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War I did on Sunday
On Sunday morning, I'd arranged to meet up with a few friends in London.
I knew that trains would muck people's schedules up, so came prepared with an mp3 player, some reading material, a few card games, a ball, a frisbee, etc. Even at 10:30 it was a gorgeous day. I sat in the shade reading Interzone, and listening to an old Boothby Graffoe album for a while. Then got up and tried to remember how to get my diabolo to work. I'd either fail to keep it horizontal on the spin up, or would launch it and it would fail to keep spinning when I caught (No mention will be made of launch attempts when the rope was twisted, that nearly lead to decapitation).
Fuzz turned up first and tried his hand at the diabolo. At about this point a young chinese girl came over and showed us what we were doing wrong (Hold one hand higher than the other when catching the diablo, so it rolls down the string and picks up rotational speed). She then did some Around The Leg tricks before running of after her companion, who wasn't impressed and had wandered off.
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piesandmash turned up, and after a bit we headed down to the War Museum.
While they were searching our backpacks at the entrance to the museum, the steward asked if anyone had ever found my XKCD t-shirt offensive. I grinned replied that it only really annoyed wizards. Then a security guard came over and said that he was sorry, but it wasn't a joke. The War Museum has policy of no offensive words on T-shirts, and he said I really ought to turn it inside out. Instead I turned it backwards, and put my backpack on.
He seemed quite embarrassed, and came over later to make sure I hadn't felt picked on. There was a lot of kids around so I said I understood why they would say that. Thinking back on it, I wonder if the rule is there because people turn up with protest t-shirts? I could have stood my ground, and made a stand for freedom of expression, but frankly I was more interested in the shiny metal inside.
The main hall has got lots of big metal war machines in it, and one little wooden sailing boat (It was the smallest civilian boat of the Dunkirk fleet). The space is quite a bit smaller than the large gallery in the Canadian War Museum. However there's a good range of stuff in there, from spotlights and recoilless artillery, to tanks (with spare tracks mounted like spare tires) and planes.
While waiting for the last of party to arrive we had a good poke around. The shear mass of these things is impressive. Give the sea mine a whack, and you can just about hear a hollow ring through the thick steel, but the larger gun barrels are so thick that they may as well be solid for all that I could tell from wacking them.
Aesthetically, I love the details inside a complex machine [1]. Everything serves some purpose but it's pretty inscrutable from a quick glance. In that vein, the cut away V2 engines, and the brass gunner's sighting mechanisms were pretty nifty. Fuzz says that modern gunners still use those sights to double check computers, and are almost as fast them. Neither of us could figure out why they were all made of brass rather than steel.
The scariest exhibit in that room is also the smallest and least assuming. It's 3 meters long, less than a meter across, shaped like a black sausage with a tail fin. It's the casing for an early atomic bomb.
The lower levels were devoted to war from 1900 onwards, mostly focusing on the 2 World Wars. Like the main hall, each display case was densely packed, with well arranged examples of artefacts typical of the type suited for the narrative of the exhibition.
A few examples that spring to mind:
A corner of a cabinet devoted to bits of wood, with nails in. Also known as improvised trench clubs.
A 4-lines-a-day diary, opened to the D-Day landing. It reads like a twitter stream.
Many hand written letters.
A tea pot made from an old cocoa tin.
Italian hand grenades. Which were red, and different in design from any I'd seen before. If one of those landed at my feet I wouldn't recognise it torun away from pick up and throw back dive on top of.
The Trench Experience was a little disappointing. It was dim, narrow, and contained various wounded soldier dummies, but it smelt of cumin seeds and just didn't have the atmosphere. Bad audio I wonder?
By then everyone was getting hungry and thirsty, so we raced up to Marble Arch and booked tickets for The Dark Knight. We wandered around for quarter of an hour looking for a decent pub that would serve us food on a Sunday afternoon, but failed. So resorted to a Weatherspoons. They were out of beef burgers, charged more for ale than lager, and still publish a vaguly Eurosceptic newsletter.
The Dark Knight was a pretty entertaining film, which left us discussing motivations, and plot lines for a while afterwards. The action scenes were: thrilling, high octane, and slightly silly, which you'd expect from a summer blockbuster. Constantly I had no idea what was going to happen in the next 5 minutes and couldn't wait to find out. All that said, I doubt I'll ever buy it. I hadn't seen Batman Begins, which didn't prevent the film from making sense, but did mean I had to deduce a bit of what had happened. I'm glad I saw it, but it's not a film I feel compelled to go see again.
After that, rather than heading back to the Weatherspoons, we walked to the Cock, for some good cheap Samuel Smith beer. The drizzle that joined us for the walk was fairly warm and quite refreshing really.
Woah. That's around a thousand words. I never write that much.
[1]If I ever have a weekend without any plans (not had one free since before Easter) I ought to go down to the Science Museum, and have a go at drawing some of their sketching steam engines.
