Wandering on up the building, the next intriguing thing was the exponential horn, a loudspeaker from the 30's recently reconstructed. I caught a bit of electronic music but I think I have missed this boat and am not going to hear it play any chamber music, which is a pity as the claim was that the horn gives a sense of presence, a sense of being with the instruments that you do not get with the rather smaller loudspeakers we usually use these days.
From there onto an impressive display, with plenty of brown wood and glass display cases, about early aeroplanes. Lots of interesting stuff for someone interested in that sort of thing and not bad for someone who was not. But overall, the museum, while the fabric, infrastructure and paintwork were being kept in good order, seemed sadly empty. Enough money to keep the place ticking over but not enough money to put on the kind of displays which might pull people in. A sense perhaps that the science museum industry is not quite sure what its place in the world is, given that television and the internet have cut a lot of the older ground from under their feet.
And so to the Natural History museum which did not seem to be suffering quite so badly. People did still like to look at the skeletons of dinosaurs and stuffed birds. And there was some impressive fishy fossil stuff from Lyme Regis to provide a bit of balance. I was especially struck by the slice of giant redwood which had been given a shrine at the very top of the building - the shrine like format being entirely appropriate in this building which reminded me both of cathedrals - and Victorian railway stations. With the giant redwood in question having been born around the time that our King Alfred was burning the cakes.
There was a modest brain display, a bit elementary, but it did include some neat exhibits, including what looked like a gray oven cloth, about 33 by 66cm, and which was said to approximate to what a human cortex would look like if you flattened it out, flattening out all the wrinkles in the process. There were plenty of eateries scattered about the place and I took a ham and cheese baguette from one of them, entirely satisfactory, for around £4.50.
Round the back I stumbled upon the cocoon, a large gherkin shaped and white coloured building within a building which looked as if it might have been designed by a lady Iraqi but was, I was told by the helpful pair of entymologists outside, actually the work of a Danish gentleman. I think that they rather liked the original building and would have been a bit happier if the money had been spent on bugs rather than bricks.
And so from Exhibition Road Museums to Sedding Street for the second half of the day's activities. Waiting in Sloane Square I was able to eyeball all the ladies coming back from their shopping expeditions with lots of expensive looking carrier bags and one lady heading into the tube with a full set of golf clubs. From which we deduce that while in Epsom ladies generally take their Chelsea tractors to golf, in Chelsea they generally take the tube.
First beverage from the Antelope, which seemed more or less unchanged from when I used to use it more than forty years ago. Décor unchanged and clientèle largely unchanged, my once favourite table at the back was still there, although blazers and such like were not quite as much in evidence as they would have been in the olden days. Second beverage from the Wellington where the décor was largely unchanged but the clientèle and the ambience had. Not the place it used to be at all. Amongst other things, the place had been a food pub before food pubs had been invented, with a large Spanish gentleman dispensing food from various hot tubs mounted in a dispensary across the Eaton Terrace end of the bar while mine host (a lady with a pound note accent) dispensed wisdom from her place at the other end. They could manage, nonetheless, a reasonable sausage sandwich. They managed soft white bread and managed to omit external trimmings - but could not bear to omit internal lashings of some white goo or other, although I expect I would be able to get them to omit it if I asked nicely another time.
Outside we were very impressed by a cavalcade of black cars: led by a black open topped sports car, a Lamborghini or some such, then a couple of rollers and wound up with a couple of Range Rovers with smoked glass windows, the sort of thing one imagines is chock full of SAS types with all their latest toys. No flags or other insignia that I saw, so perhaps an oligarch. Odd to lead with the sports car though.
Then to visit the front door of what had been my bedsit for a while and I was pleased to find that the ground floor was still a dentist (see illustration). Some things don't change. While the rather ordinary newsagent at which I had found the bedsit, and where I probably bought the tobacco I used to smoke at that time, had turned into a rather expensive looking wedding dress shop (http://www.le-spose-di-gio.it/).
Third and last beverage from the bar of the Grosvenor Hotel, the once fancy hotel next to Victoria Station and which is not fancy at all once you get above the first floor, at least it was not on the one occasion that I stayed there, some years ago now. But the bar was decent enough, if rather quiet, with very obsequious service. Very decent plumbing too. Now part of the Guoman Family, described on their web site as an exclusive collection of deluxe London Hotels.
Closed the outing with an event which was a first for me. A train to Epsom made up of just three coaches.
No comments:
Post a Comment