LONDON ZOO
Written by James Ward
Yesterday, I went to London Zoo.
As I sat on the train, a small boy sitting opposite me ate a hollow chocolate Santa. Just two weeks ago, this chocolate would have been almost impossibly exciting, but now, it seemed tinged with disappointment, just like the Advent Calendars marked down to 99p in Costcutters. The small boy and his family were going to the London Eye. I’ve never been on the London Eye. Maybe I’ll go at some point.
I got the tube at Waterloo and noticed that the two blonde twins from Hollyoaks were sitting nearby. They hadn’t died in that fire at the Dog In The Pond, after all. Unless they were ghosts. They got off at Tottenham Court Road, and I noticed a teenage girl take off her headphones and whisper something in her dad’s ear. He looked around and I could see him mouth the word “Who?”
I got to the zoo. It was cold. There weren’t many people around. There weren’t many animals either.
I watched a sacred ibis eating a dead mouse:
Actually, it didn’t really seem interested in eating it. It just kind of flicked it around a bit, ensuring the mouse lost whatever dignity it had in life. There was a shit stained information board telling visitors about the bird:
I saw a giraffe:
And a tiger:
And a lion:
There were meerkats:
I watched the meerkats for a while, but as they ran around and scrambled over the rocks and branches in their enclosure, I found it hard to tell them apart. Ideally, there should be some sort of way of differenciating between them. A kind of meerkat rating system to distinguish one meerkat from another, perhaps it could be online, like those price comparison websites you see advertised on TV all the time. Some way of comparing meerkats. They could get Gio Compario to appear in the adverts. He could sing a song.
After a while, I began to find the bits where there weren’t any animals more interesting than the animals themselves. I like the idea of paying eighteen pounds to go and look at some mud and bits of old wood and concrete:
I wish you’d do a coffee table book, James.
It’s nice to see your photographs online, but sometimes the effort of switching on a computer is just too much.
I love your animaless photos. I’m not sure if they’re more or less melancholic than the ones with animals in them…
I also love the shit covered sacred ibis info shot. So funny! I once fed a couple of them some left over egg mayonaise baguette. They got themselves covered in it. Egg all over their long beaks. It was quie a sight! Then I realised that feeding a bird egg was perhaps rather wrong. Oops! They didn’t seem to mind….
Nice boring photos. Thank you for posting them.
Found your site via your Boring Conference reported in the WSJ via Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish. I have only read a few entries of your blog so far — I will slowly parcel them out, if I can!
I like the way you look at the backs of brightly-lit signs, in the ditches of busy highways, the drying mud of a giraffe cage — and, basically, attend to the miracle of all life.
There is nothing in the world that is boring if looked at hard enough, I say. And if you do it right, people come on board.
I spent 2 1/2 years writing a book on pocket lint, collecting 600 pieces of it from clients & strangers. Conceptual art in book form. Sold 300 copies. Only 50 left. The Pocket LInt Chronicles.
There is obviously a thirst for “boringness” — it is restful in our over-stimulated world. (Over 4,000 people clicked “LIKE” in the WSJ article on your conference.)
Hello James. I also went to London Zoo on a similarly cold day. In fact, it started snowing halfway through my visit. The animals all hid. I felt cheated by the zoo. It seemed to me a potent symbol of everything that was wrong with London. Well done.
always glad to note that there are only “two twins”….xx michael. r.
raggedy lion!
Your one astute (and funny) observation sparked my interest in you & then in Peter Handke’s The Weight of the World book.
Why it looks practically medieval.
I like the photos of the empty animal enclosures. They are like Zen rock gardens – what’s not there is as important as what is. It was like the animals were too bored to turn up. Plus I think its cruel to keep lions and tigers in a cold enclosure in suburban London.
I like this post very much.
I think there is such a tendency to over-hype things when reality – just as it is, with all its mundane details – is pretty interesting in itself.
I really like how I can change the world around me just by thinking about it differently, and I love the idea of visiting a Zoo in search of empty concrete/mud/wooden spaces, rather than in search of AWESOME or EXTRAORDINARY animals.
Nice work.
I going to stay at one hotels in Paddington and looking at the google maps I think the zoo is close or at least at a walking distance. But I am not familiar with city at all so what looks close to me on a map may be a 2-3 hours walking in reality. Should I bother reaching the zoo on foot or should I take some kind of public transport? The giraffe is cute btw.
Checking on Google Maps, it looks like about 45mins, so it depends how much you like walking, I suppose.