Historic Encounter

On Tuesday I was on another school trip, this time to the Natural History Museum in Londinium. Male staff are few and far between here. Male staff who can be taken away from their post for the day without disrupting the school and don't need someone to be employed to cover for the day are even fewer and farther between. Luckily for the History dept., I happen to be a male employee who can be taken away from his post for the day without disrupting things or requiring someone to be employed for the day in my stead. I was also looking forward to seeing the Natural History Museum as it's a place I've been wanting to visit since I was a child.

Admission to the museum is free; the only cost is part of your soul which is taken from you as soon as you cross the threshold into London.

My favourite exhibits were, of course, the ones displaying reconstructed skeletons, fossils, and models of the incredible creatures that once inhabited the planet. The awesome dinosaurs, the early mammals and reptilians, the moas that stood taller than a man (then again, ostriches are pretty big), the raptors that would have blotted out the sun, the submarine life of tremendous scale, the mammoth mammoths, and the deer with horns wider than the animal is long.

Sure there were exhibits about tectonics, archaeology, and the Earth's future; but I was too busy looking at the giant crocodile's skull. The treasury exhibit was quite interesting though. It features all sorts of crystals, stones, and minerals excavated from the planet's hidden depths.

One of the students did not believe me that blue whales really are that big. I can't remember the word he then used to describe the scale of it as realisation dawned. Something like "hench" I think.

Oh yeah, the toilets also feature hand driers that would turn you into some kind of ugly alien should you put your face under them. Proper turbo power.

We also walked around London for a short while afterwards in order to take in some of the city's sights (mainly Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace).

I didn't get much sleep that night. Yesterday was pretty hellish and by two-o'-clock it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I even felt exhausted this morning and that's after nine or ten hours of sleep. I'm having lots of dreams about riding my bike without a helmet. Last night I had a dream about an accidental wheelie, as well as other things. I'm having a little trouble sleeping and I'm not entirely sure why. I wake up at two or three in the morning virtually every night, and getting up in the morning has become progressively more difficult.

In other news, Nick has his new bike. A CBF125 to replace his deathtrap (it was only functioning as a deathtrap after the collision; but even before then it was sending application forms for the position). I'm interested to see it on Sunday. This Sunday should also be the last week I have to pick Sam up from Hawkhurst since he said he would be riding his new 250cc after his birthday when his insurance premium drops in price.