All August my friend Robert and I have been planning a trip to Hastings before the summer is out.
But the title says London! I hear you cry. Patience, I'll get there.
We went to London instead. Originally we had hoped to go to the beach with a group of friends, inspired by a prior conversation about a past birthday party of mine. When everyone turned out to be working on the days we were free, the list was whittled down to two. So we settled on Hastings and planned, to among other things, visit the Sea Life Centre. Or whatever they're calling themselves now.
Today it was pouring down with rain, so at the train station we decided against coastal Hastings. Rather, we needed a place with lots of indoor activities and subterranean travel. That's London, by the way. Keep up!
Robert wanted to visit the Imperial War Museum. He wanted to go to a lot of places, none of which we did. I dragged him to the science museum instead. We played with the Ferroliquid, and stared trance-like at the working steam engines. Well, I did, Rob stared annoyed-like at me. One floor had mainly art installations that the touch-screen displays took pains to explain their relevance to a science museum. One, which I definitely appreciated from a behaviour psychology perspective viewpoint, was a metal pillar stretching from floor to ceiling. It was open at just below head height, the two ends connected by cable-like metal shafts. It was ringed on the floor, a great yellow and black circle emblazoned with "do not touch" in big grumpy letters, but no rope or barrier. Well, there were people approaching it, despite the angry buzzing that grew louder as you did, and putting their hands between the cables. The pillar would respond with a noise like a great electronic pulse, and as you'd expect, the subjects received an electric shock. Served them right. I resisted the urge to test it myself. Not very scientific of me, but I deemed it better not to interfere lest it affect my results... which I did not care to collect. Um...
Those of you who have visited will remember what I can only call the "opinion ring", a great hanging metal ring with a sort of LCD display either built in or projected onto the inside edge. Blocks of light bounce around and occasionally explode, spelling a question, which then resolved into an answer that someone had given. Today's topic: energy. I enjoyed tapping my answers into the machine, some serious, some not ("What would you think of electricity-free days in England?" "Free electricity? I'm for that!" - SD, 43). I saw my age and initials flash when I submitted an answer but my question always had someone else's answer. I expect there is a vetting process somewhere.
Not everywhere, though. One of the other art things was a dark room with many small green LCD displays suspended in several columns across one side in front of the benches. Words would rapidly flicker across the whole display with soft clicking sounds before getting into a kind of production, of which there appeared to be several, to calm music as random words or phrases would pop up on each display as a synthesised voice read them out. I saw one where they were all "I like..." or "I love..." phrases. I later learned that they were randomly selected from various chat rooms and included without any oversight, so I was witness to the spectacle of sitting among children before an exhibit in the science museum speaking, in Microsoft Sam's voice: "I love pizza," "I like books," "I like deer." "I like big boobs," and not forgetting: "I love interacting with vaginas."
We had lunch at a hidden little place In South Kensington, popular with students for its affordable prices (unlike the rest of London). We then made our way to Leicester Square (via Camden Road, in case there was anything interesting for sale) with the tentative proposal of seeing a film depending on price and convenience. We didn't, but we just had to investigate the Square's map's claim of a recently opened "M&M's World", whatever that was.
It was exactly as it sounds. The best I can describe it is a Disney Shop, except where everything is hugely over-priced M&M tack. Four huge floors of it. The largest candy store in the world, as I later learned, not there was much of that. Massive statues of the characters in various costumes, M&M versions of famous portraits and pictures on the wall, great tubes of over twenty different colours for the "make a bag" service, they reminded me of walls of carpet samples in appearance. The sheer quantity of tack was incredible. The whole place was rather horrifying, and doing exceedingly good business too. There was a periodic table of M&M colours, and a window titled "M&M lab" which people behind it. They were there, in a place decked out to look like a cartoony lab, in lab coats, filling bags and other merchandise containers with M&Ms, I cried out, far too loudly, "Jurassic Park!".
"Are these characters, people, animatronics?
"No, we don't have any animatronics here. These are the real miracle workers of M&M's World."
I think they missed a trick, though, they should have had Willy-Wonka style machinery and pneumatic tubes and automatic packagers. Much more fun than tack. We wisely chose not to buy anything, but we documented it all on a camera phone (the world has to know! The horrors will not be silenced!) and made a hasty exit.
