England Plus Paris: Part 7

There's not much science to be had... except what you can peep through a window. Through a window, you might catch a glimpse of a BostoMatic 405 and some engineers reading the paper and eating breakfasts.

Many of Oxford's science buildings are card-key locked. They are barricaded and ready to repel tourists. I would walk up to doors nonchalantly and try to open them, nearly dislocating my shoulder when those doors turned out to be locked. I walked into one building, scurrying behind a legit visitor. Of course, there wasn't much for a tourist to see--they weren't expecting any tourists in that building.

I went into another building, which seemed to have something to do with chemistry. This one wasn't locked up. But it nevertheless had nothing to amuse me. There were announcements of seminars posted on the wall, but nothing interesting.

Maybe there are wonderful things to see in one or more of Oxford's science buildings, but I didn't find them.

Append to Enemies List

At the Museum of Modern Art, I learned that Arne Jacobsen was responsible for some chairs and silverware which had annoyed me over the years.

He designed the Ant Chair. The Ant Chair was like an Eames Chair, but stackable and uncomfortable.

I spent a while in an exhibit about him until I couldn't stand him. When I left the museum, it was raining out. I was so angry at Jacobsen by then that I blamed him for the weather.

Bluster

Merton had a sundial.

Within the time it took me to obtain and consume a sandwich from Heroes, the rain had stopped, and the wind had become non-trivial. I was standing in the front gate of Merton College, looking at my tourist map, trying to figure out how to reach the library.

There was a wooden sign leaning against a wall, a wooden sign encouraging students to join the boat club. It was a heavy sign, and I was surprised when the wind lifted it up, hurled it down a few steps and sent it clunking into a courtyard.

I gruntfully picked up the sign and leaned it back against its wall, but angled it differently. Now, when the wind blew through the gate, it would push the sign against the wall harder, not pull it away from the wind.

It was pretty embarassing when some wind came through from the other direction, causing the sign to lean away from the wall; and even more embarassing when the wind again reversed, so that the sign tumbled down the stairs and back into the courtyard.

Better Bluster

As I waited outside the Librarian's door, the wind continued. In a neighboring courtyard, there was a sort of dust-devil, except that instead of dust, there were flower petals. I could have watched that all day.

Bookish

The Librarian showed up and let me into his office to wait for the next tour-time. One wall of the office bulged, and there was a doorway in the bulge--an entrance to a narrow stone spiral staircase. I sat and reminded myself that I wasn't on a movie set.

The library tour allowed me to see an old library. It smelled of old books and tanned leather covers. I thought I'd like the atmosphere of an ancient library, and I did.

Everything

The Pitt Rivers Museum displayed approximately 20 bazillion cultural artifacts, including coin swords, Yoruba masks, scrimshaw, Buddhas, axes, netsuke, shrunken heads, saddles, necklaces, ceremonial fire-starting equipment, board games, armor, a carved ivory apple with a scene inside showing a horse and rider approaching some people and a cabin in a forest, a totem-pole, smoking pipes, kayaks, ceremonial masks, practical fire-making equipment, model ships, headrests, shadow puppets, patterned fabrics, a Tibetan rice mandala, snowshoes, balances, concentric carved ivory spheres, Burmese neck-rings, tiny Ganesh figurines, hats, spinning tops, tinder pouches, weapons, an outrigger sailboat, a Sudanese hedgehog trap, and canoes.

Anyone will find something in this museum that interests them. Anyone will will find many things in this museum that don't interest them. But there are enough unique items such that I suspect that anyone would be glad, overall that they visited.

Dopey

The tourists weren't the only pedestrian hazard in Oxford. The sidewalks were generally narrow, so anyone could get in my way. At one point, I was walking one way and two people were walking the other. They were talking, and neither one of them was paying attention to where they were going. No, really. One of them bumped into me. There was a strong smell of marijuana. The guy who bumped into me stopped, looked up, gaped as he realized that I was a person. Slowly, his brain processed this information. Eventually he went around me, and I was able to continue.

Media Conspiracy

There was a show on the television called "Inspector Morse". It took place in Oxford. Rather, it took place in a sort of fantasy Oxford. In this fantasy, there was plenty of parking available, and there were hardly any tourists.

Wandering Jew

It was Saturday, and Oxford was about to fill up. So I hopped a train North to Sheffield.

In Sheffield, I stopped in at a full pub-with-rooms and a full hotel. At the hotel, they warned me: the World Snooker Championship Tourney was going on in town. Uh-oh. At the tourist information office, they told me that every place in town was full.

Between Oxford's "big match" and this World Snooker Championship, I was developing a dislike for spectator sports. I asked the tourist information office lady if she knew of anything big going on in Leicester this weekend. She didn't.

I hopped a train to Leicester. I went to a hotel there, which was full. They said that most places in town were full for the weekend, but that the Holiday Inn still had a few rooms open.

So I went to the Holiday Inn. It wasn't easy to reach the Holiday Inn. It was in the middle of a traffic circle, and there weren't many legit ways for a pedestrian to get in there. I tried a pedestrian walkway, but this turned out to be a walkway over the traffic circle.

When I finally reached the Holiday Inn's desk, I was worn out. I'd spent all day trying to find a place that would rent me a room. That's when the nice lady at the desk told me that the only rooms that they had left were "Executive Rooms". Each night in one of these rooms would cost me a week's rent of my apartment in San Francisco.

In hindsight, back when the first Leicester hotel said "everything" was full, I should have checked a couple of nearby B&Bs instead of running after the "few rooms" at the Holiday Inn. If the B&Bs were full, I should have hopped a train up to Nottingham, which was ankle-deep in accomodations.

