I’m not going to make a habit of this kind of diary post now I’m back from Vietnam but this seemed worth doing. It might very well say more about what’s wrong with my eyes than about what’s wrong with the world. I think it very probable that something very great and powerful was passing somewhere behind the fronts I could see. That’s a familiar feeling! Perhaps you have seen it, or been it, in which case please be gentle in your correctives!
23/04/23
The last time I drove this way was in darkness; to catch an early train to the airport. This time, I am less sensitive to the landscape and more sensitive to Rowan's song choices. I have resisted having the Inspector Gadget theme on loop again but then the playlist somehow ends up launching into a bedtime story and I drive up the verge trying to respond to Rowan's entreaties that it's not a song. I'm not even looking at the time. I know we're late but this is tired dad time, not professional time or scientist time. I spent the whole week doing stuff like reorganizing the bedlinen and buying cycling kit for my new school run duties. Still, we are going, finally, to an XR event in London; just the two of us.
The train is standing in the station all the time I parked my car. Turns our the line north of here is still subject to engineering works, presumably due to whatever it was that happened on the night I left for Vietnam. Once we get on and Rowan chooses a seat, I ask him what he thinks we will see from the windows on the way.
"Trees.... Danger parks."
"What are danger parks?"
"They have big walls, and a lot of electricity in them."
I have a feeling that he is thinking about electricity substations. Do they still have those safety videos? And show them to 4-year olds? Or perhaps he was shown one once: "Is it where they make the electricity?" I ask.
"Yes. And there are lots of burglars there."
"Aren't the burglars scared of the electricity."
"They know the way to go."
We have quite a talk about electricity and lightning. Later on we talk about floods and the sea. I haven't told him where we're going except that we're going to London.
Canada geese are paired up on wide pastures, with stately willows overhead.
A man with a phone laughs so his partner will ask why. French protesters, he says, have built a literal brick wall across a planned motorway route, he says. "And here Just Stop Oil glue themselves to buildings and when you pull them off, they cry."
As we get into the city, I notice, Rowan becomes less interested in what is out of the window, even though there are more things to point at. I take a little hope from this, but don't look at it too hard.
Waiting at the bus stop at Liverpool Street, I see a stall selling something I've only seen in Vietnam: Nước mía - sugarcane juice. They have just the same flimsy Chromium mills they use on the streets there, though it's 42 times the price.
"Do you want a sugarcane juice?"
"Yes!" The strength of his enthusiasm, and his desire, is always a bit of a shock. His brother wasn't like that. His brother, also, would have been calling out the bus numbers, Rowan is just learning them. We take a number 11. It goes past St Paul’s and, Rowan tells me, a picture of a bird with a person's head. I don't see that but it’s very probable; London’s full of monsters.
We get off outside St Thomas's and he's up on my shoulders to cross the bridge. I did bring waterproofs but no umbrella, despite specific instructions. "It was sunny when we left". Yeah. It's April. So we pop into a shop before the bridge and buy a big umbrella; I need one anyway. Rowan wants a squishy superhero key fob ("These are the coolest things I have ever seen,") and settles on Thor. I say that's fine but no more toys after this.
The bridge is closed to traffic, whether because of the protest or the marathon or both. We walk past the big white lion which has an oddly benevolent, bemused expression. We look at the river, and we look at Big Ben.
As we approach the other end, we can hear drumming but it turns out this is an event for a diabetes charity. They have big corporate blue banners that say 'diabetes is relentless; so are we.' but the drumming is - well I thought it was the XR event,. I'm incredibly musically ignorant it was those long drums that you hang round your neck. What are they called? Lots of people drumming together. Anyway, I'm surprised at that kind of drumming with those kinds of bannersTwo men in turbans dance together to it, I think they are just from the crowd.
