The House Husband

According to NY1 (my new favourite TV station) the weather today was set to top the 90 degree mark with the chance of thunder storms and extreme humidity. While there was no thunderstorms that I could see, the temperature was horrific and the humidity was so high, fish were walking along the sidewalks breathing the air.

I woke early and, after my usual breakfast at Roxy’s Diner (famous since 1944 with the motto ‘Take your time hurry up’) hopped on the C train heading uptown to 81st Street. The hotel we’re at is so handy for virtually all the subway trains. It has the added benefit of not being in Midtown.

Unlike the Tube, the subway trains are deliciously air conditioned – it’s like sitting in a fridge. I reckon anyone without air conditioning should just ride on the subway all day. Of course the comfort levels are drastically reduced once you leave, as I did, into the heat of 81st Street.

The New York Museum of Natural History doesn’t open until 10am and I arrived at 9 in order to wander around a bit of Central Park. Actually that sounds a bit random. I’d found out there’s a statue of Alice in Wonderland in the park and was determined to find it.

Central Park is so amazing. Rolling hills, lakes, woodland, open grass. A true oasis in the heart of Manhattan. And there’s always lots of people enjoying it. Joggers, mothers with babies, school groups playing football and learning to dribble…actually I sat on a bench for a bit and watched this guy painstakingly explaining to a group of toddlers how to dribble a ball into the net.

He started at one end with a small football at his feet, telling them to take little steps and just tap the ball in front of them, approaching the small goalposts. He demonstrated as he spoke, taking tiny steps until he stood about a foot from the goal and then, with the instruction to score, booted it into the back of the net. He then turned around and told the first little girl to have a go.

She looked a lot like Shirley Temple, all curls and cute little dress. Her foot was resting professionally on the ball, her face a study in concentration. She lifted her foot and kicked the ball straight at the goal, scoring effortlessly. The guy smiled grimly and told her, while it was a great goal, it she hadn’t quite grasped dribbling.

She was about four and she looked at the guy as if to say there was no way she was slowly walking towards the goal in the heat when she could just as easily kick it from where she stood.

Anyway, eventually I found the Alice statue but, to my massive disappointment, it was undergoing some sort of surgical procedure by park staff and had been roped off. This is as close as I could get. Thank goodness I had my new camera!

Alice in Central Park

You can see the White Rabbit, Alice (who looks rather demonic), the Cheshire Cat behind her, the Doormouse on her lap and the Mad Hatter to the right. Such a pity I couldn’t get closer! Clearly I will have to visit New York again.

The heat of the day was rapidly growing as I wandered back across the park to the Natural History Museum. I gladly entered its air conditioned arms, paid my entrance fee and wandered up to the dinosaurs.

Up on the 4th floor there is the largest collection of dinosaur fossils in the world and I wandered around, eyes wide, taking in the wonders. Here’s just a couple of them.

Dinosaurs at the New York Museum of Natural History

And, of course, I had to go and look at the rocks. The museum has the largest piece of meteorite in any museum in the world. It’s called (yes, it actually has a name) Ahnighito and is just a bit of an original one that fell to earth thousands of years ago in Greenland. It’s solid iron and weighs 34 tons. It is seriously big!

Further along the rocks galleries, they have lots of amazing displays showing all sorts of crystallization and gemstones. One quite extraordinary rock is a piece of mesolite from New Jersey, which looks like it’s covered in white hair.

Mesolite from New Jersey

From the rocks (I won’t bore you with any more about the rest of the marvellous things I saw) I went downstairs to the Hall of Human Origins where a cast of Lucy as well as Turkana Boy and the Flores (the so called Hobbit) were displayed.

Interestingly, Lucy didn’t look nearly as good as when I saw the real one in Houston! Still, the display of our ancestors, gradually moving through the millennia is excellent.

