Apropos of Nothing, son of the sequel

More short, random observations of life on this side.

On the oddly bi-polar nature of driver's licences:
First of all, they're not called driver's licenses, they're called "drivING licences". I guess it's not the person that's licensed, it's the act.  I recently traded my Canadian driver's license for a UK one, which was relatively painless and not even that expensive.  The annoying thing is that driving licenses in the UK require you to take your test in a manual transmission vehicle if you want to be licensed to drive a manual transmission car.  Of course there's no way to prove that I took my driving test (27 years ago...ohmygod) in a manual transmission car because no one in Canada gives a damn about that and hence no records of that are kept (oh, also I didn't take my test in a manual, but that's not the point.)  The point is that I wasn't able to get a manual transmission license.  This, despite the fact that every vehicle I've ever owned and registered was a manual.  I suppose the fact that I owned them is no guarantee that I drove them.  So now I have to arrange to take a test to upgrade my license, because about 90% of vehicles in the UK are manuals, which is all kind of boring.  That's the first bi-polar thing about driving licence - the manual/automatic differentiation.

The other thing is the physical licence itself. It comes in two parts, like the old Saskatchewan licences.  There's the plastic photo card part that most people carry around, which is familiar. Then there's the "paper counterpart" which is a full A4 sized sheet and is a legal part of the licence itself. Theoretically you're supposed to carry both halves at all times, which almost no one does, partly because it's a pain and partly because it's just a flimsy piece of paper that will decompose in a wallet in no time flat.

 

It says: "Important Document - The photocard and paper counterpart should be kept together. Both must be produced when required."  And that's my photocard in the corner, the pink thing with the EU symbol and the unflattering photo.  Then again it's not nearly as unflattering as the ID photo on my new Olympic Park pass which makes me look 70 years old, three-quarters dead and supremely uninterested in everything. People gasp and make involuntary vowel sounds when they see it.  Then their eyes start bleeding...

On the similarly dual nature of laundry detergent:

Again, we've got a linguistic clarification to make here.  It's not actually called laundry detergent here, it's called "washing powder".  Also, dishwashing soap is called "washing up liquid" because doing the dishes is referred to as "doing the washing up". "Washing up" is apparently a phrase that refers exclusively to the dishes.  So it's "washing up liquid", unless it's "fairy liquid".  Not because it comes from fairies, but because the best-known brand of washing up liquid is Fairy.

Lemon Fairy Liquid, though it's most common form is Mild Green Fairy Liquid.

But back to the washing up powder, and something that baffled me for a long time after I arrived before I finally got off my butt and asked about it.  All washing powder over here is clearly divided and appropriately labeled as belonging to one of two camps: Biological and Non-Biological, usually abbreviated to Bio and Non-bio.

See what I mean? Clearly labelled.

And what's the difference?  According to our friends at Wikpedia (and let's just pause for a moment and consider that there are actually people out there who care enough about this subject to write a short but reasonably informative article about it) (Oh, and let's also have a short moment of reflection to admit that I am also in the process of writing about it.) (And don't forget you are reading it, so don't get snooty)... but back to Wikipedia, which says that biological detergent contains "enzymes harvested from micro-organisms such as bacteria adapted to live in hot springs... whose purpose is to break down protein, starches and fat in dirt and stains on clothing... for example food stains, sweat and mud."  Apparently those enzymes increase the cleaning power of the detergent, especially in cold water, which is odd if they're harvested from hot springs.  (And exactly how does one harvest micro-organisms from hot springs? With extremely tiny nets?)  I can't believe there are enough hot springs in the world to produce enough of these enzymes to fill the shelves at every Tesco, Sainsbury's , Lidl, Waitrose and Asda in the UK.  (Especially not the Asda at Putney Vale, which I think is large enough to be visible from the International Space Station.)  

No matter, the bio stuff supposedly works about 10-15% better. However the bio stuff is also harsher, probably because those enzymes must have to be pretty tough characters to survive in steamy, mineral-laden hot springs. Hence the existence of non-bio washing powder for babies, people with allergies and anyone who is generally just a whinging wimp. Nonetheless, the wholesale and absolute division of the entire laundry detergent world into two discrete types was disconcerting - a bit like walking into the grocery store to find the entire dairy section had separate areas for left-handed and right-handed yogurt.

