A Day at the Museum

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

A day at the museums with K and R began at the Natural History Museum, to see the incredible entries from all over the world for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.  It's always worth a visit, if only to be inspired by the photo entries in the 10 years and under category, they are superb.

For lunch R took us to follow in the footsteps of the Soviet spy Yevgeni Ivanov with a visit to Daquise, a restaurant serving traditional Polish cuisine a short walk from the museums.  Their website reports that they hosted the KGB spy and Christine Keeler in the sixties, during the Profumo affair which was big news at the time.  A first for me, Polish food that is, really enjoyed it - we shared a selection of dishes between the three of us.

After lunch, my meditation time was spent at the Mormon Church on Exhibition Road, suggested as a possibility by K.  To be honest it was a surprise to me that the church was open and quite so welcoming to "outsiders", a notion that was soon dispelled as I was shown to the chapel, a welcome sanctuary after the busy morning.  Had an interesting chat with some of the staff later as well, giving me a potted version of their beliefs and values.  I recalled that even when I was a child in Cwmbran the Church owned a house nearby, used as a base for their travelling missionaries; there was even a large display with an image of one of their early gatherings in Wales, which seems to have found fertile ground in the nineteenth century revivalist fervour of the time which saw many converts leave Wales for Utah.

But soon I hear another call, to the V&A for my highlight of the day, the Winnie-the-Pooh exhibition.  As far back as I can remember I loved to draw, and the sketches that Shepard produced for A A Milnes books (amongst others), are just mesmerising; real treasures to me.  The deft pencil strokes convey texture, emotion and movement so readily, and the cartoon sequences of Pooh upended in the hunny jar floating down the river - priceless.  Plenty of sketches on display to get a sense of how Shepard developed the characters and interpreted their characteristics.  I don't recall ever having read the books in childhood, well not my first one anyway.  So glad I caught them later on.

S joined us for a curry later on and we heard all about his adventures in Iceland; including seeing some stunning photos from his glacier walk and later on the Northern Lights.  Maybe a few more ideas for exploration.

And so to my blip for the day, made at the V&A after the visit to the exhibition.  I wanted a shot of the whale skeleton in the foyer, but from the upper balcony.  As I got there I saw others looking for inspiration too; people sketching, photographing - and I defaulted to a bit of people watching, probably the most fruitful of all, photographically speaking.  Get a crowd of people and there are lots of photo opportunities.