Westminster University, London
The idea that one goes on a long journey to rest and recoup from daily life is certainly not found in my reality. I figure I am falling about six to eight hours further behind every day in what I want to be doing. Part of me wants to sit in a little room all day and write. Dozens of new essays are lurking on specks of paper - napkins, receipts, bulletins, tickets. Yet, when a brilliant sun detonates in a cerulean sky and I know there is at least two thousand years of history within walking distance, the writing gets deferred. I rationalize that I will be able to write at another time. Sun and proximity will not always be viable options. I do have a four-hour train ride tomorrow so will get at least a couple of essays finished up.
For the first time since leaving New York, I did not ride anything on rails all day, electing to instead use boats. Wanting to go back to that Victorian wonderland with all manner of cool clocks, telescopes, and other scientific toys we science nerds thrive on, I walked to the docks and hopped a cruise boat down the Thames to Greenwich. An untarnished sky yielded grand images of the river front to replace many of the leaden images I made a couple of months ago. There was a whole lot more river front visible, as a very low tide had much of the shore high and semi-dry. I don’t things actually get dry here.
The Royal Naval College is en route to time keeper’s heaven so I detoured to take some additional photos of the Painted Hall and Chapel I missed getting in July. The Painted Hall is described as the grandest dining room in Europe. It is. It took nineteen years just to paint the inside of it. There must be some kind of magic in this room. I again found the guides in here to be the friendliest women ever placed on planet earth. One possesses a luscious accent and smile that has me wondering how I was going to tell you I had run off and gotten married as part of my British Airways total travel package. I considered taking my lunch and dinner and eating on one of their grand oak trestle tables, but food’s not allowed and being obvious doesn’t work in this culture; I will have to trust romance to the same One that makes thieves bring stolen cameras back to church.
The guide that was in the chapel a couple of months ago; one who had me consider moving my church membership over here is not present today. The one on duty today must not have gotten a pay raise and the place is very noisy as some trades people are building and pounding as part of some renovation work. I do believe that more time and money are put into scaffolding in the UK than into the actual projects contained in them. I went back to the Painted Hall. The sun came out.
I had to let puppy love go. I went across the Commons to the Maritime Museum and found all manner of interesting ship’s chronometers, astrolabes, and models; stuff nearly as cool as the kind to be found in the observatory. What I did not expect in a maritime museum was perhaps the most emoting display of stained glass I have ever encountered. A prestigious financial trading exchange in London had long ago commissioned a dome be made of stained glass reminiscent of Tiffany and placed over a grand stairway in the exchange. Alas, the historic Baltic Exchange building was destroyed by terrorists in 1992. After some years the glass was salvaged and restored, finally being tastefully installed in this museum. It was like being under a planetarium dome made of flower petals. I took thirty pictures of the dome and five very large windows that have been salvaged. The whole day was worth this one spectral find. I am elated that I didn’t find out about photography being the unpardonable sin until I was long done and in another part of a second building, merely taking a picture of a sign board on the wall, when accosted by the photo police. The glass images came out glorious.
It finally was time to ascend the hill and go into the observatories I always dreamed about as a kid. There are more kinds of funky telescopes in this place than even my active imagination could have thought up. In the stunningly beautiful Victorian brick buildings, one can find a strange transit telescope that has been in use since 1884 to define the world’s Prime Meridian. I was in and out of several hemispheres without leaving the room. For a long time I was not competing with hordes of tourists for floor space and actually was entirely alone in the main observatory where I carefully photographed a 28” refractor telescope. The guys in astronomy club are going to like this! After playing with a building full of interactive displays and quickly learning that I will not be winning a Nobel in physics any time soon, the time came for a cosmic descent back down the hill.
There were still a few remaining neurons that had not been stuffed with data; necessitating a quick wandering in the Queen’s house to fill them. This elegant house designed by the great British architect Inigo Jones was quite the surprise. An expected five-minute spin through the place turned into the rest of the afternoon and I ended up being conducted out by staff that wanted to go home for dinner. This has been happening with increasing frequency in venues of late. The place was actually already locked up when I was let out. I should have been taking cues when staff were going around and closing up wood shutters over all the outside windows.
A spectacular collection of Flemish maritime painting had me transfixed. There had been almost no one in the building earlier. What a glorious surprise to find this collection. I nearly did not go in, figuring there to be just more fussy antiques and rugs inside. Apparently others thought the same thing. There was no furniture or rugs whatever. Spectacular paintings carefully arrayed and illuminated in this grand classical structure made for inspiring reflections on centuries of life at sea. Works by many of the grand masters of maritime painting were represented - JMW Turner, Canaletto, and Hodges. The closest I got today to life at sea was riding back an hour on the tide into London on the river boat; the river being about fifteen feet higher than this morning.
The neurons are now overfull and I stopped at Sainsbury’s to buy something to make for dinner. Life is good.
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