On the most excellent nature of Christmas lights on Oxford and Regent Streets:
Oxford and Regent Streets are the hub of retail consumerism in London, centred at the intersection (or junction) of the two main roads, called Oxford Circus. There is handy tube station at Oxford Circus which I have NEVER exited without being completely disoriented.  This is because unless you were to conduct an exhaustively mapped, years-long, three-dimensional study of the various exits from Oxford Circus Station, I think it's completely impossible to know upon exiting which direction you need to walk to get to the Apple Store. I generally stumble up out of the tube and try to locate All Souls Church, which I firmly believed to be in an easterly direction along Oxford Street, and then orient myself from there.  Naturally it turns out that All Souls is actually north up Regent Street.  And surprisingly it also turns out that Regent Street and not Oxford Street is the one that curves south and east into Piccadilly Circus. Huh.  This goes a long way to explaining why I've always found Oxford Circus a tad confusing.

Navigational challenges aside, Oxford Circus is a shopper's paradise.  The area is home to big department stores like Selfridges, Debenham's, and the beloved Marks and Spencer (which really deserves a post all its own), and to the flagship stores for a lot of major retailers like Apple, Uniqlo, and the famous Hamley's toys store.  And because Christmas is high season for shopping, the Oxford/Regent Street businesses really do up the place with festive lights, which is really fun.

This, for example, is a Boots Drug Store (Chemist):

Nice work Boots, but not quite as classy as:

Debenham's, which I would say is roughly equivalent to The Bay.  But bigger, of course.  And highly skilled with the Christmas lights.

Lights like this are generally called "fairy lights".  So if it's Christmas time you could theoretically make a batch of fairy cakes and then wash up the bowl with fairy liquid all under the gentle glow of fairy lights.  How lovely.  Especially the cakes.  And not so much the washing up.

Brixton Station Steel Drum Band:

Lastly, a little taste of one of the things that makes living in Brixton fun and cool.  There is an Iceland store just next to Brixton Station (Iceland is another of the grocery chains,this one with a particular focus. And I'll admit now that it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to understand that focus.  This after I'd had numerous trips to Iceland wherein I'd wander up and down the aisles thinking to myself, "Damn, they have a LOT of frozen food in this place. Weird."  Yep.  Iceland sells... frozen food.  Not one of my shining moments.)  Anyway, the front of the Iceland is a popular spot - usually for guys selling sticks of incense which is smelly and annoying and which I strongly suspect is a thinly-disguised front for drug sales.  The Bible-thumpers tend to hang out a little farther down the street around the same place as the Communists, but when the stars align the steel drummers come out, which is my favourite:

How fun is that?  All they need is some fairy lights and we'd have it all.

GRUB!: Pie and Mash

It’s been too long since we indulged in any local delicacies and this weekend I had the perfect opportunity to seek out a classic.  This is because I’m now working in the Far East (of London) which has historically been a very working class area, and one of the time-honoured foods of  London’s working class is pie and mash.

First I should clarify that over here pie is always assumed to be meat pie unless otherwise stated.  Fruit pies exist but are much less common; in the UK the default setting for pie is meat.  And mash is mashed potatoes of course.  So pie and mash is meat pie – usually minced beef (hamburger) – with mashed potatoes.  There’s a third critical element to traditional pie and mash, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

So there I was at work in deepest darkest East London on an odd split-shift Saturday morning facing a long break before I’d next be needed. Clearly there was no choice but to dragoon a couple of coworkers - one of whom cleverly knew the way - and head to a traditional local pie and mash shop.

G.Kelly Noted Eel and Pie Shop, Est. 1937

Ok, I suspect you're wondering about the "Eel" part of that sign, and there's really no way to talk about pie and mash properly without talking about eels (of course). This is partly because they're both proper working class foods. Eels were cheap, nutritious and readily available - coming right from the Thames itself. Hence they, like pie and mash, became a staple for London's poor.  There are two common cooking methods for eel. The first is to boil them in water and vinegar and then allow the mixture to cool.  Because eels are, as Wikipedia charmingly says, "a naturally gelatinous fish", a sort of jelly forms when the cooking liquid cools resulting in a batch of the delicacy known as jellied eels.  (Aside: Yes, I realize that the day is coming when the blog topics become thin on the ground and I'll have to take up the "Steve's Weird Food" Challenge once again and at least try some jellied eel, but let's hope that day is a long long way off, because a big ole plate of jellied eel is a terrifying thing to behold.) Thankfully eels are also served warm with the broth they're cooked in.  That broth is the "critical third element" I mentioned earlier.  Fortified with lashings of chopped parsley which turn it an odd green colour, eel broth becomes something called "liquor", the traditional accompaniment to a proper meal of pie and mash.  Pie and mash and liquor - that's what I was after.

