Dateline France, 20 April 1990
Report 17

I guess I've just been having too much fun here.  I've just come to
write up the notes on our trip to London, which took place back in February.

We departed for London by train during one of the many windstorms that
hit Britain and the continent this winter.  It caused the Hovercraft to
be cancelled, so we were rerouted to a ferry, which itself was late in
leaving.  We ended up making 12 or 13 changes of transport on the way to
London, arriving quite late in the evening.  We had rented an apartment
on Ovington Circle in South Kensington for several nights, but called the
agency, which promised to leave a key with someone else in the building.
Fortunately, the people with the key were back from dinner by the time
we got there.  Unfortunately, it was the wrong key.  Fortunately, the
key to the neighbors' apartment also opened ours.  Unfortunately, there
was no bed for the kids.  (They thought there was no bed for the adults,
but they were wrong.)  Anyway, we managed to work out these problems over
the next few days, and were glad to have a kitchen at our disposal, as
it meant that not every meal had to be eaten out.

We were right around the corner from Harrod's, but I always seems to
be leaving too early or coming back too late to go in while it was open.
It was fun to see them decorating the store windows during the time we
were there.  The theme was the Orient Express, with windows made up to
look like the insides of luxurious train cars.

Our apartment was a short walk from the Victoria & Albert Museum.  We
spent a morning there, and perhaps saw about a quarter of the collection.
We spent a lot of time looking at the Byzantine treasures, and also at
clothing through the ages.  They had several examples of the wire cages
worn under skirts when bustles and hips went to extremes.  In the 1700s
the hip extensions got so wide that a woman could not enter a normal
doorway head on.  There was a good special exhibit on the history of
plastic.  Early plastics all seem to have been produced to look like some
other material--ivory, tortoise shell, marble, silk, etc.  It wasn't really
until acrylics (Plexiglas, Lucite) came on the scene that the "plastic look"
that we know and love today took hold.  There was another exhibit of
photos of the insides of peoples' homes.  Kind of the opposite end of the
spectrum from what you would see in House & Garden--the TV-tray-and-porcelain-
figurine school of decorating was much represented.  The best part of the
exhibit was incidental.  Some woman was being interviewed about it for radio.
You could tell that she was "in the arts" by the way she was got up: dayglo
orange hair, Pepsi suspenders, red & white striped shirt.  We usually tell
Sarah not to stare at people, but she obviously wanted it.  Kaye's favorite
quote: "There's not enough actuality here."  The Jewelry collection is
great, though you have to enter a vault to view it.  I also spent some time
looking at armor.  Kaye had been reading something that explained why many
lances and axes had outward-facing hooks on them.  They are used to push
ladders away from the castle wall.

That afternoon we managed to get tickets to a matinee of "Me and My Gal."
It is a revival of a 1937 musical about a Cockney gentleman who turns out
to be the 18th Lord Hereford, and his efforts to integrate into British
high society.  It had wonderful sets and lots of good sight gags.  Sarah was
quite sad at the end because she didn't realize that the woman that the
Lord marries was his Cockney girlfriend made over (by Prof. Henry Higgins,
it's implied).  Sarah sang and danced the songs all the way to dinner.
When she gets back to Oregon, she is going to have all her friends over
so they can have a chorus line.

A few words on British cuisine.  England is definitely the land of the
sandwich.  A great change after the standard ham & butter, sausage and
cheese choices of France.  My favorite is a ploughman's sandwich: cheese,
a red pickle relish and lettuce.  (Though the Italians have some interesting
varieties too--like artichoke sandwiches.)  The crisps (potato chips)
are definitely better than in France.  Luke was able to satisfy his
craving for fish and chips with a portion reminiscent of Jesus feeding the
5000.  Beer comes in all grades, from 3.5% alcohol up to 9%.  Milk is still
delivered to the door, even to banks in downtown London, presumably for
afternoon tea.  America has made its usual contribution.  Standing in one
place in Picadilly Circus, I could see Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, Taco Time
and 2 Burger Kings.  The most unusual restaurant we encountered was in
a complex called Fusion, off the Circus, featuring fashion and fine eats.
It was a bunch of independent boutiques spread over split-level floors
with various kinds of music and videos playing and with 5 or 6 cafes and
small restaurants.  The restaurant that caught Kaye's attention featured
low calorie food, and priced every dish at one pence per calorie.  [Not
an unheard of concept in history.  Kaye's brother David told me that having
oil was a sign of affluence in China in the past, and one tried to impress
ones guests with the amount of oil used in the dishes served.  The bias
continues today in time of plentiful oil, with the result of dishes being
very oily for his tastes.]  Desserts were priced at two pence a calorie.
The bargains were Diet Coke and tea at 1 calorie each.  We also walked
through Chinatown one night and found some yummy buns and pastry for
dessert.

