The Happiest Place on Earth, Explained

I recently wrote about the only place in London where people actually smile at me, and a few days later realized why this is.  It's because of the kids.

Our house faces the street.  We have the top two floors of a three story Victorian townhouse.  With its 12-foot ceilings, ornate plasterwork and finicky plumbing, it's quite a grand place in a shabby chic sort of way.  A feature of these townhouses is a bay window in front.  Or maybe it's a bow window. I don't know, anyway, it's three windows which stick out of the front of the house, affording a 270 degree view.  And from this window, on most mornings, Caroline and Michael wave and blow kisses and make faces at me for as long as they can as I walk to the tube station.  If I stretch my neck right as I start along the footpath I mentioned earlier, I can just see them between two branches of the tree in front of the house, still waving madly.  This, of course, makes me smile, which apparently causes others on the path to smile back.  Hm.  I may be on to something here.

Speaking of children, one thing I always tell those who are about to have kids is that the first few years are really hard, but it gets easier and more rewarding as time goes by.  Yesterday, we reached another milestone in the children's development - the Children's Table.  We went to see a play (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the New Wimbledon Theatre - it was surprisingly well done, and I highly recommend it as a day out with kids in London) with three other families and afterwards, out to a very noisy Italian restaurant for dinner.

There were 16 of us - 8 adults and 8 children.  The restaurant couldn't fit us all at one table, so they laid two tables for 8 each.  The kids gravitated to one and the adults to the other.  I expected disaster as the children at the kids table ranged from 4 to 8, but it all went surprisingly well.  The kids had a great time doing kid stuff without adult intervention, and the grownups were able to actually carry on a conversation without constantly interrupting themselves to stop the kids blowing bubbles in their drinks.
Caroline got into a tiff with her friends over something (hopefully not a boy, but she won't tell us...) and spent the last half hour or so sulking in the corner, but otherwise it was a fine evening.  Friends with young children, take heart!  You too will soon have a peaceful meal!

I have to say, though, that these rites of passage are bittersweet.  The fact that the kids can order their own food and fend for themselves at the dinner table is gratifying in that it allows me to commune with other adults, but it also means that the children are growing up and acquiring the skills that will make them fully independent at some point in the not too distant future.  When they were babies, I wished they'd just grow UP already, but now they aren't and I wish they'd just STOP growing UP already.  Ah, well, as long as they keep making faces at the window, it's all OK.

The Happiest Place on Earth

There is a common misconception, brought about by a large number of dollars spent on branding, advertising and marketing, that Disney Land and all its spawn are the 'Happiest Place on Earth'. In fact, the happiest spot on the planet is about 10 meters from my front door, and I'll challenge any of those mouse-lovers to prove me wrong.

Allow me to explain.

London is a miserable place. Well, actually, the people are miserable. Not the ones I know, of course, but the vast majority of the population. It's not their fault. Misery is an institution here. Ever since the year God-knows-when, when Romans had their slaves row up the Thames for the first time, debarked their vessels and said, "Veni specto pluvia!", which roughly translated, means, "Sweet Mother of God, this rain sucks!", successive generations of Britons have had to go about their daily business in cold, wet clothes. Eventually, the damp seeped into the pores and became encoded in the DNA. So people here can't help being miserable; they're genetically predisposed to be so.

Close your eyes. Wait, keep them open, or you won't be able to read the rest of this. Imagine a sidewalk in London. The sidewalk is empty. Now imagine a man appears, striding in your direction. You can predict two things about the immediate future. 1) the man heading in your direction will change course for no discernible reason other than to place himself directly in your path. 2) he will ram his shoulder into yours as you pass.

This sort of aggressive apathy is pervasive throughout the city. Everywhere, that is, except for a footpath about 10 meters from my front door. This footpath, no more than 30 meters long, passing narrowly between the bland faces of the two least remarkable houses in a street full of unremarkable houses, is truly the happiest place on earth. It is here that the small courtesy is still observed of waiting for an oncoming pedestrian to pass through a narrow space. And it is here that the rarest of flowers can be found - the smile of another human.

I've been smiled at, said "Good morning" to, waited for, on that short stretch of pavement connecting my street with the next one over. I cannot fathom why this should be. There is nothing special about this path. It is not pretty; in fact, it is fairly ugly. I know women who won't walk alone through it at night. There are weeds and high walls and the odd steaming mound of freshly laid poo. And yet, people smile at me and say good morning. It's almost as if I'm not in London at all, but in some Utopian dream, where people are actually nice to each other.

Or maybe I'm in Denver.

Take that, you Mouseketeers.