Jimmy and I have been squabbling for some weeks that we never do anything. We keep promising to go out 'for walks' but the weather has not been in our favour of recent.
Exasperated, the other day, I said let's go to Tate Modern. (We've never been). He turned up his nose. Perhaps too heavily influenced by my nephew, to whom I also made the same suggestion some weeks back. My nephew's response was "It's crap and I'm not wasting my breath arguing when I know I'm right". Jimmy's response was "How about the Natural History Museum?" Of all the museums he could have suggested, this would have been my last choice, but it isn't always about me.
I tasked him with researching in a guidebook which bits he wanted to see. He said all of it. I said that it's quite big and it might take some time to do all of it. I had a look on the website and realised that this weekend was the last chance to see an exhibition about the Antarctic. This seemed interesting to both of us, so we went along to South Ken and bought our tickets for this special exhibition. General admission to the museum is free; to special exhibitions costs.
What a total waste of money. Our money as ticket holders and taxpayers; also of sponsors' money, but that isn't our concern.
It wasn't clear beforehand that the exhibition was aimed specifically at 7-11 year-olds. Specifically, rather thick 7-11 year olds, those that lack the ability to absorb information and ask enquiring questions. It was really a low-rent amusement arcade. Some rather 1990s computer games, and that was about it. Being somewhat curious by nature, I decided I wanted to know, how big is Antarctica? How many people work there, from how many countries, on how many bases, doing what? There was a tent erected, and I was vaguely curious as to what distinguished it from the sort of tent one uses on a camping holiday in an European summer. They had an example of the food parcels they get, but no details on what they actually contain or the logistics of getting them there.
There was a game where you could pretend to drive a smowmobile. The sort of video game you would find at motorway service centres in the 1980s. So many kids were wanting to play this that they totally ignored the genuine snowmobile sat right next to them. Until I reasoned 'it has no sign saying "Do not touch" so I will straddle it and play a game of make believe'. At which point, of course, it became everybody else's turn, and I got furious glares for hogging the thing that had suddenly become attractive. There was a game where you could pretend to be a diver and catch fish. It contained less variety of fish than my 'Magnetic Fishing Game' vintage circa 1972, less exciting graphics, and considerably less skill. If I had been curating the exhibition I would have scrapped it and replaced it with an actual video of actual fish filmed under water in the Antarctic summer. There was a cupboard of Antarctic clothing that you could put on if you wanted - and assuming that you weren't knocked out of the way by an aggressive pre-teen shoved there by their even more aggressive parent. But there was nothing about the clothing, how perhaps it might differ from similar clothing you might wear for a stroll in the Cotswolds.
There was also a video which I assumed was filmed in the Antarctic but could easily have been filmed in my garden on a cold dark night. It was on constant loop, so when a loop finished, and a whole bunch of people moved off, I thought I would sit and watch, only to be bundled out of the way by a bunch of aggressive males, passively supervised by asinine adults. (By the way I was using my walking stick). I decided to sit on the floor, because in their world, that's how it works - spoilt brats get to sit on seats, especially when it involves shoving the middle-aged woman with a stick out of the way. I'm tempted to say that if I behaved like that at that age I would have got a sharp telling off from my parents. But it isn't about then and now, because I know plenty of children of the same age now who would also be given a sharp telling off, and have been brought up not to be so thoughtless and selfish.
In fact, I found the whole visit rather depressing. It seemed that the majority of people there rarely go out in public. Whole bunches of them without a clue of how to manoeuvre in crowded spaces. The speciality seemed to be targeting the elderlies or those with babes-in-arms. There's some savage place in England where the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, rules. Of course, the people there were entirely unrepresentative of the population of Britain. Overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly middle-class, noticeably "comfortable" if not especially rich. Poor quality entertainment for 'elites', where clearly if you don't have a retard aged 7-11 you don't matter. And that's what our taxes are being wasted on. The mentality that 'my child is entitled to run around and treat this as a playground and if you happen to be standing actually examining the contents of a display cabinet, you are encroaching on my brat's right to slide along each display cabinet and shout and therefore you are a horrible person who shouldn't be here.' And it wasn't just me. I saw at least three older couples looking bemused as they became the next victims of the bullying. And I overheard a couple of conversations that reassured me it wasn't my imagination or me over-reacting.
We ate and made the mistake of entering South Ken station just after the museums closed, and thus were held for five minutes or more behind the barriers because of 'platform overcrowding'. Jimmy asked me if this was common. I said it happens occasionally at Victoria between five and six on a weekday, and I think it also happens regularly at Kings Cross. I later remembered it had happened at Earls Court after a concert, and I daresay it's common at anywhere there's a large number of people all heading for the Underground at the same time. It wasn't helped by the District and Circle being closed for planned engineering works.
I observed that when we got down there, the majority of people would crowd on the platform near the entrance, blocking others from entering, then we'd get on the train and people would crowd near the doors (we get off in ten stops' time and don't want to miss our station), not letting people move down the carriage where in any case every child would have a god-given right to a seat in preference to middle-aged woman with a stick, any elderly infirm or pregnant person, or anybody who had been at work all day. Lo and behold, when we got to the platform, I said we should move down, in order to be near the escalators on exit. A whole crowd bunched by the platform entrance. At subsequent stops the driver kept asking people to move down the carriage, not lean on the doors, let passengers off first and so on, which sounded odd in our half-empty carriage. I expect most of them will return to Middle England vowing never again to use public transport 'because it's over-crowded' nor ever go into a crowded place again, because people don't bow down and worship their spoilt spawn.
On the way home, we were at the bus stop in Brixton, a mother made her son stand back and let me on the bus. There was no necessity; the bus was nearly empty and there was only a dozen or so people waiting. Naturally I thanked her, and him. It's easy to spot those with class and those that are bullies (it has no connection with skin colour, household income or where you live; it has everything to do with how you behave and the example you set to your children).
