GIP, mostly.
(There's an art post coming up on the blog, you can just wait until then).
Fanfic
Bounce
AKA: I am just going to wank on about Mycroft even more self-indulgently than I wanked on about Eames, because this is basically how I interact with fandom: find one character or relationship that I like and then wander off in my own direction with it, largely ignoring the frothing over the canon itself, all of the fanon, and most of the fans, and just vomit out fic like some sort of terrible sodomy-penning eremite. HOW ON EARTH HAVE I EVER MADE FRIENDS DOING THIS, THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW. (NB: I have posted none of this in communities because fuck you.)
Meanwhile, theories on Reichenbach make their way into my field of vision:
Explanation via The Mentalist
Paul Cornell has words
Poetry
Chivalry
blog Posts
Show, Don't Tell, because what everyone on my friendslist needed and wanted was me lecturing them about how to write when I quite plainly cannot do it myself.
LIFE
Despite a long list of fucking technological hitches I did manage to see lanyon, world's busiest woman, for a couple of hours last night. This involved a whistle-stop tour of the British Museum and an introduction to the ... mildly hair-raising? ... methods of navigating through a London which seems to be entirely under reconstruction at the moment. In the British Museum we managed to wander into a gallery I've never been to before, which is butt-full of Indian art and sculpture from all sorts of bits of history. There's a blingtastic ceremonial crown from the 18th Century and a dancing Ganesh statue which is BEAUTIFUL in ways I don't have words for which is from roughly 750 AD and it's all very exciting. I had a lot of incoherent thoughts about what Dr Ramachandran says about the human perception of beauty as a concept and the examples he used, but my memory is failing me as to all of the pertinent words (like the name of the bronzes he referred to, or the name of the notion of the psychological process that leads to depictions of exaggerated femininity).
We also walked the fabulous gift shops and fantasised about being rich enough to buy the busts and so on ("When I'm rich ... because that's how it works, right, you just become inevitably wealthy, as a grown-up..."), and I fell down and bought some bloody SHERBERT from the other gift shop - which has some awesome-looking children's books in it explaining the Hajj and so on. The shop, not the sherbert.
And then I went to the gift shop at the National Gallery to get some hand cream because that is the kind of woman I am. It smells fantastic. And there was gift wrap which is effectively a poster of the human anatomy, so I bought that, too.
Anyway, I bring up this unbridled capitalist excess because I'm thinking of doing a blog post reviewing museum & gallery gift shops in London (for free attractions) and was wondering if anyone could suggest any?
So far I have:
+ V&A
+ Natural History Museum (which has several gift shops)
+ Science Museum
+ London Museum
+ Tate Modern
+ The Globe
+ National Gallery
+ British Library
+ Wellcome Collection
+ Tate Britain
+ Horniman Museum
Other suggestions? I was thinking btw of visiting them in batches since they tend to be grouped together, and if anyone wants to accompany me they're welcome to. Kensington would be one day, City/South Bank another (that's the London Museum, the Globe, and the Tate Modern), and then Euston/Trafalgar another day. Which unfortunately leaves the bloody Horniman and the Tate Britain for the same day, and the Horniman is in the middle of nowhere. Grr. Still! Adventure! And if I'm only going to the gift shops I can at least get through them quickly.
EDIT: C suggests the London Transport Museum (Covent Garden) the National Theatre (South Bank, which has in turn reminded me of the BFI), and the "shit one at Parliament". This makes me wonder if St Paul's has one, given that Lund Cathedral had a gifty bit and so does the Notre Dame churchdoodah.
EDIT: Abbi says Pollock's Toy Museum, The Museum of Childhood (Bethnal Green), and reminded me of the Geffyre whatsit in Hoxton. Oh, and the SHERLOCK HOLMES MUSEUM, the London Dungeon, and the Tower of London. I shall check which of these are free to get into. Clockmaker's Museum in the Guildhall, the RAF Museum in Hendon... the Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Bruce Castle Museum I don't think has a gift shop due to being the size of a postage stamp... the William Morris Museum in Walthamstow which I wanted to go to anyway...
EDIT: Holly says the Imperial War Museum, Wallace Collection, and Hunterian Museum...
EDIT: Rose suggests the Barbican Centre, which has the advantage of being very close to the London Museum.
