uppercase F

My Heaven June 11, 2008

Much has happened in the last few days. I spent the beginning of the week looking through old journals, and I realized that all of the women in them remind me of the mom from Mary Poppins. The journals are from around the same time as the movie is supposed to take place, and they are all wearing buttons and marching. I like to think this means that Mary Poppins actually does exist.

On Tuesday I had a very difficult time getting to work, because two- that’s right, TWO- of my trains were stopped because of sick passengers. Apparently, this is code for vomiting passengers. When it gets hot outside people just start throwing up everywhere on the tube. People here react to sun the way Texans react to snow. Either way, I ended up having to walk the last part of my journey, which took forever.

After work I went to the British Library to take a peek around. It’s flipping magnificent. What you see above is an entire wall made out of books. It’s actually a tower of books that’s many stories tall. This, my friends, is where I will be going when I die. In their exhibit space they have lots of cool things, like the Magna Carta, Shakespeare’s first folio, and journals from many famous authors like Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, and the Bronte sisters. I had a religious experience, though, as they had a handwritten poem by Sylvia Plath. I was thisclose to something the woman touched. It’s almost like beams of light shone down on it and choir music played.

Today after work I paid a visit to the V&A museum since it’s right next door to the Natural History Museum. I went into The Supremes exhibit, but was pretty disappointed. It was costume heavy, and dresses like that always look better on screen. I did learn that they are teeny tiny women though. Then I went to the Blood on Paper exhibit, which was an exhibit of artists books. It brought up lots of questions, like what actually defines a book? And if the emphasis is placed on the book as a physical object, as it is in this exhibit, how can that be conveyed without actual physical contact by the visitors? All in all, it was interesting, but it was lacking because I couldn’t put my paws on the books.

After that I went to a play with Kathleen called The Harder They Come. Don’t ask me what it was about, because I have no idea. They had such heavy Jamaican accents throughout the whole thing I couldn’t understand what was going on. Everyone else seemed to like it though, because they got a standing O at the end of it. Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate culture without subtitles.

(Oh, and in the pictures below you will see a bottle of cider that holds 3 LITERS! I put my foot next to it to give you some perspective on how big that is)