Back from London/Off to Glasgow

I just returned from a couple of days with the glamorous, talented and wonderful Jenny at the Palace of Solitude--and what a palace it is. After meeting in Highgate Monday night, we chatted our way back to the PoS and then met up last night with a group of friends from University, some of whom I hadn't seen in more years than I want to calculate. All of them were as wonderful now as then--it's just incredible that so much time passed and yet it was as though it was yesterday that we were hanging out in Whitstable, Canterbury and Herne Bay. Jenny brought along some amazing photos, including the one of me with a tray on my head, another with Paul wearing a Tippex moustache and goatee and one where I'm wearing large toy sunglasses and have some kind of spoon in my mouth. Lots of party pix, some graduation pictures that I've never seen (for some reason, Dad didn't bring a camera or may have taken photos he didn't develop). There was even one of my friend Bruce and I in our gowns--alas, that would be the last time I saw him but I hear he's doing well.

I went to the Imperial War Museum yesterday and it deserves a separate post. If you are ever in London, go. There's a WW I trench, complete with sounds and smells, an entire 1940-1 house, an amazing evacuation exhibit (my Mum was evacuated as a baby in the latter round of evacuations during the Blitz), a blitz exhibit where you go into an air raid shelter during an attack (again sounds and smells are reconstructed). Plus the three Holocaust floors are both informative and moving. Plus the WWI exhibits put that battle in the clearest historical context I've seen (confession--one chapter in my book is on WWI). Plus the gardens are beautiful. And it is all free, except for special exhibits. I was there for over three hours and could have seen more. I also found great granddad's name in the computer database listing the Blitz dead which was important to me--and to my Dad.

I'm off to my conference tomorrow, so I'm typing in corrections now, working on my Powerpoint slides and generally wondering where the time has gone--and where the summer has gone. We're nearly half way through already.