The LDS meeting that fit best into our schedule ended up being one totally conducted in Portuguese. Which was just fine. An hour-and-fifteen of our neurons being challenged is always welcome. While sitting there I looked over at The Boy's bulging pockets and leaned over to tell him that he's handy to have on a trip.
Not only does he have that trusty rubber band around his wrist, which has come in handy (remember: The Great Tick Capture of '13), but in his pockets he had his camera and camera cleaning cloth, four pence, a map of the London Underground system, and a Kendal Mint Cake.
After church we went next door to the Victoria & Albert Museum -- a favorite. First order of business was eating lunch. We were lucky and found a table big enough for all of us in the William Morris dining room.
The dining rooms were built in the 1860's "intended as a showpiece of modern design, craftsmanship, and manufacturing," and they formed the first museum restaurant in the world. The Morris room was WM's first public commission.
Equally as important as seeing Morris's work was to get the millionaire bar -- my friend and I had one of the best ones ever -- there at the V&A -- a few years ago... But alas, the recipe has changed (didn't seem at all home-made -- more "manufacturing" and less "craftsmanship"), but that shortbread, caramel, chocolate combo was still worth it.
Note, The Boy opted not to get the millionaire, but instead to get the "Bowie" -- a brownie with a couple of consonants missing by way of PR for the David Bowie exhibit currently going on (he hasn't been quite as omnipresent as Beatrix Potter on this trip, but he's been popping up). As David Bowie fans we were super excited when we heard about the exhibit a while back... so we were sad to hear that tickets were sold out for months (boo!), but then thrilled to find out that they do a limited amount of same-day tickets, and we got the last family ticket (woohoo!). But before any of that happened, we had some things to do.
Namely, design our own album covers (the museum provided the kiddos a kit with cool papers from the V&A collection, double-sided stickies, colored pencils, etc):
And, cut their own songs. We went into a classroom equipped with iPads and Garageband, and after some brief explanations the kids were cut loose to create their own songs. Later in his career David Bowie -- believing in the idea of chance, and that meaningful lyrics can come via associations that he might not naturally have in the course of a day -- would either cut up written down phrases, and then rearrange them randomly, or enter words/sentences/phrases into a computer program that would randomly order them. Because of this, there were boxes of cut up lyrics on the table that the kids could choose from to create a song. Both kids, and our teenager, did a great job creating instrumental songs. When it came time to add the optional lyrics I figured that only The Boy would actually do it (he makes up songs all day long), so I was very impressed that The Girl was willing to give it a shot. And, true to form, she following the rules (using her lyrics randomly generated from the box), and The Boy did what he wanted (made up a song about chickens). The Sister coerced The Dad into chanting some lyrics for her song. Everybody was a good sport, and it was really fun.
The Girl's song
The Boy's song
The Sister's song (with The Dad as guest "singer")
As we still had some time until we were allowed entry to David Bowie land, we checked out some items of interest in the museum.
Designer Joris Laarman's Bone Chair, which "mimics the way that growing bones are able to generate additional material where it is needed, but also to remove material where it is superfluous."
Tipu's Tiger: an 18th century life-size automaton that had a pipe-organ where his organs should be that would make growls (tiger's) and groans (victim's).
We haven't had our Beatrix Potter reference for a while... As a frequent visitor to the V&A, she saw some 18th century clothes in a case and received permission to spend some time with some of the fabrics. She detailed them so closely that it's possible to tell the exact items she used for the illustrations in The Tailor of Gloucester.
And then the time came for us to get our headsets (they had a GPS chip, so we didn't key-in anything, as we walked through the exhibit songs would start, or clips of Bowie talking would kick in, or if you stood in front of one of the many screens it would immediately sync so you could hear what was happening on the screen).
David Bowie (actually David Jones, but he didn't want to be confused with the other David Jones singing at the time, so he took his stage name from the Bowie knife) started off not too keen on school, but wanting to do something with music. He was one more kid cranky about living in the burbs. He looked like any other kid at the time. It took him quite a while to break into the music scene. And then he did. And as the exhibit highlighted, his influence can be seen in a gajillion different ways.
The exhibit itself is remarkable. An enormous -- two story at least -- screen at the end playing his videos, works of art (i.e. an artist did this thing with grains of rice -- one grain for every baby born in 1948 -- and one of those babies was David Bowie), his costumes (The Boy was sad that pictures weren't allowed as there was a particular baby-blue leather suit that he was crazy about), screens with the movies he was in playing, interviews, etc. Of course, some of the material was more-mature. Sometimes I just moved the children along, and other times we took the time to talk through things. At one time as I was explaining that David Bowie had made some poor choices, and he was trying to change that path I said: Timshel, and the kids nodded.
Two Bowie treasures: 1. He was curious and willing to work really hard. He spoke of early influences -- books, jazz performers, etc. He said that he often didn't know what he was learning, but he knew that it was important to keep taking in stuff, and that eventually a thread would emerge, and his identity would become more cohesive. It reminded me of what our friend said at The Boy's birthday party: that there was a theme -- The Boy. 2. David Bowie said that he wasn't convinced that all human endeavor is progress. Ha!lle!lu!jah! When I say that people smirk at me -- like I'm being provincial. Well, well, well. I cannot think of anybody LESS provincial than my friend David.
By the time we were done we were mentally, even emotionally worn out, but the evening was fine, so we decided to walk the three-ish miles back to our hotel via the parks.
We stopped in Hyde Park by the Serpentine to have dinner outside at the cafe tables. The Lido Pavillion was built in 1930, as sunbathing facilities, but now it's a cafe -- that serves pasta with hair. True story: The Girl found a very obvious piece of hair in her pasta. The Dad was slightly put out about it, but agreed that she should get a replacement, so went back inside to take care of it. While he was in there, The Boy found a very obvious piece of hair. Now. What do you do with that? Do I say, No, you have to eat it anyway because you were unfortunate enough to find it second, and really, it's only socially acceptable to return one meal? When The Boy returned from giving his pasta to The Dad, to replace, he said: "Be prepared for a cranky dad." We all started busting up (for the record: The Dad did not return at all cranky).
Though converted from it's original use as sunbathing facilities, it is still a memorial to the son of the man who donated the funds:
We went to another memorial: Princess Diana's Memorial Fountain. The children walked around it, but we still had too far to go to our hotel (and it was a bit chilly), so nobody waded in it. It's so clear and sensory oriented (the pieces on the bottom have several different textures) that the kids talked about it for quite awhile as we walked on. They want to build a similar water feature someday if we ever have a backyard. I overhead The Boy telling The Girl that bags of cement are only about three dollars, so they should be able to make the whole thing pretty inexpensively.
We stopped by the Peter Pan statue -- which is so cool because Barry had it installed in the middle of the night so it was seem as if it was magicked into being.
And we cut through the Italian Gardens -- which seem as if they were also magicked into being.
We found a random dirt patch that had a dozen or so little brown bunnies. We stopped to watch them for a bit, and when The Girl asked me to take a picture a squirrel photo-bombed. We couldn't stop laughing, as we are pretty sure that the squirrels are bitter because we don't idolize them like the other tourists do.
And before finishing our grand walking tour we passed a memorial/public art that had the word: Antipodes. And boy, did we feel awesome.
