Plenty more fish in the sea.

Unpublished, written 2006.

I like to define the importance of an event from the speed at which it reaches Wikipedia. Almost immediately after its sighting, the Thames Whale had its own byte or two of cyber fame. According to the article, “at 0830 GMT on Friday 20 January, a man on a train called the authorities to say that he believed he had been hallucinating, as he thought he had just spotted a whale swimming in the River Thames.”

So you’ve been hallucinating, be that drug/caffeine/revision induced, and are pretty certain that you’ve gone totally bonkers. Of all the people to call, you call the authorities? Odd, but then he was obviously prone to hallucinating.

Back to the whale, sightings were reported throughout the day, until it was eventually surrounded by TV cameras and members of the public eager to see how the story unfolded. It’s quite like a baby being surrounded, photographed and poked by random folk he’s never seen before. If babies could run away, they probably would. And had this whale not had a few bumps on the head, he probably would have swum away too.

But I shouldn’t pick on the overzealous media and their flashing cameras which probably confused an already confused mammal further. This was probably the only news story in eons, unrelated to bomb explosions, which had people glued to their television sets for longer than a nanosecond.

It was indeed a beautiful moment for mankind. Even normally obnoxious Londoners set aside their usual rules of not smiling/talking/breathing to unite in their common desire for the safe escape of the whale. There’s something very powerful about a whale when it can go against all powers of the universe to actually bring people together. A few tonnes of blubber are actually more potent than all the religion/drugs/Live8 concerts in the world. Interesting.

It’s also interesting how people are so easily coerced into caring about the fate of one whale, yet are not prepared to shed even a single tear for the seven, or so, whales slaughtered everyday. Or perhaps even do something as simple as dealing with the pollution in the Thames which most likely contributed to the whale’s death. There are so many battles left to fight, yet people are continuing with their everyday lives, keeping the whale’s battle for life as a mere memory they can recount to their grandchildren.

Other battles are too complicated to care about, I suppose. But it’s always nice to have that random spasm of unity before people return to stepping on each others’ toes on the Tube.