Home Schooling In The Flat

Hi love,

I have been quarantined at home this week, not with the virus but with the secondary virus which is 'home-schooling' Erbie, having done a sterling job of it before the Easter holidays, has gone into fully blown head in the hands - 'I can't take it' crisis mode, which I am gently trying to coax him from. The only way he will do anything school related is if I sit beside him - all day. 

Yesterday, I learnt the historical beginnings of the Muslim religion, the word for 'snow shoes' in French - (raquettes de neige) at least I hope that's what the translation is! I also spent a painful hour hindering the multiplication of negative numbers. As I mentioned before, me and numbers do not fit together well. Science involved learning about salts, this was interesting, did you know that a metal and an acid make a salt? Sodium chloride being table salt, although how anyone is supposed to learn the spelling of phenolphthalein and a simpler explanation of tritiation might need a little more time. The day ended with Dickens.

His bigotry surrounding the Jewish faith and his usage of slang in his work 'Oliver'. 

By 4pm Erbie and I were done, figuratively, mentally and physically. Obviously we didn't go out for a long walk to stretch our legs and stare longingly at other peoples gardens, which would have been sensible, good parenting and self-care, oh no, I had a large glass of wine and Erbie got on. the PS4 with his friends.

It's times like these that really bring home the insecurities around parenting. at least if they are at school for some of the time, someone else is responsible for their learning, you don't have to take all the flak. In lockdown I imagine thousands, if not millions of parents everywhere are rapidly becoming reliant on their alcohol fix at 6pm and trying to scream louder than the voices in their heads shouting: 'your'e no good at this.' All hail the teaching professionals.

The truth is none of us know what we're doing, we were just better at covering it up with our busy ness. 

Things I thought I'd miss but haven't: 

1.) Clothes shopping, probably because there is nowhere to wear them, and the ever expanding waistline.

Yup, that's it, I miss everything else.

Things I thought I'd get done but haven't:

That list is way too long. 

The kids are all desperate to go back to school and that's something none of us thought we'd hear. 

Anyway time to start another day, the school bell would have gone half and hour ago, must have more coffee.

Fake Butterfly In A Jar

Columbia Road Flower Market

Cool Little Museums in London - The Grant Museum of Zoology

Want to shake hands with a skeleton, put your head in the jaws of a shark, see a jar of pickled moles and some Dodo bones, then the Grant Museum in London is well worth a visit. 

Free entry (donations welcome) and open from 1pm - 5pm Mon - Saturday it is situated in the Rockefeller Building on University Street, London, WC1E 6DE. 

This compact venue packs in a plethora of curios from 1827 onwards and was established by Robert Edmond Grant, a professor of Zoology, who amassed a collection of specimens for teaching purposes. Grant was persuaded on his death bed to leave this collection to the University of London (UCL). His radical evolutionary views also influenced the young Charles Darwin. 

There is a rather nice pdf guide of ‘Top Ten Objects to view at the Grant Museum’ which you can download here.

One of the rarest skeletons in the world, these are the bones of a Quagga or South African zebra, extinct since 1883.

Extinct Quagga (South African zebra)

Did you know elephants only have four teeth!

Elephants teeth?

Nice drawers.

Grant Museum UCL

Saying hello to Mr Bones.

How do you do?

You can become a friend of the Grant Museum and adopt a specimen.

Grant Museum London

Grant Museum UCL

Not so swift now, a collection of stuffed birds.

Grant Museum

Platypus, Flatypus, Platysausage!

Grant Museum, UCL

Man but not as we know him, a collection of evolutionary skulls.

Homo skulls - Grant Museum

Everywhere you look there is something to see. Here’s a monkey skeleton hanging from the rafters!

Grant Museum, UCL

It is now illegal to collect tortoiseshell and man can replicate it synthetically, too late for these poor blighters however.

Grant Museum, UCL

Real tortoiseshell - Grant Museum, UCL

Erbie liked seeing his face at the back of the shark - kids and mirrors.

Grant Museum, UCL

Grant Museum, UCL

So much to see...

Grant Museum, UCL

Microscope slides

Jar of moles

 A collection of mammal brains.

