Heartbreaking Disappointment

Saturday in Edinburgh started out beautifully sunny and full of promise.  Since we first decided to include Scotland (at last!) on this trip, I had wanted to go to Glasgow to learn more about Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose design work influenced so many people whose work I like (David Lance Goines, Frank Lloyd Wright, and notable others).  So today was the day: we took a 50-minute ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow, got off the train, and started the Rick Steves walk that would end at the Glasgow School of Art, where Mackintosh had studied.  He designed every detail of one of the School's buildings, which now, of course, is famous.

On the way, we passed the Willow Tearooms, which he also designed:

Though I was afraid it would be just too treacly, it was in fact very enjoyable.  We were headed for more Mackintosh, and feeling good.

Following Rick's map, we went uphill to Renfrew and Douglas Streets, wondering why the brick building at the corner was fenced off, and where the School might be.  Well, we found it on Renfrew:

But by then the heartbreak was obvious.  The building suffered a fire just last Friday -- eight days ago -- and our visit was clearly not to be.  Here's the front door:

and along the front wall:

And the side of the building, where the fire had grown from the basement to the roof:

This disaster was by far the worst thing we experienced on the trip (far worse than being pick-pocketed in London and cancelling my debit card).  I talked to a policewoman nearby

who said that quick work by the fire brigade had helped to save 90% of the contents and 70% of the building.  This seems incredible, but I hope it's true.  Nonetheless, it will be many months before the building and its exhibits, offices, classrooms, and studios will be back.  It took the firefighters eight hours to ensure that the fire was out, and workers have begun now to remove the top of the building "brick by brick," she said, to save pieces for restoration.  This is very unfortunate.

Ships and Clocks

Dan and I both enjoyed reading Longitude by Dava Sobel, which describes the challenge of determining the location of a ship at sea, and the solution to the problem through the development of a reliable clock.  (This is not the place to elucidate the problem or the solution; just accept the obvious fact that ships need to know where they are, and that navigation hasn't always been as easy as GPS.)

Coming to London meant that we absolutely wanted to go to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, where both astronomy and chronometry have a long history, so we did that on Wednesday.  While in Greenwich we went to the National Maritime Museum, where -- duh-- we saw lots of ships, and we also saw the Cutty Sark, the last of the multi-mast bazillion-sail Clipper ships bringing tea from Asia at then-blinding speeds.  Today we went to the British Museum, where we saw (in addition to the Rosetta Stone and stunning Anglo-Saxon remains found in 1939) more stuff about ships and clocks.

So first to Greenwich.  Here's a view through the rain of the Observatory on the hill:

and here are some of the time-keepers of interest:

 

a twenty-four hour clock

 a wall-mounted year-round sundial

and "H1," the first clock made by John Harrison that kept reliable time at sea.

We expected the National Maritime Museum to be dark and dusty, with little unreadable plaques.  Wrong!  It's a very modern museum with many kid-friendly touches and interactive displays, and lots of interesting history.  Perhaps a bit kitschy, but very fun, is this display of figureheads from sailing ships:

and nearby, the Miss Britain III, which in 1933 was the first boat to reach 100 MPH on seawater:

John Harrison spent many years on his seagoing chronometers, and here is "H4," which was finally acknowledged to be reliable enough to allow a navigator to determine the longitude of his ship:

And now to the British Museum (a source of endless wonder), and two more time-related objects.  This  bell-ringer was part of a larger clock, and I just liked the figures:

And finally, this, ummmm, alarm clock not only ran along on its little wheels, but also fired a little gun from its little bow, which set off all the other little cannons.  I wonder how many times it actually worked.  But it's beautiful:

War Memorials in London

Americans make a big deal of the country's participation in the two World Wars, as they should.  But the experience in other countries where the wars were actually fought is even more impressive and moving.  On Monday we passed a number of war memorials.  Here are two close-ups from a Battle of Britain memorial near the Westminster Bridge:

(Please be sure to notice the dog, which should pull at your heartstrings.)