I was pretty much museum-ed out by this time so I went to the cafe for a coffee then trawled the museum shop. Quite apart from the size of the museum, the shop has to be the largest one I’ve ever seen! It covers three floors and has an incredible amount of stock. And that’s just the main shop. There’s another, smaller shop upstairs with the dinosaurs. Very American, I must say, and not in a bad way!

Stepping outside onto Central Park West was like walking into porridge. I stopped at a street vendor for a lovely New York pretzel then headed back to the subway and, eventually, to the hotel room for a good cool off.

I figured this was about my day over and was preparing to go and eat something when I had a text from Dawn asking me if I was anywhere near the High Line. She’d read about it in a magazine and thought it looked incredible. I looked it up online and decided to head on out again to see it for myself.

It wasn’t near me but was a subway ride to 23rd Street, which I managed like a native, and a wander down to 10th Avenue where the vision of an elevated railway line overgrown with wild flowers and people hits you as incongruously as it sounds.

Originally built in 1930s, it was a railway line for freight trains, lifted 30 feet into the air in order to avoid putting it along the streets of Manhattan. In 1980 it was no longer used and in 1999 it was under threat of demolition until a group of people calling themselves the Friends of the High Line managed to save it and turned it into a long, elevated garden.

It’s a wonderful use of space and preserves the structure which is wrought iron however, the noise from the streets below and the lack of shade, makes it a bit of an odd thing. I guess as the plants grow, the shade will increase but the traffic noise isn’t about to disappear any time soon. However, as a way to walk through the meatpacking district of New York, it’s certainly an improvement on street level!

A section of the High Line, New York

Obviously, Mirinda would have been very interested but there’s no way she’d have walked along it in the heat. I could only manage half of it before taking a set of steps back down to 24th Street then catching the subway back to the hotel.

I had a text from Mirinda saying she was hiding in the toilet because the conference was so boring. I guess her day hasn’t been as nice as mine.

Clocks. That’s what horology is. Today I saw a lot of them. A-ticking and a-tocking; a great clamour there was. Fortunately none of them struck the hour as the room wasn’t that big.

Of course, I was in London for lunch with Mirinda. We were going to meet at the D’Oyly Carte sundial outside the Savoy but a load of loud and obnoxious drunks (of both sexes) had taken up residence on the semi-circular benches so I sat reading in front of Arthur Sullivan instead. It was very pleasant surrounded by all manner of flowering plants. It was almost possible to ignore the traffic.

We wandered up to an outdoor cafe in the Embankment Park and had a BLT and a CLT (that’s chicken rather than bacon) before going for a lovely walk by Cleopatra’s Needle, along the north bank, crossing Westminster Bridge and then back across the river to Embankment.

The London Eye and Aquarium from Westminster Bridge

It wasn’t the nicest of days (a bit grey) but it didn’t rain and it was a lovely walk. Ignoring the noise, of course. And the thousands of tourists which coincides with the bloody extra long Easter holidays for kids.

After Mirinda returned to work I hopped on the Tube and headed for Bank. From here, I walked up to Guildhall where the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers museum is housed. I’d researched a chap at work last week who was a big clock and watch maker and found out about the museum then. So, of course I had to go. Plus the fact that I will be graduating at Guildhall in May, I thought it would be nice to work out how to get there.

Guildhall, London

I’ve been a few times before but not recently. Not that I needed an excuse to go to the clock museum. I was very keen on doing that!

The clockmaker’s company was granted its charter in 1631 by Charles I. Prior to this, anyone involved with the making of timepieces came under the blacksmith’s company. I guess because they worked with metal rather than a forge. Anyway, they split and it’s been that way ever since.

The museum is small but wonderfully obscure. The history of clocks and watches is spread out in a series of display cases showing some wonderful antique timepieces. As you walk around you are also taken, century by century, through the world of time.

Sadly the bookshop was closed so I was unable to obtain a guidebook. There’s also no photographs allowed. For these reasons I can only relate one thing. (Like Homer, I have only room for one fact because each new one pushes an older one out.)

