Day Twenty-Eight: NO TO SWEARING

Today we visited the National Army Museum, in Chelsea. I didn’t know that it was in Chelsea, and when I first got off the tube, I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful the area was. I walked past the Royal Chelsea Hospital (I think it’s called), which is a vast complex of, from what I could see, deep red brick buildings and gold edged signs! We saw a slightly underwhelming selection of photos, not because they weren’t impressive, but because the curator didn’t give us any time with just us and the professor to sit and discuss the pictures. It’s less interesting to have them just flipped through in front of you. Also, we were looking at some of the first “war photography” photographs, and back then they were mostly staged pictures of officers, and so they all begin to look the same after the first twenty! However, there was one image that I really enjoyed seeing, and that was of a woman. I’m not sure who it was, because back then – and still now I suppose – people didn’t caption their photos Anyway, what struck me was her clothing. (I wanted to say “attire” there, but that’s a bit much!) I don’t know how women survived back then, wearing those tiny-waisted, broad-skirted dresses! Especially in army settings! I have to pick a topic to write about, two actually – one for the photography class and one for the history class – so if anyone has any ideas, they are very welcome! I want to do something not obviously academic – maybe a study of how women are presented through their clothing as captured by photography? I DON’T KNOW HELP ME!

After the museum tour was over, I wandered around for a little bit longer, checking out two of their other sections – Army and Soldier. Secretly I was hoping to see something about Zimbabwe, but it wasn’t really that kind of museum. From there, I checked in with coffee shop suggestions on Google Maps, and then wended my way to a place called “Paul’s”, on King’s Road. That road is a dangerous place – not because of crime, but because of how tempting al the expensive shops are! You know when no one is in a “60% Sale” that it isn’t really a true sale. Although that didn’t prevent me from going in and examining the clothes as if I was a clothing connoisseur, unimpressed with the stock on offer. But then I spotted a bright red and white siren sign in the distance: a Zara Sale. Zara sales are real sales, I say with all the experience of my two visits to Zara! I did find three beautiful tops, all at least half price!

But before I found my three tops, I sat for an hour or so in Paul’s. It is a gorgeous, genuinely old coffee shop, with a quaint little seating area crowned by an intricate skylight. I had a very foamy cappuccino and a delectable caramel tartelette. I chose the caramel tartelette over the chocolate one because it was prettier and because it was a chocolate "tart", not a chocolate "tartelette". What kind of person would I be if I chose a stodgy tart over a fairy-like tartelette? Their presentation was slightly ruined by the plastic tray they arrived on, but that didn’t affect the taste! I read my new book called "Tuscan Living" as I sat and sipped my cappuccino deliberately slowly. I would have liked to have been able to eat my tartelette equally slowly, however, due to its enticing sweetness and my newly discovered inability to break off neat, small pieces, that was not an option. The tartelette disappeared in large chunks. In retrospect, this was a good thing, and something which the Tuscan Living author would have condoned: having to concentrate completely on breaking off an eatable-sized chunk of tartelette meant that I was engrossed with the tartelette and all its components, leaving no room for me to not savour the taste! I thoroughly enjoyed my little sortee to the cafe. 

The only aspect I took issue with, which almost - but not quite, because that would be impossible - ruined the scrumptiousness incumbent in my mouth, was the pair of pseudo-adults who littered their conversation with vulgar swear words. Maybe they have never had to pick up rubbish, and they have simply never learned that littering causes rubbish, and it is unpleasant in every way, shape, and form. However, I, being the unwilling and unhappy recipient of such garbage, am fully aware of the stench spiraling from its reeking mass. Usually I keep quiet about people swearing, and I simply move away from the scene. I don't want to cause problems, and I do think that people are entitled to choose how they wish to present themselves to the world - a thing affected most clearly by the language they choose to use. Thus normally, if the person is a friend, I ask them not to pollute the air I have to breathe. However, I always thought that this was hardly possible, nor completely reasonable, in a restaurant or cafe setting, when the polluter was a stranger and was not intentionally trying to destroy my environment. 

But now I think that may change. In a public setting, the duel between the two Freedoms is made public; there are no seconds in this fight, no one to come to the aid of the dying loser. No, instead, one must bow to the other, defeated and angry. I am talking about the two Freedoms of Speech. This is a problem which is so evident in America, and it has been very difficult learning that sometimes it is better to bow out of a battle you know you won't win, rather than running foolishly into the barrel of the gun. Sometimes, I just shut up because I think that saying something won't achieve anything. I don't say what I think because there isn't really any point. I don't exercise my Freedom of Speech, because I think, sometimes, that by not exercising it, I am facilitating someone else's. But aren't those the very things that every advocate of Freedom of Speech uses to support their argument? Maybe not exactly the same, but close enough.

So, from now on, when someone is swearing like the regular degenerate teenage-adults he/she/they is/are, I will ask them, kindly, to respect my freedom to sit in a cafe in peace, to sit without the detritus of their foul mouths cascading into my tartelette and ruining its taste. I have the right to ask, right? 

Other than that, it was a wonderful day!