Today, I'll be bringing you an extremely quick post. Time is a precious commodity on a European vacation, and I havn't made my full eight hours of sleep since Wednesday or Thursday last week. I highly doubt that will change tonight, but I can dream, right?
Yesterday, I went to perhaps my favorite site in London thus far. After spending the day in the British Museum, me and my parents had only two more things planned for the day; Kings Cross station, and the British Library.
One of my better pictures from the British Museum.
Kings cross, as it turns out, was actually rather disappointing. Platform 9 and 3/4 was not a platform at all, but a tourist-oriented sign stuck in a wall someplace unrelated to that shown in the movie. Worse, there was a crowd of perhaps 50 individuals crowded around this useless sign, and so we skipped it all together. The real area between platforms nine and ten, we later found out, is terribly modern anyway.
With the station labelled a bust, we headed onwards to the British Library. Before we entered the display room, my dad informed me that there were, loosley quoted, "countless wonders" to be seen inside. For my part, I simply nodded and kept on walking. Everything in this country had countless wonders. What could this place offer that was special? The answer; books.
And as stupid as this sounds, I was actually more amazed by books that they had on display there then any of the museums or monuments I've been seeing over the last few days. They had some of the first bibles ever printed. They had an original copy of Beowolf. There were dozens of ancient, beautifully illustrated and preserved books, with the writing as clear as you might expect a ten year old book to be, as opposed to a novel hundreds or thousands of years old.
I didn't have my ipad to take pictures with (assuming we were allowed too do so), and so I couldn't take any photos to display here. This was a shame, as I would have liked to take pictures of some very early musical compositions for laura. There were hand-drawn sheets of medieval music, some of the first printed music, and even hand-written lyrics to yesterday written out by the Beatles.
My favorite section, however, came not with the music or religious texts on display. Instead, it came from the contemporary novels that could be found there. I've already mentioned Beowolf. There were also novels from authors like Virginia Woolfe, and Charles Dickens. Jane Austen's writing desk. The problem was, I could hardly read there unintelligible scrawl! Perhaps that's why, in the end, I was drawn to a telegram sent by an author who I forget the name of to his friend. In it, he talked about the play Waiting for Goudot, and I believe that he later went on to become a playwright himself. I found it funny- and perhaps a little embarrassing- when at the end the author signed off with something along the lines of 'I note that you didn't reply to my last telegram. I rather think you should have, if only because it took me a f#$king long time to type out." Interesting how he spends the whole letter calmly describing his life, and then drops the f-bomb like that!
But why was I embarrassed? My sisters might know why. Because, as much as I enjoy reading them, I'm terrible at responding to e-mails. So I'm sorry, Laura.
The library had so many books, it would be impossible to describe them all here. In fact, the total collection is apparently in excess of 150 million books! From what I understand, every book published in the UK has one copy sent to the library. That is clearly insane. Brilliant, but insane. Can I work there?
Overall, the library was an amazing experience. To see the amount of effort that went into these works, and see mint-condition (1) novels that I'd only ever heard about, was awe-inspiring. If you care at all for books, and happen to find yourself in London, do yourself a favour and check this place out. Alternatively, you can find digital copies of many of the books on the British Library's website. And you can actually flip the pages!
Thanks for reading,
-Mark
(1;) Mint condition; a numismatic term referring to a coin that is in a similar condition to when it was first struck, or minted. (I went through a coin-collecting phase a year or two back. Sorry about the random terminology. Then again, since me and Laura are the only ones who read this blog, and mint-condition is a reasonably common term that can refer to more then just coins, I feel this definition is close to useless. I already know what it means, and Laura's no fool, so... Anyways.)
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