aamcnamara

Things that my life will be lacking when I leave London:

1. The sharp-sweet taste of very lemony lemon cookies.
2. A bar of soap that smells of lavender.
3. The taste and mouth-feel of oatcakes spread with jam from Wales (blueberry-apple, I think).
4. Rosemary-scented handsoap in public restrooms (the National Archives, and I think the British Museum as well, though I did not today become a person who smells their hands in the bathroom while washing them).
5. Strawberry toothpaste, which I used to use as a kid but hadn't for years (I have become a mint-toothpaste person) until I ran across it in a store and it was the only flavor they had of Tom's of Maine. Which, well, I have never looked very deeply into the matter of toothpaste, but I needed toothpaste past the tiny travel tube I brought, and I knew that buying Tom's of Maine would make my mother happy. (Hi, Mom.) Hence strawberry, which will now have layered memories of childhood and London in it, if I ever buy it afterward.

Yesterday I finished everything I could do in the National Archives early, so I wandered around in Kew. I found a really nice little used-books shop, where I will endeavor not to spend all of my money (they have dragon sculptures, and shelves that look like trees!), and an organic-food store where I found--glory of glories--EnerG bread, aka the first loaf of bread I have found in England that I can eat. And the aforementioned very lemony lemon cookies, which similarly are the first cookies I have found in England that I can eat. Sandwiches! Toast! Cookies!

Today I went to the British Museum. It is overwhelming and impressive and full of amazing things. I saw several Greek vases that we talked about in my art history class last year! And of course the Elgin Marbles, which were mentioned in novels I read as a kid and imagined as spheres made of marble.

It also wore me down, little by little, by the crowds and the hugeness and the fact that I know that a lot of what's there--all the cultural diversity, and the variety, and the vast timespan covered--was stolen from graves, taken without permission, cheated out of people, etc. Which just kind of came to a head when I got to the Egyptian gallery, already footsore, and realized that they had actual mummies in the cases; and then went into the next room, where there was an example of a basketweave coffin with what appeared to be an actual skeleton in it. Just--people. Is this actually acceptable?

So I left, resisting the urge of "but I haven't seen everything yet!". The Roman fighting demonstrations that I'd stumbled on earlier were still happening, so I sat there for a little while, but then I decided to walk down to the Sir John Soane Museum, which sounded cool. And then I went slightly the wrong way and ended up in Covent Garden instead. Um. Whoops? I found the Apple store (and went up two flights of stairs, having missed the iPods completely on the ground floor--my iPod touch was lost on my journey here, alas, so I wanted to look at what's out there) and I found another tea store (where I did not buy anything, thank you very much, even though they had teapot-shaped tea infusers (I am holding out for the robot-shaped tea infuser I spotted once at the Wedge Co-Op in Minneapolis))... and then I checked my map and saw where I'd gone wrong and headed toward the Soane museum again.

It took a bit more wandering to actually get there, but when I did, I found that it was next to a very nice park (Lincoln's Inn Fields, I believe) in which I sat and ate one of the aforementioned cookies, which I had brought along.

Sir John Soane's idea of museum-collecting, as it turns out, is basically like Isabella Gardner's. Only he was into the Classics, and also peculiar architecture and interesting things to do with natural light, so it's this Victorian-I-think row-house-type-thing crammed with paintings and statues and vases and reliefs where all the light comes from odd skylights (one small room has a tiny glass cupola in its ceiling) and windows with various colors of glass, and gets reflected in the many mirrors and mirrored doors... Said windows usually look out into tiny courtyards filled with further monuments, of course. There's a sarcophagus for a mummy, but it's empty; and the sense of overwhelming personality and Cool Architectural Stuff at least gives something to put in the other pan against the "wow, all this stuff was robbed from graves" thing.

I've no idea what they do when it's overcast--I am not kidding when I say that all the light comes from skylights and windows--although one of my flatmates says they occasionally do a Candlelit Night where they put candles everywhere, which sounds gorgeous.

In the end, I could probably go back to either of the museums I visited today. But I'm more likely to drag people to the Soane, and also I hear there's a false wall I didn't get to see in operation (!). Going back to the British Museum, I think I would have to have a Plan: do initial research on some area/time period/etc. and then go and look at all the things in that or those room(s), so that I at least have some context.

But the British Museum did have a volunteer who let me hold a small Romano-Celtic war-god. So there's that. And really it was a very nice day, although my calves are extremely sore now, and I did not go out again and buy groceries this evening at all. (I should have. If I had made plans for tomorrow at all, not having bought groceries today would mess them right up. But I haven't made plans for tomorrow; and it was windy tonight; and my feet hurt. So there.)