The marathoners are pouring between the human banks that have formed for them. I talk to Rowan about the race; I'm not sure if he's impressed or not. The same goes for his reaction to the statue of Boudicca, which I just tell him is of ‘a fighting queen'. I can’t see his face because he's on my shoulders.
We start to see the pink jackets of the XR stewards under the looming statue of Churchill. They really made him massive for that statue. I wonder what I'd tell Rowan about him. Anyway, one man in a jacket gives us directions.
The XR welcome tent is with a line of others along the south side of Parliament Square. Events are all at the various hubs but the map above the whiteboard only shows a couple of them. It's a crap map, as the man from behind the table cheerfully acknowledges. We get stickers. Rowan wants the one with the skull on which says 'Let it all burn. Growth is God.' The Family Hub is on the other side of the square, we’re told.
I tell Rowan that the big yellowish building is where the people work who are supposed to make the rules for what people should be allowed to do and what they shouldn't in the whole country, and the white building is where the old kings are buried. He says he would like to see the king. I wonder if that’s possible. It will be the Coronation soon.
I would really like to stop for the Buddhist 'just slow down' event at the Faith hub but I know that's not going to happen. "Oh! shall we take some deep breaths?" I say, as the speaker suggests it. "Why?" Rowan asks; he isn't feeling angry. We ask another steward who is also very switched on, friendly and helpful but also does not know where the family hub is; "and you're not the first person who's asked me," he says. Surely the XR grandparents will know.
As it turns out, it’s right next to the grandparents tent. "I want to go to the museum." Rowan suddenly announces but, to my great relief I am able to counter with: "do you want to do some lego?"
"Yes!"
And I shepherd him through his shyness into a tent in the shadow of Lincoln where a baby lying in the Lego, keeps worming itself forward headwise and getting lovingly yanked back by its little ankles. Across the way, we can see the backs of Gandhi's knees and Mandela's jacket which, if you look closely, is embroidered on the statue. Actually I think it is pretty amazing that we have statues of these leaders of former colonies. Honestly I wouldn't have expected it in Britain-as-I-think-of-it. I doubt there will be any more. But then I would have doubted there would be any now.
Next to the Lego are instruments and little synthesizers, and then DIY facepainting. He wants a tiger, which I think I mange fairly well. At the grandparents stall there are storybooks. "This one is really good." says the presiding grandmother, "and very positive. Though maybe it's a bit old for him." It's a big book of pictures and infographics. She opens it at a page with pictures of dolphins but I know Rowan will never choose the one suggested. He chooses a couple of storybooks which I read to him. I find them queasy reading: kids are confronted with the problem of litter in the ocean and the message is that everyone can pitch in and help clear it up. The third one, which I like more, is just the story of the water moving from mountain stream to ocean to veldt to sky. Great pipes dripping black gunk are captioned only: 'everyone uses the river for what they need.' It's left to the parents to bring up discussion points but this is something I do not do. Rowan suddenly received a call to participate more directly in the water cycle. A couple on the Lego mat tells me there's a toilet 'tucked into a garden' behind the Houses of Parliament, near the main stage. I guess that's the - what are they called? - the Victoria Tower Gardens on the river. I think the last time I was there, I was chasing a whale1.
In the gardens, men are assembling a gigantic marquee which I can't help comparing to the black and pink sound stage in the street: Romans and barbarians, I think. The men are very professional. I can't find the toilets and Rowan ends up weeing on the trunk of a Banksia in the shrubbery. Nobody is watching; surely we should be surrounded by drones or something by now. I know it’s Sunday but where is everybody - the actual Westminster people, I mean?
I'm pleased to see some hawthorns and buckthorns too, flanking the Parliamentary Education Centre. Why my attitude to the bushes is contrary to my attitude to the statues is an old question that I'm not interested in right now. Parakeets are calling. The bushes are hung with knitted eyes and a woman with cat ears is sleeping curled-up on a bench.