And so my hardy companions and I headed off to G. Kelly's, which is situated on a particularly old thoroughfare, as you can see by this picture of the street sign:

I told you it was old.  Apparently it's the oldest known trade route in Britain (taken by Boudicea on her way to burn the Romans out of London).  

A properly traditional pie and mash shop is decorated with white tiles on the walls and has white marble tables and counter top, and I am happy to report that G. Kelly's had both, along with a woman behind the counter who referred to everyone as "lovely" - and that's a noun here, not an adjective, as in "That'll be three pound sixty, lovely."  When pressed for time "lovely" gets abbreviated to "luv" but either way, it's great.  

Emma and Jo at the white marble counter of G. Kelly's.

The menu at G. Kelly's is extensive. You can have pie and mash, or double pie and mash, or double pie and double mash.  Pie comes in beef mince, chicken and - surprisingly - vegetarian mince.  Liquor is optional, but very traditional.  You can even have just a bowl of mash and liquor if you're not in the mood for pie, but why would you possibly go to a pie shop if you weren't in the mood for pie?  We, of course, were very much in the mood for pie and all three of us had a single beef mince pie with mash and liquor and a mug of hot tea.

My plate of pie, mash and liquor.  Note the mash is scraped off the serving spoon along the edge of the plate.  Apparently even this is traditional.

I can't say that Kelly's pie and mash was like a party in my mouth. The mash was lovely, but the liquor was oddly bland and the pie was average: pastry a bit tough, filling a bit meager.  Then again you really can't complain when a lunch of real food made by real people, including a nice cup of tea, comes to £3.60.  Pie and mash is still cheaper and more nutritious than a Big Mac and fries.  And after our pie we had... more pie!  G.Kelly's stretches to some lovely little fruit pies in cherry and apple, along with rhubarb or apple crumble. They even had mince tarts, which taste like Christmas!  All in all it was a resoundingly successful and quintessentially East London little outing. G. Kelly's was as proper a pie and mash shop as you could hope for (except possibly for the inclusion of the vegetarian option) and came complete with local punters in flat caps eating pie and mash while filling out betting slips.

Roman Road even has a reasonable street market on Saturdays, so we had a wander through that as well. The market runs quite heavily to cheap clothing that looks like it "fell" off the back of a Top Shop truck, along with a few fruit and veg stalls and the usual jumble of other merchandise with suspicious origins, but it was diverting and festive.

Third floor... ladies wear... lingerie...

And because I was lucky enough to be with friends I got them to take a picture of me, standing in the churchyard of Bow Church, a lovely little spot tragically located in the middle of a traffic island.

Me at Bow Church. (In my super hi-vis cycling jacket.  I got it on Amazon, which boasted that it was waterproof AND breathable, which turned out to be a complete fabrication.  Waterproof, yes, but that jacket is about as breathable as mustard gas.  It's like wrapping yourself in clingfilm (that's saran wrap for the folks at home).  Still, I wear it whenever I cycle because being sweaty is better than being dead.)  

And that's the story for this week.  Now please excuse me while I go finish the ironing and the next episode of "Master Chef" where, sadly, they never do pie and mash.

A Day Out: Cambridge

I asked around a bit and the consensus seemed to be that of the two big university towns – Oxford and Cambridge – Cambridge is more interesting to visit.  Even Rick Steves says so!  Thus it was that I ended up setting the alarm on Sunday morning (horrors!) and then catching the 8:50am train on a beautifully clear and sunny day.

The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of Cambridge station were the bikes – there must have been thousands of them parked in two big lots outside the station.

I’m not kidding… thousands! 

