Sir John Soane´s Museum

Our last day in London we finally managed to make it to a museum that has been at the top of my list for years, but we have not been in London those few days during the week when it is open. I am talking about Sir John Soane´s Museum at Lincoln´s Inn Fields. I first read about it in an article about Swedish actor Peter Harryson and his annual trip to London. (I imagine it was a travel magazine.) He made it sound like a treasure palace of odd, wondrous things.

From the look of it, it was more office and exhibition space than a proper home. Soane was an architect and built the house himself. To me, it had the feel of a tomb more than a palace, not unlike Swedish doctor Axel Munthe´s villa San Michele on Capri, which we visited some fifteen years ago. It all those collections of mummies and gravegoods, tombstones and such, I think. Makes me cold all over, I can´t help it; it´s not conscious at all, more of a physical reaction. It´s so very Victorian to collect things like that; every man with means seems to have been an amateur antiquarian.

Soane - and his home - was quite famous even in his lifetime. He came from modest beginnings as the son of a bricklayer, trained at the Royal Academy where he distinguished himself as a very gifted student, got a scholarship to make his Grand Tour and was even knighted in 1831 after a fairly successful career. I got the impression that Soane was never at the forefront of architectural fashions, but rather a representative of the traditional, classic styles.

Soane had a very happy marriage, but was tragically disappointed in his two sons, one of whom was ill and died young, while the other was a rake, living with two women, gambling, and ending up in prison for fraud. When the younger son anonymously wrote an article slandering his father, Soane´s wife was so upset she died just a few months later. His final hope was for his grandson to be an architect, but the young man was rejected by the architect with whom he was studing, on account of being homosexual.

Interesting fact: the tomb Soane designed for his wife was the inspiration for the red telephone box that is such a classic British symbol.

Unfortunately it is not allowed to take photographs inside the museum, so I can´t share anything from the interior. There isn´t much in way of photo galleries at the website either, so for the Sir John Soane´s Museum experience, I guess you have to go there.

We had never been in this part of town before, and Lincoln´s Inn Fields turned out to be a nice little park, with a densly populated lawn. There was a television crew there and the husband was approached to take part, something about asking questions to politicians. This happens to us often, that we are taken for natives, asked for directions and what not. He declined to go on British television.

After this we walked along Oxford Street and don´t ask me how, but we found our way to the roof of the department store John Lewis, where we found a slightly plastic garden; there we had a drink and looked at the bustling shopping street below. A great place to relax!

And the day after, we went home. Not very many weeks later, we booked tickets to Heathrow for the summer of 2015. We still haven´t decided how to fill those two weeks, but I am beginning to think about it now. I guess it helps to have something to look forward to.

Natural History Museum

After Scarborough, we went to London, and one of the sights on my list has long been the Natural History Museum. It is one of several museums along Exhibition Road, among them the Victoria and Albert Museum that we went to some years ago to see an exhibition of historical fashion. The Natural History Museum was built by Alfred Waterhouse, who was part of the Victorian Gothic Revival and the building itself is reason enough to take time out to go there. It´s a cathedral dedicated to ecology. You have probably seen it it a film or two. I remember an episode of "Spooks" a few years ago, with spies walking and talking around the dinosaur in the main hall - that scene specifically put it on my list of places to go.

Of course, there were even more dinosaurs further inside the museum, and they seemed to be the main attraction for the many visitors, many of whom were children - perhaps the free entrance adds to the attraction for families. They have a lot of special programs for school children - we saw hoards of little girls in white coats, carrying clipboards, being Dino-scientists! Unfortunately, this option was not available for adults...

If you ever have a rainy day in London, I can really recommend this place.

The details are charming.

All individually fantastic pieces of art, used to decorate the ceiling.

From one of the side galleries.

View from the top floor; the statue of Charles Darwin throned on the stair opposite.

The top jewel, a slice of a Redwood Tree.

The modern extensions have a completely different design,
but works well with Waterhouse´s original style.

The SOE, special operations executive, which supported resistance
in occupied territory during World War II, had offices in
the building where agents were trained in using "specialised military equipment".

(Gasp!)

They have so many skeletons that they display them on two floors in a single room, leading the visitors through on up-hoisted gangways.

This fleshed out specimen had sound effects. Very Jurassic Park.

Boy pondering a dino nursery.

Some theories as to why they died out. I sympathise with this, though I doubt it...

... and this, I want to believe!