Gas masks are always pretty horrifying, both for how they look and for what thry try to protect against. The women in this are at home, I guess, but in the next memorial we saw, it was different:

On Tuesday we spent hours in the Churchill War Rooms and museum.  The first surprise was that this underground complex of rooms, from which Churchill and his cabinet ran the war, is only just below the street, nowhere near as deep underground as the Tube.  The six feet of humongous steel beams encased in concrete might or might not have protected the rooms if a bomb had dropped right on the street above.

A section of the novel Life After Life describes the main character's work on a rescue team during the Blitz, and that part really brought home to me the terror, stink, grime, and exhaustion of her experience.  Not surprisingly, the War Rooms have a lot of the same flavor.  The attached Churchill Museum has much more detail on his whole life, which is fascinating but a bit hard to take in fully during one visit.  The video of Churchill's funeral in 1965 was a flashback for me: one of my weekend trips from Stanford-In-Italy was to Switzerland, where TV in a café happened to be showing the funeral live.  It was very moving to stand and watch, only about a year after watching TV coverage of JFK's assassination and funeral.

It was not a surprise to see how cramped the War Rooms were, especially with all the people doing their work down there month after month.  (The lights were on for five straight years.) This contraption provided artificial sunlight to counter one of the hazards of the job:

In addition to all the military men, a number of typists -- women, of course -- worked down there.  They had special gas masks with headphones attached that (I think . . .) allowed them to continue hearing dictation while typing during a gas attack.  Kinda hard to imagine that situation.  The angle of this photo isn't good, but you can figure it out:

A surprise to me was the Enigma Machine, with which the British broke the German codes -- a very big deal.  The machine is like a big typewriter, not the huge thing I would have expected:

A little more light-hearted, a photo that I think was meant to cheer the home front.  It's comforting to clean your gun with the little lady knitting at your side:

And finally, an admonition to the better-dressed among us from a wartime poster.  You know who you are, and it's not OK.

Signs and Street Art

 It's always fun to have photos of unusual things seen on the street.  Here we have a collection of signs and public art.

From Tuscany, some intricate fixtures high on walls:

  

 

 

Outside Dario Cecchini's butcher shop in Panzano, a sign that I think refers to the Gallo Nero (black rooster) icon for Chianti wines:

And from London, a sign I liked:

Finally, two sculptures in Trafalgar Square.  First, the ubiquitous British lion:

and then, the less well-known Giant Blue Chicken:

London, day 1

Our flight from Florence to London took off mid-morning, so we left Panzano early to be sure we could navigate the roads (from paved to dirt to autostrada) and return the car in time.  The early morning fog was beautiful:

Arrival in London was easy enough, with the small difficulty of replacement buses because of work on the Overground.  Being native speakers of English helped us figure out where to wait and when to get off, and we only walked past the entrance to the apartment complex twice before realizing we had found our HomeExchange hosts' home.  They live on the 17th floor, and this is the view at night:

Our excursion today was to the British Library, partly to see an exhibit called "Beautiful Science," which showed various ways to visualize numeric data.  It included Florence Nightingale's circular graph in three colors, representing causes of death over time during the Crimean War, and computer-generated tracks using records from hundreds of British East India ship voyages, as well as a beautiful few-minute-long NASA animation of ocean currents over a few years, from satellite data.

We also saw the six-story temperature- and humidity-controlled library collected by George III, and the Magna Carta (written by scribes shortly after the agreement at Runnymede in 1215), and a Shakespeare first folio, and original Beatle scribblings of a few songs.  The Library building opened in 1998, bringing together collections that had been in different locations.  A modern image of Isaac Newton measuring the universe with a compass is in the courtyard:

On our way to the Library, we passed St. Pancras Station, which today houses a hotel above the tracks and shopping mall below.  The whole building is huge:

and there are various artworks inside.  This is one detail from a much larger sculpture that must have been done recently:

Finally, a shot from somewhere along our walk today.  Riding a bicycle in London must be scary enough, so I can see why this bike's owner decided to stop:

Boaring Sights

Though we haven't seen any live ones walking around, it's very easy to find wild boars in Tuscany.  Here are a few from Volterra and Cortona.