Week Thirteen

If I was to weigh up the themes of art versus science over my last 3 months of adventures, I think it goes without saying that I have been desperately one-sided.  As my friend Dharsh eloquently put it: "Art = Fart".  How delightful. So, he was very happy to hear that for week thirteen I had given some focus to the left, more logical part of my brain.  I went to Late Nights at The Science Museum and it literally has to be one of the most wonderful things in London.  I will tell you why.

I arrived to find the most ridiculously long but noisy and infectious queue.  Smiles all round.  People were gagging to get in and soon I found out why.  Its like an enormous playground for adults.  There are 4 floors of no less than 20 activities.

Its almost impossible to do everything so you have to be selective. Wanting to use our logic from the get go, my friend Anna and I decided to start at the top and work our way down.  On the third floor is Launchpad, a haven of button pressing, handle-turning, ball-throwing and, there was not a nappy, dummy or pram in sight.  Its brilliant because the child in you comes out immediately and you just want to play with everything.  Its incredibly tactile and just makes for something a little out of the ordinary for the stereotypical day-to-day, po-faced Londoner.  Plus, you learn.  The difference of the viscosity of liquid or how a magnet works are things that most of us probably learnt as a child but the information is buried in the depths of our crammed under-used brains.  But, here it is again for us all to absorb.  Just don't test me with questions though.....

Me taking a photo of myself in infra-red

Next it was down to the second floor where people were making noise at silent disco.  Silent disco is a really funny one.  The concept is amusing - before you put on headphones, you're looking at people dancing around to nothing, or they might not be listening to the same thing as you, or there is that slight embarrassment orbing around your body when for a moment you think you're alone and then you see everyone around you.  The thing is, silent disco, for me only truly works when you completely loose yourself and perhaps amongst the cases of plastic dinosaurs is not the ideal setting. Saying that, it was just funny watching others dancing so conservatively.

Down to the first floor and a whole menagerie of making, smelling, folding and doing was rife in the "cosmos and culture" section.  Firstly we went to the Lotto lab which is basically a bit of a science lab with some very cool experts telling us about bees.  There were some boxes that were filled with what looked like a load of squiggly lines, but in actual fact were the journeys of bees to a series of flowers, seeing how often they return to certain ones with little or no pollen in them.  Almost a bit of a pavlovian journey.  Bees are rather clever creatures.

Then we got involved in a session of origami with a very dry teacher who made me chuckle.  We made tulips.

Best bit of the night for me was the chance to make a mechanical bug.  Yes, for £2.50 we were given a battery, a motor and a plastic cup along with a multitude of feathers, stickers, felt and pipe cleaners and given free reign to make the most glamourous bug we could muster.  I think you'll agree Anna and I did a glorious job.

Next was the hula-hooping room. It really is quite strange how much fun it is to try and keep a plastic hoop spinning round your body.  Why is that?  Can anyone explain it.  No sooner did I get a few tips from the hula expert did I start to look a little less like a clumsy oaf and got really into it.  I was actually thinking that I might do a proper hula hooping exercise class as one of my 52 things - perhaps later in the year.  But oh, the small things.  It goes hand in hand with the smell of toast and popping bubble-wrap.

Go Anna

There was so so much more that we couldn't even get a look in on but rest assured the possibilites are limitless at Late Nights.  I suggest you go soon.  It happens on the last Wednesday of every month and you can check out more information here.
This week I'm going to be learning valuable life lessons at a lecture called "Being Yourselves" at The School of Life.  Deep.