After having spent five weeks in England, I can now say that I have seen some things only possible to see here in Britain, and things that people come here to see. I woke up early this morning, took care of some things at home, had a good breakfast, made my lunch, and made it into London by noon; not bad given my typical weekend wake time.
The first place that I went to was the The British Museum. Now this place is filled with many items from ancient history statues, mummies, stone wall murals, and items from North America’s Native population. All very neat, but it had none of that ‘oh-wow’ factor that I like to have when in a museum. I thought that the best display in the museum, was the history of money display. Coins were of course represented, but the first items of currency were shells, and unsharpened knives, usually to just have a form to trade the metal in. I left the museum when after having taken a break, and finally having found the bathroom, I had read in my travel guide to London that you could see original lyric scribblings from the Beatles at The British Library. Very cool. I, of course, headed off immediately.
The first thing that I did when i got to the Library was to sit down for a second. I was either walking to fast in the tube stations or I am really out of shape. I’m going with the latter. While I was sitting I asked the security guard if it was okay to take pictures in the museum. Now this was an old man, who really didn’t have much to do in being a security guard in the British Library, and probably relished the chance to have a bit of a chat every now and then. The first thing that he told me was that it was a Library and not a Museum. I didn’t even want to get into it on how I knew that it was a library, but out of habit and convention I call places that display priceless artifacts from our past as museums. I thought it best to keep my mouth shut. I then made the mistake of asking if it was permissible to take photos in the Library. The guard went on for far too long on how it was not okay to take photos, but that some of the museums that he had visited had indeed let him take photos, of course they were in Amsterdam and not in England at all, and that in some of the photo permissible museums only half of the museum let him take photos while the other half barred people from doing so, and of course this set of rules made no sense to him. Oh boy, a simple ‘no’ would have been fine. I told him that the half that didn’t allow photos to be taken probably had items which would be damaged by the flash of the cameras. He said ‘Oh, Right’ in that way that people do when you say something that they should have thought of themselves and want to change the subject. I was finally out of the conversation.
The first display was one of the history of typefaces, and the invention of the mass printing press. I was actually engrossed in a film of a couple of old men demonstrating the lost skill of creating a print from moveable type. The same display of the museum then went on to showcase the subsequent dawn of the sound recording, and finished with a short display on digital typesetting and sound recorded on Compact Discs: The Dawn of the Digital age.
I went upstairs to the real treat of the Library: the precious documents display. I want to say how amazing this place actually is, how close you can get to these documents, and if words fail me then you are just going to have to get yourself to London and make sure to visit this place yourself.
In this room on display for you to practically touch [but not actually touch, because they all have a thick piece of security glass between you and them] are : The Magna Carta, eight pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, original maps of Mercator, letters from WWI and WWII from various Generals of the Allied forces on the state of the Wars, cancelled Nazi Germany Stamps with Hitler’s face on them, uncanceled stamps, the original manuscript of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, the transcript of his trial for homosexual behavior, original handwritten lyrics of The Beatles’ Ticket to Ride and others. There was much more, and they are probably some things that would make as big an impression on others as these items I mentioned had on me. All in one room!
And outside of this display room, there is the entire Library of King George III, bequeathed to the Library by his son King George IV. There is an incredible collection of the stamps from the 19th century that is purported to be inclusive, and, yes, it did include stamps from the U.S. If you’re ever in London, come here, visit this Library.
I was supposed to meet up with the friend of a friend, but that didn’t pan out, so I was sitting in a pub, I think that it was called Buncha Grapes, near Hyde Park wondering what to do with the rest of the evening. It was about 7:30 and I was having a pint of Guinness, but wasn’t really in the mood to spend the rest of the day / evening in a pub, so was reading my guidebook, hoping that I could find something else to do. I was looking over the tube system, and then was reading an article about the various Pedestrian Bridges that cross the Thames. I found that the Tate Modern was near one of the pedestrian bridges in the article. It was open until 10! I knew where I was going next. I asked where the nearest tube station was and left.
I was only able to see one floor of this converted warehouse, and I am not certain that I saw the entire floor. The one floor that I did explore was fascinating. There are works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Picasso, and others I had never heard of, whose names I cannot remember, but whose works I’ll never forget. If you want to have your idea of what art is challenged, this is your place. I am going back as soon as I can, perhaps next week before the party that I’m going to in London.
Well, it is actually Sunday night as I write this, and after having biked along the River Thames for two hours today, utilizing the Thames Path, up to Pangbourne, I’m tired and am going to bed.
