Same old, same old...

This week I find myself feeling somewhat grounded, back in an old hunting ground which scarcely seems to have changed since the last time I saw it. I am presently spending some time in the UK and finding that no matter how much time one spends away from the place the same old inertia and ennui seems to prevail here. Life in South East Asia was sometimes frustrating, often annoying, even dangerous on occasions, but always colourful and intense. Back here in the UK, there is a strange deadness to proceedings. It's as if the last five months never happened and life has gone on in essentially in the same way as it always does in the UK. Moderate and mediocre, the UK feels like a wet blanket of a country that squelches those who dare to show a little eccentricity, those who dare to be a little different.
Although one would struggle to realise it, there is a general election coming up in the next month. I listened to a commentator on the BBC explaining how the choice this time was starker than it had been for many an election. He then went on to explain the choice that was before us. We had the Labour party, who advocated austerity but at a slower rate than is currently the case, the Liberals, who advocate austerity at about the same rate, the Conservatives, who advocate austerity at an increased rate and, finally, the United Kingdom Independence Party, who advocate austerity at the fastest rate of the lot! At this point, I find myself struggling to work out exactly where this 'stark' choice was, as far as I could see it was just a matter of how severe the austerity would be.

.A few, completely interchangeable, UK politicos..

Still, I suppose, that unlike Thailand at least the UK has a civilian government and a form of democracy, of sorts. And unlike China, you do at least get the chance to vote for a party every few years, even if the parties you can vote for are essentially saying very much the same thing. It does feel like a very clear demonstration of something the redoubtable Ken Livingstone said many moons ago: 'If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it!'
On a more personal level, I find myself already yearning to experience different places, different cultures and different societies once more. Spain is a distinct possibility, with the idea of spending a few weeks in the Girona or Barelona areas. I have had, for several years now, an ongoing love of the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. The man lived and died before the appearance of the surrealists in Paris in the 1920's, but one can view him as something of an architectural precursor to this movement. Oddly, he lived a life of fairly extreme abstinence, but his buildings have a joyous exuberance that has to be experienced directly to be believed.

The gorgeous, and slightly mad, surrealist architecture of Antoni Gaudi...

Spain is particularly tempting at this juncture because of the current strength of the pound against the Euro. Travel on the continent has once more become an attractive proposition. At the same time, and rather against economic fundamentals, the US dollar has become quite expensive. Fortunately, this is not too great a problem as the temptations of America, or at least the United States, do not exert a particularly strong pull on me.
I have, at various times in the past, spent some months in the US, but on each occasion I found the society to be one of the less interesting, dominated by commercial interests and a fascination, almost an obsession, with getting rich quick. I travelled through about a dozen different states, but essentially found that the same multi-nationals dominated wherever one went. A McDonalds in Maine feels very much the same as a McDonalds in Delaware (and, for that matter, anywhere else on the entire planet).
There was also an extraordinary parochialism to the attitudes of many of the folks I met and conversed with there. With a few notable and interesting exceptions, most of those I spoke to seemed to harbour the most extreme US-centralism, the notion that the one and only place to be was the US, and that somehow other countries were of much lesser importance. To be fair, I have come across similar attitudes in many countries, but perhaps nowhere else was it as pronounced as it was in the US. I remember one lass who wished to assure me that she had travelled widely. When I enquired as to where she had been she responded with 'Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington...'

A villainous selection....

Of course, and to be fair, the rather unfortunate effects of the influence of multi-nationals and globalisation have not been confined to the US. It was, however, the place in which I first became aware of the process as a day to day reality. My first visit to the US was some 25 or so years ago now, and that rather depressing 'sameness' was already apparent in many of the places I visited back then. That same process, because of globalisation, can now be experienced almost anywhere one goes. From a personal point of view, I feel that I want to go out and experience other places and other cultures before the cold, dead hand of globalisation has flattened the whole planet into an acceptable but very boring 'niceness'.
As I write these words I realise my own participation in the process. I am sitting in a branch of Costas in Buckhurst Hill on the edges of London. It is one of many such branches one can find all over the UK in this day and age. Much like Neros, like Starbucks, like Pret a Manger, etc. There are the some very pleasant non-chain cafés sprinkled about here and there, but they are largely swamped by the overpowering ubiquity of these huge chains. The lack of this was one of the joys of Thailand. The multinationals had infected the larger cities such as Bangkok and Chiang Mai, but in the smaller towns there were all manner of interestingly individual cafés. China was interesting in a different way, spawning as it does almost endless imitations of the likes of Starbucks.
For now, in this particular branch of Costas, I find myself spending time planning the start of the next venture. I am not sure of exactly when and where but it is hard to conceive of living in the UK for any more than a few months in the next year or two, the temptations of travel and the advantages of alternative lifestyles are far too tempting to be ignored. My own particular brand of flaneurial activity seems to lend itself very naturally to enjoying other places and other cultures. Such pleasures are so diluted in countries such as the UK as to be scarcely definable as a pleasure at all. I find myself longing for warmer climes and the greater intensity and variety that is available in other parts of this beautiful planet of ours.

I still love the occasional peach and gingersnap tea. Man cannot survive on coffee alone!