A Boat Ride

Our last day in Scarborough we decided to take a trip on the North Sea and take in the first view of Skardaborg that the Vikings would have had. We were lucky enough to be taken out by "Regal Lady", a lovely little boat that actually took part in the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, which impressed me much. It´s captain was very proud of her, you could really tell. Seemed like it needed some TLC, though, and they were selling bits and bobs, aside from having a pub/café service, to scrape together some money to do maintainance work. I bought a small plastic notebook with the image of "Regal Lady" on it, as we really couldn´t stomach food or drink on such a short trip (a little more than an hour). But there was much eating and drinkning going on around us - the Brits have excellent appetites, that´s for sure!

Luckily, for me, a trip at sea seemed to clear up my hay fever pretty well, and I hardly felt it after that. Must remember for next time. (Also, must remember to take a photo of the entire boat! You can see a little film about here here, though.)

Scarborough from the south.

Scarborough from the north. (The sky a bit more dramatic in noir...)

Peasholm Park

One of our days in Scarborough we spent in Peasholm Park. I was still feeling pretty awful from my allergy, and while a park probably wasn´t the best place for me, going shopping again felt too depressing.

The park is lovely, was opened in 1912 as a Japanese themed park, and is recently restored with the support of the Peasholm Park Friends, a group of volunteers who even set up a website for the park. Now that I have looked at the website I´m sorry we didn´t go see the Naval Warfare thing, which they describe like this:  "For more than 80 years the “Battle of Peasholm” has been played out for 30 minutes three times every week during the summer season, delighting audiences..." They have a gallery of photos, old and new, here. Soo British! We did, however, enjoy the music of an organist sitting in a floating... pagoda, perhaps. He played jolly evergreens like "The sun has put his hat on" from the musical "Me and My Girl", and an ABBA-medley, which he commented with "hördi-gördi*, and all that kind of thing". I guess that´s what the English thinks Swedish sounds like: hördi-gördi. The Brits are crazy about ABBA, you hear it played all the time.

Well, we walked into the park, following the Tree Trail, and all of a sudden we found ourselves in a cemetery. The English kind, that looks completely abandoned. If a stone falls over in a Swedish cemetery, it is considered a desecration and a disrespect to the dead, not to mention a hazard for children (after a child climbing a stone was crushed under it a few years ago - a tragic accident). The English seem to think otherwise. Their cemeteries have a gothic kind of beauty, though, that I like; it really is a place for the dead. Swedish cemeteries are positively cheerful and lively in comparison.

I did do a lot of drawing, there are many photos of me sitting on a bench, red-nosed with a packet of Kleenex in my breastpocket and a drawing pad in my knee. Looking at the drawings now, at least I can say that my skills have improved since then!

No wonder Dracula was attracted to England... 

* I attempted an English spelling of "hördi-gördi" but couldn´t decide on one that I was sure would have an unambiguous pronounciation. The sound that goes with the letter "ö" can be spelled in English with an i, as in bird or first; with an e, as in her or serve; with a u, as in burn or turn; with an o, as in word; or with the combination ea, as in learn or pearl. I would not be surprised if there are more variants. What to choose? One of my old English-teachers comes to mind, who sighed and said that there are no clear rules to English spelling. You just have to learn every word by using it. Perhaps I should have gone with an e - it works after h in her, and after g in Gertrude. "Herdi-gerdi"?

What if the English would adopt the letter ö? I´m sure millions of först-graders would be grateful, easily lörning to spell wörds like börd, först, hör, sörve, börn, törn, lörn and pörl. Of course, pearl and purl would be spelled the same way, but there already are lots of words with several meanings. Wouldn´t that be just pörfect? Hm, maybe not.

An In-Between Vacation Day

After having walked the Rail Trail and me still being rather messed up with hay fever (the Swedish word is hösnuva, hay snuffles or hay cold, but really the English word is more apt because I´m sure I had a temperature - I was pretty knocked out), we decided to skip a trip to Robin Hood´s Bay and a World War II signal station and just drift about town for an afternoon. We entered an amusement arcade and managed to win a little money - not sure how, a boy on a machine next to us tried to explain how it worked, but at least I didn´t comprehend much of it - and not being much bent on gambling (even the plentiful jingling of coins in the drop bucket couldn´t entice us to keep playing) we took our winnings to the fudge shop.

Street art always cheers me up.

We always go looking for cherries. Fresh cherries in Swedish Lapland is so rare as to be non-existent.

Always interesting to see how the idea of Sweden is used to sell stuff.

Of course, I had to take a peak into the local library.

Interesting to see what they write about one´s own town.

In the end, an early night with Kleenex, salt water rinses for eyes and nose,
and some football on television, was just the thing.