Everything's Gone Green

Apparently Chicago dyed its river green for the St Patrick's Day celebrations. America's madness for St Patrick's Day has always been something of a puzzle to me. OK, you can understand it in Boston and New York, but the proportion of the population in Los Angeles or Las Vegas that can directly trace any Irish lineage is, I would imagine, fairly low. But, green hats and green doughnuts abound on St Patrick's day, even if your dealer's first name is Jorge and he would probably be hard-pushed to locate Ireland on the map.

But, give the Americans credit; if they go for something, they tend to go for it wholeheartedly. In Britain we do these things almost apologetically. In fact, unless something is loaded with nudge-nudge wink-wink knowing irony, everything often goes off half-cock.

So it was with Trafalgar Square, which decided on a pale imitation of Chicago and dyed the water in the fountains green. Unfortunately, rather than making it the iridescent green that we got in Chicago, Trafalgar Square was a pale imitation in the most literal sense. The water in the fountains looks as if it hasn't been cleaned properly and a few algae and plankton have taken up residence while the gardener is off sick. It's a kind of anaemic light yellow pea-green that you might get if one too many tourists had pissed in it on a sunny summer's day. Instead of providing a feeling of Irishness, the mood created is more one of feeling not very well. Damnit, water in fountains should look sky-blue, not queazy green.

But, green it is and green it remains, presumably until the Trafalgar Square gardener comes back off sick-leave.