One morning was spent at the Science museum, which is just across from
the V&A.  An exhibit on Legos had just opened that morning, and it was
all we could do to get Luke to look at any of the rest of the museum.
They had Lego creations commissioned from various artists, architects
and engineers, including a Lego organ, a six-foot robot arm and some
wonderful masks.  Also huge bins of Legos for kids to build things from, and 
drawers full of special parts.  Also exhibits on the history and
manufacturing of Legos.  But it didn't say why there are no green bricks.
After that, I went to see the computer exhibits, which included pieces
of the first Manchester machine--an analog computer built out of Meccano
(similar to an Erector Set) parts, based on Vannevar Bush's Differential
Analyzer at MIT.  The interesting thing was that although the Manchester
machine was just a prototype for a custom machine, it could obtain 2%
accuracy in computations.  I finally think I understand how a torque
amplifier is supposed to work (without which the analog gear and dial
machines could not have worked), which makes me all the more incredulous
that the early analog machines operated at all.  (The integrator wheels
also seem a bit Rube-Goldbergish.)  Somehow, I don't think I'd be working
on object-oriented databases today if computer hardware had continued to
develop in that vein.**  I saw Babbage's Difference Engine and parts from
his programmable machine.  (I've heard a rumor that the Difference Engine,
though once operable, no longer works--it was disassembled to make copies,
but someone didn't realize that seemingly identical gears were in fact
different and had been matched by hand.)  There was also some recently
declassified pictures of the Colossus codebreaking machine that Alan
Turing worked on.  It was operational in 1943, was programmable and
electronic.  Hence it might challenge some of ENIAC's "firsts".  (I
gather it wasn't a general-purpose machine, but rather aimed at cracking
codes of the German "Enigma" (or was it "Ultra"?) machine.)

A morning wasn't nearly enough time for me, so I went back to the Science
Museum with the kids on our last day.  We each chose a section to visit:
Sarah picked space travel, I picked Plastics and Luke chose a special
exhibit on Engineering Futures (and careers in Engineering).  I think
Sarah made the best choice.  A lot of interesting material from launches
by early rocket societies, and on early Russian theoretical studies.

The reason I left the Science Museum early the first day was to go up
to Cambridge and visit Alan Borning at the Xerox PARC Cambridge research
center.  Alan is also on sabbatical this year.  On the train trip up
I could see some of the damage the windstorms had caused in England.
The recent one hadn't knocked down that many trees around London, but
it was causing considerable flooding in parts of Wales.
He showed me all the nifty video toys they had, for piping images
between offices and spying on each other.  During a break we took a walk
over to the Whipple Museum which covers history of science.  There was
an exhibit on a French instrument maker named Renoir, and I got to see
a standard for the Great Pyramid inch.  We also passed the Cavendish
Labs where Maxwell spotted the first electron.  But the electron wasn't
on display--out for repairs or something.  We also took a spin through
Kings College, which is beautifully kept up, at least the grounds.  Lots
of flowers in beds and in window boxes.  Alan's 5-year-old son David has
become interested in columns this year, learning their parts and orders, and
searching for examples around town.  Alan gave him a column kit for
Christmas, which was assembled by visiting various wedding cake shops.

While I was in Cambridge, the rest of the family took a bus tour around
London, which got them out of a rain storm.  Luke was most interested
in the different uniforms that guards were wearing various places.

The next day we a good while at the Tower of London.  We saw the crown
jewels, the apartments where the Beefeaters live, torture instruments and
a wonderful armory in the White Tower.  The White Tower was built by
William the Conquerer not long after he had built a fortification there
in 1066.  That fortification incorporated some existing Roman walls.
We visited Bloody Tower, where Sir Walter Raleigh was kept, and walked
along the walls between some other towers.  