It seems that the British manufacturing industry has always been a victim of its own success. Because craftsmanship, skill and care are expensive commodities, once the first few products are created, someone from the continent will always make them cheaper. The market then buys the cheaper mass produced option and the home grown industry gets more and more exclusive before disappearing up it’s own workshop.

This is exactly what happened to British clock and watch makers. They were world leaders at one time. They produced the most amazing clocks and watches; inventing new movements and more accuracy. But then the Swiss stole the entire market. Actually that’s not entirely true but they did their fair share and it sort of explains why they are now world renowned for watches.

Still, it is a wonderful museum and very quiet – clearly there’s not a lot of interest in horology. I was alone for all except the last few minutes. The museum has a website here.

I think it’s important to get this out of the way right from the start: Florence Nightingale had a big nose. Some would call it noble, perhaps Roman, even stately but, when it comes down to it, it was big. Fortunately it wasn’t big and wide, plastered across her face like an unattractive dumpling. It was finely chiselled. Even so, it was big. Perhaps this explains why she wasn’t that keen on having her picture taken or her portrait painted. I rather wish a few modern celebrities were of the same mind.

Florence Nightingale bust by John Steell

Incidentally, she was named after Florence, in Italy. Maybe this was a homage to her Romanesque nose…I have no evidence to support this assertion. Which prompts me to tell the story of her parent’s honeymoon. It was a grand tour through Europe and described in the guide book as ‘leisurely’. Given that Florence’s sister was born during the honeymoon indicates just how leisurely it was! I’m assuming she was conceived within wedlock, of course.

Why Florence Nightingale? Well, today, after a lovely Italian lunch with Mirinda, I visited her museum at St Thomas Hospital. It’s a bit of a shrine, really. Decorated with tiles, it resembles a mausoleum. This isn’t a bad thing. On the contrary, it gives it a nice reverence.

The whole thing with museum design is interesting. The Hunterian was, basically, a lot of very tall glass cabinets with glass containers of body bits and looked very clinical and scientific. Dr Johnson’s House looked like…well, a house. And (Saint) Florence has a Victorian tomb.

While Flo’s museum is a lovely celebration of her amazing efforts to improve nursing, I noted with interest two facts. Firstly, she wasn’t the first. Apparently the French and the Russians had female nurses tending for the sick and wounded in the Crimea before she turned up.

Secondly, there was an amazing woman called Mary Seacole who made her own way to the Crimea and set up a ‘hotel’ for soldiers to come to in order to receive herbal remedies, general supplies and any unofficial surgery they might have wanted. She had largely been forgotten (I don’t think Florence rated her very highly because she didn’t take her on at Scutari) under the shadow cast by Florence’s brilliant light but she was a great Victorian woman as well. Actually, if you read about Mary here, you’ll realise she did an awful lot but was (seemingly) rejected because she was black.

But none of this should take away from the fact that Florence Nightingale was amazing. While she tended the sick and dying, going without food and sleep in order to comfort and cure, she also worked tirelessly to improve the lot of soldiers in war zones and nursing in general. She really was amazing. And she had a very tiny waist, as evidenced by her uniform which is on display at the museum.

Also on display is her bed which has to be one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever felt. Honestly, I’ve slept on ground more comfortable. Maybe this is why she didn’t bother sleeping most nights.

A cute but not necessarily useful gimmick at the museum, is the use of stethoscopes. These are used to channel the recordings which are normally in talking sticks at tourist attractions. I’m sure kids love them but, in order to accommodate all size heads, they are quite tight. Mine tried to meet in the middle, squeezing my ear drums together. I gave up listening after a while and just hung it round my neck like a doctor out for a stroll.

Something that wasn’t really mentioned was the fact that Florence was a bit mad. I’m pretty sure she’d not have been able to accomplish most of the things she did had she been completely sane. The museum does mention her declining health, mostly brought on by a germ she picked up in the Crimea. This, apparently, made her irritable and short tempered. I reckon that could have been her nose, too.

