Scattered thoughts

We went on holiday to Norfolk this year, to this beautiful cottage called "Remus" in Larling, through this brilliant company who let holiday cottages in five locales, despite being called "Best of Suffolk" ;)

I was pretty excited about going, but didn't realise how much I really needed to get away from everything after the year we've had so far. And I really did need to get away, and feel miles better for having done so.

( Day One - Friday 3rd September - Travelling and settling in )

( Day Two - Saturday 4th September - Relaxing in the cottage )

( Day Three - Sunday 5th September - Bure Valley Railway and Great Yarmouth )

( Day Four - Monday 6th September - Banham Zoo (featuring Giraffes) )

( Day Five - Tuesday 7th September - The world's most disappointing Toy and Model Expo and England's only Whisky distillery )

( Day Six - Wednesday 8th September - IWM Duxford )

( Day Seven - Thursday 9th September - Norwich )

( Day Eight - Friday 10th September - Home again (with a stop at Bluewater en-route) )

It was really good to be away, but it was quite nice to get home again.

The fantastic news, and a good way to round off our holiday, is this was our last holiday in which I had to do all the driving, because on Monday, Ben passed his driving test first time \o/ (though this does mean I now have to share the car ;))

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Typical, that on the day the Government withdraws the plan to keep MPs expenses secret my MP should write back to me about voting against the proposed measure.

For good measure, I'm putting a copy of his reply here. Bits in italics were handwritten and not always very clear ;)

( Letter from Julian Brazier )

In other news, should you have any spare cash lying around (I know that this is unlikely given the current economic climate) and fancy putting it towards a cool cause, the National Railway Museum in York are trying to gather funds so they can finish their restoration of The Flying Scotsman. "Steam our Scotsman" - the campaign to raise money to finish the restoration.

I'm sitting here feeling really overwhelmed right now and the reason is today's trip to the Imperial War Museum's Holocause Exhibition.

The day started out early (5am - I was barely aware there was such a time ;)) and was on a train by half six. Got to Waterloo, had breakfast and wandered to the museum, getting soaked in the process (socks have only just dried off). Went into the museum and our first session of the day dealing with teaching sensitive topics. It was suggested that we try things like brainstorms (how much do you know about the Holocaust etc) as a way in and also brainstorm words we would apply to the victims, rescuers and perpetrators, and then use photographic resorces to prove these ideas wrong: not all victims were weak, pathetic or passive, not all rescuers are saintly and not all perpatrators were evil and they certainly did not look their roles.

Let me put it this way. Does ( this man )
look like the architech of mass murder to you? (if you know who he is try to look at the picture dispassionately - here he looks like a "nice" family man.) The reality is really quite shocking.

There were 20 images or so of this type and most of the time the people were not in the roles our first glance would have assigned them. It seems like a really good starter activity to use with children :)

Then came lunch and after that( Cut because some of the things I'm going to talk about are really distressing )

After that came the exhibition which I didn't find nearly as awful as the workshop. Some bits were horrid and made me very sombre, ( like things that are LJ cut to prevent undue distress )

Anyway, the exhibition was good, but the artefact workshop was better for achieving the aim of making the holocaust more real to the student (or regular person).

I urge you to go see this exhibition.

It can't be described in words, though I have tried here.

Amazing.

Wow.

Shamelessly cross-posted to my other journal