I later found out that there are about 30,000 bicycles in Cambridge, and a bit more than 100,000 people.  I think I probably saw more bikes than people that day – they are chained to every fence, pillar, post, or stationary object in the city.  I suspect if I’d stood still long enough I would have ended up with at least four bikes attached to me, three of which would have had wicker baskets on the handlebars.  Since there are no vehicles allowed in parts of the historic city centre, cycling remains the best way of zipping from getting around town, especially if you’re a student on a tight budget with a full class load.

I managed to navigate from the station to the main market square with only minimal confusion.  (This was not helped by the fact that my iPhone – my primary navigation tool – has developed the alarming tendency to drain its battery from a full charge to nothing in about 4 hours.  Charming.  It looks like there’s a new phone in my immediate future…).  I knew I’d reached the centre because there was a nice market where I wandered around slightly grumpily after discovering that the Tourist Information Centre, which had been my navigational goal, is closed on Sundays.  This was a minor setback, but I fortified myself with coffee from a market vendor and set off to discover a bit of the city on my own before returning to see if the promised 1:00 pm guided walking tour would actually take place.

The first thing I found was something I’d been planning to seek out, but which I stumbled on accidentally – the Corpus Clock.  This is a relatively new site in Cambridge, having been unveiled near Corpus Christi College in 2008.  It’s a large gold plated mechanical clock surmounted by a nasty looking borg-like grasshopper.  The grasshopper – called “Chronophage” (time eater) - is actually the clock’s escapement, and is the world’s largest “grasshopper escapement” (an escapement is a method of converting the motion of a pendulum into rotational movement, a rather important notion in clock-making).  The grasshopper appears to march along the top of the clock while pushing the outer ring around it.  Instead of hands, the Corpus Clock lights up a series of blue LEDs that shine through slits around the clock’s face. It’s a bit hard to explain, but if you check out this video, all will be revealed:

It’s a bit long, but this is the inventor of the clock itself explaining how it works, which is cool. (Ian – this one’s for you.)

Since I arrived just before the hour I stuck around long enough to see the clock strike eleven, which was satisfying in a rattly, mechanical way.  Then as I started walking down the street I was stopped by the sounding of the 11am gun marking the start of two minutes of silence – it was Remembrance Sunday.  I waited where I was standing and looked around to see that a lot of other people had stopped too.  As time passed more and more people clued in and just stopped and stood quietly where they were facing towards the sound of the gun.  Even cyclists stopped in the street and stood astride their bikes.  A few foreign tourists were clearly baffled by the whole thing - I imagine they thought it was some kind of elaborate practical joke and were looking for hidden cameras - but I thought is was bloody excellent.  Then after a full two minutes a second gun fired and everyone went about their business.  Nice.

I eventually did find the one o'clock guided tour after a pleasant wander on my own, a light lunch and another cup of coffee to counteract the early alarm.  Sadly the guide was only mediocre despite sporting the coveted Blue Badge. However, she did explain about the college system at Cambridge (and Oxford), which is quite different to how North American universities operate.  Cambridge is comprised of 31 colleges, which are not to be confused with the departments/faculties.  Colleges are where the students live, and include residences, dining halls and libraries.  Faculties are the areas of study.  Thus a student might belong to King’s College but study biological science in a class with students from Trinity College and St. John’s College and Corpus Christi and so on.  Colleges concentrate on housing, welfare, social activities and tutored study sessions for undergrads, whereas departments deal with classes and research.  Clear as mud, right?

Never mind, the important thing if you’re a tourist is that the oldest colleges have stunning architecture and  lovely grounds covered in untouchable grass that is a super-intelligent shade of green.  (The grass really is untouchable – only fellows of the college and their guests are allowed to walk on it.).  Most colleges admit visitors to poke around (though not inside the buildings) and some are so popular they can charge admission.  This is the case with perhaps the most famous – King’s College.  Luckily, my £15 walking tour included entry into King’s College and, most importantly, into its famous chapel.

King’s College Chapel, from the outside

The chapel is one of the finest examples of  perpendicular architecture and has huge stained glass windows dating to the 1500s.  The most striking feature of the building is its fan-vaulted stone ceiling which weighs close to 2,000 tons and is the largest anywhere - 289 feet long, 40’ wide and 80’ high.

