1. The Throat Clear – British people in their natural habitat are for some reason incapable of speaking to strangers. As a result, when I do a stupid American thing like surreptitiously stand out of the way in someone else’s surreptitious standing out of the way place, I receive the Throat Clear. Possibly akin to public shaming in British culture, it has more of a dog whistle effect on foreigners. It is not the same as an American throat clear, but a more piercing hate-filled yawping sound. It is my theory that British have differently developed throat capabilities that allow them to transmit entire thoughts and complex emotions through these throat clears which outsiders do not quite understand, leaving us only with a vague sense of disgruntlement. The throat clear often accompanies the Stare, which again, is very different than American stares as it transmits complex emotions (namely the feeling you get when a dementor sucks out your soul). I am beginning to develop an immunity, as I have begun to experiment with the fastest and most effective ways to elicit these reactions. Wearing bright colors has been effecient thus far.
2. Weird accordion buses – I don’t really know what else to call these. They’re really long buses that have accordions between each section. I’m assuming it’s supposed to help with turns. I’m mostly upset about these because they don’t make any actual accordion sounds, but I’m also really upset about the state of the floors of accordion buses. I was standing in a crowded one the other day and suddenly the floor started spinning around, like that one section in Super Mario 64 where you have to fight one of the bosses on the merry-go-round. Anyway, potentially the best thing in the entire universe except my enjoyment of the spinning floor (which honestly seems to have no other purpose than my personal amusement) earned me several Stares.
3. Crazy modern art theory – I really thought that all those crazy modern art jokes from Spongebob about a pile of pencil shavings and off-white paint on a white canvas as art were exaggerations. I was wrong. I went to the Tate Modern and one of the exhibits was a mirror on a canvas with a captioned “viewers are now confronted by themselves, thereby questioning a long-held notion of painting transcending reality.” They totally lifted that from that one scene in Neverending Story (the one costarring the delightful dragon puppet) in which the main character has to face himself in a metaphorical mirror to save the land of Fantasia. I’m only irritated about this mirror thing because it detracts from the other really awesome exhibits (i.e. a tree carved out of a giant block of wood, a perfect foam replica of a guy’s entire garage).
4. Leggings designed to look like skinny jeans – I am not sure if this is big in America now, too, but I’m really upset because last month I bought a pair of leggings with rips painted on them, which I thought was totally hilarious. But apparently everyone wears jean leggings seriously. This keeps happening to me. Years ago, I had this pair of awesome little girls’ rain boots to capitalize upon my weird munchkin feet and then they suddenly became stylish. What’s the point of wearing stupid stuff if no one else gets the joke?
But like I said, these are actually annoying things that I’m really enjoying. On to the adventures: I’ve gone to a few more too-beautiful-for-words type churches (Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s again, a Hindu temple / probably the most beautiful and interesting place I’ve seen so far) and too-historical-for-history type museums and buildings (Victorian and Albert / awesome museum of totally random stuff, Buckingham Palace / the castle of pens more expensive than my college tuition, the National Portrait Gallery / hall of scary white people with creepy claw hands and comically regal head positions). I’ve also gone to a few more shows. One was at the Globe again (not as fantastic as I expected since it was supposed to feature people in an insane asylum and cannibals, but I have impossible standards of creepiness.) The other was Les Miserables, which is the best thing in the entire universe. Furthermore, it was the best thing in the entire universe on a rotating stage, which I thought was this groundbreaking futuristic technology and stage direction, but apparently is normal. Nonetheless, difficult singing and acting… performed on a giant merry-go-round (I think I’m just overly impressed by things that spin).
I also went to Speakers’ Corner, this corner of Hyde Park where anyone can just get up and start talking (unfortunately, no one was there the day I went, but I’m really excited to go back and listen to people!)
And now I’ll end by describing the surprising variety of stairs I walked up today (I make England sound so exciting). St. Paul’s Cathedral is designed in such a way that climbing to the top seems like a treacherous quest wrought with suspense, tests of faith, and awe striking cinematic moments. The first leg of the journey is composed of these really irritating, shallow stone steps that are just a little too close together for a single step but a little too far apart for the more advanced two-at-a-time step. Slowly, the steps transition from normal to a wide circle with a stone wall. At a certain point I believe that the steps will never end. I have entered one of those Twilight Zone purgatories and will continue walking up awkwardly spaced steps in circles until I’m driven mad. But then, just as I begin to lose hope, we reach the top of the inside of the dome. Decorated with medieval religious symbolism, the dome’s acoustics allows people hundreds of feet away to hear anyone who whispers into the side of the wall (this, of course, serves to further my suspicion that I have been transported into a magical alternate reality or cosmic holding place in which the captive have the ability to communicate almost telepathically). We do what we know we must. We keep going up.
The next set of stairs is a tight one lane spiral of steep stairs straight up. Many of the inside dome people have turned back. (This is pretty much the equivalent of when Frodo and Sam must break off from the Order of the Ring as the journey is even more perilous than before and must be continued with only the main characters). The tower is tall, and it is creepy. We reach another landing, and walk across scaffolding outside (don’t worry, Dad, it’s actually railed in and super safe, I just wrote scaffolding for dramatic effect… which is now ruined. Thanks a lot) to get to the final set of stairs. Up until now, we have been climbing dimly little gray stone stairs, but the last portion of the climb are white walls and black, intricately designed wrought iron spiral stairs that change spiral directions every few sets. I rightly expect giant weird clock gears that represent an evil mastermind that controls time, who will inevitably be a tall clay man with impossibly spindly appendages humming Tim Burton theme music. These expectations never come to fruition so I hum the creepy Tim Burton theme music myself as we final reach the top. It is everything we dreamed of, the thing we risked our lives seeking in hopes of a better world: a graffiti "Justin Beiber" heart.
Also this view:
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