I sit Rowan down on the huge black traffic barrier and tell him that people are here because they are angry and sad. I can't imagine that he believes me; the place is all smiles. He's young enough to know what a shot of raw anger of sadness looks like. But I try to explain this thing he can’t see.
"They are angry and sad," I say, "because of - do you remember the danger parks?" he nods - "well the people in the danger parks that make the electricity are making it in a dangerous way. It makes a dangerous smoke and a dangerous air and the air makes a blanket around the world and, well why do you have a blanket?"
"To keep warm!"
I'm relieved; that could have gone in all sorts of directions. I go on "So if the dangerous air makes a blanket round the whole world, then the whole world gets warmer and - well that might sound nice but it can do a lot of bad things. One of the things it can do is - well there's a lot of ice in the world and what does ice do when it gets warm?"
"Melts!"
"And what does it become when it melts?"
"Water."
"And where does the water go?"
"In the river."
"And where does the river go?"
This is where I lose him; even though we just had a story about the water cycle.
"Well it goes to the sea and if we get more water in the sea, what might it do?"
Again, this has already come up. "Something beginning with 'Fuh'"
"Fish"
"No, flood."
Again he seems overly delighted: "Flood!"
"And well, the people who work in that big yellow building," (I'm oddly aware that it's empty; it's Sunday), "they're supposed to make the rules of who can and can't do things. So they should tell the people at the danger parks to stop making electricity in that dangerous way, shouldn't they?"
He nods.
"But they haven't. It's been such a long time and they haven't done it. So that's why all these people are here. That's why they're sad and angry."
It looks like he's a bit confused now. If I had to guess, it's because I've put him in the middle of a story which isn't over; a day which has not been saved. Or it might just be a bit much for a four-year-old to get his head round.
The music is starting and we weave our way to the front of the crowd as I never would do if alone. Somebody gives him a lilac sticker with a message about caring, to go along with his skull one.
The second song sets something swaying in me. Like I say, I am extremely musically ignorant. I have no idea how big a deal this band might be, or how to describe what they are singing. All I know is the lyrics are insistent, the odd Leftist jargon word clattering radically in them and then what I still call 'the chorus' rises:
"Under the skies and out of control
Get ready for my dangerous soul"2
And out of those words, which have risen like wings or flames, more come punching; striking faster than Spotify can show them. I feel it.
And at the same time, I see huge planes passing behind the huge planes that line Abingdon Street and I keep glancing back to the great gold tower behind me, hoping I can believe that whatever resides - or pretends to reside - in that skull is really scared of the fire in this woman's soul or of anything in however many human souls. The singer can see the tower through the trees, behind our faces. Is she singing more to it, or more to us?
There is, no lie, a waterlogged EU flag tangled in one of the trees. Remnant of some more respectable dissent, I suppose.
I respond to the rest of the lyrics, I realise, rather as I respond to the Nicene creed; here's another party I am standing on the edge of. There's so much that is good about this idea of - what was it? the Social Contract? I don't know the theory but I know what the kingdom I grew up in felt like, even it if was always all a lie, and I know it feels different to me now. Now, just as I can't accept Christianity's centring of the human, I can't accept the supposed centrality of the people, the electorate, the voters, whatever. I can't believe any more that we are what really matters, that the people or powers in the gold palace or the white are somehow there for our benefit or answer to us. I can’t even really believe that they should.
"Maybe your country is very big" a Vietnamese colleague said to me once, by a campfire "and you are very small." I had been on the marches, in 2001, against the war. I didn't, at first, see why size mattered.
And you know what else, with those lyrics - it could be the oil singing. “Into the skies and out of control.”
I listen a bit to the speaker after, who is "a genuine real-life whistleblower" formerly of Shell. She talks about her incredulity that Shell are to be hailed as 'Zero heroes' at an upcoming event in Birmingham. They blame the government for their own failings, she claims. Governments, not them, have to set the incentives for society to adopt renewable energy. I'm afraid that actually strikes me as reasonable, which is doubtless the company's intention. She points out that such sentiments are not typical of heroes. That's all I get to hear, though, because Rowan says he would like to go home now.
