London at this time of year is decidedly grey.*
This might not normally be such an issue for me, but as daylight savings has just finished, suddenly it’s getting dark before 4 pm and the days never really seem to get out of first gear. They brighten up a little in the mornings, remain dim, grey, low and overcast during the day, then slide back into blackness very early on in the piece. In some ways this means the nights are far more enjoyable than the days – the city is properly lit up then, people are out having fun, and while the day seems to suck the life out of the place, the night seems to give it back.
Which is fortunate, as there inevitably turns out to be a lot to do at night…
I forgot to write in my last blog about Clinton and my trip to Wembley to watch the NFL game between the Chargers and the Saints. (The Saints? My own NFL team? At last I have one to support for appropriately spurious reasons…) I believe it was considered a home game for the Saints, and we all got little Saints flags to wave when they did anything good. Which they did, quite a bit, eventually winning a very cool game 37-32. I have to say that while I’ve hassled NFL for being kind of silly in the past, (a one hour game played in 3 hours 45 minutes, seriously?), watching it live it becomes a much more fluid and enjoyable spectacle. Especially when you’ve got someone who knows what’s actually going on sitting next to you (thanks Clinton).
And it really was a spectacle, complete with (extremely cold, I assume) cheerleaders, mascots running about the place, marching bands, giant floating banners, the totally excellent aerial camera thing they have, what appears to be approximately 300 players per team, and 82,000 people packed into Wembley. Which is quite a lot of people, especially after the game when all of them want to go back to the station and catch a train back. Quite the sea of humanity on the boulevard that runs between stadium and station.
I’ve got to say, in my two or three experiences of it, British police are past masters at effective crowd control. Wembley was a good example of this. On the boulevard at about three points there were five or so mounted police with their horses spaced evenly across the way. In order to control the flow, and prevent crushes in the station, every now and then one would yell out “Full cordon!”, and the horses would all pivot 90 degrees and become a fence that people couldn’t pass through. Was really interesting to watch, although did necessitate the need to avoid manure on the boulevard.
That was a couple of weekends ago, and while last weekend led to a couple of random, drinking to the wee small hours of the night, nights, watching the US elections in a bar full of Obama supporters until 7 in the morning was probably the next thing of true awesomeness to occur.
(NFL, US Elections… some might suggest I’ve ended up in the wrong country perhaps?)
The night produced some interesting conversations with Americans, Canadians, Sri Lankans, other Kiwis, Brits… really a multinational basement bar, all barracking for Barack. (An aside here, the definition for barrack. Australian vs British usage, totally opposite to each other. Odd.) (I was using it in the Australian sense, obviously.) It also led to a handshake and conversation outside the bar with John Bird, the guy who set up The Big Issue. He seemed pretty cool. Random.
The night also produced some excellent emotions. Hanging with a room full of people who were all so incredibly excited to see the victory, having followed the race closely for well over a year myself, tired, somewhat drunk… great way of really getting into the spirit of the thing. I highly recommend it.
And the victory itself? Especially the speech? Stunning. Amazing.
Afterwards, when I finally left the pub and was walking to the tube station through a misty Kensington Park, the fact that the day was once again grey and lifeless didn’t seem to matter quite so much.
* Most of the year actually, I’ve been reliably informed, but I’m really noticing it just now.