Dicken's Londontown, England

"Please sir, can I have some more?"
May 21, 2001

Tommy and I went down to the cafeteria for breakfast. Really, I've forgotten that the rest of the world smokes. We enter the mess hall and walk through clouds of smoke. Thick, evil European cigarettes. I don't think they even know about filters or marlborough lights. Tommy and I sit in the corner by the window and eat our single servings of poor, black bread and lumpy British corn flakes. We are drinking a horrible 'juice' drink which we poured from a big Horchata type swirling machine. It's times like these I really miss Taco Bell. The food here is so bland. The mess hall is packed. No one talks. Suddenly I discover I am Oliver Twist.

My room in the Generator is so quiet. People are asleep at all times. I come back to the room after a long day of tramping around London and I find totally new strangers asleep in the bunks and their backpacks and guitars and shoes lying in piles on the floor. Most of the people staying at The Generator are looking for work. They are usually commonwealth citizens from all over the Britain's Dead Empire; lots of Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, and South Africans who've come to London to take advantage of the Pound Sterling's superior exchange rate. They wait tables, tend bars, and wash dishes for two years, and then travel on the money. I was surprised . . . I was thinking "why are all these English speakers so poor?" Turns out in the commonwealth, the wealth ain't so common. The rich-poor index is a sliding scale, and it pretty much goes Canadians Aussies-Kiwis-South Africans. The South Africans have the worst currency in the bunch . . One Rand is worth about 12 cents.

This is how I meet George.I kept coming back to the room and finding George sitting in the corner trying to read the classifieds by the little shaft of light coming through the dirty panes. Because nameless backpackers were asleep at all times of the day, we were afraid to turn on the bright fluorescent lights. I finally asked George what he was doing. George told me how he came to London from Johannesburg to find some work. He needed to find work quick because his rands were slipping through his fingers like tokens at the arcade. George is only 18 years old and he'd just finished the South African equivalent of high school. He's trying to stay in London through the winter, and then go home and go to trade school and become an engineer. We started chatting, and soon we forgot about all the other backpackers turning in their beds. That's when Tommy the Humanitarian burst back into the room with a wall size poster of a British Pound in his hands. "I won it at the Bank of England" He told us the bank gives out a prize each day to one lucky tourist. Tommy had gone to the Bank two days in the row (after 4 o'clock to take advantage of the free entrance after tea time rule) because he wants to study Monetary Theory. "But I wish it was a real Pound, no?" he said.

I bet Tommy looked out of place in the hollowed halls of the old Bank, with his dirty jeans, hiking boots, and his long curly ponytail. Tommy's full French Canadian, a Canadienne, as they call themselves, and his speaks with a heavy Quebec accent. I bet his ancestors were Fur Trappers . . He looks like he jumped out the pages of 'The Last of the Mohicans.'
The Generator has a bar; a futuristic, neon-lit affair. I went there the first night but nobody looked very approchable, so I just sat in the corner and watched British MTV. But in the dorm room Tommy and George and I were talking loud and waking up the other backpackers so I suggested we move it to the bar. I was pretty excited . . . we had a round of bitter and toasted new friendship, and I finally felt I had arrived. Here I am in London, talking to a French Canadian and an South African.

Tommy pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, examines it, and asks if we want to go to watch a screening of a new movie tonight. He said it is documentary about the WTO convention in Seattle, and all the protesting and stuff. "Sure, why not?" I say. George looks downcast, his budget can't support a movie right now. Tommy and I decide to comp him. I'm not interested in the movie, but I just want to do something with people. We don't take the Underground because it's too expensive, and anyway it's nice to walk along the streets, talking with new friends. We use our little London A-to-Zed guides and find ourselves in a back alley, following little garage-sale type signs that say "Movie - this way"
"Where is this place?"
"It's someplace called the Horse Hospital"
"What?"
"Yeah, I guess it used to be a Horse Hospital back in the day."
As we walk along, Tommy is picking up trash and putting it in the trash can. We stop at a phone booth to call the film promoter for better directions, and Tommy pulls down all the full-color prostitute business cards jammed in the cracks on the phone booth windows. "It doesn't help" he says, "by tomorrow morning this booth will be full of pornography again."
Nevertheless, he still pulls them down.

We find this old, soot-covered building, and walk up this winding ramp thing with 2x4s nailed to the floor for rudimentary steps. We are met at the door by a little Indian Groucho Marx . . . he's the promoter, and he seems overjoyed to see us. We are the first people there. He tells us the staircase was made for horses. They would walk the horses up to the second floor to meet the horse doctor. Groucho serves us tea, and we stand around introducing ourselves. I can see right away that this is a some political group. These are anti-WTO people. Tommy said he wanted to check it out . . . see what they were into. Right away I feel out of place, since I work in Finance. Here is George, my poor young friend from South Africa who needs some financial help, and young Tommy, the political activist from Quebec who is about to write the next 'Das Kapital'.

The movie is total propaganda. But the footage is real. Mostly videotape shot by the protesters themselves. They show Seattle police spraying disbursement chemicals on the non-violent protesters, and innocent bystanders leaving their downtown offices and getting pummeled by paramilitary types with heavy clubs and shields. None of this footage made in on the nightly news. The news just shows the protesters breaking windows and stuff.

After the movie, Groucho stood up and gave an impassioned speech. He called America "the Beast" and told us all to go the Genoa and protest the G8 conference. Now I'm feeling very nervous. Are they going to burn me at the stake? After the speech, people start signing up for Genoa and I can see Groucho coming towards us with a clipboard. Tommy sees my anxious look and tells me we can leave. We run down the horse staircase, and tear up the alley towards the nearest tube stop. I thought Tommy was going to sign up, but he told me later he didn't understand WTO enough yet. "I think most of the protesters didn't know what they were protesting. It will be the same in Genoa." Here I am hanging out with my international friends and talking about international politics. I was wondering how the movie affected George's young eighteen-year-old mind.

"Bunch a bloody propaganda," he said. "Besides, I can't afford to sit around protesting."

"But your currency sucks," I said, "How can we change things?"

Tommy laughs and says "If you want a better world, first you must clean up the old one, no?" He grabs a fallen newspaper and disposes it in the bin.