The Brompton Cemetery

Today we walked to the Brompton Cemetery, one of seven cemeteries created by an act of Parliament in the mid-1800s because inadequate burial space and high mortality rates were causing severe problems. Like no place to put the dead. Bodies were being buried just a few feet deep between houses, shops, and taverns.

The most famous of those cemeteries is Highgate, which we plan to tour next weekend. Between 1860 and 1870, there were 30 burials a day there.

No, it's not the entrance to Buckingham Palace. Just the Brompton Cemetery entrance.

"The public are permitted to walk in the cemetery daily." 

We is glad to know that.

A pretty crowded place. And real hard to keep those darn vines cleared.

Ok, what's she up to now?

London's Science Museum

Today friends Lynn and Neal drove in from Oxford to deliver the Robin-stuff they stored for her. After unloading the car they drove us to the Science Museum for great lunch and an afternoon of entertainment and enlightenment.

England has mandated that all museums are to be free to the public. A great bargain, especially when you have friends that drive you there and buy you lunch. I wonder if all the other people there got the same deal?

One of the exhibit halls featuring older machines.

An early car dashboard made of plastic.

A concept car.

I thought this guy was getting way out of line, but thank goodness I put on my glasses before I said anything.

The new iMower. Just a rumor so far, but I'll bet it's gonna be the next big thing.

Thai & Turkish cuisine alerts

A very short stroll in the neighborhood looks promising. Lots of shops and small restaurants very close by, including this Thai restaurant named @Thai and a popular-looking Turkish restaurant. We also took note of a pool hall / bar with BBQ. No telling what's another block or two away. Like the big Hammersmith Shopping Centre. We'll check it out more this weekend.

Thai restaurant Friday night crowd.

Pool hall and bar.

Shopping at Sainsbury's, about a 5 minute walk from here. Getting stuff for the little toy refrigerator in Robin's room. Actually, there's more cupboard storage and refrigerator space in her room now than there was in her dormitory kitchen last year. 

The Hammersmith 'hood

Rather than stumble through the Tube system with heavy bags, we took a cab into London, to the Hammersmith area where Robin rented a small B&B apartment.

Small, but twice the size of her dormitory room last year.

I wondered how the cab driver in Uxbridge would know how to get to some obscure address in London, until he pulled out his GPS, entered the address, and just followed the lovely female, English-accent voice instructions. 

The cab driver checks his GPS.

Before getting a cab we walked back to the Brunel campus so Robin could check the new settings for her laptop and iPad and make sure she could connect to the campus wireless network. On the way, we stopped at the graveyard again for a few more photos.

The graveyard entrance.

Robin said "Haven't I heard of someone named Max Headroom?" Yeah, and this might be where he's buried.

This paved path shortcut to the Brunel campus follows a babbling brook. Or, as similar water ways in New Mexico are called, a river.

Tomorrow friends Lynn and Neal are driving in from Oxford to deliver Robin's computer and several other boxes of stuff that they stored for her. 

We've unpacked, it's dark and rainy out, and we're going to go explore the immediate neighborhood.

Too good to be forgotten...

Walking from the Brunel campus back to The Red Lion, we passed the gated entrance of a graveyard and decided to check it out. It was about ten times larger than it looked from the entrance and had lots of interesting monuments, many in various states of disrepair.

This one got the expected comment from Robin: "Typewriter apostrophe! Arrgh!"

Fear and Loathing at HSBC

Interesting day on the Brunel campus. Robin went to the campus branch of HSBC (a huge bank here) to change her existing account to a fee-free account, as she'd been told she could do when she left here last September. But no, to do that, you have to provide proof of residence, which Robin has. Not just any proof will do. You must show proof of being a resident of a property that has been registered with some sort of official Estate Agent. Not only that, but to qualify for the no-fee banking account, you must deposit at least £500 in the account per month for the next year.

So Robin says "What does HSBC stand for?"

"Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation."

"Okay, never mind. I'll just keep the existing account and pay the darn fees." And of course, the monthly fees apply for the other nine months she's in the USA because closing the account would just mean going through the major pain of re-applying for another account next year.

I didn't get an HSBC photo. The photo here is in the computer services office where students go if they need help connecting to the Brunel WiFi network. It seems that Robin's password info got messed up during the student registration process earlier this morning and she couldn't get connected with her laptop or iPad. The guy pictured worked on it for almost an hour, then gave up and sent us to the other computer office where the real system administrators are who can make backend changes to the system. Sometimes it takes an hour or so for those changes to work, so we won't know until we're back on campus tomorrow if the connection is working. Or maybe they told us that to get us out of the office so they could go home.

Speaking of going home... Pub time.

Like Facebook, but with cider on tap

Ahhhh, Pubs: food, beverage, social networking, and atmosphere. Enjoyed a nice dinner downstairs, in the Red Lion.

When we checked in, the front desk lady asked if we wanted "tookies" for our room. As I struggled to process that question, Robin said "Yes, two keys might be helpful." She's so good with foreign languages.

Robin contacted friend Richard Kindersley, master stone carver/typographer/designer (www.KindersleyStudio.co.uk ). We met him in Rome about 12 years ago while with a group studying the lettering on temples and monuments of ancient Rome. Robin had a one-day stone-carving lesson in his studio a couple of years later when we visited London. We're planning a rendezvous with him next week.
Brilliant. Lovely. Indeed.