Blythe House, exterior

This is where I went today to view the objects I’ve been amending at work. Originally the headquarters for the Post Office Savings Bank, Blythe House now houses reserve objects for the Science Museum (and the V&A AND the British Museum). It is very big. The Science Museum has a short, but interesting, piece on it here.

I had a call from Karen and Farelli today (Farelli wanted to hear if my accent had changed at all) and, in the course of the conversation, I mentioned I was off to Blythe today. When Karen was working at the V&A she had to go there to photograph some quilts. She warned me it was a rabbit warren of rooms and corridors, stairs and hidden rooms. She was SO right!

What an amazing place. To work there would be a dream; a utopia. Except for the transport. Getting there on the Overground was fine. In fact, I’d never been on the Overground before and I have to say it sure beats the Tube into a cocked hat! It is a very easy connection from home because I changed at Clapham Junction rather than go all the way into town. This was a 10 minute wait between connections. more than manageable.

Fortunately, Mirinda had warned me that the Oyster touch pads were very well hidden. I think I’ve mentioned before this evil habit of London transport. Well, this is the worst one. Very well hidden it is. And then, at Kensington Olympia, it’s also hard to find – they do not have automatic gates. Still, these are minor annoyances. The worst thing was coming back. The Overground was rammed full and, by the time I arrived at Clapham, I managed to miss the train home by three minutes. This meant a wait of 30 minutes on a cold draughty station. Mirinda also reminded me of this as she had the same experience when she had to go to Shepherd’s Bush two years ago.

Anyway, I digress. That was all very unimportant. Yesterday Kevin gave me directions for getting to Blythe House and I dutifully turned up at 2pm for my tour. They were all just finishing their lunch and I met a whole load of people, mostly called John and then Nick led me away.

From the outset I have to say that any sense of direction is immediately destroyed. I have no idea where I went, where I was or how I returned. The place is amazing. Doors, carefully marked, lead off into rooms full of reserve collection objects.

First up, Nick took me to see some of the artworks I’ve been researching. He showed me some amazing pictures of some amazing people including an engraving of Charles Babbage which I’d not seen before. He looked quite the dandy!

I’ve just finished reading Bride of Science (about Ada Lovelace nee Byron) in which Babbage features heavily and recently I read Jacquard’s Web, again with a lot of Babbage. Both of these feature him when he was older, as most of the pictures I’ve seen of him do as well, so it was nice to see him looking young and eager.

From the portraits of inventors and scientists, passing the two huge busts turned towards the corner, looking as if they were in trouble but I suspect to save their noses from careless feet and trolleys, we moved into the print room to view railway engravings.

Way back, when I was studying for my undergraduate degree, I wrote an essay about early transport in England. I learned an awful lot about the first railway lines and trains as they superseded things like coastal shipping and canal boats. Imagine my delight when Nick produced the original drawing of the Stockton and Darlington Railway which boasts having the first (ever!) steam driven passenger carriage! Wikipedia has a nice entry here. One of the pictures I saw today can be seen here but it’s nowhere near as good as the original!

Having looked at lots of railway pictures, we moved on to ships (I should add that trains and boats are Nick’s passions) and came across a wonderful hand drawn panorama of Portsmouth harbour in the early 1800s. Wonderful stuff! But my time with Nick was drawing to a close and he had to hand me over to Kevin for the second part of my tour. Before we left this part of Blythe, I made him pose for a photograph.

Nick, my boss at the Science Museum, humouring me

We then walked upstairs to the office they work in where Kevin sat waiting for me. Most importantly I was handed a pair of latex gloves because, as he said “We’ll be touching things.” We said goodbye to Nick and he led me deeper into the maze, further below the ground, in a strange world of long dark corridors with blank nondescript doors, each locked and marked only with a location code.

