Large things in large town

My days in London settle into a vague pattern. Mornings are leisurely, evenings are social, afternoons I usually bus into the city, and experience the first traffic jams of my life. I go with vague errands (buying a phone/tent/harmonica, unrewarding illegitimate busking) but mostly my time in central London is spent walking around and staring at old things: surprisingly low stone builidings; commerative statues and arches of all descriptions; plaques, portraits and palaces. I’m equally attracted and repulsed by the monuments. A giant statue of Achilles made with cannon won in the battle of Waterloo? Bellicose jingoism. More difficult for me is the oft-present glorification of the era of British imperialism.

The injustices of British relations with other ethnicities are still sorely relevant for many. A man waves an Ulster flag among the massive Union Jacks along the Mall. Later I meet a pan-African crowd outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. An impromptu protest has sprung up in the aftermath of activist Toyin Agbetu being released without charge after his pronouncements during the Abolition 200 (ending of slavery) service in Westminster Abbey back in March. Agbetu was arrested while declaiming what he has called the commemoration’s “myopic eurocentrism”. For the interested, here's a news piece on the March event.
The protest today involves a lot of drumming and pretty soon the National Gallery closes their main doors. Sympathetic and curiousI asked one of the protestors why they chose this spot. The protest started at the police station, and ended here partly by chance. My guy thought it was as appropriate a place as any. He gestures around Trafalgar Square. “Slaves built all of this” he says. I talk with him a bit, explain the phrase "kia kaha", (he hears kia kara), then move off to book my tickets for the Globe theatre.

Namvula encourages me to go to the British Museum – to “see all the stuff we stole” I do. The wizened and strangely shiny mummified Egyptian is very memorable. But it is looking at the exhibit of Viking doohickies that something hits me. The complexity of this island’s history. I present a list, familiar to most of you, but important nonetheless:

Invaders/colonisers of Great Britain
????? (Neolithic stuff)
Romans
Anglo-saxons
Vikings
Normans

Then a few centuries later, the mongrel inhabitants of this damp flat island spread an Empire to the antipodes. Bizarre. That’s what I think of when I see Nelson’s column.

Next time I write I will have tales of cycling through the Midlands.