Natural History Museum and a Chalet Meet

This morning I intended to head to the Victoria and Albert Museum however my route took me past the Natural History Museum and it was such a beautiful building I decided to go in.
It would be easy to look at the exhibits through modern eyes and disapprove of the taking of so many specimens from around the world but looking at it from the times it was done it is pretty amazing. I suspect I only saw a small part of the museum, it is huge with so many exhibits.

I did get to see stuffed dodos and a great auk.
The gems were interesting. I got excited when I saw the famous diamonds but they were only models. Seeing a rough diamond and then the polished version I don’t think I’d recognise one in the wild.

The building itself is worth the visit. It was apparently designed to be a cathedral to nature and it is beautiful.

I cut my visit short as I had to go to my physio appointment. Hopefully the massage will improve things.

This evening I went to the London Chalet Meeting. Many of you already know that I collect children’s school stories from the early-mid 20th Century. One of the main series is the Chalet School. It influenced where I stayed in Switzerland as the school is set in the Interlaken region in the later books (and set in Pertisau in the earlier books, hence my visit in 2016).
It took some courage to go to a meeting of people I didn’t know but I knew they’d be “my people” and they were. I had a lovely evening discussing medical disasters in girls own books amongst other things. I did let Australia down by not having read The Silver Brumby and Ivan Southall though!
I did get to see synthetic maps (which will only be of interest to other Chalet fans). They were more or less what I imagined but it was interesting to see them in the flesh.Read more