pumpkinstrokemarrow

We decided that yesterday we should have our very own Olympic experience, getting as close to the action as was comfortable.

Started off the proceedings at Epsom station a good two hours after the rush to Dorking to see the lycras grinding up Box Hill, by which time all was quiet and all the electronic gates were working satisfactorily. Took a train to Hampton Court where there was more lycra action promised for the afternoon. Hundreds of barriers and hundreds of security people, these last looking young, foreign and idle. Not many lycra spotters at this early hour so we were able to nip into the Palace without any bother, a Palace which was eerily quiet for a summer Saturday afternoon. So quiet that while they had fired up the barbecue in the kitchen experience, they only had plaster meat lumps, unlike the last occasion I was there (with FIL) when they had real meat lumps.

First stop was the tarting experience, a collection of paintings and other artefacts celebrating the sweaty court life of the Stuart restoration. Lots and lots of paintings from the Lely & Kneller partnership: maybe they had teams of apprentices to do the boring bits while the maestros themselves just put their imprimaturs on the nearly finished products. Interesting to see how alike all the ladies looked. Was this just the effect of their all being dolled up in the fashions of the day? Which I was intrigued to learn included the ladies wearing what passed for nighties for the first part of the morning, the time of day when one would sit (or stand, or lie) for one's portrait. Would all the ladies in a similar collection of photographs from the 1960's look similarly similar to the viewer of the 2160's?

I was also intrigued to learn that the point of beauty patches was to cover up smallpox scars, a disease which looked to have carried off a good proportion of those painted, with childbirth accounting for a good proportion of the remainder: TB did not seem to get a look in with this lot and I wondered why, without coming to any conclusion. Something else to ask Mr. Google in a quiet moment. On the other hand, Barbara Villiers lived and scandalled to a ripe old age, in which she was the subject of a rather splendid portrait. At which point I paused to ponder on the use of these rather grand rooms for an educational display, complete with the sound and light effects thought to be a necessary ingredient of such displays these days. First thought was that it was rather odd; Queen Mary II must be turning in her grave. Second thought was that it was hard to find a sensible use for such rooms - and as they were, they were not nearly as dull as the more or less empty rooms we came across later in William III land.

Then onto the Chapel, the Kitchens, Henry VIII land and said William III land. Quick whizz around the gardens, a little past their early summer best now but still looking pretty good. Meantime much noise from the main road signalled Olympic activity. Leave things for half and hour or so, by which time it was safe to venture out into Olympic land, from which the not very large crowds were rapidly dispersing while the older security guards extracted the last drops of their temporary glory. Amused to see that the prime corner site between the railway station and the river which has been derelict for years and which is still, I believe, the subject of a long running dispute between nature trusties, heritage trusties and fat cats about future use, had been cleaned up and grassed over so as not to make a bad impression on our visitors. So there is at least one useful by product of the games, albeit temporary.

10 minute wait for a train onto which the whole of the waiting crowd was loaded and so set off for the return to Epsom, accompanied by a herd of very cheerful orange clad Hollanders who told me, once they grasped what I was asking them, that they did indeed come from the Holland region of the Netherlands. And so we completed our brush with the Olympics. Run quite close enough, thank you.

Souvenir picture above of some impressive looking temporary plumbing behind some temporary Palace marquee or other.