Wednesday 21-July-2010 Changing of the guard

Buckingham Palace
Moving house
Cabinet war rooms
The railway children

We started today with a train ride as usual.  Then we stood with the croud outside buckingham palace in the sun.  A beautiful pond but no one swimming.  To respectful I guess.  It was hot.  Sthe sun shon, the band played, the men marched the horses paraded and in they went.  The band played.  Half of us sat down.  The band played.  The band played, The band played, the men marched the horses paraded and out they came.  And that my friends is the changing of the guard.

Then another change.  We moved.  Evicted from our Soho penthouse to the Picadilly youth hostel.  I have to confess we knew when we booked that we only had three nights before we had to move due to a prior booking.  The Picadilly youth hostel is at least 5 floors.  Reception is on the 4th floor.  We booked out an entire 6 bed dorm.  For a family it is actually quite expensive because you pay per person and for 6 it really adds up.

After the move we took another train ride back into town to have a look at the Cabinet war rooms.  These are the rooms that Winston Churchill and his staff and other politicians and Military comanders used to coordinate the British part of the war against Germany.  Much of it was used after the war as storage but the map room was simply closed up and remain closed until 1970 something (I think) have to ckeck the date.  I found it a fascinating meseum.  They have restored it to the way it was in 1945. Not too much AV technology to spoil it.  But enough restoration and commentary to give you an idea of what it must have been like.  Smoky, operating round the clock,  No flushing toilets.

Incidentally,  Churchil had a second secret bunker.

It is owned by a low cost housing association who seem to see it as a liability rather than a potential money maker.  Bizzarre.

It is only open two days a year and the next open day is in Sepetember.  So we don't get to see it.
http://www.stadiumha.org.uk
http://www.stadiumha.org.uk/article.asp?id=118

In the evening we took the kids to see the Musical "The Railway Children"  Google it.

The play is performed in the old Eurostar railway station at Waterloo.  The channel tunnel as you should know, connects Brittain and France.  You may also know that Brittain beat France in the battle of Waterloo. Abba sang a song about it.  Some historians would suggest that it was one of the most significant naval victories of all time.  Anyway just to remind the Frenchies of just how good they are, the British decided to run the track on their side of the channel tunnel to of all places Waterloo station.  Eventually political correctness got the better of them and the poms built a new station at Kings Cross.  So what do you do when you have a brand spanking new munti million dollar railway station complete with travelators, advertising and an atrium.  Well you get those creative people in west end to install some truss and hang some black material, set up some temporary tiered seating.  And put on a play.

For the kids it was a great play.  Dan and Jemma were at one stage really worried that the "father" would not come home so to me they were drawn into the story very well.  As well as pieces of stage that rolled along n the railway track we had a real live steam engine pulling a carrige that drove in and backed out a few times.  Although "drove" is probably a bit generous.  I think someone installed a electric traction system and a smoke machine or two.  Megan and I really enjoyed it although Marcus rolled his eyes a bit.