Of museums, cake and their role in educating the young.

The great project of the English Middle Classes is the education – if not edification – of their children and any poor mite who falls into their clutches.  To this end no Saturday morning is incomplete without car loads of the unfortunates being dragged to take part in whatever dreadful craft activity the local museum has managed to tenuously collect with its rather thin collection.  Having been cleaned of glitter, one of the labours Hercules didn’t manage, the little lambs will be sent without word of consolation to some dreadful circus skills ‘workshop’ where they will learn that the origins of the word ‘fun’ was only used as a term for deceit because the fey looking ‘facilitator’ in a stark primary coloured boiler suite is not delivering much of the promised enjoyment.  Finally to violin lessons of such degrees of vileness that should Mozart hear it he really would have been considering a career in market gardening rather than being held accountable.  All the time the miserable wretch stares out of the window at their less fortunate chums who have been abandoned by uncaring adults and reduced to eating chips and having larks.

The hols are upon us again and Mrs The Hon Sec has volunteered our services to take a child somewhere.  I think it might be a god child, possibly a great nephew, I lose count but I’m pretty sure there is some formal association going on and not just competitive do-gooding.  Well, it could be worse I thought; off to the ‘National War Museum’, tanks to clamber over and dioramas of the sieges so obscure that even the participants haven’t heard of them.   Then buns, books and a return home with some model of a small cannon that will never be moved for the shelf it was dumped on all are the hallmarks of a day well spent. 

 

Apparently, this was not the plan.  We were not to go and see how the NWM was dealing with its change of name to ‘The Conflict Resolution Heritage Centre’, nor what the ‘Seeing the other chap’s point of view’ exhibition was like.  Off to South Ken we went, young sprig in toe, to visit the Prince Consort Museum of Made things.  I am a tolerant man and always prepared to make the best of things.  Case are case of silverware does make a chap wonder what the point was, after all, it chills the food and all those twiddly nymphs and shepherds make drinking from an ornate tankard a hazardous undertaking.  I expect the cad who ordered these abominations never had to polish them.  I try to put myself ‘somewhere else’ but even I could hear the increase in general hurrumphiness from Mrs The Hon Sec.

 

I first assumed that – what was the child called – had not shown enough appreciation of the turn of the century cupcake holder, which normally led to a detailed lecture on the role of the Arts and Crafts Movement in tea time rituals.  We were safe around the Bauhaus which my sweet wife regarded as ‘fit only for stationary cupboards.’  No, it was not the lack of appreciation which was raising the feelings of ire but the lack of cases.  Once upon a time the place was crammed floor to ceiling cabinets of embroidered table linen, each with its own hand written label.  I remember spending a whole day watching Mrs The Hon Sec progress up such a gallery, notebook in hand, carefully examining each and every item and being as unmoveable as the Rock of Gibraltar when the staff came to lock up.  It is amazing how long ‘five minutes more’ can be stretched.  I believe some science chaps are excited as it breaks the laws of physics as previously understood.

 

 The blasted museum had decided to become ‘relevant’.  This meant locking nine tenths of the stuff away in the cellar and showing the odd piece in an artfully spot lit platform.  Mrs The Hon Sec was not pleased.  She is not backward in expressing this.  It begins with random exclamations along the lines of ‘how I am I supposed to…..’, sidles aggressively into ‘and what are we meant to glean from that!’ and ends with an all-out tirade at whatever poor benighted Saturday girl is wearing the branded tee-shirt of hopelessness and just happens to be passing by, even if they had only been sent to fetch fresh supplies of cuddly raptor toys for the shop.  The assault on the probity of the institution is never softened by the preamble ‘I know this is not your fault but….’

 

In modern parlance ‘I took one for the team’.  Seeing the growing wrath welling up in Mrs The Hon Sec in being denied the opportunity to compare Bakelite buttons across the decades, I offered up the possibility that it was elevenses and possibly a small baked product and a cup of tea may be ‘just the ticket.’

 

I am a moderate man.  I have travelled the world and mixed with chaps of all creeds, colours and preferences for Rugby codes.  I have been thrown out of better places but never ones that wanted to charge the daily wage for a artisanal worker for what was, after all, a bun with a bit of extra drizzle on it and a name invented by someone learning Italian from a book with vital pages missing. 

Thank the Lord the neighbouring parks authorities have not entirely missed their vocation, and it is still possible to let young things run off a sugar induced burst of energy with the possibility of a minor graze being used to extract extra ice cream.  I suspect next year I may not be required for duty.