Boob day

by sarah on June 1, 2012

I would have called it a day of culture personally, but when you are a 10 year old boy the naked boobs are obviously attention grabbing.

We were heading up to London to watch Horrible Histories, but as we opted to grab a lift to the train station from Pete on his way to work we were in London nearly 3 hrs early. So a bite to eat down on the South Bank and then over the bridge…

no I have no idea what Sam is doing…

to Trafalgar Square…

Where we paused to recognise Nelson and have a long discussion about the logic of building statues and memorials to dead people, because after all they don’t know or care. Sam remains unconvinced..

and the National Gallery.

This is where we first started encountering naked boobs, lots of them.

Many moons ago when I was still living with my parents in Wales and Pete was in London, I used to go to the National nearly every other Friday afternoon, to potter for an hour or so, then I’d walk along the Strand into the City to meet Pete from work before going for a few pints and a curry in the East End. Happy days!

Anyway I’d never taken the boys (apart from nipping in to use the toilets ) as they are not interested enough to justify it as a day trip. But it seemed a very good way to kill an hour. We planned well, looked at the maps when we got in to the gallery, identified four or five rooms we wanted to visit, did those and left. No one got bored, everyone stayed cheerful.

We went to see the Leonard Da Vinci they have as I’m hoping we can hitch our wagon to Big Mamma Frog and do our own Da Vinci project. Although I suspect we may well get sidetracked by the Borgia’s a bit as this is Jack’s favourite HH song at the moment (I know we wouldn’t be the first to find ourselves led down this path so any suggestions of resources welcome).

We did Titian, late 18th Century Britain, Impressionism (Monet’s Waterlilies in particular), Seurat and Van Gogh. Pretty random really, just what caught our imagination. We stopped at things that caught our eyes as we walked though other galleries, mainly battles, crucifixions and greek myths (with naked boobs!).

We stopped for a drink and snack at the back of the museum opposite the theatre. I love the going to the theatre but have strangely never been to a show in London, so there I got to do something new.

On the walk up to Trafalgar Square we had an interesting discussion on Georgian Theatre and how many theatres were set up and named after Georgian actors. I also got to pass on the story I’d happen to read on the train of Samuel Foote losing his foot in a riding accident that was the fault of George III’s brother, hence they gave him a license to set up his own theatre which he called the Theatre Royale. Occasionally things like that work out and you get to sound very knowledgeable

I won’t bore you with my thoughts on the show again as I blogged them separately here. Theatre was beautiful though, lovely domed ceiling covered in naked ladies to Jack’s chagrin.

Rather than head straight home we decided to go and spend an hour in the British Museum which appears to have replaced the Natural History as the default hang out.

We’ve been before so only did some of the Greek and Egypt galleries.

Parthenon Sculptures

But Sam was more interested in the patterns on the floor

Venus and her boobs

And some male bits to balance it out

Egyptian boobs

and a scarab beetle

The mummies were their favourites

mummy

mummy and x-ray

With canopic jars runners up. Although we were disappoint that the info plaques never told us the names of the four sons of Horus from whom the jars get their heads and the staff in the room didn’t know and looked quite disconcerted when Sam ran up and asked him. Hapi the baboon (lungs), Imsety the human (liver), Duamutef the Jackel (stomach) and Qebehsenuef the hawk (intestines) if anyone cares.

Canopic jars

But this was the highlight.

Rosetta stone! Jack has wanted to see it since he read the first Kane Chronicles. Somehow we missed it last time we were at the museum. I suspect because it was surrounded by tourists photographing it, took me ages to get this.

On the Kane Chronicle theme the shabtis were also popular.