Our Trip to the British Library

This is kind of a more personal post, chartering last Friday. Why? Because, Katy, me and the rest of my "book club" went to the British Library. And I'm going to tell you what happened. You ready?


Well, technically this isn't at the British Library, but to start with, we spent 20 minutes walking from school to the train station. As we were crossing the bridge above the tracks, we saw the train coming. So what did we do? Caused a stampede. And then we accidentally got on the train in the QUIET ZONE. Quiet. Right. Actually it was quite fun. Me, Baka, Mimz and Katy wrote on paper and to eachother and actually stayed quieter than could be expected.

So we got off at Marylebone station. And then we were told we would have to WALK to the library. Cue complaining. A lot of it. So we walked, in the freezing cold, and we got fairly excited about the fact that there was real grass in a block somewhere. We are easily excited.

Finally, we got to the library. And we took photos and we blocked up the entire pavement.
There, we waited in the courtyard. Now think. Book club + biggest library in England. What were we excited about? Yep, you guessed it. The fact there was somewhere selling warm stuff.  Warm food. After complaining about the fact the parent supervisors were getting coffee and we weren’t, we went inside.

And got overexcited about a bench. Because it was a seriously cool one. It was in the shape of a book with a metal chain. And then we went downstairs to where there was a locker. And the thing that caught our attention most. It was this art thing, 3D, when looking at it from a certain angle looked flat with the most amazing perspective work in it. We spent most of our time walking back and forth looking at it from different angles. Paradoxymoron, go look it up. It is amazing.

Then Julian Walker met us and took us round the lower bit. We saw a printing press and he explained how it worked. Then we all had a  go at folding paper so that all the pages were in the right order. We weren’t told until we were halfway through it that it wouldn’t be readable as the fold at the top was closed.

Then we went up to the gallery with lots of original manuscripts. I can’t begin to describe how awesome it was to see these things that we’re somewhat familiar with in the author’s own handwriting.

Then we were told to go and look at one case in particular and see what we could learn from it. Katy and I chose the music case and realised that our own composing in Sibelius were totally readable compared to the originals of things like Handel’s Messiah. We also learnt the Beatles couldn’t read sheet music.

Another group of four told us about the technology of books. We decided scrolls were cool, and that stone slabs were useful for hitting people around the head with. Of course the day was productive.

After a final get together with the whole group and Julian, we got to the most important, and looked forwards part of the day. Lunch. We went a little crazy (crazier) in the lunch room, before being chucked out as the next school wanted to come in.

Then it was time for the shopping, and we all jsut stood around and wrote in Narcissa’s copy of Mess. So now, whenever she opens it, it falls open at the right page for her to lose the game.

Finally it was time to go home. Back to school. As we ended up on the train a little earlier than expected, we sat and waved out of the window at passers by.  It was a good day.

Yep, we do have photos. And yes, we do have videos. But you can't see them because we'd rather you didn't track us down. And as a final note, names have been changed to protect the not-at-all-innocent.