Back to the museum

I'm very happy to be back at the NHM this week. My commute is an hour each way instead of two, and there's no hanging round for the best part of another hour waiting for transport. I was last here in December, and there have been some changes since then.

The Hintze hall (the main bit) is mostly closed off for the dismantling of Dippy and, erm, mantling of the blue whale:

Note the blatant disregard for rules that a staff badge brings

The tunnel isn't huge, so staff are strongly encouraged to take alternative routes across the site. This means I've been exploring the basement between lectures. There are maps on most junctions. It's not unlike Ikea.

Someone was about to come through those doors. I took this, shoved the camera into my pocket and tried to act natural, not like a weirdo who takes photos of basements.

Plus, one of the many many cafes has been re-done as "The T. rex Grill". I was pleasantly surprised to see the correct name format, at least on the web page, though not the banners. A palaeontologist said last term that there was a debate going on among the staff over whether the decoration should have a feathery T. rex or not. It doesn't. But I suppose that's still open to discussion.

 

Staff member anonymised by a generic basal ornithopod, who is far too boring to ever have a grill named after it.

In other news, this week's topic is palaeontology. There's still some difficult computing but the lectures have been good. Last year's class went on a field trip, but this year there are over forty of us including visiting students from the other campus (their turn to take a bus) instead of seven, so that's out. I'm not disappointed. It would probably be more than a day and I have a strong history of hating fieldwork.

Instead, I've been in contact with a palaeontologist friend who runs fossil walks at the very same site. I'm hoping that the dozen or so of us interested can get down there for an unofficial field day with no write-up. Organisation will be a challenge, but the course hasn't been perfectly organised so far so I like to think we have low standards.

Finally, a strange biological phenomenon: a collection of fresh insect bites up my leg. In January. It's either global warming or fleas.