Walking and Street Trash

15 December 2012. The day in review. 

(1)  Walking

You all know that the British drive on the wrong side of the road. But, at least they do so consistently. When it comes to walking, it's a different story.

For consistency's sake, some, say half, want to walk on left side of a pedestrian street. According to one cabbie in Birmingham (UK not Alabama - something to remind your small town airport check-in staff of if flying to Birmingham, UK, say from Gainesville, Florida), this has everything to do with the placement of one's lance 'whilst' jousting. Most people are right handed. So, the majority of lances were held in the right hand. That meant driving your horse up the left side of your opponent. I've never seen anyone hold a lance while driving a car, but the British do love their heritage. (This, by the way is the reason that they make Americans living in the UK learn how to drive. The lance in the modern horseless conveyance is a stick-shift, which is daftly handled in the left hand.)

Meanwhile, the other half of British pedestrians walk on the right. I firmly believe that these are contrarians. Only countries that have experienced revolutions drive on the right side of the road. France. The USA. Haiti. Venezuela. The Russian Federation. (I predict, incidentally, that the U.S. Virgin Islands will never throw off its colonial yolk for this simple reason: they drive on the left, mostly with American cars, which makes riding through the narrow streets of Charlotte Amalie, the capital of the USVI, something of a seat-of-your pants thrill for a passenger in a colleague's car.) 

The result, amongst pedestrians, is a super-collider on a human scale. As people try to make their way, chaos - the mathematical patterns of chaos - results. 

Pedestrians in London

Now, why is this important? 

Firstly, it make the British a more tolerant and self-effacing people. Ask yourself, how many times could you excuse yourself for someone bumping into you before you exercise your second amendment rights. Americans, because they all drive and walk down the same side of the street, have a certain directness to them that is, well, direct. I have yet to walk straight down a British street. No wonder the UK is slightly ahead of the USA in matters of equal rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and the transgendered.

Secondly, in American eyes, it makes the British inconsiderate. Not intentionally. If they paid attention to every on-coming obstruction, they'd have a meltdown either from indecision or having to make so many decisions. It is a marvel - and I write this with admiration - a marvel that there are not more accidents. Britons have developed the reverse polarity of magnets. To achieve the same unadulterated sense of personal space a New Yorker has to wait on a rain-storm and start swinging his or her umbrella like Occam's razor.

Sadly this marvel of modern British movement results in the 'law of metal'. If it has more metal than you, you get the hell out of its way. An American cyclist, though he runs red lights as diligently as any British cyclist, would stop to give way to a pedestrian. And, a car's driver in the USA certainly would not roll down his window to scream at the cyclist he's barely clipped, "You don't flippin' pay the road tax, do you!" If it's an American cyclist, he's left with the puzzle: what did he mean when he told you to "get back on the pavement"? The pavement is what they British call the sidewalk. You and the car are riding on what the British call the "tarmac". Lord knows what the planes and jets are flying down. But, if you have to ask, you should review the 'law of metal'.

 

(2)  Street Trash

David Sedaris moved from France to the UK, and . . .   I'll let that sink in. Many people I talk to think that David Sedaris still lives in the USA.  . . . and, what's the first thing out of his pen after he settles in? "The British are pigs!" -- in the Sunday Times (of London) no less.

They are! Pigs. You would have to be blind not to notice. The carefree abandon with which the British abandon stuff on the streets as they walk is impressive in its audacity. It's easy to believe that the entire country operates under the assumption that "Your mother lives here." She probably does: Live here. Before she died, while I lived in Florida, my mother lived in Ohio. That's like saying my British neighbour's mother lives in Finland or Italy. He can drop all the stuff he cares to. His virtual Italian mama might as well be a Pope in the woods. As it is, there's always someone to pick up after him.

Walking the dog up the "High Street" -- that's "down Main Street" in American English -- on a Saturday night, the average American dog walker could be forgiven for concluding that an army of bag-laddies had blown themselves up, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, on the streets and in the parks.

Before moving on, I feel, I need to comment on the difference between Britons walking up High Street and Americans walking down Main Street. It's the riddle of "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond". America was settled by the Scottish, where as Britain - ask any Englishman - was settled by the English.

Of course, not all of the British are pigs. And, there are pigs in the USA too. There are even historical reasons for this slovenly behavior. While Americans were being blitzed by public service campaigns insisting "put it in the can Gator fan!", the British were in the midst of "The Troubles". The Troubles was that period during the conflict in Northern Ireland when the Irish Republican Army was planting their bombs in trash cans up and down the British isles. The result, whether through the removal of trash cans or blowing them up, was the creation of a nation that discarded its trash anywhere it felt like it. 

Americans taking the UK citizenship test puzzle over the question, "What is the purpose of a wheely bin?" A wheely bin is the ubiquitous British trash bin. We've got black ones for garbage. Green ones for compost. And, Blue ones for recyclables. Any philosophy or linguistics teacher will tell you that a purpose does not necessitate a use. While out walking the dog, you're obliged to pick up its "mess". You tell yourself as you carry it away, "I am a Buddhist monk. And, this bag holds the jewels of refuge: dāna, sīla, and bhāvanā . . . alms, restraint, and concentration." You know that the next trash can you see will probably be back home.