Nice work!  The interior of the chapel is also festooned with Tudor roses, because though it was started by Henry VI in 1446, construction was delayed due to the War of the Roses. It wasn’t finished until 1515, under Henry VIII.  He’s the one who added all the Tudor bits and had his and Anne Boleyn’s initials carved into the oak organ screen that divides the chapel. 

The walking tour continued when we left the chapel and walked along the Cam River (Cam-bridge, get it?) and through Queens’ College, even crossing over the famous “Mathematical Bridge”.  It’s an arched wooden bridge purportedly designed by Isaac Newton without the use of bolts or fasteners.  The legend is that students were so fascinated by the design that they took it apart to see how it worked and then were unable to put it back together, which is why it’s now assembled with hardware.  Sadly, the story is merely a legend; the original bridge was designed by a carpenter 22 years after Newton’s death.  It’s a great story though, and the fact that names like Isaac Newton are tossed out so casually is an indication of the depth of history and prestige associated with Cambridge. For instance, Queens’ College boasts a bit of masonry called Erasmus Tower.  Why?  Because the 15th century Dutch theologian and humanist Erasmus studied and lived there, of course.

The Mathematical Bridge, linking the two halves of Queens’ College across the Cam

The River Cam is crossed by nine bridges in Cambridge, and is the site of a particularly diverting pastime for tourists and students alike – punting!  A punt is a shallow, flat-bottomed boat that’s propelled by a punter (no really, that’s what they’re called) who stands on the back deck with a comically long pole and moves the boat along by dropping the end of the pole to the riverbed and pushing off.  I forked over £13.50 for the pleasure of 45 minutes being propelled along the Cam with a group of other tourists by a quite yummy young Cambridge resident named Nick.

Nick, with his pole.

Nick was a much better guide than woman from the walking tour, and he amused us with anecdotes about the different colleges, and about punting, and was skilled enough to avoid the continual parade of amateur punters in self-hire boats who managed to end up perpendicular to the river blocking traffic at regular intervals. Even though it got a bit dark and chilly, the punting was a great activity and well worth the money, if only because I got to sit back for 45 minutes and have a nice break from the hours of walking.

A punt and punter and a load of… errr...  puntees?

After the punting I was quite chilled and hungry, but I still had one more important thing to do in Cambridge so I decamped to a pub for some mediocre roast beef and some good real ale and a disappointing rhubarb crumble with custard.  This was all to kill a bit of time and to fortify myself for the last activity of the day.  King’s College Chapel, which you’ll remember from about 600 words ago, was to hold a special Remembrance Sunday Requiem service at 6:00pm, and I was determined to attend so I could hear the famous choir of King’s College Chapel, who were to sing that night, accompanied by an orchestra.

I arrived to the entrance of King’s at about 5:30pm, having been warned that there would be a full house.  Indeed there was a queue forming in the dark, and I took my place dutifully and even struck up a bit of a conversation with two older gentlemen, one of whom was in academic robes and both of whom were so quintessentially “Old Boy” that it was a bit hard to believe.  The queue wound slowly through the grounds past the untouchable grass until we were outside the doors to the cathedral.   While we waited a small church across the street started ringing its bells – proper change ringing, mind – and the organ in the chapel echoed the sequences back so you could say it was just a tad atmospheric.  And of course there were the inevitable queue-jumpers who were met with muttered indignance by all they passed (“Just shameless…” said the guy behind me, but not so loudly that anyone else could hear.  So English!).  And then we filed quietly into the cathedral.

It was fantastic. It was dark outside and the space was lit mostly with candles and just one or two floodlights aimed up the walls.  (Well, they’re not going to hang banks of fluorescents from the fan vaults now are they?)  Everyone found a spot in the pews, which are arranged parallel to the long sides of the church facing towards each other, and there were programs of the service on each seat.  The choir and clergy entered, and everyone stood, and then the orchestra started up and the choir started singing – 14 men from the college and 16 boy sopranos from the King’s School – and it was pretty magical.  Yes, there was a lot of standing and a lot of back and forth between clergy and congregation about how we all were not worthy and were wretched sinners. (High Church of England services are just a spit from Roman Catholic it seems - there was even incense).  And there was a long wait while people lined up to take communion (optional, phew).  The service lasted just over and hour, and it was dim and moody and the music was great.  The whole thing was quite lovely, even for a godless heathen like myself, and I found myself thinking that while the church may be responsible for a lot of nastiness, they’ve also given us unbelievably beautiful buildings and soaring music that’s pretty hard to criticize.

