Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed...

I haven't been blogging for a while, not just due to the film premiere running up, but various events happening at home.  Some of which have surely not gone unnoticed in international news.  I live far from the madness running rampant through England, though there's no telling how the Scots will react.  Perhaps the Scots will decide that rioting in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen would be too "English," and we enjoy a rare quiet week in the cities. Wales and Northern Ireland join us from the sidelines, watching our southeastern brother tearing itself apart. Sibling rivalry is a constant in the United Kingdom, but for all our chants and jeers in football games, we're still united for now, and the plight of England is met with dismay. England's skin has been broken, and we have wild men with hands and bellies, filled with hate and filled with lust, looting and pillaging and destroying.

And for what?  Social change?  Reaction to a political outrage?  Expressing terror and panic?  Apparently, no one is sure. Some blame a general malaise, a madness which has afflicted England's cities, causing them to burn and demolish for seemingly no reason beyond simple opportunism.  Others say the gap between rich and poor has grown so vast that mass looting is truly a viable solution to their financial woes, and acting in a concerted nationwide robbery would mean higher chance of evading capture.  Still more blame "kids these days."

Truly, we can call England's cities civilized. I say this not out of parochialism - Scotland's cities have proven themselves to be just as civilized on many an occassion - and not to decry civilization.  Just out of an observation that for every creative and protective act of civilization, there is an equal and opposite destructive and aggressive act of civilization.  In this past week, we've seen the fruits of architectural genius being torched to ashes by the anger of malcontents; the spoils of economic conquest hoisted away by new victors; the peak of city life washed away in a torrent of fear and chaos.

I'm still going to the Conan premiere. I grew up in the West Coast of Scotland during the years of the Lockerbie disaster, the Dunblane Massacre, and the final days of The Troubles, and Greenwich hasn't seen much of the rioting.  I'll likely be safe, and I'm surely not going to be looking for trouble, as long as trouble doesn't get in my way.  My skin's already broken.