Day 6

I am going to have to keep updating this regularly if I hope to include half the interesting bits. It seems positively remarkable that I haven't even been here a week yet-- eventually the work will have to start, of course (eventually, like, um, Monday?) but for now I just go out, try and get my bearings, look at what I find interesting and talk to whom I find interesting.

My plan was to spend today in the British Museum, which is deliriously close to where I'm staying, maybe a five minute walk. And around 10 AM, what a walk it was: sunny, a little hazy, the streets busy in a quiet way and Russell Square full of kids so cute it made my teeth hurt a little to look at them. Nevertheless, I went to the museum. I made it through about half of the Egyption and most of the Greek galleries before things became entirely choked with large grounds of Japanese and Brazilian tourists. I also appeared to be moving at the same pace, and through the same circuit, as every middle-aged American couple who had arrived at the opening at 9:30, Rick Steve's guide in hand, and who was following the route laid out in the book.

I made it as far as the Elgin marbles before I threw in the towel. They are, as advertised, truly spectacular. I mean, truly stunning in a way I won't even try and do justice to here. (Though, suffice it to say, the story of their arrival in the British Museum is enough to make me reconsider my earlier comments about the majesty and laudability of the collector's business. It's a complicated and ideologically-fraught business, on a good day and there would be no, say, Cotton collection at the BL if bishops hadn't been burnt in Smithfield.) My favorite objects in the small portion of the galleries that I saw today were, as always, the idiosyncratic pieces were standard generic forms and now-inscrutable personal taste seem to combine: a tiny bronze figure of two women fighting (one has a sword!), a vase depicting the birth of Athena were Zeus' stylized eyes wince with pain, a carving from an Assyrian temple where cuneiform has been incised over a bas-relief of a hero fighting some kind of fish-monster, making the text appear to ripple with the figures' contortions. And some sexy, sexy Roman-era recreations of Greek statue. I'll be back, obvs-- I never made it to the Sutton Hoo treasure or Lindow man, the two things I'd got specifically to see-- but there's a long grey winter ahead for that.

Given that the sun was still out, I decided to walk east, a direction I had not heretofore explored. I walked down Clerkenwell (hey, it's medieval!), past something called the Yo! Sushi Academy (who would like to fund my visit to the local Yo!Sushi branch? Pretty please? They conveyor belts! if Rube Goldberg were alive today I bet this would be his favorite place to eat.) on to St. John's gate (the rebels burnt the original church there in 1831), where I visited the very small museum of the Order of St. John Ambulance, e.g. the Knights Hospitaller (Wat Tyler and friends also saw fit to dispatch their bishop at the time and to burn up all the records of the Knights Templar, which order the Hospitallers had absorbed after it was dissolved. In this way they provided the grist for hours and hours of History Channel programing and not a few masters theses). Eventually, I wound up in Hoxton Square, a nice, Northern-Liberties like neighborhood, chatting with an excitable Irishman named Jason, who announced that, well, I "[didn't] look like an American" (still unsure if that was compliment, insult, or observation. I seem to blend in well enough; people ask me for directions) and talked to me about American politics and told me I would make a beautiful mother someday. Remarkably, he'd actually spent time in West Philadelphia, and it was a relief to be able to explain to someone where I'd come from without having to resort to Will Smith lyrics. Inevitably, as all straight men seem to want to do, regardless of race, creed, or country of origin, he told me about his ex-girlfriend and how he is still in love with her, even more so now that she's taken up with another man. What do you want me to say, guys? No, seriously, what do you want me to say?

[There is room here for a larger disquisition on the rather dramatic differences in cross-gender socializing I've already observed here as opposed to the states, and how a display of the tinest bit of knowledge about, say, house DJ's or Britpop, surprises and delights, but it's late now and I am quite certain there will be other occassions for such a discourse.]

I walked back through Islington, which was, like Camden, packed full of real people going about their business and had a prosperous but comfortably worn feel to it. Came back to the dorm by cutting through a tiny, bucolic graveyard that I happened on completely by accident, unfortunately disturbing its two living occupants, who were making out with one another. Dinner featured a suspicious fish, but no ill effects yet, and a repeat performance by Sketchy McSketcherton, who was drunk and wearing a t-shrit that said "Hello, my name is Michelle." Did I mention he's got to be closer to 35 than 25?

Later, all I wanted was ice cream, frozen yogurt, gelato, anything soft and creamy. Since it was after eight-o-friggin-clock in the evening, though, everything, including Sainsbury's was closed. Salvation came, eventually, in the form of a Cadbury's chocolate pudding cup from Tesco, that minature emporium of-- well, not culinary, exactly, but gustatory-- delights. It was pretty good. Not Walker's Thai Chili Crisps good, of course, but let's not be greedy. Odd that the US should have a firm commerical upper hand when it comes to fast food, but not at all in the candy market. Clearly, this merits further study in the form of things like Aero bars.

... and now I'm telling the story. Whew. Brick Lane, Bike Polo and there really ought to be some reading done tomorrow. There is no longer any doubt in my mind how it is possible to live within sprinting distance of the British Library and not get any work at all done on one's dissertation.

PS, those of you with Skype should look me up; the username is the same as the gmail address in my facebook profile. How's that for Web 2.0?