Spam & Pop Tarts

In the early hours of this morning, an idiot from West London decided it was fine and dandy to walk along a Tube tunnel (I assume he’d missed what he thought was the last train). He stepped off the station at Bayswater and was not seen again until a maintenance/cleaning crew came through at 2:30am and found his body. Police think he was trying to walk home.

While this is an incredibly stupid thing to do at any time, it threw the Tube into a massive mess this morning. The police closed off the Circle line completely and a large section of the District line. And then, to compound the problem for this morning’s commuters, there was a signal problem on the Northern line and it was also stopped.

I watched as a train full of passengers, heading north from Waterloo, disgorged as the announcement was made. I joined the huge flow of humanity, heading for the Jubilee line, hoping it was running.

As I stood waiting for the next train (along with about 28,000 other disgruntled travellers) an announcement came over the tannoy. A man with a voice that dripped of inevitability, read off the various lines that would be closed on the weekend. As usual, the Jubilee line was one of them. As the next train pulled in, I thanked the Roman god of transport and squeezed on.

Getting off at Green Park (where the King lives) I walked the 32 miles to the Piccadilly line for the short trip to South Kensington. I wasn’t alone as I shuffled along in the grumbled mass.

After all of that, I managed to get to work on time if somewhat rattled. This is one reason why I’d NEVER work full time at the Science Museum. This would only have to happen a few times before I quit.

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The day was rubbish again so, after lunch, I wandered around the Energy Hall and took a few educational pictures. Firstly, here’s a picture of Old Bess, built by Boulton & Watt…well, the top bit, anyway.

Old Bess by Boulton & Watt, 1777

While Old Bess was a very important move in the development of steam power, she was, apparently, not very reliable and, in the words of Boulton & Watt, probably the worst thing they ever built. She was so unpredictable that people called her Beelzebub. She was only called Old Bess when she was used for removing water from mines.

And here is a drawing of all of her.

Drawing of Old Bess

If you’d like to read more, there’s a Science Museum piece about it here.

Here is a child looking up in wonder at all the amazing things in the entrance hall of the Science Museum.

Science Museum Energy Hall

I love it when they do that. The museum has things hanging from the ceiling as well as all around the walls. At one end is a big rocket. I think that’s what he’s looking at.

There’s always a lot of kids at the museum at lunchtime. I think it’s great and they all seem to have a wonderful time.

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I heard on the news that a stranded luxury liner had run out of food and a navy helicopter flew them out some emergency rations. They gave them Spam and pop tarts! Is that all they could manage to find?