Londoners - don't be so scared of interacting with other people!

[backinthebox]

I had a proper wtf moment yesterday.

We went to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, me, DH and DCs 12 and 9. We do love a good roller coaster. We didn't know which rides we were going to go and and being a bank holiday it was quite busy, so rather than by tokens at each ride we bought a stack of them. We had a great time and when we'd been on everything we wanted to we had 6 tokens (£6 worth) left. We needed to go and get our train so thought we would give them away on our way out. The tokens are valid for all rides, so could have been used on anything from a child's carousel to a roller coaster.

We approached a family who had just arrived and asked them if they had just got here and did they want our unused tokens. The woman just stared at us, shook her head, put her arms around her children and herded them off without a word. Oh, we thought. Weird. So we approached a young couple we had just seen entering WW, and offered the tokens to them. They looked at us and gabbled 'we don't need them' then scuttled away. The kids were bemused by this. Not being deterred, I watched another family with children arriving and took DD to offer the tokens. I assumed a family would not be going to Winter Wonderland with kids for the drinking, so a few ride tokens would be on their list of things to buy. They didn't make eye contact and mumbled 'we'll buy our own.' By this point we definitely needed to be heading off for our train so we set out across Hyde Park. We saw a pair of blokes, one on the phone saying '.... see you inside in a minute...' I asked them if they were going in to Winter Wonderland and they looked at me - one nodded and the other shook his head at the same time. I get it that it was dark, but we were a family of 4 with kids, so hardly axe murderer material!

Eventually we managed to give them to a couple heading that way. The woman said thanks, but held them between forefinger and thumb and passed them instantly to her partner as if they were going to explode.

My DH (who works in London) and my kids (who only go into London for theatre and museum trips) were so amused by our inability to give money away that we decided after the first 3 rebuffs that we would carry on till we managed to give them away. It took 5 goes, and everyone looked at us as though we had 2 heads.

It's no big deal, but this exact attitude was what caused me to move out of London nearly 20 years ago and not look back. I've lived in various northern cities and travel extensively round other major cities around the world with work, and nowhere has the 'we don't talk to strangers' attitude quite like London. It was the busiest and loneliest place I've ever been. It's weird, and a bit sad.

It can get the better of you - this watchfulness though. I always drum into my children not to interrupt me when I am getting money at the cash point - our local one is a target for pickpockets and distraction scams to the point where I don’t use it if it can possibly be avoided.

When I was there earlier in the year the children started pulling at my sleeve and saying ‘Mum! Mum! Look at that man!’ Without looking away from what I was doing I told them off for distracting me at the cash point. When I had finished putting the money away I looked around at them and saw what they were pointing at - a man had collapsed, basically at our feet. Breathing but eyes wide open and staring - unresponsive. Very quickly a crowd of miserable Londoners gathered, a shopkeeper came out with a blanket and an ambulance was called. Everyone collaborating to get the address right and guide the ambulance. keep the man warm and work out how else we could help. So yes I was initially on my guard. But most people aren’t monsters.

Londoners wouldn’t set foot in Winter Wonderland. It’s full of tourists, so you’re not really making sense.

New Years Day? Why would anyone who lives in London go to WW. People who are keen go right when it opens & wouldn’t wait until yesterday. Each of my teens has been once & thought it was a rip off but my friend from Moscow’s teenage sons went each night while they were staying in London.

Don’t blame them, that area, is full of mugs. So many stories about be people getting robbed .

My friend was approached by a group of kids with a petition to sign and they managed to nick her wallet. She said the paper was full of powdery stuff that made her sneeze.
I get asked all sometimes about direction and honestly I get so scared specially at night. I always say sorry not familiar with the area.

This reminds me of the time I was walking down Oxford Street on my way to work one morning. A small group of Australian tourists came from the far end of the pavement and surrounded me. I ducked out of the way and carried on walking . They then started shouting at me for my rudeness as apparently they had only wanted to ask directions. But for all I knew they could have been about to mug me - It's London FFS!
Had one of them approached me in a less intimidating manner I'd have gladly helped.

Fwiw, I've never failed to give away a voucher or token anywhere else - quite often at places like Alton Towers there are people giving tokens for discounts away because they collected too many from the newspaper or some other reason.

Look at what you are writing! The overwhelming opinion is 'get back to your little rest-of-anywhere-outside-the-M25, you rude outsider! We would never be as rude as you are, you ignorant province-dweller!' You are actually being rude in not saying you would be rude. Anyway, I've toddled back to my bit-of-the-UK-that-is-not-London, along with the 57000000 other probably rude and small minded country folk.

