Friday, July 09, 2004
Tourons, homesickness/culture shock/angst, and strawberries
I had two conversations yesterday about how London is big and busy and it can be overwhelming to live there. This seems to be a regular topic of conversation in non-London England, or at least it has come up with many denizens of Bristol as they ask me how I liked living there. The most frequent comment is "I like going there for a day, but I don't want to live there."
And it's true. London is big and busy and it can be overwhelming to live there. Witness John's commuting hassles this week. But I could happily have continued being a temporary Londoner over the summer -- away from the flat on Queensway, because I had completely had it with the dodgy plumbing and the cockroaches -- were it not for the tourons.
I believe John came up with the term tourons [actually, he may have come up with it, but others have already done so] in response to my barely contained ire with the masses of moronic tourists in central London the Friday in June before I moved to Bristol. John and I took film in for processing, grabbed food at the McDonald's near Piccadilly Circus, and visited the end of year show at the Royal College of Art.* Until the art show, we were hampered at every point on our journey by many people who had not grasped the "stand on the right" concept on the escalators, or that stopping right at the top or bottom of staircases is going to impede the following hordes. And then there is the inevitable delay while those in London for the first time figure out how to insert their travel card on entering or exiting the Tube.
It is not that any of them were drooling idiots. But when there are so many of them, the individual small moments of hesitation and ignorance in dealing with a strange city accumulate exponentially and the knock on effect [this is my current favourite Britishism] grows unbearable. My brother copes with the summer surge in touron numbers by avoiding the centre as much as possible, a reasonable flight-instead-of-fight response. My patience was so low in June, though, that I was beginning to contemplate shouldering people out of my way and stepping on the heels of those standing on the left. It is much easier to be a kind person in Bristol.
Or it was, when it was sunny.
I was prepared, thanks to Tom, for the heavy rain during Wimbledon. But after a brief respite this weekend, it was miserable again Wednesday, Thursday and today. I should not need two long-sleeved layers in July. It is against God.
The wet and the chill (and the fact that I am at that point of conscious ignorance in my project at which I realise just how much work I need to get done in the next month) made me particularly susceptible to gloominess. Now that I'm actually living in England (for London is more it's own place than it is English) I seem to be going through some culture shock. I've been back and forth to London at least weekly since moving here, which makes settling in difficult even though, thanks to Andrew, I have a ready-made group of friends. Yesterday I phoned my dad to whine about my homesickness and to bitch about the weather. He said it was no better in Kelowna and Vancouver. At least if I were there I could more often see, through the drizzle, my parents and the many friends and family I miss. This might also be a response to not having FutureThinktanker and my brother and others about to bond/vent over the things we miss about North America. This angst too shall pass.
Tuesday evening on my ride home from work, before the rain and misery started, my back tire on my borrowed bike went flat. It wasn't that disastrous; I am indebted to Dan for picking me up and fitting the bike in the back of his car. I've been taking the train to and from work. It's much more civilised than the bus, even though the Severn Beach line only has one train an hour. I'm taking it into the main station in 40 minutes to meet my McGill friend Jetset, on his way to South East Asia by way of Ireland and London and various other locations in Europe. And "it's the freakin' weekend baby"; I was already beginning to be in a better mood, despite the rain and gloom.
When I arrived home, though, what should I find sitting in front of the door but my mini-box of vegetables and bag of fruit from Riverford organic vegetables. Hooray! And my first issue of my student subscription to the Economist was waiting inside. Hooray again!
I took the produce inside and started washing the mud off the carrots and turnips. The strawberries looked a bit forlorn, but I ate one and it was SO DELICIOUS. The delivery comes with recipes and news from the farm. About the strawberries, Guy Watson wrote:
"The season got off to a good start with some wonderful fruit but we have recently been grading out vast quantities. I know that even then, the quality has been questionable at best. After the rain they seem to be a bit better, though we are now seeing some of the botrytis mould that thrives in damp conditions. It all reminds me why I have, twice in my horticultural career, gleefully ripped out the strawberries and sworn 'never again'. Please don't think that we think these stawberries are up to scratch. It is just that having grown them, we judge it to be slightly better to put them in the boxes rather than have no strawberries at all."I judge their judgement to be sound. I might even be less annoyed with the rain since it made the strawberries a bit better. That one strawberry diminished my angst level considerably, and I feel certain that reading the Economist on the train will decrease it further still.
* there were many cool pieces at the show, and a few WTF ones. I meant to write about it, but the whole moving process and starting work got in the way. This is also why I still haven't posted much about Singapore, even though my trip was much more worthy of writing about than most of the things I post here. But Tim was mocking me about that earlier this week, so I may do so "soon", 2 months after getting back.