So, what would David Sedaris do? (WWJD? you might ask.) In his Sunday Times article, he asks Britons to be ashamed and to bin it like the good Americans we all suspect they want to be. (They don't want to be European, that's for sure.) BTW: Bin it, that's British English for "put it in the can Manchester United fan".

Discarded nappy - a bag of baby poo.

Sunday Evenings, Late

Something about late Sunday evening dog walks encourages he off-cant.
   
(1)

     I, I know Florida, said the nice man Max just met on his evening walk. That's where ...
     I've heard this - Mickey Mouse - a million times, but no ...
     That's where Neanderthal Man comes from, says he.
     No, I say, George W. Bush comes from Texas.
     

   
(2)

     Another delightfully weird Sunday late-evening dog walk in Cambridge.
     Sitting outside the Starbucks - closed at this hour, we came across a man who looked like Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, accessing the Wifi on an ultrabook. He was blogging.

     A celestial event - he said.
     Good night for it - I said - an unusually warm evening. - Tribute? - I asked.  Sir Patrick Moore, a distinguished British astronomer died today. He'd been the world's longest running TV host for a program called, "The Sky at Night".  It was like watching your dowdy old aunt pull the frumpy sitting room furniture out onto the lawn to watch the stars.
     No. I am reporting the progress of that orb . . . - He said - . . . the one hovering in the sky over your shoulder.
     I turned to see what might be described as an orb, stationary in the sky.  The sight of sky lanterns isn't unusual here.  They're used to mark weddings, births and deaths.  This was brighter, however, than any sky lantern I've seen.  It was roughly on the flight path used by planes landing at the local airport.  But, aircraft wonted for a soundtrack: the reverse thrust of jets eventually landing, the beat of helicopter rotors, ...  Even the jets sent to pound the hell out of Libya during the revolution made a mighty roar.
     How long have you been here? - I asked, assuming he'd tell me how long the orb had been laying about.
     Fifteen. - He said nothing of how long he'd seen the orb.
     Ingenious! - I said - I'd never have thought of coming here to use the Wifi at night.
     I have Internet at home - the tone of his voice seemed to say, "I'm not crazy", as he continued - I came here to see the orb.
   
     What characterizes late Sunday evening encounters is the need to just go with the flow.  It's claimed that Cambridge is a UFO hot-spot.  But, there are also UK and US air bases near-by.  Lord knows what they're flying off into the night sky.
 
 

What shall we be today?

This as part of a submarine. A periscope.
 
The Empire of England remakes its objects as they age, as purpose becomes obsolescence. Drains without feed are become submarines. Lamp posts without light, a temple's ruins. Alone, each seems to ask, "What shall we be today?"
 
I once attended an international conference on literature for children. Standing in the farthest reaches of the conference theatre, among the rafters like a planet in deep space, I heard "just-so" and "might-be" stories the likes of how coyote learned to call, or, crocodile came to smile, or, in translation from the near-Asian steppe, why mommy took a wife.
 

---

 
You put your head to the window of the periscope and you can see them. The race that sails round and round the stationary scope. Traveling millions of miles if only in their own special sense of distance. Like a set of chattering plastic teeth at the end of a wind-up key held stationary, or, planets laid out on a mechanical form.
 
The mirrors that take the light down bend it along with the images of the over-land world above. I come out, below, with a broad nose and thin lips as is fitting an alternate reality. My eyes, sadly though, read like a bad poem. With gravity far beyond their years, those eyes - at first sight - spark broad panic. It dies down, but, not without much discussion of the blinkered code they might be sending.
 
Aware of your own distortion, you consider that the mermaids you see there, below, might be sea cows. Might they survive on the refuse washed down drains from the nearby open-air market's fruit and vegetable vendors, you allow yourself to wonder. Meanwhile, those below create myths in which we gain the role of gods. We should be honoured but wary. What goes down must come back up.
 
Indeed, whether mermaids or sea cows, they're ravenous with a propensity to belch. Initially, we've mistaken the gurgling sound for conversation. Attendant malodorous scents, however, neither suggest nor confirm that our hypothesis is false. But, they certainly rise as quickly as our hopes give rise to having discovered intelligent life beyond, if inside, our own world. If they, below, only knew what our scientists are saying!
 
Having described the submarine below as a kind of sit-n-spin, they've now moved on to postulate that those farthest aft experience age in advance of those closer to the spout. A society of contrarians labels the theory "Daft", outlining a mocking theory that considers those to the rear are stern and those forward are loopy. They refuse, simply, to allow prevailing theory to be edified by uncertain observations of the subterranean world. Indeed, reminding us of smoke-and-mirrors, they suggest, it may be our world, not that below, that is spinning.