It's well worth approaching everything with an open mind btw. The opinion that an attraction in London is only for tourists excludes the sort of Londoners commenting that they would never go to tourist places from most of what makes London worth going to. People come from all around the world to be tourists in London - it is rather small minded to assume that they are all yokels blinking in the bright lights and that kind of thing is not for you. Winter Wonderland might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I hear all the time people saying stuff like 'good grief, I would NEVER go to the Tower of London/Science museum/Cutty Sark/London Eye/etc. They are for tourists (spat out like tourist is some kind of dirty word.) You are missing out!

Londonders are pretty sick of London bashing threads OP, chill out

We’re not assuming they’re parochial idiots OP but we are saying they’re tourists. It surprises me that your open mindedness does not extend to considering this 😂

I'm not scared if interacting with other people but I choose who I interact with and what tourist attractions I go to.

It's more than likely that the people approached weren't Londoners anyway - just tourists or visitors who have been warned about dodgy scams.

They had probably already had the women with the roses, the quiet-talker ('I need £2 to get home') scammers and the fake monks trying to get money from them already that day.

Wow backinthebox, there’s certainly a lot of animosity towards you on this thread. I understand exactly what you’re saying. Some people need to have a word with themselves.

Anyway, I've toddled back to my bit-of-the-UK-that-is-not-London, along with the 57000000 other probably rude and small minded country folk.

It's just a shame you still have the internet to spout your prejudice and bile.

Well OP it's not nice Londoners being slagged off, so some of us slagged you off back.
I've lived in London all my life and find us to to be warm, friendly and helpful (and welcoming to people from around the world, unlike many other places in the UK).
And yes the people you offered were probably not even tourists, ruining the whole premise of your OP.

You as a tourist are TELLING Londoners how to live in their own city

Very very funny.

No comment on our capacity to rush in and lift double decker buses off people then? No thought not. It's all about winter wonderland and the bloody tokens 🤣🤣🤣

Offering free tickets out could have been misconstrued as a distraction technique for pickpockets.

OP "It's well worth approaching everything with an open mind btw. "

to quote the judge in the Good Wife - in your opinion.

'It's London FFS!'

Given that I work in cities where an armed guard is needed, I'm not utterly oblivious to the potential for both petty crime and larger random attacks (I actually spent a day discussing risk in cities with my company's security and asset protection managers only a few weeks ago at work.) But the relative scale of rudeness to outsiders vs the likelihood of crime is disproportionate in London. Other than that, London is not dissimilar to many other capital cities in the world in terms of being a large, populous, busy city.

I see the 'bloody London-bashing threads' posts, but in all honesty the last London vs everywhere else thread I saw on MN was actually started by a Londoner wanting to cut the money-sapping, lower income, vote differently to us so not like us rest of the country off and declare London independent from the rest of the UK.

so OP, why did you feel the need to start a thread telling Londoners to be less scared?

not back to work yet so no one to boss around?!

"No comment on our capacity to rush in and lift double decker buses off people then? No thought not. It's all about winter wonderland and the bloody tokens"

eh? I didn't start a thread about double decker buses. And you never mentioned how lovely the weather is in Rio. Because it's not a thread about the weather in Rio, or double decker buses!

it was a thread about “why Londoners are so miserable”.
We are just pointing out that maybe you were not actually interacting with Londoners.
Your response? Well Londoners are all wrong for not doing the Tourist things.

I am no longer a Londoner but I loved London and found people way more accepting of diversity than outside London.

I interacted with vastly more peopel and I went to the galleries, museums, walked around the city and appreciated everything that was free on the doorstep.

You’d have to pay me to go to a tut fest like WW though

Oh take your London bashing self away

I am a Londoner and interact plenty, thanks.

I still don’t get what Londoners have to do with tbh. As many posters have pointed out, winter wonderland is an attraction mostly frequented by tourists (not judging, just a fact). Your offer of the leftover tokens was almost certainly to people not from London so what does their response have to do with Londoners?! Also, as many PP have pointed out, it could have been misinterpreted as a pickpocketing scam so it really wasn’t personal!

Oh and I would never declare places like the Tower of London only for tourists. I just did them to death during childhood with many school trips and with parents during the holidays so there isn’t a great deal of enthusiasm!

I hope you enjoyed your day out, don’t let a couple of brief interactions with fellow tourists over some ride tokens ruin your view of what is a great city.

You can take your condescending opinion back where you came from. I'm guessing those to whom you offered tickets couldn't understand what you were saying.

I think the fact that Londoners do stuff like lifting double decker buses off trapped people is highly pertinent. This happened in London, not Rio. You don't see what relevance the behaviour of Londoners has to a thread you have started to slag off Londoners? Don't be so silly 😁

"I'm guessing those to whom you offered tickets couldn't understand what you were saying." @SilverySurfer is that comment supposed to belittle me, or assuming the ignorance of the other people in Hyde Park yesterday?