Anchored in the Thames near the Tower is HMS Belfast, a WWII cruiser that
you can visit.  I remember visiting a US battleship (Missouri?) up in
Bellingham (Bremerton?) was I was much younger, but that tour didn't
cover nearly as much of the ship as one can explore on the Belfast.  The
Belfast did not see a whole lot of action in WWII because its hull was
bent by a mine explosion shortly after it put to sea, and it needed
extensive repairs.  It did see action in the Korean war, before being
brought into London in 1973.  The gun turrets were interesting, as was the
machinery to turn it and the elevators to feed it powder and shells
below decks.  There was a map showing which part of the London metropolitan
area are in the range of its guns (pretty near all of it).  We saw the
boiler and engine rooms, the chapel, the laundry, officers quarters and
mess, and the galleys.  The galley help got to sleep over the tables
in the crew's mess, slinging their hammocks from the hooks provided.
The Belfast also had an Admiral's bridge and quarters, as it was meant
to be the flagship of a fleet.

From the ship we headed to St. Pauls Cathedral, which has truly impressive
mosaics.  We also tried to see Westminster Abbey, but there was a service
on and we could only look in the windows.  We did visit St. Margaret's
church next door, which is kind of like the chapel for Parliment (and
which is being attacked by wood-eating beetles).  We strolled by the
Parliment buildings, and the tower with Big Ben.  (All you trivial
experts out there of course know that Big Ben is neither the tower or
a clock but a bell.)

We had a chance to watch some English TV in the evenings.  Luke's favorite
show was called Crystal Maze.  It's a game show, but it is truly challenging
by standards American game shows.  It's played by a team of six in a maze.
The maze has four regions, something like Mediaeval, Industrial, Aztec and
Space, which give a theme for the decor and the tests.  Each region has
a number of rooms, each containing a some kind of test of skill, physical
dexterity, mental problem solving, etc.  One member of the team goes into
the room try to pass the test in a certain amount of time.  The teammates
scream suggestions from outside.  If the test is passed, the team gets
a crystal, which are exchanged for prizes at the end of the game.  If the
person stays in the room past the time allowed without getting the crystal,
they are captive, and must be ransomed for a crystal.  (The team is free
to leave him or her there--the interpersonal dynamics are fun to watch.)
I'm surprised it hasn't made it to the US.  (Wheel of Fortune has a
version on French TV.  I've never seen it, but I notice it in the newspaper
because it is always top in its time-slot in the ratings.  Who says French
tastes are more cultivated than American?)

I also watched a number of sporting events on the telly: cricket, snooker
(still haven't fathomed the rules for that), sumo wrestling, lawn bowling.
No darts, though.  I guess that is just too fast-moving for English sports
fans.  I was able to see some of the differences between English lawn bowling
and French boules.  There are some trivial differences: lawns versus dirt
playing surface; wooden, oblate ellipsoids for balls in England versus
spherical metal balls in France; rolling the ball versus lobbing it.  The
significant difference is that in the French game you smoke cigarettes,
scratch your crotch and say "merde" a lot--the English have yet to make
these improvements in their game.

We did most of our traveling on the underground.  It is crowded at almost
all times of day, much of the equipment is pre-WWII.  (Remember the
fire that started in a wooden escalator in Kings Cross station? (Wonder
how Charing Cross got its name??))  The fares are higher than in Paris,
as the London underground is not subsidized.  All is not bad, though.
There were verses of poetry posted in cars on the Underground, by the
likes of Walt Whitman and D.H. Lawrence.  Musicians in the underground seem
to make more money.  They also seem more professional.  I saw one spot
where a guitarist was playing and a trumpet player was warming up to go
on next.

We did get to ride the Hovercraft on the way home.  It is fast (40
minutes Dover-Boulogne) but real noisy.  Sarah taken aback when we
arrived at Dover to board because "The ship's not in the water!"
Besides being fast, the Hovercraft has the advantage of needing 
minimal docking facilities.  Simply pave a piece of beach and fly it
right up.  This is important, because there is no deep-water port
at Boulogne.  Ferries have to go to Calais, which is farther from
Paris, so Hovercraft ends up being faster on two counts.

[** But who knows.  Imagine that the computer can control a milling
machine, and when you do a create(Class) a new object is milled and
attached to the computing machine.  The object might have shafts and
gears and cranks, and setting those in motion is like sending a message.
Encapsulation is just slapping a cover on it so that some of the gears
and shafts aren't accessible externally.  The permanent/temporary object
problem could be solved by milling permanent objects from brass and
temporary ones from ice.  Then you just let the machine heat up a little
bit to do garbage collection.  I'm still working on inheritance, but
it's clear the model supports object identity in the strong sense.]