The Wool Palace

Swan song

I know I've said it before, but today was a beautiful day.  21 degrees in late October insists that you must be outside.  The children and I consulted.  London Zoo was mooted, but quashed by me due to travelling time.  We would not leave until after lunch and it closes at 4.30pm, meaning a three hour trip to the zoo would work out at over £10 per hour - too much even for a half term treat.

I have been wanting to visit the Wetlands Centre ever since it was opened.  We often pass its brown sign as it is on our route out of London to Taunton.  I am a sucker for brown signs.  For those of you outside of the UK, brown signs generally indicate a tourist/family attraction and are placed in strategic points on main traffic routes in order to entice you in.  They raise opposing feelings in Toby and me; I want to go, he doesn't.  Most drives en famille are punctuated with me crying, 'We should go there', with him countering, 'We don't have time/it's too expensive/it will be too crowded'.  Up until now, my strongest brown sign feelings have been aroused by the Wetlands Centre and Longleat - also on the way to Taunton.  I am still working on Longleat and am confident I will succeed, but it seemed that the Wetlands Centre would have to be accomplished on my own.  Longleat will require Toby's cooperation as we need the car in order to survive - I will persevere.

I was able to lure the children into my plan by judicious showing of the website, so off we trotted after a hasty cheese sandwich lunch.

We weren't disappointed.  If you live in London I highly recommend a visit.  It is a 10 minute train ride from Clapham Junction, followed by a 10 minute walk or 5 minute bus ride.  Once you're inside the 105 acre site it's hard to believe you're in London, such is the feeling of space.

One part of the centre is divided into various habitats, providing you with opportunties to see the birds close up.  Sam and Josie had taken sketchbooks and made good use of them.

We also took photos.  These were our favourite birds.  Josie thought, 'They were trying to look smart as they knew they were having their photo taken'.  She wasn't far wrong, as the information board said, 'Watch them spend hours preening themselves and each other'.

The centre makes good use of the natural materials found in wetlands.  This is the fence round one of the lagoons.

Most of the site is taken up by a vast manmade wetland, with a variety of habitats designed to appeal to native and migratory birds.  Dotted around it are hides of different shapes and sizes from which one can observe the birds.  These aren't just for show, there were lots of serious 'twitchers' there, kitted out with high spec telescopes and cameras.  Strict 'hide rules' had to be observed - no loud noises, no running etc.  Josie and I were so engrossed we didn't even notice Sam taking this picture.

I even managed to get a little knitting done while the children sketched.  We stayed until 20 minutes before closing and I had to be strict to get the children to leave.  What better recommendation can there be?

Carrying On

Thank you for all your thoughts and kind words.  It's very touching to know there are people out there, who I've never met, thinking about me and my family and all other Londoners.

Today in some ways is worse than yesterday, as more details of the horror that people went through come to light.  Reading the paper today has had me in tears.

However, the best way to fight against these people is to carry on living our lives as close to normal as we can.  So I'll be spending this weekend as I planned, going to Get Knitted with my knitting friends tomorrow and spending Sunday with my family.  My heart goes out to those who are not able to do so.

I hope all the London knitbloggers and readers out there are safe, as well as their families and friends.

We are all OK here.  I don't work in central London anymore, so have escaped the worst of the chaos.  Thankfully my sister, who works near Russell Square, had taken the day off work.  Toby drove to work, so he will probably be very late home, but at least he is safe and well.

Back to the knitting tomorrow.

Like Lambs to the Slaughter

Today was the last day of the half term, if you don't count the weekend, which I don't.  Therefore I felt it should be 'trip' day.  I try to take the children out to some sort of attraction once in each holiday week, if possible.  This doesn't include trips to parks etc, more your zoo, museum type things.  Living in London, we are spoilt for choice and are also very lucky as many of them are free.

It was going to be London Zoo today, but thankfully a spell of cold weather has coincided with a slight cash flow crisis (have you seen the admission charges?!), so that was discounted.  I left the children to decide between themselves this morning, having given them the option of three museums (with free entry) and they came up with the Natural History Museum.

Many, many other households had obviously made the same decision, but hey, it's half term, what else can you expect?

We are old hands at the Natural History/Science Museum visits here in the Wool Palace.  Before the museums (re) introduced free entry (2 or 3 years ago I think) they used to do an excellent season ticket offer, where you paid about £25 for a year's unlimited entry to 'the big three', Natural History, Science and V&A, which I always took up with gusto.

This means we are able to plan our itinerary before we leave the house, always handy in crowded holiday times.  The Dinosaurs are out (way too crowded), as is the exploration centre thingy with microscopes (even the staff tell you not to come during the holidays - go first thing on a Saturday morning and you'll have it pretty much to yourselves).  Today was a pared down little number - stuffed animals and the Darwin Centre, as Sam currently wants to be a scientist when he grows up, although he's not too keen on the idea of university not providing school dinners at lunch time.

With a short break for lunch (packed of course, see cash flow crisis above) this was all accomplished in a couple of hours and then we headed to the V&A.  Up until now, I've always thought of the V&A as 'too grown up', but we had a great time today.  The children loved looking at the reproductions of classical statutes and we played fun games picking which artifacts we'd like to take home with us.  I think a return visit is definitely in order.  I'm proud to say I brought today's visit in for the grand total of £2.40, which is my bus fare there and back (children travel free on London buses).

I knitted on the back of Woody on the bus there and back; I'm about a third of the way in, so there's some heavy duty blocking action coming up in the very near future.  Retro Rib sock 1 is done, bar the toe grafting.

I've had some wine this evening so decided to postpone grafting until tomorrow to avoid an ugly mess tonight; I'm speaking from bitter experience here.