Not Exactly a Stately Pleasure Dome

Maybe all wasn't lost. Maybe the Executive Room would itself be an experience to remember. Maybe it would be a mind-boggling monument to sybaritic excess.

It was a hotel room like any other. That's not true. The bed was big enough for an executive, an executive's sweet patootie, an executive's dog, an executive's other dog, and more. The room was big.

As such, it did me as much good as any other room. There was a bathroom scale. I weighed myself on it, but it gave weights in stone and kilograms. What was the point of that? There was a sewing kit; I used it to re-attach a button. I couldn't get excited about that.

The towels all said "executive room" on them, but after a while, I came to read this as "sucker!".

Sayonara, Konbawa

I had my doubts when I entered the restaurant Sayonara. The name sounded Japanese to me, but the place was obviously Indian. So it wasn't what I was expecting. Ordering was difficult. There were thali dinners which allowed me to choose a vegetable and a "pulse". Apparently, in the UK a "pulse" is a legume. Maybe they don't say "legume" there because they're right next to France where a "legume" is a vegetable. I don't know. And the waitress didn't hear that I was ordering a thali. She thought I was just ordering two dishes. Not promising.

As I write this, two months later, it saddens me to realize that the sensation of this meal is fading from my mind. There were so many flavors, I can't keep them all in my head. It was spicy, but not painfully spicy. There was a lot going on beyond the heat.

It was wonderful. It was a fun restaurant to sit in, too. There were families there with cute children. Maybe the children seemed especially cute because all of the diners were in good moods, all of them eating wonderful food.

One of the things on the menu was "masala tea". I asked if that was anything like chai. Yes, the waitress said, it was exactly chai. So I had some chai and some kulfi after a huge dinner. Outside, it was cold and gray and there were some nearly innavigable traffic circles between me and my hotel, yet I waddled back in a bliss of joy.

Jain Sayin' Go Away, Come Again Some Other Day

My guidebook said that the Jain Centre was open to visitors daily, but didn't point out that on Sundays it was only open to worshippers. Maybe the Lonely Planet people are Jains. I'm not. So I didn't go in.

God Bless California/Make Way for the Wal-Mart

Not far from central Leicester, there's an ugly chunk of strip-mall hell. This could be anywhere.

Space is Open Seven Days a Week

As near as I could tell, the the National Space Science Centre was the only thing open in Leicester on a Sunday morning. It didn't even have opening hours listed in my guidebook (the Centre was too new).

I was a bit old for the Centre. I knew too much, and didn't learn much. And I was skeptical--they had many satellites. They didn't say that these were replicas or reproductions or what have you. Still, these satellites didn't look as if they'd endured re-entry. This made me wonder how much of what I was seeing was real.

But it was a fine way to spend a Sunday morning in absence of anything better to do. There were informative displays. I learned that in 2005, Kibo would link up with the International Space Station. I was probably thinking of the wrong Kibo.

They had a writeup about Blue Streak, a rocket-part made in the UK. They made a few of them, and they all worked. Blue Streak was one stage of the Europa rocket, and other countries made the other stages. None of the Europa rockets worked, though Blue Streak always did. The UK pulled out of the Europa program. Though they had expended many resources and much effort, at least they were able to whine about the incompetence of the other countries in the program.

Not Just Poop-Related

The UK contains many old Victorian pumping stations which have been turned into Museums of the History of Science and/or Technology. Leicester had one of these.

Because it was a sewage pumping station, there were some displays about early poop disposal. One chamberpot had a small figurine of a frog in it. According to the interpretive text, "The frog makes a croaking noise when the pot is emptied." I bet that got old fast.

Not all of the exhibits were about poop. There was laundry equipment, a selection of film projectors, old engines, and all kinds of stuff.

The museum also had some beautiful old pump equipment. They've kept it nicely painted.

Marketing: You've Come a Long Way, Baby

If you're in Leicester and looking for things to do, the Newarke Houses Museum is more interesting than it sounds. There, at a replicated food store, you can see a can of Creamola Custard Powder or a box of Burdall's Gravy Salt. You can see photos of how the local (pre-nuke) cooling towers were camoflague-painted so that they wouldn't be bombed by the Germans during WW2. You can see greeting cards for Eid-Ul-Fitr and Diwali.

More Antiquities Than You Can Stand

Leicester had Roman ruins across the street from the Holiday Inn. They failed to excite me.

At Leicester's Jewry Wall Museum, they had Roman stuff and other archaelogically dug-up stuff. When I realized I was thinkng of it as "archaelogically dug-up stuff," I figured out that I was worn out from being a tourist all day and it was time to go back to the room to lie down.

He Who Hesitates Is Often Saved

It was approaching dinnertime. The night before, I'd had the best Indian restaurant meal of my life. Now I was getting ready to head back to that same neighborhood.

Was I willing to risk getting rained on for a chance at a repeat of last night's dinner quality. Yes, yes I was. I put on my rain jacket.

I remembered a night in Albuquerque. I remembered thunder, lightning, and the rain that followed. I remembered the taxi that never came. I remembered walking through the rain. I remembered cars splashing water on me--and being so wet that it didn't matter.

That Hindsight Thing Again

45 minutes later, the rain had stopped. This night's storm was not like that Albuquerque storm.

I was full of peanut butter sandwiches. I'd settled for peanut butter sandwiches rather than go back to one of the best restaurant neighborhoods in the world.

I thought to myself If you were really hardcore, you'd stick your finger down your throat right now.

Departures: England Plus Paris: Part 7

Nothing To See Here