London fog

Awesome example of Islingtonness raising its decadent head in California (video dated 2008).



Lllllove it.

Let's celebrate deliberate archaisms, melancholy, nostalgia for the places where you've never been, memories of never experienced, soul anemia with BMI = 25, readersheep, and, above all, foggy days.

We had one.

Model Engineering Exhibition

Living near an exhibition centre brings to one's life things and people one would never come normally across.



Great hall of Alexandra Palace was welcoming Autistic Congress Model Engineering Exhibition. Dozens clubs, societies, museums, supplies producers gather this weekend with their model steam engines and mini-steam railway equipment, sail boats, airplanes, rocket boats (great videos displayed), miniature copies of real things and utterly fantasy engineering exercises, flying, running, shining and just snuggily enjoying attention.









It was quite wired to see masses of the grey playing toys and one-off kids watching them. I wonder, if in 80 years' time video games will also drift out from the children's hands to grandads'.







This lovely gentleman was selling steam boats. Two for £10, and it runs as long as the candle burns:









My ignorance, my bliss, was safely protecting me from noticing factual and technical inaccuracies all through the show.



However, sometimes it was not enough.





The rest of the pictures below, there were not much of them since I had to leave early.

Bovington tank museum

Wow, it was a long silence spell. Exams, Christmas, back to work, nothing exiting but everything time-consuming. 


We spent one more Christmas on the Dorset / Wiltshire border. Looking across The nerdy day trips map, I can't help but notice that all the area was covered with military bases, training fields, fake villages for urban warfire training, weaponry bio-labs (such as Porton Down, explicitly mentioned prototype of Baskerville from the latest Sherlock) and bombing ranges. 


The Colonel Grandpa later confirmed that the area in post-WWII times actually was one huge military base, and no one than him organised some parachute landing trainings with descent to the sea and leaving on white horses submarines into the sunset. So sweet.


Although Google Streetview cars had difficulties approaching some of these objects, the idea can be easily seen from satellite. Say, this is Bovington Camp and tank crew training ground:



View Larger Map


And the same thing from the ground, visitor-friendly view with cute child-drawing-like "Tank crossing" road signs and even soldiers:



View Larger Map





View Larger Map


Although, I wonder how Dorset Gliding club members feel operating between tank training ground and Purbeck Shooting School. 


So, our aim was the best tank museum in the world, Bovington Tank museum.  





Welcome.





The museum consists of 3 large exhibition areas:


1. Tank story - 33 the most remarkable from historical point of view tanks arranged into a clear narrative line.
2. The Discovery centre - the main collection of ~150 vehicles, all look well cared, pampered and documented.
3. The Trench Experience - a tribute to wired British fashion for mannequined expositions. 


Not going for competition with the vast museum's website, which has truly outstanding amount of information about its numerous exhibits, I am just posting below random notes on the things which I found unexpected for me. 


First one, tanks are like cats! Look at this one, he is trained to the litter tray!





Early tanks were designed for the only one task - to make holes into the wire fields and trenches lines. They were developed by all the varieties of forces - separately by cavalry and infantry in France, by navy in the UK (where they were initially called landships, subject to change to "tank" for the sake of secrecy). The messaging service in early tanks:





The Trench Experience bit:











Cut-in-half Centurion:





Cold War times, American on the left, Soviet on the right. Low profile of the right one was a result of pioneering solution in the mechanised gun charging.





Britishness galore:





More Britishness. How is the main battle tank referred? As AWESOME.





Here it is, cutie:

Modern vehicles were organised in a sub-exposition, vaguely depicting a camp in an anonymous hot and dusty country. Loads a of videos with attractive sanguine soldiers and officers were definitely aiming not at leisured public, but at potential recruits. 

The museum has event days, and one of the nearest one will be airing Tiger 131 this March. Hmmm...