The boots above were issued by the Women’s Land Army, and they belonged to Doreen Thorpe who served in Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Derbyshire and Yorkshire.
I’m impressed that they’ve survived completely unworn, not least because it means that we can see all the details on the stitched and hobnailed soles. I particularly like the horseshoe heels which I hadn’t seen before.
Yesterday I went to the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret, where I arrived just in time for a talk. I was glad of that, because the museum would have made a lot less sense without it. It’s mostly three hundred years of medical history (including bit of bodies in jars) without a great deal of explanation. There’s all sorts of interesting things in there, but it makes a lot more sense if you happen to have spent the past few months reading books about the history of medicine!
In the afternoon I made my way over to Kensington Gardens, where Alice and I enjoyed a very decadent afternoon tea in the Orangery, and then went on to be thoroughly Enchanted by Kensington Palace.
Most of it’s closed at the moment, because of ongoing work to make the palace more accessible. So they’ve put together the most amazing exhibition/installation in the State Apartments. You’re given a little map and a “dance card” as you go in, and you have to collect the names of seven hidden princesses as you go round. The princesses are all real, and all connected to the history of the Palace, and the regular guides are all still there, so if you have any actual historical questions they can answer you. There are also a bunch of vaguely steampunky people with drapey coats and head lamps (and in one case an accordion) wandering about the place, and if you ask them nicely they’ll let you play with the soldiers.
It costs £12.50 to get in, which seems like a lot, but it’s absolutely worth it. You can’t take photos inside the royal collections, so I can’t show you what it’s like, but enchanted really is the word for it. It’s on until February, and I heartily recommend it.
This is a little picture of “Shaharazad”, a mechanical organ owned by Boz Oram.
Today we went to Crofton Beam Engines with the Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers, to dance at their end of season gala. There were some vintage cars, a few different steam engines and this mechanical organ. (And the enormous beam engines, of course.)
It was very loud, but we stood and listened to it for ages, and I eventually plucked up the courage to be a little bit cheeky and ask Boz if I could have a look inside.
Oh my goodness, it was AWESOME.
Boz showed me all the cards of music, and how they fed through, and explained how he makes them (he makes them himself!) and I was gutted to have to run away after only a few minutes because it was time for me to play the recorder again.
It was absolutely mesmerising to watch the wheel turning and the holes in the cards slowly moving along – I was surprised how quickly I could read the holes, and understand what the music was going to do next.
When I run away and join the circus, I’m definitely going to have a mechanical organ. (And some earplugs. Very loud!)
I had an absolutely fabulous day. Apparently I’m even more of an Industrial Revolution nerd than I’d thought.
Here I am, in the Science Museum, with my Stitched Self!
Which, in fact, looks nothing like me. But a few months ago the resemblance would have been uncanny, I promise.
Just in case you can’t spot my Mini-Me, here’s a close-up:
I’m not sure what’s happened to my hair, or why my scarf’s all over my face like that, but never mind. Something I made has been exhibited in a museum in London! Even if it was for just one night.
The last time I went to the Science Museum was in 2003 for a Lord of the Rings exhibition that turned out not to be very much fun. (Too many people, not enough space, very hot, lots of shoving. Yuk.) I didn’t really recall the rest of the museum, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The Who Am I exhibition was really interesting, and also great fun. There are lots of buttons to press and games to play, as well as some very thought-provoking exhibits.
I was rather excited to spot a Wheatstone concertina in the Making the Modern World exhibition, which I particularly enjoyed. The next time I’m in London I’d like to go back and see Glimpses of Medical History and The Science and Art of Medicine. I also need to find out what the steel wedding dress is all about, as I didn’t have time to go and look at the Challenge of Materials gallery. The only thing that worries me about that is the glass bridge across the main hall, which I don’t much like the sound of! I’m definitely making plans to go back though.
This is the Natural History Museum in London. Quite a typical view – looking over the central hall from the giant sequoia tree, over the top of the big dinosaur skeleton, to the statue of Darwin on the main staircase.
Usually people are so busy looking at the dinosaur that it simply doesn’t occur to them to look up.
This is the ceiling of that same central gallery, and it’s absolutely covered with the most beautiful botanical illustrations. They’re scientifically accurate, apparently, and decorated with gold that catches the light streaming in from the windows below.
This is one of the single illustrations, close to the end of the gallery with the sequoia tree. Epilobium Angustifolium is known as Fireweed in the US, or Rosebay Willowherb in the UK. The café (the one with the panda) also has these single illustrations above it.
