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If I wanted to have profound thoughts then I would relax with fine British tea, perhaps by a fireplace. Instead I’m only having beer thoughts tonight, within a real English pub: I know it’s real because it has a blue heritage plaque inside. The music is like from my parent’s day. So nice.
Pubs vary. The first one I tried tonight was “between kitchens,” and so a James McAvoy look-a-like (Scottish actor) sent me to the Lamb. But the Lamb was a La Dolce Vita themed place, (link to Roger Ebert’s masterful film review) very full, and all of its menu items were unpronounceable. I never order food I can’t pronounce. Next I looked into the Perseverance pub. Almost every single chair was taken: No place to hide. At last I tried the Duke. Mostly empty. Perfect.
There’s a wind, branches are swaying fast, which would mean, back home, a fierce rain storm rushing in. We’ll see. I don’t care. I want my beer! (Truly I want my protein, as I’m walking so much)
My hotel, down the roads a ways, was picked to be within walking distance of the British Museum. My thoughts, made for beer, are inspired by that world famous edifice. To visit is to know the preciousness, and the fragility, of civilization. It’s been a long road, with many casualties along the way: Babylon, Rome, Nineveh and more. The latter city, of Assyrians, tried to rule their empire through fear, complete with stacks of heads. Two hundred years after that evil city fell, the local peasants did not know what that mound in the distance was. As a scribe noted, “Nineveh is gone, and who shall bewail her?”
Right now the Orcs of Russia are trying to instil fear by using atrocities—and if tomorrow Russia had earthquakes and pestilence then I daresay no one would go help. The thunderbird pilots of International Rescue would stay their hands. Maybe the Chinese would help, as folks say the sanctions imposed by the free world will eventually have the great effect of reducing Russia to a Chinese vassal.
It’s early May. Lots of bare legs. The fashion this year is lots of bare midriffs. Yet here I am, wearing a full length T-shirt. Yes, even though I’m an independently minded guy (nerd), one who likes to get a crowd to laugh by very solemnly proclaiming, “I am secure in my sexual identity…” Strange; I can admire all the museum statues of Greeks and Romans, enjoy the torso of a lady at the next table, yet for my own sartorial choice? Fashion is not a thing to be justified by logical thought, no, it’s a gut response. And my gut says, “Keep your shirt on.” I don’t know if people assimilate by conscious thought, but there you are: I am well assimilated into my society—but independent.
I guess a museum is for tourists, not locals. Outside, a smattering of ladies in black or brown tents. Inside, scarcely any head scarfs. Back when I was in elementary school, our principle told us—told the girls among us, more precisely—that they would soon be dressing either for the boys, or for the girls. I am fine either way. Where I get subconsciously irritated is when, on the sidewalk outside the museum, I see funny foreign tents, because I think they must be dressing neither for boys nor for girls, but for other unassimilated foreigners, rather than leading by example. I suppose, at some level, I feel I’ve been rejected. And no, they don’t dress for God’s eyes; I’m sure they wouldn’t wear a tent on a desert island or in their own kitchen.
Surely the housewives would tell each other that just as French boys and girls are taught to be safe drinkers by being given small glasses of wine as children, so too are London boys and girls taught to have self control around the opposite sex. Yes, bare legs for Boy Scouts and Girl Guides are perfectly safe, and never an excuse for being inappropriate.
Meanwhile, the Museum is “an equal opportunity offender” with idols and symbols from every pagan and heathen and infidel religion—including the Church of England. Hopefully, no one thinks I want to destroy anything permanently, for all time, depriving all future generations, even though I do talk like a fundamentalist by habitually saying, “Praise the Lord.” Back home nobody notices when I say so, here I accidentally get a laugh, maybe from my American accent. Some Englishman: “Everybody knows God lives in the American Midwest.”
Have you seen those long flat Chinese scrolls? I must return to the museum, because they have an animated screen that zooms in and pans and shows you how the scroll is meant to remind you of three dimensions.
In the luxury gift shop I asked: The only pea pod jewelry left, by Bill Skinner, (link to studio) is a small thing on a chain. Luckily I had snapped up a big one—from several boxed in a drawer—on my last visit: Now I have a nice pretty pea pod lapel pin. Yes, of course I can wear ladies jewelry—Did I tell you I’m secure?
The museum cafe sandwich came wrapped in cardboard, with a plastic see-through hatch that swung open. The listing of ingredients on the back, a big square of MEGO stuff, (my-eyes-glaze-over) had—get this—bolding for every keyword for allergies. Praise the Lord.
…
…
Sean Crawford
Composed at the Duke,
(Last week’s piece was composed on the Dreamliner,
over the Atlantic)
May,
2022
Footnotes for reading on a rainy day:
~I touched on assimilation on 25 April, Recruit School is Really Scary.
~Now I think humanity has been ever engaged in a battle line through everyone’s heart: between the burden of democracy or the surrender to autocracy; between thinking for yourself or submitting to State Television; between being a Russian-speaker in the Ukraine or in the land of Orcs. … Nobody is crossing the “Berlin Wall” going east into Russia.
~It is indeed Politically Correct, comrade, to be casting judgement: No rational person believes anything the Russians say. (I sure wish a politician would say so!)
~Here’s the start of Lord Byron’s poem where the Assyrians meet the Angel of Death: (link to poem and explanation)
The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And his cohorts were gleaming in silver and gold,
And the sheen of his spears were like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilea
~Thunderbirds March, 1:38, played by the Royal Marines, on a parade square, for ending a film; the credits are “a hoot!”
