Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

Sarcasm (n): harsh or bitter derision or irony; a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark. For the English, the national language- my addition.

It says something interesting about a nation when strangers make sarcastic remarks to you to indicate that they are trying to be friendly. In fact, the first time I truly felt welcome in London was when an older English gentleman made a silly, sarcastic remark to me at the Discover Greenwich museum. Another interesting thing is that the English seem to think that they have cornered the market on sarcasm.

Jesse was taking a picture of me wearing a replica of a jousting helmet- the tag said “try me on!” and you don’t need to tell me twice- when the man apparently said, “Well, that’s an improvement!” As there was essentially a snug metal bucket on my head, I couldn’t exactly hear him, so Rachel repeated it to me after I took the helmet off. When I smiled at the man and said, “You’re probably right about that,” he grinned back and explained that he was “only joking.” This event made me ecstatic and I bounced around to all my friends, telling them that I was starting to fit in in England.

This is an improvement...

Shortly after, when we needed directions to the tunnel that runs under the Thames, we asked the docents at the museum. They seemed eager to direct us toward the tunnel and added that “the tunnel doesn’t usually flood and people rarely ever die in it.” We laughed along with them, but they continued to act as if we must have no idea that they were joking. We’re Americans and therefore must not understand sarcasm. Because our country is entirely full of earnest people, right? (Wink wink, nudge nudge…)

I find it very interesting that- and this is a huge generalization- for a nation of overly standoffish people, the English sure love their sarcasm. It seems odd to me that no one makes eye contact on the street or on the tube, but it is totally acceptable to poke fun at a stranger at a museum.

Even though this probably sounds like a criticism, don’t get me wrong: I’m totally fluent in sarcasm, too.

There’s a crazy wide variety of theatres in London, more than I’ve ever experienced in one place before. Sure, it’s a little bit annoying to stand up for 3 hours while watching a play, but when am I going to have the experience to lean on the stage of a theatre, except when I’m at the Globe? And when am I going to get to see big name shows like Les Mis and Wicked one night and brand new shows like Deathtrap and Bedlam the next?

Theatre is so different here than in the US. In the States, theatre is very elitist. Tickets are so expensive that it’s hard for the medium to be accessible to everyone. Here, because the tickets are cheaper, it’s much easier for everyone to go out to the theatre much more frequently. We showed up yesterday morning and got 25 pound front row seats for Deathtrap. We were so close we could see Jonathon Groff spit (although I’m fairly certain everyone could see that). Because people can get such cheap tickets so frequently, many people- of many different social and economic backgrounds- are all so accustomed to going to the theatre. This results in the delightful traditions we witnessed at places like the Royal Albert Hall; symphony-goers starting a slow clap during intermission and coughing loudly between movements and the like.

To read a little more about these traditions, check out this site: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/how-the-proms-turned-populist-without-offending-the-purists-2040031.html.

Part of the reason that theatre here is so accessible is that the UK makes an effort to get people out to the theatre. Right now there is program running called A Night Less Ordinary, which offers free tickets for over 200 of the subsidized theatres in England to residents under the age of 26 (http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Life/Entertainment/Theatre/Tickets.htm). It’s amazing to me that the government would offer free theatre tickets. In the states, that would be unheard of.

Here, theatre is a bit of an equalizer. A college student like myself can pay 15 pounds (or, in our case, have the school pay our 15 pounds) to go to the National Theatre and sit 10 seats away from Sir Ian McKellen (true story, folks)! And if you don’t mind sitting in the back row of the Apollo Victoria or the Barbican, you’ll end up paying as much as you might pay for a mediocre dinner to go see a West End show.

The accessibility of the theatre seems to foster a love of the theatre in this country. To me, government subsidized tickets for young people make perfect sense. Get ‘em hooked, and they’ll keep coming back for more, something that is apparent when you look at the audiences here. Every show is practically packed, at shows that have been running for 2 months and ones that have been running for 20 years.

And, did I mention how fun it is to meet the actors after the low-priced performances?:

Not too shabby, eh?

I really don’t have anything academic or insightful to say about pubs, so I’ve been holding off on this post. I haven’t visited too many pubs in London because there were other things that I wanted to do instead, like going to see various theatre shows. I also don’t like beer, so the discovery of cider has been a lifesaver. I’ve been to quite a few pubs for lunch, actually, which is a completely different experience than going for drinks at night. In the afternoon the pubs aren’t nearly as crowded, but I felt like more suspicion fell on me as an Outsider then. The room is quiet enough that my American accent is very apparent, and everyone can hear my akward attempts to order food and, in the beginning of our trip, to count out the proper change. I don’t know all of the social cues yet (not that the British are very helpful in this aspect), and I feel like people definitely watch me and judge that. This might be a bit paranoid, granted, but I clearly don’t belong, and it can be an uncomfortable experience.