Fanfic
Bounce
AKA: I am just going to wank on about Mycroft even more self-indulgently than I wanked on about Eames, because this is basically how I interact with fandom: find one character or relationship that I like and then wander off in my own direction with it, largely ignoring the frothing over the canon itself, all of the fanon, and most of the fans, and just vomit out fic like some sort of terrible sodomy-penning eremite. HOW ON EARTH HAVE I EVER MADE FRIENDS DOING THIS, THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW. (NB: I have posted none of this in communities because fuck you.)
Meanwhile, theories on Reichenbach make their way into my field of vision:
Explanation via The Mentalist
Paul Cornell has words
Poetry
Chivalry
blog Posts
Show, Don't Tell, because what everyone on my friendslist needed and wanted was me lecturing them about how to write when I quite plainly cannot do it myself.
LIFE
Despite a long list of fucking technological hitches I did manage to see lanyon, world's busiest woman, for a couple of hours last night. This involved a whistle-stop tour of the British Museum and an introduction to the ... mildly hair-raising? ... methods of navigating through a London which seems to be entirely under reconstruction at the moment. In the British Museum we managed to wander into a gallery I've never been to before, which is butt-full of Indian art and sculpture from all sorts of bits of history. There's a blingtastic ceremonial crown from the 18th Century and a dancing Ganesh statue which is BEAUTIFUL in ways I don't have words for which is from roughly 750 AD and it's all very exciting. I had a lot of incoherent thoughts about what Dr Ramachandran says about the human perception of beauty as a concept and the examples he used, but my memory is failing me as to all of the pertinent words (like the name of the bronzes he referred to, or the name of the notion of the psychological process that leads to depictions of exaggerated femininity).
We also walked the fabulous gift shops and fantasised about being rich enough to buy the busts and so on ("When I'm rich ... because that's how it works, right, you just become inevitably wealthy, as a grown-up..."), and I fell down and bought some bloody SHERBERT from the other gift shop - which has some awesome-looking children's books in it explaining the Hajj and so on. The shop, not the sherbert.
And then I went to the gift shop at the National Gallery to get some hand cream because that is the kind of woman I am. It smells fantastic. And there was gift wrap which is effectively a poster of the human anatomy, so I bought that, too.
Anyway, I bring up this unbridled capitalist excess because I'm thinking of doing a blog post reviewing museum & gallery gift shops in London (for free attractions) and was wondering if anyone could suggest any?
So far I have:
+ V&A
+ Natural History Museum (which has several gift shops)
+ Science Museum
+ London Museum
+ Tate Modern
+ The Globe
+ National Gallery
+ British Library
+ Wellcome Collection
+ Tate Britain
+ Horniman Museum
Other suggestions? I was thinking btw of visiting them in batches since they tend to be grouped together, and if anyone wants to accompany me they're welcome to. Kensington would be one day, City/South Bank another (that's the London Museum, the Globe, and the Tate Modern), and then Euston/Trafalgar another day. Which unfortunately leaves the bloody Horniman and the Tate Britain for the same day, and the Horniman is in the middle of nowhere. Grr. Still! Adventure! And if I'm only going to the gift shops I can at least get through them quickly.
EDIT: C suggests the London Transport Museum (Covent Garden) the National Theatre (South Bank, which has in turn reminded me of the BFI), and the "shit one at Parliament". This makes me wonder if St Paul's has one, given that Lund Cathedral had a gifty bit and so does the Notre Dame churchdoodah.
EDIT: Abbi says Pollock's Toy Museum, The Museum of Childhood (Bethnal Green), and reminded me of the Geffyre whatsit in Hoxton. Oh, and the SHERLOCK HOLMES MUSEUM, the London Dungeon, and the Tower of London. I shall check which of these are free to get into. Clockmaker's Museum in the Guildhall, the RAF Museum in Hendon... the Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Bruce Castle Museum I don't think has a gift shop due to being the size of a postage stamp... the William Morris Museum in Walthamstow which I wanted to go to anyway...
EDIT: Holly says the Imperial War Museum, Wallace Collection, and Hunterian Museum...
EDIT: Rose suggests the Barbican Centre, which has the advantage of being very close to the London Museum.