This olive tree is right above the famous dinosaur skeleton, and is one of many images – mostly of larger trees – which spread across six panels like this.
I found out about the ceiling while I was watching the Museum of Life programme, which made me want to know much more about the Museum’s collections than they have on display. I’d been hoping to go on a Spirit Collection Tour, but apparently it’s not safe to run them when the weather’s too hot, so I’ll have to do that another time.
My favourite part about the Natural History Museum is that it’s completely free. This allows you to really take your time when you visit, knowing that you can go back any time and it won’t cost you a fortune. Well worth the train fare to London, and I really must remember to go more often!
Hopefully you can all see this embedded video of the finches at the Barbican in London – an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. We went on a little trip yesterday evening, and had an absolutely magical time watching and listening to a room full of little birds and musical instruments.
The video is of a previous incarnation of this installation, so the environment isn’t quite the same. The floor at the Barbican is wooden decking, with little islands cut out of it which are filled with sand and grass-type plants. The guitars and cymbals are mounted in these islands. The rest of the room is white, and there are roosting boxes high up on the walls so that the birds can hide away if they want to.
The sound at the Barbican isn’t quite as dramatic or as loud as it is in the video – unless the birds were just in a particularly quiet mood yesterday. The speakers are mounted well away from the individual instruments, so it’s quite hard to tell exactly where the sound is coming from. This makes the experience slightly more surreal, and presumably helps the birds not to be terrified that they’ve just made a bass guitar go CLANG.
The birds do fly free, so if you’re nervous about that it might be a bit stressful.
But you can get really close to the finches, and pay real attention to them as they go about their birdy business. I stopped noticing the sounds after a little while, but it’s really interesting how the noises that the birds make blends in really well to the constant little feedback sounds of them landing on the guitars or the microphone cables. Every now and then there would be a flurry of activity on a cymbal or a guitar, but for me the excitement and magic of the room was getting to see the birds up close and personal, interacting with one another. The whole room was filled with quiet, respectful, smiling people. You could see that everyone was dying to get really close to the birds, but everybody kept their distance – and if you got too close, the finches would simply fly away. At one point a finch sat on a man’s foot, and he looked as though he might explode with joy whilst standing extremely still.
Paul spent ages watching and listening to one little finch that liked to sit on the cable of a microphone that was attached underneath a cymbal. His little feet made scratchy pickup sounds as he shuffled back and forth. The cymbals were really lovely to listen to. They were mounted upside down, and two were filled with seed and another with water. As the birds pecked at the cymbals to eat the seed, there was a beautifully gentle ringing sound, like the softest gong.
I spent ages watching one little finch that had fallen asleep on the neck of a guitar. He looked so comfortable, perched on the strings! His eyes were shut tight, and he was gently rocking back and forth as he slept. Bless. There were also a pair of birds that had made a nest on another guitar. They were making a lot of noise as they rearranged all the strands of grass to their satisfaction. They were also quite defensive, and would sing loudly at anyone who came too close.
The Curve Gallery at the Barbican is open from 11am-8pm every day, and until 10pm on Thurdsays. We went at about 6:30pm, which turned out to be ideal. We only had to queue for about five minutes (sometimes the wait is up to three-quarters of an hour), and we spent around an hour inside. They only allow 25 people inside the exhibition at a time, so it never feels crowded. Entry is free, and sadly you’re not allowed to take photographs inside.
I only wish I lived close enough to go back again and again.
Obviously we saw tanks, and a helicopter (with the Easter Bunny as the pilot!), but I was particularly interested in the seemingly endless variations on the Bedford lorry. Not only were they used to transport both personnel and equipment, but also to rescue and maintain other vehicles.
This one’s kitted out as a self-contained communications base.
This one has a complete workshop inside, so that new parts could be manufactured to repair equipment. If you’re stuck in the middle of Africa, not to mention stuck in a war, you can’t exactly pop down to the local garage for spare parts for your tank. Vehicles like this allowed REME to make their own.
I have to confess to a certain fascination with lorries like these, with completely self-contained and often unexpected worlds inside.
I’ve been reading The Hermitage lately, whose author Rima used to live in a converted Bedford horse box. I’ve also been re-reading Wind in the Willows, and enjoying the colourful illustrations of Toad’s ill-fated Gypsy caravan. Which reminds me that I haven’t visited the Gypsy caravan at Blake’s Lock Museum (or what’s left of it) in far too long… and that reminds me that Carter’s Steam Fair is in Reading this weekend.
