You're a beautiful woman probably...

I mentioned some time ago paying a visit to London and being amazed at the V & A Museum . A flying visit on our recent trip confirms that it's not resting on its laurels and has an excellent new restaurant along with an air of efficiency and a feeling of abundance. In comparison, what a disappointment the Science Museum is! Apart from the general lack of thematic cohesion (very few of its exhibits seem to have clearly marked beginnings or endings, any clear chronological sequence or a definite theme other than that they're about (say) aviation), several exhibits are woefully out of date. The "flight" display, for example, referred to Concorde as if it were still a commercial airliner when, in fact, it made its last flight in 2003. As if this weren't bad enough, we could find nothing in the display on computing later than the 1970s! For a major national museum to ignore a whole chunk of history in this way is a huge let-down. Even if there are problems with ...

John and I went to York yesterday for a day trip (an hour from Newcastle on the train) and confirmed my impression that it's a great place to visit in the colder months, because of the number of good museums. The morning was spent wandering the old streets, and then we had a pizza at the rather good La Piazza restaurant in Goodramgate, in what looked like an authentic Tudor building. Looking round the town again, I was surprised to see that a number of buildings there seem to have survived from the sixteenth century: as far as I'm aware, Newcastle only has one or two (not counting churches or the Castle itself) and Gateshead has none. In the afternoon, we went to the York Castle Museum, somewhere I hadn't been for maybe 20 years, and it was excellent - lots to see. I've only posted one photo on my Flickr pages so far, but I'll try to get my finger out and put one or two more on there.

I'm on the way back from another trip to London, which included a very enjoyable visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. John and I were impressed with its vastness, the elegance of the building and the sheer number of curios and treasures there. What makes London so fascinating to visit is the richness (in more senses than one) of the culture there. When you consider that the V&A is just one of London's museums and that there's also the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery - to name just a few - then it starts to dawn on you how many hundreds of millions of pounds of public money have been (and continue to be) lavished on London, to the detriment of other parts of the country. I know that London has its grim Council Estates and higher property prices, but the arguably greater social problems and higher gun and knife crime than the North must, if anything, be evidence that money spent on a region doesn'...