick and say where you can get the selfsame brand on Harrods Cosmetics Floor.)
At the same time as the world obviously congregates in London, the feeling on the street is of every man for himself. I have no idea whether this has always been the case, or whether it is part of the legacy of the July 7th bombings.
Even in the underground, where there is nowhere much to look, strangers avoid eye contact. (This is also true in New York.) If they see you looking helplessly at a map, they won’t volunteer to assist you unless they’re asked. At that point, they will give the information you need. Nothing more -- not even a perfunctory “Where are you from, anyway?” I certainly hope that I wasn’t assumed to be American and instantly hated; I don’t think so. The coldness appeared to be due to indifference, not dislike.
Or maybe it was just that famous English reserve. I read in one of the city’s papers a passing reference to the fact that Londoners know it’s simply not done to smile at strangers in the street. I had been wandering around in my dorky Canadian way, occasionally smiling at the unusual person who met my eye, because to look impassively at someone who is looking at you strikes me as rude, even aggressive. No wonder they seemed to regard me as Forrest Gump, without the box of chocolates.
My Canadian gormlessness might also explain why one evening, when a small man stopped to asked me directions and I tried to help him, he seemed so grateful. From Kuwait, he had gone to school in the United States and remembered the experience fondly. I of course pointed out that I was not from there, but from Canada. Nevertheless, when I saw him again by chance on Oxford Street, he looked absurdly pleased and asked me out for dinner. My only explanation for this, since I towered over him and am never mistaken for Kate Moss, is that I’m probably the only person who had so much as smiled at the guy since he got there. I politely declined the invitation, hoping he’d get a “Yes” from an unmarried, petite candidate later.
I went out one night to a swank bar called Lounge Lover and to the restaurant across the alley from it, Les Trois Garcons. These two establishments, which supposedly attract a celebrity crowd, are connected. They are owned by a trio of antique dealers who have designed them to incorporate all kinds of funky pieces, from the head and neck of a giraffe stretching over our table to stuffed animals, antique purses in well-lit hutches, and splendid chandeliers. In Canada, the waiter at such a spot would likely have a slightly ingratiating way about him or her ‑ a sincere- looking smile and an apparent desire to please. Here, my group of seven was served aperitifs that likely cost $200 and a meal that probably cost close to $1,000 without a smidgeon of interest or friendliness coming from the restaurant’s staff.
On the other hand, those people I met through business, such as the curator of an exhibition at the Museum of Natural History, were thoroughly charming, well-informed and unpretentious. The city itself is, of course, extraordinary, with its distinctive architectural styles (the Museum itself is glorious) and a limitless array of things to do.
My cousin and her family took me to the Globe Theatre, the apparently faithful reconstruction of the theatre where many of Shakespeare’s plays were first produced, to see The Winter’s Tale. It was an unforgettable experience to stand throughout the show on the floor in front of the open-air stage, as people did 400 years ago, drinking red wine with the cool September night sky overhead, musicians playing Tudor instruments and performers bringing to life a play that had been first performed in the original Globe Theatre in 1611.
Then again, it was also impressive to arrive after a 15-hour trip involving a taxi, two underground routes, an oppressive slog through Heathrow and a 10-hour plane ride, in the International Lounge of the Vancouver Airport. I got off the jet, with the grimy air of London still in my lungs and the coolness of its citizens still in my gut. When I entered the expansive terminal with the West Coast sun pouring in, the sound of water splashing in the waterfall underneath the welcoming wooden carving, the pure air and the sight of potted fir trees a hint of the rainforest I would be re-entering shortly, I felt like the embodiment of a sigh.
My cab driver actually asked me how my day was going. He didn’t really care, naturally, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
This is clearly the life for me.
Writing > Humour
