Today I took a lovely trip to the Tate Modern in London.  It was a substitute day for two missed national holidays last week and I decided to kick back and just thoroughly enjoy the day.  I turned off the mobile and didn’t check the internet for 12 hours.  But I digress….

I’m not such a fan of modern art.  I really don’t understand it.  At one exhibit I said “it’s a pile of bricks”.  Then I went to read the description and laughed.  Really it was a pile of bricks.  You can put whatever meaning on it you want – it’s still a pile of bricks.

At another exhibit there was what looked like a big canvas with some colors and then covered with twigs.  Very odd.  Then I read the description which said the picture was inspired by a speech by Mao Zedong about 1000 roses and free expression in China.  Soon after giving the speech people tried to use that free speech and it turns out that’s not at all what Mao meant.  So, the art was a painting of Mao giving a speech covered by all these dried up and dead roses.  Symbolism.  Hmmm….  Initially looking at the installation I had no idea of the meaning and wrote it off.  With the explanation suddenly it had meaning.

There have been some things here in England that have struck me as weird or strange.  One of those was that no one takes their own trash off their tables at cafes and coffee shops.  They just walk away from their table and leave their garbage.  I found it really hard to do!  And, in the back of my mind I thought it was really lazy that people couldn’t even walk over to a bin and get rid of their trash.

Two weeks ago I was at a train station with my boss.  We finished our tea and got up to leave.  I picked up my trash and looked around for a rubbish bin.  No rubbish bin.  I put my trash back down and said how I still have a hard time remembering to leave my rubbish on the table.  My boss replied that it was a carryover from the days of the IRA when you couldn’t have rubbish bins (and especially not in places like train stations) because the IRA would blow them up.

Huh.

I would never have guess that people left their trash on their table because rubbish bins are terrorist targets.  It all makes perfect sense now.  A country that went through that kind of threat for decades will take a long long time to change their habits.

Does this country come with little plaques on the wall to explain the meaning of things?