A day in ‘the smoke’

We headed off to London today. We used to go up fairly regularly for a while but it petered off last year with just one or two visits and this year I don’t think we’ve been at all. Actually I’d conclude from today that Davies and Scarlett are in a period of requiring two adults for maximum enjoyment of such things. When they were small I was quite fiercely indpendent and able to do everything, on my own with them, and woe betide anyone who suggested it might be a bit tricky. I have many an anecdote of nightmare trips to London with a toddler, a pushchair and a preschooler but I was never really daunted by it. Now I am finding that whilst it is not challenging logistically it would just be a more productive and enjoyable trip all round if D&S had an adult each to go round with. Neither of them are reading, or close enough to it to make sense of the signs around exhibits, but they are both old enough to want to know more, except that they are also individual enough to want to look at different things, close enough in age to want the same level of interaction with someone else and far apart enough to want different levels of it at the same time. Just like Legoland was tricky on my own simply because they both wanted to go on everything but both needed an adult accompanying them, today was tricky because they both wanted to know all about the things they saw but needed someone constantly chatting to them about it. Definitely a small window of this though between having Scarlett in the pushchair or content to wander along following Davies’ lead and zoning in and out of what I said to him while counting her own toes or people watching or being happy with a rice cake shoved in the pushchair while doing active ‘stuff’ with Davies and having two independant children who can go off and read the signs and do stuff themselves though, I should probably savour it while it lasts ;).

After a very organised start, which even left me time to chat online on an international level 😉 we set off for the station. It was a brisk and enjoyable walk, which was my first indication that this was going to be a differnt sort of experience to two years ago really. We chattered all the way, recalling things we’d seen before, observing stuff and generally feeling like people who like to be together rather than a babysitter. We arrived just as Lucy and The Rs were coming out of the ticket office which meant I could leave D&S with them and dash across to the cashpoint. There was now a queue at the ticket office but luckily Lucy had already bought her ticket and was able to find the same one on the self service vending ticket machine so we got that and dashed back across the crossing to our side of the platform to catch the train.

We sat all but together – we were opposite a lovely lady who complimented Davies in his drawing (he’d brought a small pad and pencil and set to drawing a train) and smiled a lot at Scarlett, while Lucy and The Rs were across the carriage opposite a trio of older people who were getting off at Gatwick to fly off on holiday. We moved across to sit opposite them when they got off. Train journeys previously to London have always been without company and usually pretty stressfree as we look out of the window, play games and chatter. It was slightly different with company and Davies and Scarlett were louder and less well behaved than I would have liked, but I suspect that was much more my issue than theirs :?:.

We arrived at Victoria, cut across to the tube station and aside from one small false turning had a very smooth journey the two tube stops to the museum. The children got to see a busker, which we had only been talking about the other day when Mr Bean does a bit of busking in the film we watched last weekend, so I was able to give them 10p each to go and throw in his violin case. It’s a longish walk from the underground to the overground at South Ken. but we arrived pretty much dead on agreed meeting time with the rest of the people coming, entered the museum and headed to the loos. Julie rang me while we were in there to say they were three stops away on a bus so we arranged to lurk in the foyer to meet them. Lucy and The Rs headed off, Davies and Scarlett very happily completed a giant jigsaw of the iguanadon in the foyer and we waited for Julie and co to arrive.

We didn’t have long to wait and once we’d greeted them Davies and Scarlett were very keen to head off to the Human Biology bit as they’d seen a picture of the giant baby advertised on one of the interactive touch screens around the place and wanted to go and see that first. So we headed off there, looked at various baby-making exhibits, which tied in rather nicely with all the books we’ve been reading lately about reproduction, puberty and so on. We then decided we were quite hungry too so headed off to the picnic area to join the others for lunch. That was a fairly speedy affair for us – I don’t really see the point of travelling for 2 hours to get to London to sit for an hour eating in an underground area that could be anywhere – and as I’d already decided not to put pressure on us to see more than we could manage I let D&S decide where to go to next. They both wanted to see the bugs and insects so we went there next, which as it was next to the picnic area the others joined us at.

We looked at lots of interesting stuff about bees, termites, spiders, crabs, ants (including the classic leafcutter ants carrying leaf bits along a log and into their nest display) oh and a very graphic exhibit about flies and how they munge up food to eat by vomiting on it (I recall there used to be a poster in our science lab at school with all but the identical wording on it actually). We then moved on as I was very aware of the differing levels of interest and pace between Davies and Scarlett, let alone adding another 5 adults and 6 children to the mix.

We went to the dinosaurs, which has gotten even better since last we were there 3 years ago with a couple of excellent animatronic dinosaurs there now, which captivated D&S for ages. :). We decided to wander a bit after that and went upstairs to look at various things before coming downstairs to look at the mammals. There are pics on flickr but as I struggled with the flash and getting the camera to take the amazing shots I could see with my eyes but not get it to replicate I won’t post any in this.

Scarlett had flagged rather by this point, although she could be rallied it was all but impossible without compromising Davies’ experience although I managed a bit :). We moved onto mammals which they both loved. Julie and Co had by now started to head for home, so I spoke to Lucy and we decided to also make a move. I was really cross to have missed the volcanoes and earthquake area as I recall it from before but had been convinced that had been at the Science Museum, not the Nat. History one (although I’m not at all sure why 🙄 at self). A trip to the gift shop which netted us a set of jacks each – D’s are dinosaurs and S’s are sharks. D has been after a set of jacks for ages so that’s good. 🙂

Back again to the tube, where we arrived on the platform at almost the split second the next train did, so we squashed on. The children loved the tube, Scarlett liked the dare-devilnness of not holding on to the bar until the last minute 😆 :roll:. Back to Victoria and as there was no direct train listed yet we decided to go to Brighton on the fast train and catch a connection back to Lancing from there. There were no seats to be had on the train but actually that was fine. We stood for the first couple of stops, the train thinned out and Lucy and The Rs got seats but me, D and S were very happy with all the legroom afforded by sitting in the gap between carriages and we played a few rousing games of ‘on saturday I went to the supermaket and I bought’ memory games. We had a shortish wait at Brighton before getting on the train home.

Ady was waiting for us at the station whereupon I rather slumped and we had unpleasant episodes from tired mother and daughter 🙁 All quickly made up though and they were both asleep pretty early by their standards. It was a good day, made me resolve to get back up to London more frequently again and enjoy some of the stuff like that which just doesn’t happen at home without that sort of stimulus.