This contrast really comes to mind when I think of The Court–I went once for lunch and once for drinks with a large group. At lunch everyone could hear us as we debated the menu, and the bartender looked at me as if I was an idiot when I said, “Can I please try…” I’m sorry, I worked in retail for three years, and it’s hard to break that false cheerfulness during cash register interactions. But when I went back at night, the atmosphere was completely different. Both floors were crowded, there was loud music playing, and there was much more energy about the place. I really liked The Court for that type of outing–I wanted to have fun with my friends and drink a little more than I needed to, and I feel like The Court offered a really comfortable atmosphere for that. There were so many young people there that I could be sure that a) no matter how loud we got, the group next to us was drinking way more and being much louder than we were, b) someone would try to make conversation when I was waiting at the bar to order a round, c) the bartender wouldn’t have time to notice my awkwardness in ordering said round, and d) I could sing Journey at the end of the night without anyone caring, because they couldn’t really hear me. Would I like this atmosphere every night? Absolutely not. But for going out with friends, I thought that it had a really fun place.

This preference would probably make George Orwell turn over in his grave. His description of the ideal pub in “The Moon Under Water” sounds absolutely nothing like The Court. The exact opposite, in fact. I can see where Orwell was coming from, however. His pub is quiet, with good conversation and good beer served in the proper mugs. Based on what we’ve read in Kate Fox, pubs are a huge center of British culture, and it seems to be where people can go to forget what else has happened in the day and just socialize with other regulars. The familiarity becomes comforting in and of itself. For that purpose, I wouldn’t want to go to The Court either.  Maybe this is one of the reasons the English have a pub (or sometimes more) on every corner, because each pub serves a slightly different purpose and attracts a slightly different crowd.

After visiting Hamstead Heath with a friend from London, she took me down Bishop’s Avenue which she claimed to be the most expensive street in London. Bishops Avenue is in Hampstead, a wealthy areaof Northern London. On it are some of the largest, and strangest, houses in London. After doing a bit of research I found out that the Avenue is known not necessarily for being London’s most expensive residential road (though it is in the top three) but it certainly has the largest number of huge, empty houses

The attraction of owning a house on this road is purely prestige. The neighborhood is a fifteen minute drive from central London, can have a garden of a couple of acres, and is only thirty minutes from London Luton airport, the obvious choice for owners of private jets. There are plenty of other wealthy areas of London, the 16th most expensive city to live in as of 2009 (3rd in 2008, according to the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jul/07/global-economy-economics). Arguably, none of the other wealthy neighborhoods or streets carry with them the same nouveau riche implications that Bishops does.

There’s the famous Kensington Palace Gardens street , owned and leased by the Crown and with gates at either end, it is currently the most expensive road per square foot in London.

http://www.propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk/blog/most-expensive-house-in-the-world/

However, Bishops Avenue lays claim to the highest concentration of giant, super-expensive houses. It has another distinction: it is here that the Saudi royal family bought seven homes in the early 1990s when they thought that Sadam Hussein would invade their country (see below Times article). All of those houses are now unoccupied as are a huge proportion of the mansions on Bishops Avenue. In fact, they are occupied so rarely that owners sometimes find squatters inhabiting their homes when they stop by once every five years or so.

As a piece in the times points out, these houses are owned not by people for whom money is no object but by those for whom it is the only object (Times). People who have purchased these houses are interested in the status which comes with owning a piece of property whose exact monetary value is frankly beside the point.

When it was purchased in 2004 and renamed the Royal Mansion, the $50 million Toprak Mansion, held the distinct honor of the most expensive new house ever sold in London. It now has giant gold lettering across the top of the columns proclaiming its new name for all to see.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7208534.stm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-510744/The-Chavenue-Inside-expensive-road-London.html

Britain’s richest man, Lakshmi Mittal, also owns a house here which he has been unable to sell. Instead, he has offered to rent it for the paltry sum of 10,000 pounds-a-week.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23725446-mittal-rents-out-10000-a-week-palace-he-cant-sell.do

There are many remarkable, and shocking, things about the culture of opulence which these houses represent. I’ll leave you with this from the Times:

“I heard a story, a parable even, about this pocket of north London. It takes place in the plant room of a new-built mansion – where else? – and concerns a certain country’s richest man, whose identity I promised to conceal for fear of my informant’s social (and, perhaps, actual) death. This man and his wife had not lived in their house for long – one of the world’s most expensive – when the heating systems began to go awry. Now, when you live in a 20,000-square-foot house and the plumbing’s playing up, you call someone fast. The engineer arrived promptly, went down to the plant room and looked at the series of mechanical control panels that monitor the byzantine complex of boilers and water tanks and filters. And they were all to cock. Someone had been messing around with them. He asked around the staff, but nobody knew anything about it. Eventually the owner’s wife admitted, rather sheepishly, that she had been in the room and had tried to adjust the settings. Why, asked the engineer. Her reply tells you everything you need to know about this odd little world. “I was worried about the heating bills,” she said.”

Cited:

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article4164403.ece

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/overseas/article4632834.ece