Spanspek

I'm so over Michael Jackson and his fans. Let's get some perspective, here people. He was a weird due who did a lot of weird, and quite probably disgusting, stuff. Remember when he was black (and apparently happy in that state)?

I have a cousin in Canterbury whom I haven't seen since 1993. Despite recent illness, though, she's her usual chirpy self and it was lovely to see her today. Her Dad, whom I'd never met, came as well. He actually hopped on the same train carriage as us! The plan was for Gillian, Mum and me to go, and probably Daniel and Lou too, but Kiera and Sue decided to as well. Canterbury is a very historic city, dominated by its famous Cathedral (Westminster's claims notwithstanding probably the seat of Anglicanism). The Cathedral is truly astonishing and much expanded since St Augustine founded it in 597. Thanks to Henry VIII's being pissed off with Rome for not allowing the practice of serialized monogamy, it did not attract the garish and excessive decoration evident elsewhere in Europe. One suspects that the English would be less inclined toward that anyway, even if Catholicism had not been brutally suppressed for at least 200 of the last 500 years.

Today's was a short day—good for travelling children. We went to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Admission is free and the line moved quite quickly. We didn't attempt to see everything, just the "earth" section and the dinosaurs. Both are very well done. I think the Melburne Museum has improved greatly since I was a child, especially in its new building, but it's rather pedestrian by comparison! The earth section has a lot about volcanoes and earthquakes, including a simulation of an earthquake in Kobe, complete with shaking walls and floor. Daniel really liked that, and, disturbingly, was quite taken with the model of the wall collapsed on the car. The dinosaurs are great: robotic velociraptors, psittacosaurus and a scale model of a T-Rex. Daniel, even though he knows it's not real, spent a lot of time taunting it—"you can't get me", roaring, and the like. Marvellous stuff!

We discussed the options for today and decided on Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and the London Eye. It certainly is quite something to walk around places that one has seen only in pictures (still or moving). However, photographic tricks are revealed when, with an ordinary camera, one is unable to get shots like those one has seen elsewhere. That said, Trafalgar Square is a lot smaller than I thought it would be! We walked to Buckingham Palace, which is as big as I thought it would be. I feel the same way about this as I do about Catholic churches: imagine the good that could have been done if the British taxpayer didn't have to fork out all that money. But then one has to remember that, until quite recently, the Brits really have been very fond of their royals. A constitutional change wouldn't necessarily make that much difference. Many aristocratic properties have ling since passed to the National Trust and similar organisations. Like it or not, the anti-democratic monarchy is part of the history and its legacy should be preserved up to a point. We walked through St James Park to Westminster Bridge. It started to rain. It seems as if Daniel's coming down with a cold, not because of the weather, but it didn't help. The London Eye is certainly spectacular, but is it worth £17 a ride? I'm not so sure. It took 11/2; hours to get back to the boathouse. The Tube's District Line has three or four branches from its Western half. We wanted a train to Richmond but there were only two there and 10 or 12 to each of Winbledon and Ealing Broadway. It didn't help that announcements were frequently wrong. Just another example of downtrodden Brits putting up with bad service.

There's a pool close by! The Centre is being renovated so there are no showers for pool users ("Please don't use the dry side showers"—why ever not, I say, since stinking gym users can't be less objectionable than dripping, chlorinated swimmers). There are no 5 metre markers in or above the pool so doing backstroke is dangerous. Still, we're happy to be able to get a swim. I hope I can swim every day! Since the Tube was out of action, Mum and Gillian came across using the National Rail, which is hideously expensive and mostly not useable with an Oyster card. But at least they got here and we all walked across the bridge to Kew Botanical Gardens. Kew is an important horticultural research centre with a seed bank, many collections of exotic plants (including Wollemi pines) and, soon, a very large collection of fungi. Daniel had a play in the children's section and the "evolution" house (no dinosaurs though). We also went on the treetop walk—not unlike Tasmania's Tahune Air Walk but not as high—and the Temperament House (a greenhouse full of exotic species). After that, we had dinner at a local restaurant near the Gardens and walked home. It was a very nice day.