Back to Kensington! We decided to spend the last couple of hours at the Natural History Museum. Well, I did, and convinced Robert. He said he'd been there far too often. So have I, but I still love it. Hall of Birds, Hall of Ichthyosaurs, love it. Robert wanted a picture of himself prostrate on the floor on the main staircase, as if he were worshipping the statue of Darwin. I did not want this at all. Also there were too many people to do it, and it was embarrassing. "Where's Richard Owen gone?" I asked him of the statue of the Museum's founder that used to sit there. He wouldn't have liked his replacement at all. I thought I saw it behind the primate exhibit at the top of the right staircase, but it was actually my good friend Thomas Huxley. I got a photo of Rob worshipping him instead.
I couldn't leave without visiting the gift shop. I didn't expect to find anything I'd want to part money for, not here at least. Prices. But I did. A stuffed toy squid caught my eye and I couldn't bear to leave it. I have an odd relationship with stuffed toys, they tend to be, for no particular reason, my preferred animal toy. The plastic ones don't impress me, and nor do mos stuffed animals, but every know and then...
It's the anatomical accuracy that gets me. It's usually crap, especially for the unusual species that I prefer. I won't touch them if they're wrong. Now, that's easy with most mammals, though they're bog standard, too popular and boring. If it included penis and scrotum ten the combination of accuracy and steel-balled audacity would have me parting with my money, but otherwise the mammals don't get a second look from me. This squid, though. The last time I was this impressed was with the horn shark I found at Hastings' aquarium, every detail was present and correct (assuming it's a girl). I bought it. This squid had eight arms, two tentacles, two fins, two eyes, one siphon, one beak. All present and correct. Even the mantle was separate from the head, by some very clever construction. Only individually constructed suckers and claws could improve it. I have loads of octopuses like it, but this is my first proper teuthid.
The dinosaur toys, as usual, crap. Accuracy terrible, even for stuffed animals. At lead they're getting feathers now, but fluffy tufts on the head and elbows? That's crap. The pterosaurs are always awful without exception. And birds always have tiny wings, in the folded position. Who wants a stuffed macaw that can't spread its huge wings, or a stunted, flightless owl? Come on toy makers, get your act together.
Rob seemed impressed by a little plastic Pteranodon skeleton model, which he bought. He later insisted that it merely "looked the least retarded", though that doesn't seem enough to warrant purchase. These things were emblazoned with the Natural History Museum's insignia and design, and they are an embarrassment. I should write. The world's first museum opened to the public, which architecture that shows what can be done if people other than churches pay for it. And this is the shit they're selling? The obligatory Velociraptor (thank you Michael Crichton) had its hands positioned completely wrong, and amazingly its feet completely lacked the terrible claw. Completely. Just three normal toes.
The flaws in the Pteranodon didn't become apparent until Rob was assembling it on the train. He didn't notice them until I pointed them out, which was pretty bad considering that he actually wroked, at university, with Mark Witton, Darren Naish and Dave Martill, Britain's leading pterosaur experts and among the top in the world (not their only speciality, I should add). Man, but I envy him for that. He even helped build, set up and run the Pterosaur Exhibition in London last year, where he met David Attenborough.
The first mistake I noticed was that the picture of the finished model on the front of the box had its wings on the wrong sides of the body. Elbows pointing forward, that sort of thing. Back-to-front. A rather miserable oversight, but perhaps down to the photographer who assembled it. The second error was actually Robert's fault in assembly. I noticed, while discussing the pterosaur's unique pteroid bone, that he'd put the wings on upside-down. He was deservedly embarrassed at this. It reminded me of the time, in 1869, when Edward Drinker Cope published his reconstruction of
Elasmosaurus platyurus with the head on the wrong end. Then, while discussing how he could readjust the model into a more realistic pose, I noticed the final and most grotesque flaw evident to my amateur eyes. The back legs, which are attached to the body as part of the same mould, are each affixed to the wrong side of the pelvis. Also they are upside-down. At this point Robert dismantled the model and put it away, somewhat miffed, though that didn't stop our giggling.
Still, I should write.
