Show us yer props!

On Saturday Kevin and I eventually met up in London following a spectactuarly unsuccessful attempt which saw us wandering round on both sides of the Thames, mobile phones glued to ears and trying vainly to spy one another since we both thought we were standing in the same place. My telling Kevin that I was standing in front of the Royal Festival Hall would have been more helpful if:

• I'd been slightly more specific than this
• Kevin had known where the Royal Festival Hall was
• the sign that Kevin found saying, amongst other things, "Royal Festival Hall" hadn't at some point previously been swivelled round 180°, meaning that he strode off in the opposite direction.

We ended up having to navigate by landmarks as varied as the Wheel and "a man dressed all in gold" (a mime), and eventually found each other. Sheesh. I never knew it could be so hard to locate someone when you've pre-arranged a meeting place and a meeting time, and you both have mobile phones. Je suis inutile.

Another good point to note for future reference is that "I'm on the Millennium Wheel side of the bridge" means that someone's on the Millennium Wheel side of the bridge, not necessarily the Millennium Wheel end of the bridge. Gah. We've never been good at directions.

We wandered around London until the evening, when we went to the Lord Of the Rings exhibition at the Science Museum, which was drool-worthy. Particularly noteworthy were the extremely life-like Boromir lying in his boat (I half expected him to suddenly sit up until Kevin said something very similar, at which point I four-fifths expected him to suddenly sit up), and one display showing various props and costumes at different scales - there was an example of the material used for Frodo's jacket, and they even had the weave of the cloth made to different scales.

One thing that did surprise me was how enthralled I was by the artwork that was on display - I've never been much of one for art, but it was really beautiful. The exhibit that I found slightly disturbing, on the other hand, was the display of prosthetics - what you can see is a glass wall of a cabinet absolutely crammed full of them. On first hurried glance out of the corner of my eye, all I saw was a large display full of feet, and isolated ears, which almost made me jump.

We had a leisurely scout around the Science Museum shop, which features a huge range of fun gadgets, toys, and suchlike. There was the screwdriver with a spirit level in the shaft... the periodic table ties (always a classic)... the globes with raised surfaces for mountains... the egg-timers containing bubbles instead of sand ("Bubbles which defy gravity and float upwards!")... the build-your-own suspension rollercoaster... the t-shirt with hazard symbol declaring "IRRITANT"... Best of all was - actually, I'll let Kevin tell that one :-)