I’m not sure where this fascination with moveable houses comes from. Anybody who knows me would laugh at the thought of me being a traveller – I don’t drive, and I loathe being trapped in a car or on a train. The last time I ventured onto an aeroplane was thirteen years ago, and I get sick on boats. But there’s still something about the possibility of just pulling up your roots and moving on, whilst taking all of your belongings with you, that I find very attractive indeed.
This morning we paid an impromptu visit to the REME Museum of Technology at Arborfield. We wanted to go somewhere local, but that we’d never been to before, so this fit the bill perfectly. We were both surprised at how big the Museum was, and also how good the displays were. I have to say that we’d looked at the Museum’s website and pre-judged the place a little, so we were very pleasantly surprised when we arrived.
The main Museum building has lots of displays of different types of technology. There are lots of recordings to listen to, a slightly animatronic guard (who told us off for not having shiny boots!), and uniforms for the children to try on. It mostly looks at the period 1939-45, but there are much older objects in the small arms room, and some more recent developments too. We saw communications technology from the Falklands, and photographs of some current equipment being used in Afghanistan.
These medals made me pause, because I’m fairly certain they’re the same ones that my Grandad had. From left to right they’re The 1939-1945 Star, The Africa Star and The 1939-1945 War Medal. These three were awarded to a driver in Africa, which is pretty much all I know about my Grandad’s role during the Second World War. He drove lorries, and he went to Africa. Beyond that I don’t know anything, because he simply refused to talk about it. When we found my Grandad’s medals, they were still in their original brown cardboard box, ribbons folded, wrapped in paper. They were kept in a drawer in the dining room, underneath the tea towels.
This little box (about 12cm/5″ square) is part of the food ration and contains, believe it or not, a tiny stove. The tablets warned against on the box are blocks of hexamine – like modern firelighters. I love the way that “DANGER“ has been emphasised with capitals, bold, quotation marks and underlining, just in case you’ve somehow missed the point.
I tried to take pictures of some other glorious examples of typography, but it was a little bit too dark. My favourite leaflet was a set of instructions for what to do if you should escape after having been taken prisoner. Seventeen pieces of advice, beginning with “Air your feet” and ending with “DO NOT GET FLUSTERED”. Not quite as snappy as “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON”, but important advice nonetheless!
This skinny little fellow is the skeleton of a Slender Loris.
One of the projects I’m currently working on as a volunteer is rebuilding the website for the Cole Museum of Zoology, so I thought it would be useful to go and have a look around. I’m so glad I did!
If you’re freaked out by skeletons or things-in-jars then you might not like it, but it’s a fabulously interesting place. The room is dominated by the skeletons of an indian elephant and a false killer whale.
Because I’m a lover of monkeys, I spent most of my time looking at the incredible variety in all of the different primate skeletons on display. The slender loris is a prosimian, which means that he’s related to lemurs. You can tell from those amazing eye sockets that he’s nocturnal. And just look at his adorable little hands and feet!
Of course a loris in the zoo isn’t the same thing as a loris in the wild – but at least this little fellow can be studied in ways which might be of benefit to his Sri Lankan cousins.
If primates aren’t your preference, you can see plenty of other exhibits at the Cole Museum. I particularly enjoyed looking at the insides of a squid. A warning for the phobic though – there are plenty of snakes and spiders.
If you fancy going and having a look, the museum is on the Whiteknights campus of the University of Reading, on the ground floor of the AMS tower. (The tall one, to the left of the Palmer Building.) There’s a lot of building work going on at the moment, but the museum is still accessible through the right hand door. It’s open Monday to Friday, 9:30-5. Here’s a map.
I really enjoyed my quick visit this morning, and I’ll definitely be going back!
Today we went to the Chiltern Open Air Museum, and I got to pet this little lamb! He is ten days old! Bless!
We also saw an encampment of the Romano-British re-enactment Group, the Vicus.
As you might expect, I very much enjoyed the fashion show. Lots of tunics! And a demonstration of toga wrapping. I’ve taken lots and lots of pictures, and I had a very interesting chat with the Romans about the benefits of wearing loosely woven wool cloth in this hot weather. Cooler than you might think, apparently.
After the demonstration was over, I asked a group of Romans to pose, so I could take photos of their shoes.
As you do.
(If you’re me.)
Socks with sandals – shocking.
I’m very tempted to have a go at making a pair of those boots though.