He says he would like to go home now but then he drags his feet. He wants to visit all the tents. The games tent has some of those old-style 'go forward three spaces' one track games, themed on climate. I drag him past. At the scientists' tent, there's a sign inviting questions. Rowan goes up and leans on the bench, staring up at a young scientist with wavy blonde hair. "Do you want to ask a question?" I ask him. He does but he doesn't know what. I suggest he ask about the dangerous ways to make electricity. The scientist is very amused to be addressed by a little tiger-painted face peeping over the counter but she doesn't know the answer. "Jeff?" she calls "this little boy wants to know what the most dangerous way to make electricity is." Jeff comes over from the back and opines that it's probably Ben Franklin's method with the kite. Rowan's happy and goes on to be dragged away from the T-shirt printing tent "They don't have them your size. Anyway, it will take too long to dry. And anyway, I thought you wanted to go home." Shopaholic, this one. We make the pink origami boat, though I'm actually quite uncomfortable with immigration as a focus for XR. Rowan, of course, does not want to leave the origami boat behind.
I think of what to say about Churchill. He did some good things and some bad things but a really good thing he did was to know when the danger had come, at a time when other people wanted to pretend there was no danger. Rowan is beyond hearing these little stories, though. He says he wants to see the river because it's beautiful. I have to get him across the bridge, though, and suspect that viewing the river is simply preferable to walking. I can't carry him the entire way. I am a suspicious father; it’s a bad fault.
As we walk back to Waterloo, past the London Eye (and two ice cream vans), I see the Shell flag flying from the top of a high, white tower. A sign in an alleyway notes that there is no public right of way and the building is baulked with white plywood hoardings. In the middle of every other huge piece of plywood is a little office printout warning that an injunction from the High Court of Justice prohibits anyone entering or remaining on any part of the Shell Centre Tower without the consent of Shell International Petroleum Company Limited, and also prohibits blocking the doors or 'damaging the building' by - e.g. glueing your hand to it. "If you do, you may be sent to prison or have your assets seized" it warns with bold, italics and a full 20 or so points of typeface size. Wasn't taking that risk the point? I was scared to take it. How could I risk letting my family down even more.
There are guards standing about in high-vis jackets, keeping eyes on one another. They're spaced as if around a fortress in a videogame but they're not guards. I mean they're not anything Boudicca or Richard I would have recognised as guards, surely.
The cafe's called 'The Black Penny." It looks nice.
I take a stupid route on the Underground. The train from Embankment is full of marathoners and our standing section, specifically, is full of kids. There's a family from Lowestoft there, the son very chatty, the daughter complaining that her face is in her dad's armpit. "Give me a break," he says, "I've just run a marathon." Then a family get on with a big double double dimpled, broad-faced baby and his brother in a hulk jumper. We're all pulling faces and talking. Just what the tube is supposed to not be like. The really obvious fact is how much bigger the London Marathon is than XR's 'Big One." Does that matter? It feels like it does, but what do I know.
Our journey home is smooth. We're tired but mercifully Rowan stays awake in the car..He tells me he didn't really like the trip and I tell him we'll do something more fun another time.
A Bottlenose Whale swam up the Thames once. I only got to see it being carried out dead on a barge.
She Drew The Gun: I Will Not Behave Myself. Lyrics © Louise Roach.
There's an Eeyore quality to your vignettes that makes them so darkly appealing.
I saw an oak today, fallen long ago across a river. Maybe in a long-ago storm or maybe just undermined by fast-flowing water. At the point of contact across the bank it had established roots again and - wonder of wonders - a second trunk. Both new trunks now form the highest part of the forest canopy. I thought about how Homo Sapiens can't win in the end and how the invertebrates will outlast us.
Not a single dead insect on the screen when I drove home, though.