This years first venture down to London: part 1
At 4.10pm the Science Museum building was left and there were no planes in the sky, sun was out, a hot dog stall was making weird smells, the Natural History Museum was almost next door and had a massive dinosaur skeleton in front of it; and we went through the ‘Evolutionary Gardens’ to get to the museum – where the skeleton of a 25 metre long blue whale was dangling from the ceiling. There was a mammoth skeleton by the shop, a t-rex, fossilized trees, and a large lump of coal from Australia (which was somewhere I forgot because I frantically photographed the ludicrous stuff in the shop); we went up some massive stairs that Charles Darwin was sat at the top of…
…lumps of all sorts of ores and minerals were along the corridor there, and a little chimpanzee skeleton was amongst other bones. In the minerals gallery – a 1400 lbs (635kg) lump of meteoric iron from 1783 was on a plinth, ‘the vault’ at the end contained a lump that proved water once existed on Mars, and there was an octopus carved out of quartz, a giant emerald – and lots more I forgot; we came back through the gallery, and ‘the Ostro Stone’ was on a pole at the other end. A big black statue of Richard Owen holding a bone was opposite a big white one of Thomas Henry Huxley in a chair; further round was a bowler hat home to a now empty wasps nest; and a dwarf cassowary, and massive peacock and a couple of chickens were amongst the birds in the glass cases as we left the museum – on to Cromwell Road (and Mum mentioned Oliver Cromwell had his head chopped off).
A yellow, red and blue flag was flying over a doorway, 1 of a threesome of teenage boys had a burst of loud screaming; we reached the tunnel to the underground again at 5.25pm, Mum did some violent sneezing and said there was something in this tunnel that makes her sneeze, ‘The Fact Hungry Witch Detective Hunt’ was amongst the posters on the tunnel walls, I photographed as much as possible while walking along it, and by 5.47pm we were on a District Line tube (which wasn’t too stuffed): a big paper bag someone was carrying seemed to be meant to look like a part of The Daily Prophet (the newspaper in Harry Potter), a girl in a flannel onesie sort of garment/flannel material sack was playing phone games, and at 5.56pm we got off at Embankment.
3 minutes later we were on a Bakerloo Line platform – with Jack Daniels whiskey advertised (amongst other things I forgot); it took around 90 seconds for the tube to appear there, Charing Cross was stopped at next, and I forgot what I saw after that because at Piccadilly Circus a heck of a lot of people got on, lots were saying ‘ein stchop’ – and they all got off at the next stop (Oxford Circus). The robot announcer seemed to be using ZFL as an acronym for London Zoo, almost every human on the train had there head bent over their phone, the window I was stood by when Baker Street got stopped at had a massive advert for a dish of noodles outside it, and I forgot when we got off again (at Marylebone this time) because I had to find the return tickets that weren’t easily findable on our tablet – so poked it a bit and forgot where I found it. A person in an official looking security vest was asked about super off peak train times; and then we sat down in the little Starbucks in a corner – which was selling chocolate swiss loaf cake (making me wonder if a swiss loaf would be easier to make than a swiss roll), protein cold foam, and propercorn popcorn (and a delivery box on the counter of Pipers cheese and onion crisps said ‘FRAGILE’ on it).
Mum started reading the Metro I’d grabbed earlier, I was feeling slightly stoned by then, and wondered what a ristretto Bianco was (advertised on a screen behind the counter – and Wikipedia terms it ‘”a short shot” (20 ml from a double basket) of a highly concentrated espresso’; and it was 6.42pm when we moved. A ticket machine screen was intermittently showing ‘Last year over 500 people were prosecuted for travelling without a valid rail ticket’; and then I forgot when the platform number for the 7.06pm train popped up – because a big rush (that included us) was made for the barriers, and we made it through and found seats on the train. A heck of a lot of food was being consumed by passengers when it moved – and a weird mixture of smells was wafting; after passing Ruislip – the massiveness of the HS2 work was briefly visible again, the man sat in front of me was poking his phone and watching videos of someone in a golf buggy on Facebook; and High Wycombe was whizzed past at 7.31pm (and my eyebrows were feeling like they’d been raised for a very long time). Google Maps decided to point out The Grange Restaurant for Hearing Dogs to me, a lady poking her phone watched a video of people doing very strange leg movements at high speed; and 8.27pm was when we got our legs moving, I noticed a 10p coin on the floor (so grabbed it), and 8.29pm was when the train was disembarked. My teeth started chattering – and continued to for the 7 minutes it took to reach the car; and it was mostly dark when we made it home.