I knew that trains would muck people's schedules up, so came prepared with an mp3 player, some reading material, a few card games, a ball, a frisbee, etc. Even at 10:30 it was a gorgeous day. I sat in the shade reading Interzone, and listening to an old Boothby Graffoe album for a while. Then got up and tried to remember how to get my diabolo to work. I'd either fail to keep it horizontal on the spin up, or would launch it and it would fail to keep spinning when I caught (No mention will be made of launch attempts when the rope was twisted, that nearly lead to decapitation).
Fuzz turned up first and tried his hand at the diabolo. At about this point a young chinese girl came over and showed us what we were doing wrong (Hold one hand higher than the other when catching the diablo, so it rolls down the string and picks up rotational speed). She then did some Around The Leg tricks before running of after her companion, who wasn't impressed and had wandered off.
piesandmash turned up, and after a bit we headed down to the War Museum.While they were searching our backpacks at the entrance to the museum, the steward asked if anyone had ever found my XKCD t-shirt offensive. I grinned replied that it only really annoyed wizards. Then a security guard came over and said that he was sorry, but it wasn't a joke. The War Museum has policy of no offensive words on T-shirts, and he said I really ought to turn it inside out. Instead I turned it backwards, and put my backpack on.
He seemed quite embarrassed, and came over later to make sure I hadn't felt picked on. There was a lot of kids around so I said I understood why they would say that. Thinking back on it, I wonder if the rule is there because people turn up with protest t-shirts? I could have stood my ground, and made a stand for freedom of expression, but frankly I was more interested in the shiny metal inside.
The main hall has got lots of big metal war machines in it, and one little wooden sailing boat (It was the smallest civilian boat of the Dunkirk fleet). The space is quite a bit smaller than the large gallery in the Canadian War Museum. However there's a good range of stuff in there, from spotlights and recoilless artillery, to tanks (with spare tracks mounted like spare tires) and planes.
While waiting for the last of party to arrive we had a good poke around. The shear mass of these things is impressive. Give the sea mine a whack, and you can just about hear a hollow ring through the thick steel, but the larger gun barrels are so thick that they may as well be solid for all that I could tell from wacking them.
Aesthetically, I love the details inside a complex machine [1]. Everything serves some purpose but it's pretty inscrutable from a quick glance. In that vein, the cut away V2 engines, and the brass gunner's sighting mechanisms were pretty nifty. Fuzz says that modern gunners still use those sights to double check computers, and are almost as fast them. Neither of us could figure out why they were all made of brass rather than steel.
The scariest exhibit in that room is also the smallest and least assuming. It's 3 meters long, less than a meter across, shaped like a black sausage with a tail fin. It's the casing for an early atomic bomb.
The lower levels were devoted to war from 1900 onwards, mostly focusing on the 2 World Wars. Like the main hall, each display case was densely packed, with well arranged examples of artefacts typical of the type suited for the narrative of the exhibition.
A few examples that spring to mind:
A corner of a cabinet devoted to bits of wood, with nails in. Also known as improvised trench clubs.
A 4-lines-a-day diary, opened to the D-Day landing. It reads like a twitter stream.
Many hand written letters.
A tea pot made from an old cocoa tin.
Italian hand grenades. Which were red, and different in design from any I'd seen before. If one of those landed at my feet I wouldn't recognise it to
The Trench Experience was a little disappointing. It was dim, narrow, and contained various wounded soldier dummies, but it smelt of cumin seeds and just didn't have the atmosphere. Bad audio I wonder?
By then everyone was getting hungry and thirsty, so we raced up to Marble Arch and booked tickets for The Dark Knight. We wandered around for quarter of an hour looking for a decent pub that would serve us food on a Sunday afternoon, but failed. So resorted to a Weatherspoons. They were out of beef burgers, charged more for ale than lager, and still publish a vaguly Eurosceptic newsletter.
The Dark Knight was a pretty entertaining film, which left us discussing motivations, and plot lines for a while afterwards. The action scenes were: thrilling, high octane, and slightly silly, which you'd expect from a summer blockbuster. Constantly I had no idea what was going to happen in the next 5 minutes and couldn't wait to find out. All that said, I doubt I'll ever buy it. I hadn't seen Batman Begins, which didn't prevent the film from making sense, but did mean I had to deduce a bit of what had happened. I'm glad I saw it, but it's not a film I feel compelled to go see again.
After that, rather than heading back to the Weatherspoons, we walked to the Cock, for some good cheap Samuel Smith beer. The drizzle that joined us for the walk was fairly warm and quite refreshing really.
Woah. That's around a thousand words. I never write that much.
[1]If I ever have a weekend without any plans (not had one free since before Easter) I ought to go down to the Science Museum, and have a go at drawing some of their sketching steam engines.