First up we went to G24, the location for the objects I am currently entering (the masses of feeding cups, posset pots and breast relievers of recent posts). And guess what? We looked at (and handled) masses of them. I saw the various types of nipple shields – I really have to wonder how women kept them on – and marvelled at the weight of the lead one. This was like MIMSY records coming to life before my eyes. Plain and patterned feeding cups all jockeying for position in great cabinets.

When he opened a drawer containing lots of wooden boxes and opened one to reveal a breast reliever, I just had to snap a photograph!

Breast reliever in mahogany box

I thought this was it, but no, there was more!

He took me deeper into the bowels of the store. We saw Dr Frankenstein laboratories full of ancient medical equipment. We saw a room full of Roman artefacts, including the biggest plaster phallus I’ve ever seen. And after studying the Romans, I’ve seen a few. We saw…oh God, we saw so many things. It was heaven. I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

Fortunately Kevin was there to show me the way out, otherwise I’d be there forever, haunting the lost corridors like some mythical bull on a Greek island.

Truly a wonderful afternoon. Thank you Nick and Kevin!

It was a well mixed, delight of a day. From Farnham to Tilford to Woking. Most enjoyable…even with gout.

According to the BBC, today was supposed to be bright and blue and warmish. As we woke, the view out the window was grey and gloomy and chilly. This changed quite quickly. As I walked into Farnham, the clouds split apart and the sun burst forth.

During the week, at the Talking Newspaper, one of the stories I read concerned the re-opening of the Rural Life Centre at Tilford after the winter break. I’d never been. I thought that Mirinda had but she hadn’t either. I told the poorly sighted listeners I was going to visit this weekend. So we did. After lunch and a couple of episodes of CSI, we set off.

The Rural Life Centre was started in 1969 with a single plough. Now, thanks to the hard work of a group of very determined volunteers, it covers 10 acres, has a small railway running around it, has numerous buildings taken from other places and more farm implements than anyone could hope to shake any form of wood at.

It reminded Mirinda of Australiana Village. It is a collection of buildings, some old, some not so, which contain memorabilia. Everything has something to do with rural life, as the name suggests. A lot of the buildings have come from local areas, been dismantled and then erected here. For instance, there’s a grain store which was once in Borelli Yard in Farnham. Naturally, Mirinda fell in love with the green gypsy caravan.

Gypsy Caravan

This isn’t an original one, though. It was built by one of the volunteers (called ‘Rustics’) and he sleeps there when he’s one site, working. For that reason, it’s not open to the public like everything else. Because he may be asleep in there. It’s very pretty and would look quite natty in our back garden.

They also promised a working Wealden furnace which is yet to be completed. This was the main reason I wanted to go. I thought it was going to be a bloomery but, no. It has an overshot wheel and hammer and everything! It’s just not quite finished. Looks like I’ll just have to go back then…

There are lots of buildings and lots of stuff. I shall post some pictures later. Suffice to say, we had a very enjoyable wander round before heading back home.

Mirinda took the poodles for a walk around the park while I prepared dinner. You see we were dining early this week as we have tickets for a dance thing at the theatre in Woking. Traces it was called. It was only on for one day. We didn’t miss it.

It was actually quite amazing. Not really my thing. According to Mirinda, I am far too boring in my need for narrative. It’s an odd thing. Naturally I can watch people do some amazing things with their bodies and be stunned by feats as much as the next person but if it doesn’t have some sort of story, I just end up getting bored. It doesn’t hold my attention.

Though that’s not exactly true of Traces. I didn’t get a chance to get even slightly, minutely bored. They were very good and one impossible thing followed the next. Most enjoyable.

We managed to get home in time for Match of the Day and I just saw Chelsea score 4-1 against West Ham.

I am including the photo below just because I thought it was really funny. It’s a horse ambulance but I think it looks like a horse limo and the horse in the back is wearing shades.

Horsey G-G

Lovely blue skies over snow white land and quite chilly.  Paths slippery!

