A trip away - part 2.

On Thursday we (again just the girls, as S was working again) went to the very wet and muddy park to take Megan for a nice long walk in their local park and also a play in a couple of the playgrounds there. 

Cousin Meg.

M and I had a couple of rounds of chess, unlike Aunty P (who has some tactics) I did not go easy on M and beat her the first time, but the second time she beat me.  Then after a quick lunch we headed back into the town centre.  K & M had been singularly unenthusiastic about the idea of checking out the museums, after some discussion we agreed that, since the three museums we had agreed sounded as though they might be interesting were all free (one of the reasons for choosing them in the first place!), if K & M couldn't find anything interesting we could move on to the next one pretty quickly.

After discovering the one we went to first didn't open until 2 o'clock we started off at the Museum of the History of Science.  K & M like to do trails in museums and there was quite a selection here.  They chose one about telescopes and astronomy and we set off.  Apart from the telescopes, the part that caught our attention the most was the medical section.  We talked about how doctors used to bleed people because at the time they believed that illness was caused by an imbalance in the four different types of fluids or 'humours', we remembered that blood, phlegm and bile were three of them, but thought the fourth was water (it was actually yellow and black bile as separate ones).  Other things we talked about were why Aunty P works in an operating 'theatre' (she's a theatre nurse), because early operations were like a performance by the surgeon with lots of people in the 'audience'.  I also spotted this, which apparently was 'used by Sir Alfred Garrod' - I can't imagine he got much milk out though!

A breast pump from around 1870.

There was a temporary exhibition about x-ray chrystallography, which started with a very good animated video.  Both the girls and P & I found it very interesting and it fitted in really nicely with what K and I had been talking about last week about the structure of a water molecule.

Moving on we returned to the, now open, Bates Collection of Musical Instruments.  There were a lot of instruments!  We were each given a handset to listen to some of the instruments being played and given that there were a few instruments to have a go on, I was quite surprised how long K & M spent going round looking and listening first.  Then we had a go on a few including a krumhorn and, far and away M's favourite, a serpent.

M on the serpent.

Here's M on the serpent, which she would now like to learn (I'm trying to persuade her to at least start with a more conventional brass instrument which would be easier to find a teacher for!) and K on the krumhorn.

It took quite some persuading to get M to put the serpent down and come for a hot chocolate and cake!  After which we returned to the Thirsty Meeples Board Game Cafe for me to spend some of my birthday money on Forbidden Island (incredibly good value for money!), before heading back to Uncle S & Aunty P's.  I had previously mooted the idea that we could just pop buy and pick up the game, but the idea of going there and not playing a game was one that could not be borne by K & M and so we stopped and, since Aunty P had the game but it wasn't working any more, had a very quick go at Operation (just the trying to get bits out, not a proper game) before getting bored and having a go at Ticket to Ride which was much better.  We only had one go and all concentrated on trying to make our own routes rather than trying to scupper others', which I would imagine would be a tactic that some might embrace.  It was a close run thing between M and Aunty P, with Aunty P edging it.

Once home we had tea and then got Forbidden Island out and played that while waiting for Uncle S to get home from work after collecting A from the station on his way, but by that time it was pretty late, and so time for K & M to head off to bed.  More tomorrow!