 A lovely collection of glass jellyfish and other invertebrates, even a slug which were hard to preserve made by the Czech jewellers Blaschka.

Anatomically perfect model in glass - Grant Museum, UCL

There are lots of interesting books to browse through too.

Grant Museum, UCL

Dem bones.

Grant Museum, UCL

Grant Museum, UCL

As Erbie has the attention span of a gnat this little museum was perfect for an afternoon visit. His favourite things were the giant turtle shell and the giant dear skull. Mine were the glass slug and the Dodo bones.

Erbie and I took the 134 bus which stops just across the road on Gower Street. The nearest tubes are Warren Street or Euston Square.

   

Grant Museum location map here.

Russell Square in Winter

I love London...

Christmas Lights

Erbie still has a cough, it is really hanging around, so we have not been out much. He woke up at 3.30 this morning and we couldn’t get him back to sleep. Childcare involved moi on sofa snoring, him playing brum brum cars and shredding toilet roll, with occasional eye unsticking from me to offer cereal or book reading. Kids TV doesn’t even start till 6am. Anyway we all went back to sleep at 11, so I await tonight’s outcome. Bugger all this ‘extra hours in the day makes them sleep longer at night’ nonsense, I’m happy with sleep all night uninterrupted and get up at 5am.

Kingly Court, Soho

Soho

Jaeger head office, Soho

Windmill Street Gallery, W1

Charlotte Street, W1

Crystal Skull

Erbie’s cough has now turned him into a snot bucket, streams of green flow from his nose at such a rate he has already filled three bandanas this morning. The pair of us are going a bit crazy from being cooped up inside and I decided I needed to take him out before his new nickname became ‘The destroyer’. So far he has torn the spine from three books, desecrated the John Lewis catalogue, tipped every small, arch of foot piercing toy out and thrust them behind the sofa, the radiator, or into the small gap between the dishwasher and the sink, snapped all the crayons in half and eaten all of his Jungle Book stickers. The last straw was when I caught him with a tampon clutched in his little fist whirling the blue string around in a manic fashion. 

So, to escape from the Erbie making crumbs, mess, destroying things, mummy sweeping, mummy putting things back in boxes, mummy sweeping cycle, we popped over the the British Museum to look at the crystal skull. They bought the crystal skull in 1897 from Tiffany & Co NY, believing it to be of ancient Mexican origin, more recent research however has revealed it to be a 19th century fake!

The British Museum WEM

Crystal Skull (British Museum)

Ghost Forest

today is the last chance to see Angela Palmer’s ghost forest project in Trafalgar Square running in conjunction with the UN summit on climate change, while Boris’ Christmas lights burn 24/7 up the road, bah humbug! Sorry, I do like the Christmas lights they are very pretty, but do they need to be on in the morning. Anyway I digress, 10 real rain forest stumps lay like giant tree carrion in the square, a chiling sight of what’s to come, oh whatever I’m off to the shops.

Angela Palmer’s ghost forest project in Trafalgar Square

All images ©WEM

More animal noises!

Staying with the theme of Erbie starting to make animal noises, I happened across this David Farrer exhibition - Africa Revisited at the small Rebecca Hossack gallery on Charlotte Street. Amusing large scale animal heads made from papier maché. It runs until the 5th of December so if you happen to be in the vicinity drop in and have a look, the interest is in the detail, the elephant has an apple with a ladybird in his mouth, and all the different printed paper used is legible. We got a vague trumpet noise for the elephant but everything else seemed to be: ‘a bear’!

Zebra head by David Farrer, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, Charlotte Street

Papier maché animal heads by David Farrer

All images: WEM

Rrrarrr!

Erbie also said ‘Rrrrar’ at the lions in Trafalgar Square!

Whistlejacket

‘

Whistlejacket by George Stubbs, in the National Gallery, London 2009

Took Erbie to see George Stubbs, Whistlejacket in the The National Gallery yesterday and he said ‘neigh neigh’, impressive you may think for a 14 month old, but not if I let slip that’s more or less all he’s been saying since before he was one!

Christmas Lights

Carnaby Street groovy 60’s Christmas Lights

Autumn Leaves

Russell Square

The Regent’s Park