Pussy cat, pussy cat where have you been?

Down to breakfast nice and early again for me and the children – Ady had already long gone to QVC. This time we breakfasted rather lighter than yesterday and felt much better for it. We were back in the room and all packed up just after 9am so we had a bit of a rest (read Davies and Scarlett did drawing, I laid on the bed and read my book) until the Movieum opened at 10am. We got given a flyer for this yesterday, a brand new attraction just opened at County Hall but I was adamant I wanted to go to the Tate Modern and then we were worn out by the time we got back after our epic walk so I’d decided to take D and S there this morning while we waited for Ady to come back and collect us.

They are clearly still learning as it is very new and I’ve just emailed them as looking at the website it appears we should have had entry to an animation art bit too which looks very fab indeed and precisely the sort of thing Davies would adore. I can’t decide if it hasn’t moved over from Castle Street yet (which would appear to be the case from their website) or if the people staffing the Movieum were simply lacking in directing us to it. As it happens we ran out of time anyway and I think we got great value just in the Movieum but it would be well worth another trip to see the Animation bit. We’re building up quite a list of places we want to visit in London so we really must be more organised next time we go up and plan our itinery better. Davies suggested one of ‘your schedules Mumma!’ cheeky child! 😉

Anyway what we did see was fab :). We walked down the rather impressive corridors of County Hall to get to the entrance. It’s an amazing building really housing a couple of hotels, various museums and galleries, the Aquarium and a McDonalds 😆

The main hall takes you on a journey through filmmaking including set design, props, make up, costumes, special effects, sound effects, editing to cinema with all sorts of dressed sets to illustrate it. There were some fab props including the Tardis and a dalek;

Characters from Star Wars (mean nothing to me ;)), the mini from Italian Job, an underground scene:

The special effects bit includes various video footage about special effects including some stuff from Little Shop of Horrors and various methods used for creating the effects. The next section was showing backdrops with people filmed infront and had a flying scene (like Superman over seas and mountains etc.) which you could pose infront of in a flying stance which the camera filmed you doing and projected the whole thing onto a big screen above you. Great fun (if all but impossible to get a picture of!).

Next was sound effects where a short film was running on a loop with a drum machine style pad for you to put the sound effects to it with. Scarlett liked that lots – hitting something with drum sticks and getting a variety of noises from skidding brakes to gunfire to explosions!

Next you walked down more corridors all lined with giant film props with each little room leading off having different displays. There were a couple of rooms with genre types in including period dramas and horror. The horror had a severed head which looked like the eyes might blink at any time and some shrouded figures which were actually quite terrifying. None of us wanted to be the last to walk out of the room 😆

There were also rooms with loads of stills, a film room with a big screen showing interviews with directors and producers, a room with props you could have your photo taken with (jaws, giant throne, spaceship etc. but at a fiver a time we declined :)). There was an IT room set up with webcams and various animation software which we played in for a while, a room with oversized props and giant telly showing clips of tv shows made into big screen films (Are you being served was on when we were in there):

There was an area with remote control daleks set against a backdrop of Big Ben on fire on a small screen showing how some special effects are done on mini-scale :

Great excitement when we saw Wallace and Gromit displays 🙂

It was a really good museum, particularly for Davies and Scarlett who adore films and are interested in the process of creating them. I’d definitely go there again and Ady is keen to see it too. Davies was just so ‘Davies’ as we walked out saying to me ‘I really need to do some drawing now, my fingers are itching’ he was clearly inspired and desperate to commit it to paper :).

Ady rang to say he was on his way back from QVC which left Davies, Scarlett and I just enough time to walk over Westminster Bridge to get closer to Big Ben. Scarlett has been really entranced with it this weekend (actually I remember Davies was when we visited that bit of London a couple of years ago) and was desperate to get as close as she could to it and wanted to touch it. I told her touching it wouldn’t be a possibility but we did get as close as you can. She’s intrigued by it being the bell that is actually called Big Ben rather than the clock tower and having wikipedia’d and learnt a bit more about it tonight I have some more stuff to tell her about in the morning :).

Given we’d managed to be in London for a whole weekend and the only money I’d spent was the admission to the Movieum I was able to say yes to the request for ice creams which gained me title of ‘Best Mummy in the world’ – a title I am not sure should be bestowed for shelling out just £3.60 on dairy produce but was happy to accept (it didn’t come with a sash or flowers or even a tiara unfortunately)

As an aside I am always slightly fascinated at looking at the people in the background of photos which contain strangers. I remember going on a ride at Blackpool pleasure beach years ago and buying the photo of the ride which had another couple in the same car as us and them buying it too and feeling odd that forever after they would have a picture of us and we’d have one of them even though we didn’t know them. I always wonder about the people in the background of my photos and the fact that I will be in the background of other people’s photos.

We met back up with Ady and gathered all our stuff from the hotel room before heading for home. We drove through London and past QVC to show the children. We got home about 4pm and had a quiet few hours with the children spending ages playing upstairs in Davies’ room (with Doctor Who stuff, clearly inspired by what they’d seen today) before coming down to eat toast and watch Little Shop of Horrors before bed. One of the hens had laid another egg (bringing grand total to 7 :)) and we’ve enjoyed having a bath you can lie down in and after Lost and Willy’s Wonky Chocolate Factory I am now very ready for my east/west facing bed :).