Picky, picky.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Today was not too eventful, although it was an absolutely glorious day. Leah and I went to St. James Park to enjoy the fabulous weather. We ate lunch beneath a tree and Leah wrote her journals while I practiced poi. We walked around the pond and fed the massive assortment of water fowl and pigeons. It’s a bird-watcher’s paradise.
Originally I wasn’t going to mention one incident that occurred, because it really did bother me, but, from an academic standpoint, it’s a point of interest. As we were walking along a path, I saw some fallen flowers, which made me want to go pick a flower. A little ways off was a patch of grass, not fenced in, with some flowers just scattered around. Since it wasn’t fenced off, people had been walking over them and many were trampled. Now, I know perfectly well that you’re not supposed to pick flowers from other people’s gardens, and I really shouldn’t have tried. But, at the time, my logic went, “Well, they’re trampled and going to die anyway. I’ll just take one.” Of course, this is the same logic that is causing the rainforest to disappear, but that’s another issue. In any case, I went over to the flowers and found one that had most certainly been trampled. I picked it, and no sooner had that flower left the ground then I heard someone shot from behind me, “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” I turned around and some man with his young son was standing behind me, and he looked absolutely shell-shocked. “Picking flowers from a park! I’ve just told my four-year-old off for doing that! What kind of a person are you?!”
I stated plainly that the flower had already fallen, and walked off. I didn’t want to deal with him.
As I walked away, I realized that I really shouldn’t have picked a flower from a park, that I had been taught not to do that since my Girl Scouting days. What bothers me, though, is not that I was called on my error in judgment. It’s the way he said it, as if he was scolding me or accusing me of murder. He could have just as easily have said, “Excuse me, you really shouldn’t pick the flowers,” or something like that.
Now, humiliating as this was personally, it does bring to light some interesting social issues. I was immediately reminded of something that I had learned in French class last semester. In general, Europeans (and I assume this, at least in part, applies to British culture as well) have no problem with scolding their children in public, because the humiliation helps enforce the adult’s authority over the child, and shows who is in charge to anyone watching. Apparently, they don’t have a problem with scolding other people’s children, either.
This also demonstrated something else I had heard about the British. They are very serious about their gardens. I remember in Salaam Brick Lane when Hall described the roof gardens and how, even in the dingy, urban East End, it is important to have just a small bit of greenery around. It’s easy to see this in London, since there are so many parks and it seems as if everyone has a garden or at least a flowerbox on their windows. I remember walking through the Barbican for the first time and marveling how beautiful it looked, despite the fact that it’s a mass of concrete, because almost every single flat had a flowerbox hanging over the side of the balcony. I can only imagine that this insistence on gardening must come from the fact that, in such a large city with such a limited amount of space to call your own, having a garden allows you to extend your reach a little, gain a bit more privacy, and have a little more control over life in such a busy atmosphere.

Moving on, I ate hummus for dinner and hung out with Chris, Alana, Katie, Jen, and Lauren. We all decided to go down to the Thames Festival, since we had missed it the night before. Chad and I got separated from everyone else, but still had a good time walking around and getting lost in crowds. Everyone else wanted to get drunk anyway, and Chad and I weren’t in the mood. Toward the end I stumbled upon a poi store, and across from it were two people spinning poi and other pyro-theatrics. We watched them for a while, until the fireworks started. That was quite an impressive display. Not necessarily choreographed in any particular way, but they were bright and loud, so I say they did their job. It was a good night, overall. I love London at night—it’s absolutely beautiful.