Rules
The British hate to diverge from their unspoken little rules, which is why they are so early to queue and irritated by those who fail them. I have seen nastiness in the parks, on the roads and in shops over simple things that could otherwise be easily ignored and yet. For instance, today, jogging in Richmond at the Richmond Gate there is a busy round-about that unites cyclists, joggers, families, walkers and autos who simply go out of their way to own the intersection. Adding to the grumpiness is the batch-nature of the culture: everybody does anything at the same time. I pull into the athletic complex for Eitan's football Saturday morning, 9:15AM, which is empty until 9:30AM when the parking lot overfloweth. Boxing Day is one long traffic jam as London arrives, en masse, at the same parking garages for the same sales. Commuters commute on three train departures bunching around 8AM looking grouchy as they stand crammed together like sardines. Grocery shopping at Waitrose peaks Sunday morning .. and on and on it goes. CCTV ensures we march to order. We could easily become a distributed society spreading ourselves across the day, lessening tensions and going counter to the lemming mentality of our island nation. Maybe this would reduce the national passtime of binge-drinking. It would require a mind-shift impossible from everything I have so far observed. The British are engaged by rules, you see. They love structure. And everything has its place from top-to-bottom, which we all accept happily or not (compare this to the US where nobody content with their lot and always looking for a leg up). Perhaps the UK's 60 million odd survive in this confined space the size of Kansas due to its nature. Or perhaps their nature simply trends towards a natural identity different from anywhere else.
My photo, taken Thursday morning 10AM, of Smithfield's Market in Clerkenwell facing Holborn at New Fetter Lane and the boundary of the City. I used to work nearby shortly following our arrival to London. The glass buildings new - or at least since '00 - and the distant one the HQ for Sainburys which is the second largest grocery chain in the UK following Tesco. This is London's transformation - from the grim and grime of post-War '60s-style concrete to shiny glass and steel. Do you think improved?