And then I filed out of the church, leaving a little something in the collection plate.  The night had grown chilly and the walk back to the station turned out to be an unmitigated navigational disaster that required stopping in a shop to ask for help and being pointed in a direction 90 degrees from the one I’d been doggedly following.  Thus I arrived at the station slightly out of sorts but was able to get right on a slow train back to King’s Cross where I intended to start blogging right away but was so utterly done in that I contented myself with the crossword and a little light emailing.  I finally walked in the door at about 10pm in time to join my lovely housemates and guest for the cheese course, a glass of wine and some nice conversation. 

And that was Cambridge.  I saw a lot, but there is much more I didn’t do – like the Fitzwilliam Museum of art and antiquities, which had an exhibition of Vermeer on that people were queuing for outside the gates.  And there’s the Scott Polar Research Institute Museum (closed on Sundays) and more colleges, and more super-intelligently green grass and more markets and shops and about a zillion galleries, and… well you get the picture.  Cambridge is certainly worth another visit.  And perhaps next  time I can find a decent rhubarb crumble.

Me, on a bridge over the Cam

P.S.  More photos of Cambridge, Nick, and me are in the Cambridge set of photos on Flickr.

Tourist Stuff: The Imperial War Museum (and thoughts on remembrance)

It was only when I arrived at the Imperial War Museum that I realized what an appropriate choice it was for this time of year, considering Remembrance Day is just around the corner.  That, coupled with the fact that the museum is a short bus ride from Brixton, and, like many of London’s great museums, is free to enter, meant it turned out to be a perfect choice for a grey Sunday afternoon.

Me outside the museum, standing next to a 15” shell (inactive, I hope). (And check out that hair! I’m a freakin’ hippie!)

Oddly, they do not have remembrance ceremonies on Nov. 11th here unless the 11th happens to be a Sunday.  Instead, “Remembrance Sunday” occurs on the second Sunday of November.  However, ceremonies of remembrance here are much that same as those in Canada, usually centred around local war memorials or cenotaphs.  The official national ceremony is held at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, at 11:00am on Remembrance Sunday.  Wreaths are laid at the cenotaph by a lot of important people including the Queen, five princes (Philip, Charles, Edward, Andrew and William), one princess (Anne) and loads of politicians and military officials.  A field gun on Horse Guards Parade is fired at the beginning and end of two minutes of silence, and Royal Marine buglers sound “The Last Post”.

The Cenotaph.  If it looks familiar, that’s because the design was copied and adapted for war memorials all over the Commonwealth.  (And did you know that the word “cenotaph” derives from the Greek “kenos” meaning empty and “taphos” meaning tomb?  Shut up, you did not.)

Like at home, poppies are worn at this time of year, and are sold all over as a fundraiser for the Royal British Legion.  However, poppies are different here!  They’re just as prevalent, but the design is not at all the same as at home.  They’re made of paper so they’re not fuzzy, and they’re shaped differently, and have a little green paper leafy bit, and a big black plastic bit in the middle.  The stem is green plastic and meant to be threaded into a buttonhole, with pins provided as an optional extra for those poor souls whose lapels  lack an appropriate orifice.  Handily, the green plastic stem has a little upwards pointing barb on it that helps stop it from sliding out from behind the pin.  This means your average UK poppy stays put better than the Canadian variety, but overall I’d say the British poppy is inferior to the Canadian version, which is pleasingly fuzzy and definitely sturdier, being made out of plastic instead of paper.

Head-to-head comparison of poppies, English paper version on the left, fuzzy Canadian one on the right. (The Canadian one is so sturdy that it’s actually last year’s version, which I picked up at the Maple Leaf pub at an ex-pats get together in November of 2010.)

But back to the museum:

The Imperial War Museum, London.  (Interesting aside: The museum is housed in the building that was previously the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark.  It was the first hospital devoted to psychiatric patients but for a long time conditions were so dreadful and the patients so out of control that the general level of uproar and confusion that reigned meant the hospital’s name became synonymous with that state.  Hence the term “bedlam”.)  

