They're Everywhere

I just came back from two weeks in England.

First week was a course, in a smallish town up in Yorkshire. The second week was a short vacation, visiting a friend in London.

First - yes, it was hot. Okay, it's hotter here, but here we have air-conditioning. Including on the busses and subways. There's not much like riding the Underground home at the end of the work day with people crammed in close together, 95 degrees Fahrenheit, muggy ... and no a/c. Whew.

But I enjoyed the week despite the heat. Did a few museums: the British Museum, of course; the Tate (speaking of no a/c) - love the pre-Raphaelites, and they had a wonderful exhibition of Constables; and a gem of a little place I never heard of before: Sir John Soane's Museum. Sir John was a packrat of the first order - he wandered around all these digs and if he liked it, he picked it up and brought it home, where it rubs shoulders with antiquities and replicas - Apollo Belverdere gazing at a bust of Sir John done a la Roman senator; bits and pieces of marble, like feet and torsos and pediments; painting series like "The Rake's Progress" and "The Election"; and the actual sarcophagous of Seti I. The place is simply jaw-dropping.

I went up to Cambridge (blogged on that already), and also went to Westminster Abbey. I love the inscriptions - Anna says she's going to take a notebook and spend various weekends writing them all down as there's no published collection of them. They're fascinating: all the various euphemisms for "died" (exchanged his earthly for a heavenly dwelling) and the glimpses into the lives. My favorite is the 17th c woman whose tomb extols her virtues to finish by saying how they made her a fit companion for another woman, who was to be buried in Westminster and so the dead woman was buried there to wait for her... And Thomas Willis, who I learned about from Carl Zimmer's brilliant Soul Made Flesh, as well as the authors I never heard of - with the long epitaphs - and the ones I love - with the short ones... Anyway, Westminster is great.

And David showed me the whole second season of Dr Who! Whoooo-hooooo!

But - what I wanted to mention was something completely different. When I said to a woman at work that I was going to London, she was pleased for me - and then said, quite baldly: "But it's all changed now. There are Muslims everywhere now."

I really wasn't sure what to say to her. I kind of lamely said, "That doesn't bother me."

"No," she said, "I mean they're everywhere. All over. It's too bad."

I just kind of stared for a minute, and then said, "That's the great thing about big cities - real cities, you know? All the different people."

I wish I'd said something stronger ... I get flummoxed when people say things like that, people I don't expect it from, I mean.

But you know what? She was - almost - right. There are Muslims all over. And Hindus, and Sikhs, and who knows what else. Women in black burkhas (in this heat - I feel sorry for them, and if it's so cool why are the men in jeans and t-shirts?) and colorful salwar kameezes and everything in between - men in long shirts over loose trousers and more Western dress, and little kids everywhere. Mosques and temples and gudwaras mixed in with the little churches and meeting halls. A mixed crowd of people walking along the streets and on the underground and in the restaurants - and what restaurants! Everything under the sun ... places specializing in south Indian or North Indian or Chinese take-away, and places offering ploughman's lunch next to curry on the menu. Storefronts in a mix of scripts...

So yes, they're everywhere. And it's vibrant, and cosmopolitan.

And perhaps not everyone is happy with it. But that's the way it is in big cities, right? And in many ways, London is the big city.

(ps - Manhattan, I still love you. And San Francisco, too)