10:15 am. Our morning was kickstarted with crispy, butter-laden muffins prepared by Jesse himself: ne plus ultra. Feeling resoundingly positive, perhaps up there with Berlusconi after wooing another scantily clad women, or not quite, we made our way to the red bus. Ouyster cards at the ready, we made our way to the British Museum.
'What! It's huge,' I seemed to say every second, always commenting on the biblical scale of London. Indeed, the building of the British Museum is that monstrous, it is enough for God to declare it a mansion. The main entrance hall is so impressive, the Queen would call it modest. Still in awe of the scale, we walked, or more accurately hiked, to Egyptology. In the entrance hall was the Rosetta stone, a stone with formal Egyptian hieroglyphs at the top, Demotic, an informal Egyptian language in the middle and Greek at the bottom. Thomas Young, the great polymath who dabbled in subjects as varied as light and materials science helped to piece together Egyptian heiroglyphs, transcribing the language in 1822. Unlike the pictorial beauty of Egyptian hieroglyphs, I was surprised to dicover the jagged, violent, complex Assyrian hieroglyphs. I knew nothing of the Assyrians so it was intriguing for me. In fact it seemed that the British Museum provoked a child-like curiosity in me, a part of ourselves that is sometimes hard to unlock but when allowed to flourish is transcendental. It's a bit like Newton's anology: we walk along the beach discovering smoother and smoother pebbles but the ocean of discovery lays before us. All we can do is allow our child-like curiosity to direct us to a smoother pebble and maybe if inspired, we can throw our pebble into the sea, ripping a hole in the unknown...
After Egypt we took a look at Greece and Rome. As Jesse remarked it was 'everything you expect of history' with finely sculpted models not wearing much, grand temples and elegant carvings. Somehow the Greeks and Romans don't harbour as much mystique as the Aztecs, Myans, Egyptians or Assyrians. However, probably the highlight was Asia upstairs. 'Greece and Rome is everything you expect from history but when you get to Asia you are just like what the fuck' Jesse observed, summing up the eccentricity, obscurity and wild dogmas of Asia. In Asia there were three-legged frogs (to match the other three-legged frog on the Sun of course), fearsome lawyers that judge your life's merits and downfalls, the four-armed Shiva dancing on the God of ignorance and huge glowing buddhas. Bemused, we left the Britsh Museum through the grand entrance hall wishing we could stay longer.
The Science Museum was our next port of call. In the space section downstairs we were in our element. There was a mock-up of the Eagle, a J-2 engine used on the second stage of Saturn V, the orginal Apollo 10 capsule and other space related wonders. Of course it was an apt time to look at the space section, coinciding with 40 years since man walked on the moon. I stood for a fleeting moment, imagining looking at the big blue Earth through the window of the Apollo 10 capsule. Apollo seems so long ago... The days of reaching out into space, the visionary charisma of JFK, all to the soundtrack of Jimmi Hendrix or the Grateful Dead seems intangible, a glowing light that shines perhaps all too brightly as we fly over the landscape of the past. After the groundfloor we went upstairs to Maritime and Mathematics. There was a liquid model of the economy, a Japenese abacus, cloud chambers, mathematical tools and posh drawings using spirograph (or so they looked). Culminating our visit to Science Museum by eating out on the grass as the sun warmed our faces, the National History Museum loomed next us, our next venture.
Again on a par with the British Museum, the entrance hall of the Natural History Museum is impressive; Darwin, now moved to the top of the stairs to celebrate the anniversary of the Origin of Species, sits, poised above the giant diplodocas skeleton (it was huge but yet everything was huge). The compass of our curiosity directed us to Dinosaurs, so we followed. The dinosaur section is organised well as you go over a walkway observing fossils from overhead, encounter a terrifying tyranosaurus-rex and weave your way through small interactive exhibits. It seems everyone loves dinosaurs. Perhaps, it is the mystery surrounding their mass extinction, the many years ago when they stalked the planet or simply because they scare the hell out of your parents as a child. After laughing at oddball extinction theories (cataracts, mass-suicide, you get the picture) we headed over to Mammals.
I think at this point I can be excused to comment on the pretty large nature of the Blue Wale; it was ginormous, monstrous, incomprehensible. It probably isn't worth talking about what else we saw in Mammals, the Blue Wale is king: arteries you can swim down, a huge jaw to filter krill, a tongue weighing as much as an elephant and hitting the scales at 100,000 kg.
We staggered out of the Natural History museum, ending our trilogy, mouths watering awaiting Jesse's Jamaican jerk chicken. Arriving back at Jesse's we got to work preparing tea. Joe peeled potatoes, I cut potatoes and Jesse marinated the chicken, bizarre squelchy noises emanating from his side of the kitchen. We had a lot of potatoes but didn't find it hard to finish them. I'll just use the excuse that we're growing lads. Feeling full after enjoying a delicious meal, Joe donned the yellow gloves and got to work washing-up. That's what happens when you can't cook! Ending the night in style we watched Se7en, then an episode of Firefly before going to bed at 3am.
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