It was somebody's birthday. Let's call it Isaac Newton's, seeing as he was born on either December 25th or January 4th (if you've gone along with this newfangled Gregorian calandar), and The Fridays Christmas ride fell in between. It was a beautiful day for
The Scientists of London.Fellow blue plaque spotter Claudine met me on the train. An honorary citizen of Wales (
I’ve been; I’m very cosmopolitan), she was visiting her mum for the holidays and possibly coordinating an attack on Hastings. My notes are unclear on the latter.
All in a day's workShe hadn’t been able to bring her bike, so Santa provided when we got to London Bridge station.
It wasn't immediately apparent if Santa was going to "regift"It had spokey dokes, an enhancement I'm not that familiar with. My research trip to Wikipedia yielded the following: "When the bicycle user pedals at a slow speed, the beads slide up and down the spoke, resulting in noise. When speed is increased the beads move to the outside of the rim due to centripetal[sp] force and cease to make sound." Centripedal* force? Surely Sir Isaac would've had them on his bike if da Vinci had been more on the ball and invented one.
* Click for science
Fanciful spelling aside, there appears to be some confusion with centrifugal force. Perhaps this diagram will help:
What I take from that is spokey dokes can also be used as weapons.
I hadn't registered, which might have put me on the naughty list.
As I didn’t plan on going to the pub at the end, I figured that put me in a legal grey area.
The leader gave the usual talk.
There were familiar faces and noses.
Dokes weren't the only ornaments. This is from Uri Geller's 'Spokes' collection.
Then we were off. There was a queue for the Waterloo Bridge.
I couldn’t tell you much about the stops, as I wasn’t always in hearing distance of our guide and London's accoustics aren't ideal. I remember that Isaac Newton came up.
Who knew there would be a quizWe passed Alexander Fleming’s house in Chelsea, though I didn’t know it was Chelsea at the time as I wasn’t keeping track. A confession: my first thought on glancing at the name was “It’s across from the MI6 building, where Bond used to flirt with Moneypenny.” Wrong in all kinds of ways.
I dutifully took pictures of plaques.
This one at Imperial Collage was timely, as I watched Bohemian Rhapsody the other day.
You'll recall that Galileo, one of the giants on whose shoulders Newton stood, gets a shoutout.
Nombu-Goto is a thing – it's not lyrical filler!Plastered on the bus stop in front of this centre of learning was a brain teaser:
Here, put your glasses onDid the econ student forget the contractual apostrophe (for are we not making a contract with grammar when we communicate? No?), or come to realise the error of they're ways?
I went my own way after the mass evacuation to the Science Museum loos, which it only strikes me now was the apposite venue.
The green lung of Hyde Park had a pleasant case of pneumonia
and a saver of souls on duty.
To many cyclists, the city is like a bad case of brambles,
Oh this is just foreplay
He also invented eggs
Benedict.
but I still can't resist its gravity. Maybe I'm
cut from the same cloth.Trafalgar Square is nearly always my last stop.
I also can't resist the National Gallery's inexhaustible supply of
people in funny hats (would also suit E.M. Forster,
around the corner), nor the
parade of life.
Lost property: pay up or the bobble gets it