The Carrier Pigeon Does London Challenge 1: Pay a visit to Speakers’ Corner
It was Sunday, and Sammy and I had just finished up a roast beef lunch and a bottle of red with good friends, when we decided it was high-time to kick off the very first Carrier Pigeon Does London adventure. It was sunny after all – bracing, but sunny. So off we went to a special little patch of Hyde Park where people of all persuasions perch atop step ladders and purpose-built platforms to speak their minds. Speakers’ Corner is the spiritual home of the soapbox oratory tradition – the bastion of British free public speech where only the British Royal Family is off-limits – and we were keen to catch some thought-provoking talk. Perhaps learn something new.
First, we found a grey-haired English lady dressed primly in a camel coat and little kitten heels, and completely surrounded by men of all colours. “This country is in a terrible mess because of you people!” she screeched and sputtered, all red in the face. “Many English people wish we’d lost the war, because we’ve lost so much more by winning it! You steal our identities and plunder our resources…you are killing us in a much worse way!”
The crowd roared with outrage.
“The English are lazy! We’ve come to help you!” heckled a man with a Polish accent. An Indian man followed through with “Have you ever tried a curry?”
“This has nothing to do with food!” she retorted. “You losers don’t come here because you love England; you come here because you can’t sort out the mess in your own countries!”
We moved on to an Evangelist preacher with a gnomelike face and a startling bellow. “Allah is an impersonator of the real God!” he spouted off to a group of Muslim men. He then pointed to a guy clutching a can of beer: “You my friend! You have an argument with God!”
Further down we encountered a fundamentalist Muslim locked in a heated ‘my God is better than your God’ battle with a Bible Belt American, an enormous drunk Jamaican guy banging on loosely about I’m not sure what, and yet another God-fearing Evangelist on a mission to save souls.
It began to dawn on us that there was no noteworthy dialogue here, only single-minded ranting about religion or race, where whoever shouted the most won. Then an old chap in a tweed cap sidled up to us: “Welcome to the greatest lunatic asylum in the world,” he grinned. Turns out he spoke here for many years before his lungs gave out. “I used to talk about Christianity – using humour – but I couldn’t compete anymore.” He told us of a time he was pushed off his step ladder: “I simply asked the question that – given Mohammed married a nine year-old girl – what would he be called today?”
Suddenly a 40-strong cluster of police officers with bullet proof vests and heavy-duty video cameras arrived on the scene; the anti-Islamic English Defence League was coming down and they had something to say. The EDL members – many wearing masks emblazoned with St George’s Cross – descended on the scene with a right-wing Californian Rabbi in tow. It was difficult to hear the Rabbi speak through the line of police and all the heckling from a big group of Muslims – and to be honest, it was all a bit too scary to hang around for.
So we jumped on the Tube and travelled back to our safe and cosy apartment where we don’t need a step-ladder or thunderous vocals to speak our minds; just a dinner table and perhaps a bottle of wine.
(Thanks to Simon Ayerbe for issuing the first Carrier Pigeon Does London adventure. Readers, if you’d like to issue a fresh challenge simply post it in the comments section at the bottom of this blog post)
Gretel Hunnerup is convinced that in a past life she was a carrier pigeon, such is her love of taking fanciful flights and posting little stories about her discoveries to her independent online pigeon hole: www.thecarrierpigeonpost.com.
The Australian sticky beak now writes about the little-known delights that make London hum…stuff that wouldn’t make the papers, like quirky establishments, not-for-tourists pursuits, and ordinary folks doing surprising things.
A trained journalist with six years travel and lifestyle writing for print and web, Gretel has taken a new post heading up internal communications for STA Travel’s Northern Europe and Africa Division, geared for maximum on-the-road reportage. Oh and she’s a sucker for documentaries, dress-up parties and dolmades.
