Melancholy London

By my troth London is a melancholy place. Last night, after a meeting with Mark “Monty” Garfield about all things T.Mandrake, I met up with the girls (my sister, our mum and her friend) and went to the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park. The play of choice was Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and very enjoyable it was indeed! Forsooth, the cast were fantastic (although I didn’t think Hero’s father was convincing enough at being full of rage – even when he said he wanted to tear her apart with his bare hands, the emotions were portrayed in his movements, but they never reached his voice or his eyes – the way a fake smile never does either).

After the play, my sister and I went for drinks at Molton House courtesy of my friend Will – check out his blog here. While enjoying our free drinks and mingling with London’s ‘cool crowd’ we noticed what a melancholy bunch they were. Perhaps we were inspired by our injection of Shakespeare comedy earlier that evening (and all the wine/gin/vodka we’d been drinking), but this lot seemed to have trouble smiling, saying excuse me to get past you or even making eye contact in some cases! Now, of course I’m generalising here – not everybody in Molton House was secluded in their clique, but we were surprised by the surliness of some of the clientele.

So on the way home I had a little experiment. I smiled at people. Yes, on the bus and on the train. Actually made eye contact and smiled at people. The results were interesting; one girl smiled back, two guys smiled back but only once they were safely outside the bus and I was leaving on it, one guy asked for my phone number, and everybody else looked either surprised, suspicious or sometimes downright terrified!

Anon, I bid thee all a fair weekend, and beseech the people of London – please smile at each other more!