The building pictured above is one of five venues of the Imperial War Museum.  In addition to the Bedlam building they also maintain the Churchill War Rooms and the HMS Belfast in London, an aviation museum in Cambridgeshire and another purpose-built museum in Manchester.  Yet even though I was only tackling one of those spots, I knew the collection would be far too extensive to see in one visit.  Once again, I’m grateful to be living here because unlike when I was traveling I knew I could come back any time and dip in to the collection.  I also meant I didn’t feel the slightest hesitation in pausing during my visit for a nice latté and a scone with whipped cream and jam in the museum café.  If there’s anything I learned in my spell as a full time tourist it’s that taking a moment to rest and refuel can make the difference between a pleasant afternoon and a grueling ordeal.

So… what did I actually see at the museum?  I focused on two main areas – one that’s part of the permanent collection and one temporary exhibit.  The Children’s War and 1940s House is a temporary installation looking at the experience of children during the Second World War and at the home front in general.  It concentrated a lot on the evacuation of children from the cities to the countryside, which was undertaken because it was believed that major centres would be targets for German bombing.  More than 800,000 children were relocated during the war, many of whom had been raised in poverty in London’s poorest districts and who had never seen the countryside.

Poster about the evacuation

There were lots of touching excerpts from letters written by children to their parents back home, like this one:  

“They call this spring, Mum, and they have one down here every year.” - letter from evacuated child, 1940

Some kids apparently had a quite jolly time - there were heart-warming tales of frolicking in verdant meadows, swimming in ponds, chasing frogs, and being properly fed - with fruits and vegetables!  (One 6-year old girl was noted for having requested beer and cheese for breakfast... maybe I should try that some time.)  Many gained weight and ended up much healthier than when they were in the city, and some formed lifelong bonds with the families that fostered them.  Of course there were also tales of children sent to unfriendly, cold, nasty places straight out of Edward Gorey.  Following on from the stories of the evacuation there was a nice recreation of a wartime house, and lots of stuff about rationing and other home front topics which were pleasingly diverting.

After that I skipped into the WWI section, which was also quite good, and extensive, and included a walk-through recreation of a section of trenches called, inevitably, the Trench Experience.  Despite this annoying name the exhibit was quite good - dark and moody, with lots of interesting audio loops playing as you walked past the different areas.

An officer in the Trench Experience, looking like he's ordering a pizza. ("And no anchovies this time, dammit!")

And what didn't I see?  I skipped rather quickly through the main entrance hall which is full of tanks, submarines, guns and planes, and I missed most of the exhibit on World War II, and the bit on conflicts since 1945, and the galleries of both WWI and WWII artwork, and about six special exhibitions.  I also made a very conscious decision to skip the Holocaust exhibit, thinking it might not be the cheeriest thing to dive into on a cloudy, chilly November day.  But that all just means there's plenty to go back for.

The Hall O' Tanks

I also have to mention to the Imperial War Museum's audioguide because it was a type I've never encountered before, and I consider myself something of an expert on the whole subject of audioguides.  Unlike any previous examples, this one actually had a colour touch screen and showed pictures to accompany the commentary - very swish!  And at a mere £3.50 it seemed a good value, despite the fact that the first one I got crapped out at the beginning of World War I and I had to trek back to the reception desk for a replacement.  The museum also has a nice gift shop where I was tempted by many Marmite-themed products including a whole set of AndyWarhol style coffee mugs and a couple of cookbooks.  (Though I was at a loss to understand what Marmite has to do with war...)

And there you have it - another site worthy of your attention for the next day you find yourself at loose ends in Lambeth.  And another site I certainly wouldn't have visited yesterday if I hadn't felt obliged to bash out another thousand words for the three of you who are actually reading this.  If nothing else, at least the blog is  forcing me to get out of the house on a regular basis, which means I can feel quite smug in the office on Monday morning when everyone else has to admit they spent the whole weekend eating Indian takeaway and watching re-runs of "The X-Factor".  And as an added bonus it also means I (and you!) can annoy co-workers with pointless trivia like the origin of the word "bedlam" or Victorian surgical practices, or the reproductive practices of certain palm trees.  There's no need to thank me...