Today we were due to journey into London (Mirinda being off work over Christmas) to meet Karen and Nigel to see the new wing at the V&A.  Last night, Mirinda started coughing and hacking and generally sounding ill which could have had something to do with the lack of buttons on her coat and getting covered in sleet and snow.  All that added up to me going into London and leaving my sad and sorry wife snuggled up in bed as I ventured forth into the freeze.

I had watched a feature on the new gallery on The Culture Show a few weeks ago and was really keen to see it.  When I mentioned it to Karen, she suggested we all meet and see it.  A sort of final day out I guess.  It is fantastic.  For someone like me who is into just about everything but particularly religious iconography, mythical sculpture and St Sebastien, it was pretty much close to heaven.  As we strolled through the rooms, I mentioned to Nigel that it was exactly like any of our tours of Europe – me and churches!

Karen, it seems, does not like religious iconography, finds it unpleasant to look at.  I told her it was because she didn’t know how to read them; didn’t know the stories behind the images.  I described a few of them to her but she remains unconvinced.  I, however, loved every minute.  Well, except for the carpets.  I really cannot get particularly excited about carpets.

The were two Saint Sebastiens though!  One glorious little statue in silver and gilt by Hans Holbien the Elder.  Here’s a picture of it.

San Sebastien

The fine detail is wonderful.  It only stands about 300mm high.  It is exquisite.  It was my favourite piece in the whole gallery.

In saying that, there were a couple of honourable mentions for best in gallery.  The first goes to the oddly named Bartmann Jugs.  I thought the name was a joke and had something to do with The Simpsons but no, these things came first.  They were vessels which depicted bearded men, looking quite serious.  The head was generally at the top, beneath the neck of the jug, and the body of the jug was the man’s body.  They were generally of quite generous proportions!  Clearly very well fed with the contents of the jug.  They seriously looked quite odd.  I’ll post them on the site later along with the other V&A photos I took.  I have and they’re here.

The other honourable mention and equally odd, was a carved tufa fireplace decoration.  It showed hunting scenes and had lots of animals and people doing all sorts of hunting things.  Nothing unusual there at all.  Until you looked really closely.  One of the men had the bottom of his trousers ripped off and was showing his pants which, on close inspection, appeared to be a pair of frilly French knickers!  I kid you not.  It was made between 1510 & 1530 in Padua, Italy.

We spent quite a long time in the gallery so it’s possibly a good thing Mirinda stayed in bed!  About half way through Karen popped off to see another exhibit while Nigel and I finished.  It was then off for lunch.

When I used to visit Karen at work and we’d go for lunch, we had taken to visiting a nice little French place, not far from the V&A.  It served vast quantities of salmon and scrambled eggs and the staff were always pleasant.  We decided this would do for lunch.  Imagine our surprise when we discovered it had changed into an Italian place with a window full of cakes.

According to the manager, it was originally the Italian place then changed to French and has now returned to what it should be.  They now have pizza.  I was once more in heaven.

Karen told us a funny story as we ate.  They, naturally, have been extremely busy packing up, cleaning, selling and generally dispersing their worldly goods to all manner of places, in preparation for their return to Australia.  One box of stuff was destined for a charity shop and was safely situated in a cupboard, waiting for it’s trip downstairs.  On Sunday, Karen and Nigel came over, bringing with them their last bits and pieces, wine for Christmas day and Christmas presents.  I didn’t put the presents under the tree as Carmen was a little too interested in them.  Apparently, there are no present for me in the bag.  They were taken to the charity shop by accident and distributed to the ends of Wimbledon.  Because Karen always buys me odd things from odd places around the world, she couldn’t possibly re-buy them.  They are likely to be quite rude so I’m a tad concerned about some frail old volunteer opening the box and getting a fright

It was sort of a sad day, really.  Though we’ll see them on Christmas day, I realised today how much I’m going to miss Karen.  Still, she’ll only ever be an email away!