Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 May 2004 15:15:34
... the Horniman Museum ( http://www.horniman.ac.uk ), which is a fantastic museum local to me (and it has apparently won the Good Britain Guide's Museum of the Year 2004 award). I hadn't been there for a few years, it's been really tarted up thanks to a lottery grant since the last time I went, and I enjoyed it every bit as much as I do every time I go. If anyone's down south-east London way, it's a great way to spend a couple of hours. Wandering round the gardens was lovely, and as usual I loved the musical instruments collection, the aquariums (aquaria?) (although they didn't have the seahorses they usually breed due to "tank refurbishment"), and my absolute favourite: the stuffed walrus. The walrus is the centrepiece of the natural history collection, it was collected in about 1870 from Hudson Bay and brought back to the UK, where taxidermists of the time didn't really know much about walruses and the fact that they have lots of rolls of fat. So this particular walrus, perched on its plastic iceberg, is absolutely stuffed to bursting point, it makes me laugh every time.
Yesterday I spent the evening watching Eurovision with some friends, Wogan as usual was on form - I don't think I could watch it if he wasn't commentating. One friend who's German absolutely hated him, and insisted that there was no political voting going on, despite the fact that we were predicting with amazing accuracy each time who was going to get the 10 and 12 points. He just kept insisting the votes were all about the music, which only served to add to the whole surreal experience.