As a child trips to London would often involve my family spitting up for the day. My mother and sister would head for the shops while my father would take me to a musesum. We covered most of the biggies - British Museum, V&A, Museum of London - but we returned time and again to that place that dinosaur dreams are made of. Personally I blame Blue Peter. They were always taking trips there and advertising one exibition or another. To be fair I never needed much encouragement and all praise to my father for being dragged around again and again to look at the bones, stones and stuffed animals!
Each visit would always start with a trip to the latest addition but would also involve the same list of unmissables. Dinosaurs (natch), mammals (to see the flying whales and throw pennies on its tail), metorites (to witness matter from beyond our planet) and the slice of giant Sequoia (marked to show the passage of its life through the history of the world)! Finally a climb the top of the stairs in the main hall to listen to the echoes of joy and wonder floating up from below.
Of course, in those days there was only the main body of the building open without all the additional wings and things. But this meant that if we got there good and early we could spend the morning in the NHM, have lunch in the restaurant (I'm seeing fish-fingers, beans and chips on a paper plate, but then that was my staple fare at age 7) and then after lunch we'd nip round the corner to Exhibition Road and the Science Museum. I have a feeling that my Father preferred this museum due to his engineering background and love of Science Fiction. He definitely seemed more impressed by the planes suspended from the ceiling than the whales. Science Fiction is another shared passion between my father and me and I remember will glee the time the museum had on display both R2-D2 and C3-PO and Luke Skywalker's landspeeder!
Our third biggest passion, after comedy and Sci-Fi, is books (which often incorporates the first two) and an author recommended by my father, Russell Hoban, also describes lovingly the wonders of the Science Museum in his novel 'Amaryllis Night and Day' and in particular the display I always remember the most there myself - the Klein Bottles. The madness and impossibility of them would draw me in and I'd follow with my eye the twists and turns, trying to understand how such a thing were possible. The doughnut / bagel theory eluded to in my past post 'Arrest' certainly had its foundations in those incalculable curves of Klein.
One of the most random, cinematic like moments of my of my life also took place in the Science Museum. It was towards the end of the day and the galleries were emptying when suddenly a strange music filled the air - a whining trill that was beautiful and melancholic. We followed the sound and were finally greeted with the sight of a man standing by himself in the centre of the hall wearing full evening dress. He stood in front of a small, green cabinet which he appeared to be conducting. It responded magically to every shift and flow of his hands by singing the strange song. My father quietly explained that this was a Theremin, an instrument the sound of which sends tingles though my body to this day. I stood enthralled as the soloist finished the piece never once touching it but rather caressing it from a respectful distance...
It's moments like that I hope will stay in my mind wash after wash after wash...
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