Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Saturday, 19 May 2012

Canals, coconuts, cygnets and cars...


It was a tad foggy when we set out this morning but as we were heading for a gallery we weren’t worried. A while ago we went to an exhibition at The Queens Gallery, of photographs from Scott and Shackelton’s expedition to the the south pole. Attending that gives us yearlong tickets to other exhibitions at the gallery. So today it was to the Da Vinci anatomical drawings, which is apparently the largest ever exhibition of them. We had to book a time in, which gave us three quarters of an hour to wander around the streets and look at some  interesting architecture.


 I think the one thing about the drawings that impressed me the most was the intricacy of the small diagrams. I thought that the sketches would be much larger; many of the pages would have only been A5 size. Of course there were larger ones, but the intricate drawings and descriptions in Da Vinci’s mirror writing were a work in progress for a much more ambitious book about human anatomy.
























We popped across the road to Hyde Park to have out lunch, making our way around barriers that are already diverting traffic for the Jubilee Celebrations due in a couple of weeks . In the area in front of Buck House stands are being put up, like the ones for the wedding year or so ago.
After lunch we walked back to Victoria station and hopped on a train to Alperton where we had a nice peaceful walk along part of Grand Union canal. There were a few longboats, some in much better repair than others and a few very obviously lived in full time. At one stretch a pair of swans and their cygnets had settled on the side of the path for an afternoon rest. We very gingerly edged our way around the family group keeping a close eye on the adults who in turn were keeping a close eye on us. What did surprise us was the number of coconuts that were floating in the water, The Man spotted at least seven of them. The water appeared not to be flowing, in fact in some places it looked very murky and we saw the bodies of several dead carp, which might be an indication that  the water quality was not so good. A couple of miles further along we turned off and found our way to a tube station to make out way back home.
On the way down through the park in the morning we discovered that later in the day there would be an influx of little cars preparing for tomorrows Mini London to Brighton run. So on our way home we walked back up through the park to admire them








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