Travel 2007

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Of course.

I cancel a planned1 trip to Hamburg for a conference in order to extend my stay in London by 4 days, so I can hit a few more archives and libraries that I really wanted to look at. And what happens? A 3-day tube strike, which started this afternoon and finishes the evening before I leave. To make matters worse, the places I want to go have been closed for the last week or more, and so I haven't been able to confirm any appointments. So I don't know where I'm going or how I'll get there. I'm so glad I decided to stay the extra days.

Actually, it's not as bad as all that: one of the places I can walk to, another is on the Piccadilly line, which is my local line and is one of the few still running. But it will probably be packed solid. Again, getting to Peckham will in theory be ok, since the Northern line is also still running and so I can get to London Bridge and thence to Peckham Rye by National Rail. But of course, like every other poor sod using public transport I'll have to factor in long delays and leave much earlier than I otherwise would. Just what I didn't need to be doing when I've already got too much to do before I leave!

If only there was another way to travel ...

Dragon Rapide
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  1. Well, more like "vaguely thought about" than "planned", but still. [↩]

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In some ways it seems as if I've only just arrived in London; in others, it's like I've been here forever. But I now have just under a week left here, so I'm racking up a lot of "last times".1 Today was the last time I visited British Library Newspapers at Colindale, which is where I've spent most of my time, actually -- nearly every day there for the first month, the odd day or two since then.

So, to mark this occasion, here's a picture of a TARDIS:

Hendon police box
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  1. Though also still a number of firsts: yesterday was the first time I wandered past Buckingham Palace. For those non-Australians who might not know, Buckingham Palace is where the Queen of Australia lives when she is not back home. It's a nice enough little holiday house; though I did wonder why the Union Jack was flying and not the Australian flag -- seems rather un-Australian, if you ask me. [↩]

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Westminster Abbey

The Saturday after the IWM, I visited Westminster Abbey, where the kings and queens of England have come for the best part of a thousand years to be crowned, married and buried. (I'm way behind on these travel posts, I'll still be writing them up a month after I get back.) No photography is allowed inside the Abbey, and as I obeyed this rule -- unlike some people! -- all of the photos will be of the exterior, which unfortunately is less than half the fun.
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Cleopatra's Needle

Yesterday I had occasion to pass Cleopatra's Needle on the Victoria Embankment. It's not really Cleopatra's at all but Thutmose III's, as it was he who caused it to be erected at Heliopolis, in around 1450 BC. It was eventually transported from Egypt to London and re-erected there in 1878, after trials and tribulations in the Bay of Biscay.
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Tate Modern
My third Sunday here: I still hadn't seen the Thames yet and so decided today was the day. I began with a visit to the Tate Modern, which was tres cool (especially the Dalí exhibition, for all your clock-melting and eyeball-slicing needs) but they don't allow cameras. So you'll have to be satisfied with this photo of the gallery itself, or at least its smokestack (it used to be a power station). The pretty little pub on the left is called the White Hart -- sadly, not Arthur C. Clarke's non-existent pub of the same name.
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[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.]

One interesting minor theme of my recent museum visits here in London has been, I suppose, the popular origins of wargames (as opposed to the intellectual origins): I've been coming across a number of games, produced in the first half of the twentieth century and aimed presumably at children, which represent war in some way. War games, but not yet wargames. So for example, one exhibit in the Science Museum's aviation gallery was a First World War-era board game called Aviation: The Aerial Tactics Game of Attack and Defence. The board represents the sky, and the pieces are aircraft and squadrons. Here's the box:

Aviation

According to the caption, it was published around 1920, and the cover shows 'stylised First World War tanks and Handley Page H.P. 0/400 [sic] bombers'. It doesn't look particularly like an O/400 to me; the corresponding game-piece is just called a Battle Plane (and the "tanks" are actually anti-aircraft guns on tank chassis, very advanced!)
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Planes. Lots of planes.

You want planes? We got planes.

After the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, though really it should be called the Technology Museum as there's not a lot of what I would call basic science on show (perhaps due to the afore-mentioned Natural History Museum being right next door). Still, that's just nit-picking, as this is yet another truly excellent museum.

I headed straight for the space section ...
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Whale skeleton

A rather Vorlonish-looking whale skeleton.

On my second Sunday here (so the day after the RAF Museum, I'm way behind here), I travelled out to South Kensington to visit the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, which are right next to each other (and the Victoria and Albert is conveniently located just across the road, but will have to wait for another day). The NHM (opened 1881) is one of the great natural history museums of the world, and its creation (for a long time, as a semi-independent arm of the British Museum) on such a grand scale is a testament to the importance of the life and earth sciences in Victorian Britain. The architecture alone is powerful:
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