“WHEN IT’S THREE O’CLOCK IN NEW YORK, IT’S STILL 1938 IN LONDON” (Bette Midler): General thoughts on England as vs. America.

1) Midler isn’t right, of course, but she isn’t entirely wrong either. Both the Rat and I found that England felt weirdly Orwellian–not because of the “CCTV in Operation” spycam signs posted all over the place, but because of the bizarre sense of just-like-in-the-books English life shoved up against the year 2002. Red-faced, white-haired old guys hawking fruit, beer glass wedged between the strawberry boxes; and, on the lamppost, a wheatpasted sign calling Londoners to Rally for Islam. England did feel older. This may well be the result of our own expectations coloring our experience; I can’t tell.

2) Related: On this trip I got to find out what my mental furniture looks like. Apparently my mental picture of England is composed of, in about this order: Michael de Larrabeiti, George Orwell, Diana Wynne Jones, Lee Miller‘s “Grim Glory” series, Helen Cresswell, the Rolling Stones, the Clash, Huggy Bear, and (of course) Paddington Bear.

3) The houses were almost all white, with some dark houses; bright color was rare. Perhaps this is different in immigrant neighborhoods? It was strikingly non-U.S.-like.

4) Londoners have walled-off or hedged-off gardens instead of big green “My lawn is my manhood!!!” King of the Hill-style lawns. The gardens are much prettier and more individual than lawns, but also much more standoffish. The contrast was almost too easy.

5) Traditional English breakfasts are delicious. Oh yes. Fat, salt, sweetness–mmmmmmmmm… Very Southern/soul-food-like.

6) Sometimes it seemed like half of London was made up of museums commemorating Horrors of English History. Makes you see the bright side of American youthfulness/amnesia. London did not seem nearly as parasitic on its past as, say, Athens; nonetheless I think it would be depressing to live in a city with (at least!) four major memorials to historic local vileness. (The Clink; the Tower of London; the London Dungeon; Madame Tussaud’s…)

7) The news on the newsstands seemed very… 1990s. Shark-attack stuff. I became acclimated to hideous, grand-scale news–attack, war, chaos, pederastic priests, more war, “a crisis in American capitalism,” etc. etc., and it was bizarre to go back to local murders and similar Chandra-like news. That news isn’t trivial in any way–Chandra Levy’s death wasn’t trivial either, and it was grim watching thoughtless commentators use her and her Congressional connection as a symbol of “meaningless” pre-9/11 news stories–but the British newspapers didn’t have the same perpetual crisis feeling that you get from walking past a row of American newspaper kiosks these days. This general trend in British news was interrupted at the tail end of our visit by news that London hospitals were stockpiling radiation pills.

8) As if to contradict the above, security was much tighter in London than in D.C. or New York City. There were signs posted all over the Underground instructing people in how to deal with suspicious packages; I saw a traveler get told off by a station attendant for leaving his baggage for a moment; there were no trashcans in any of the stations, which I assume is an anti-bomb measure (I think some DC stations have also removed their trashcans–am I right?–and if so, it’s hard to imagine that our canless stations are as clean as the Tube stations). Before 9/11, there was the IRA.

9) In a single Borders Books outlet, you could purchase the following magazines: Class War; Class Struggle; and the Socialist Review, not to mention numerous less explicitly pinko publications. Very very not-like-home.