Thoughts for: Monday 13th March 2006

London :: [11:52:44]
Got back from London last night. I have been to London a few times before, but never to actually stay there for any period of time. Having now stayed there for a short while I can honestly say I do not like it. London smells, it is dirty and the people are rude, obnoxious and entirely without manners. One would assume that if the word etiquette arose in conversation your average londoner would assume you were talking about a city in Canada. The place is jam packed with people who seem to be in some dire need to get somewhere in the most expedient manner possible, so much so that they cannot spare a moments thought for anyone else they encounter upon their travels. I have had less people collide with my body in mosh pits than I had in London this weekend. Of these multiple impacts the proportion of people who actually took the time to apologise is so ludicrously slim that if I offered a numeric value for it then it would be decimals. Another baffling occurance is the way that people stop dead as they are walking without a single thought to the fact that the entire pavement is so packed with human bodies that people are going to collide with them. They seem not to care. Apparently standing directly in the middle of a massive flow of human bodies is an acceptable location for a conversation.
I have for a long time considered retail service in Britain to be substandard but London really took the biscuit. I'm not sure that a single person I encountered behind a shop counter understand basic things like the words please or thankyou. Even hello and goodbye seemed beyond their comprehension and were met with extremely puzzled looks all around. A prime example was when attempting to buy a subway ticket. Going to the counter and enquiring was met with not a single word but merely a thumb jabbed in the direction of a place list without explantion. Then as the time was taken to read said list the aforementioned thumb apparently became inpatient and repeatedly thrust itself in the direction of this celotaped piece of paper upon the glass. Quite why the person attached to this thumb couldn't communicate or answer questions I have no idea. Oh well, on the upside the thumb was probably more intelligent than the creature it was attached to anyway.

I don't think I could live in London for any length of time without being forced to napalm things. I think in the future I shall endeavour to avoid this dirty and mannerless cityunless it is absolutely necessarry.