Big giant sloths

We've been like big giant sloths this Christmas. We have gone to the park and we did make one disastrous attempt at post-holiday sales shopping, but mostly we've been hibernating. We've been watching tv and reading books and lounging around the house like big giant sloths.

Not yesterday, though. Perhaps it was the slightly less grey sky or the warmer temperatures, but I spent the morning gardening and the afternoon at the Natural History Museum.

We haven't been in a while, but I thought it might be a nice idea to see the animatronic dinosaurs and maybe have a look at the gems and minerals and so forth. I knew it would be crowded, kids are out of school and many parents are off work and kids love dinosaurs and well... We'd been at Christmas time before and knew the drill.

I had no idea exactly how croweded it would be. Apparently, the Natural History Museum has been cashing in on its holiday appeal. There's now a Christmas fair and a giant ice skating rink (which costs about $20 a head - seriously!) and a carousel.



Oh...and there's a big, giant queue to get into the Natural History Museum.



This queue stretched all the way from the door to the street in a snarling tangle of impatient children and weary adults - and it didn't seem to be moving any too quickly.

I didn't want any of that, so I told the Vol-in-Law that we should just find another museum (the Victoria and Albert and the Science Museum are just around the corner). But when went around the side and up Exhibition Road - we found that there were no queues to enter the museum from that side. We had to wait no longer than a few minutes and that to have our bags searched by a very grumpy security man. It wasn't worth the wait, but we did go through the slightly more boring entrance - without a big giant dinosaur skeleton gracing the main entry hall. But, it's possible to snake one's way through the earth history section and the minerals and so forth and into the fantastic main hall.



And on your way, you can find out what happens to big giant sloths:



We didn't get to see the animatronic dinos - as the queue for that was very long indeed. But we did get to see a very outdated exhibition on human evolution and a very up-to-date indoctrination exhibition on ecology for children. It was geared for the young'uns and had just enough facts in it to turn them into little eco-warriors and brow beat their parents with environmentalism.

We did spend a minute or two looking at "being green in the garden" - where I could quite happily say "tick, tick, tick" to most of their green suggestions. After all, composting is the main good thing you can do - and that helps you reduce the need for chemicals and increase your yields all the while decreasing pressure on the landfills. I felt quite saintly, having spent the morning spreading compost I made myself. The little eco-warriour exhibit was comparitively empty though- despite the fact that it had gruesome displays of tigers disembowelling antelope and crows pecking out the eyes of hares. I guess kids prefer to see extinct animals eating each other in animatronic fashion rather than badly stuffed kitty cats stalking a bevy of badly stuffed rats.