One of these is Barbie. The other is by Tim Burton. Can you tell which is which?
26 December 2024
I haven’t drained the iPad or keyboard batteries yet. We’ll be in the air another hour and a half. One more post?
The events in this post took place on December 19 and 20.
We had blue sky in the morning again. Like yesterday, it didn’t last long.
We were booked on a train to Dorridge, where we’d connect with a train to Stratford Upon Avon. Tiffany and Dan live there, in a historic edifice known as Clopton Tower. Five years ago we’d spent New Year’s Eve there, sleeping in the tower that’s connected to the house that was built, section by section, by subsequent owners.
When we arrived at Paddington Station, we found the train we’d planned to catch was canceled. The curse of NJ Transit follows Jack everywhere. A helpful ticket agent booked us on a different train, changing at Leamington Spa. We had to wait an hour for it, so we cobbled together a lunch from a couple of station shops and ate it on a bench in the train hall.
Dan met us at the train station when we arrived in Stratford. He drove us to the house, uphill all the way.
Millie, the four-year-old whippet, met us barkingly at the door. Tiffany handed us treats to give to Millie, and that made us friends.
We sat by the fire, eating salty snacks and drinking champagne. Millie settled in on her side of the sofa.
They cooked dinner. For dessert there was cheese and, “what are these?”
“Oat cakes.”
“OAT CAKES!”
They weren’t as thick or as sweet as the ones I’d had on the CAT ferry.
“Do you mean flapjacks?” Tiffany asked, and reached for a jar on the window sill. “I baked these,” she said, and pulled out a piece that looked like what I’d had on the boat but tasted sweeter.
They had cheese. I engulfed oat cakes and flapjacks.
I didn’t want to make Tiffany have to haul bedding down the narrow, winding stairs of the tower. We had the option of sleeping in the house instead. The bedroom still looked like a castle though, with gothic windows and heavy curtains.
We woke around 8:00 a.m. At 8:15 I opened the curtains to find myself in the middle of a full-sky sunrise. Five minutes earlier and I would have captured the pinks too.
Our room was next to the tower.
After breakfast (yogurt, fruit, French press coffee, and OAT CAKES!), we went up to the roof of the tower. If I lived here, I’d be up here for sunrises and sunsets every partly-cloudy day.
Each level on the tower has one room. The sitting room has a door that leads to the roof of the main house. We went out there to look around.
Below us, Dan was returning from Millie’s morning walk.
From the window inside the sitting room, we saw a magpie preening on a branch.
Tiffany and Dan had stuff to do; it was a weekday after all. We had 5:00 tickets for the Design Museum back in London. They dropped us off at the train station. This time our connection at Dorridge worked. It was still light out when we got back to the hotel.
I took a picture of The Standard from across the street. The red, pill-shaped thing bottom center is an external elevator that happened to be running at the time I took the picture. I’d seen it running once before, but never after when I took this photo. The elevator goes to the restaurant on the 10th floor, where we’d be having our Christas dinner. If you look at the top of the elevator and look one floor up to the right, that was our room. I tended to leave the curtain open.
We took public transport to the West Kensington section of London, where the Design Museum moved to a bunch of years ago. It used to be on the south bank of the Thames, a place where there was a lot of other stuff to do and see. Here, not so much. The street lighting was worthy, though.
Our timed tickets were for the Barbie exhibit first.
I had Barbies when I was a kid. My Barbie went around saying “Looks don’t matter.” My insecurity goes back a ways. I didn’t take any photos, but there were moments of recognition. “I had that camper,” I told Jack, and “The Dream House I had was an earlier version.” My sister’s Malibu Barbie was named Susan. One of us had cut her hair. I recognized Skipper, who, being a preteen, had a body more like mine. And I’d forgotten about the Hawaiian Barbie, who, like me, was not a blonde.
What struck me most was how much the later dolls aimed for women’s empowerment but somehow were also hyperfeminine. And now there are Barbies with wider hips and thicker legs. Had they been around when I was of the proper age, would they have helped with my body issues? Probably not. There were no fat tomboy Barbies on display.
Next up, Tim Burton.
I had no idea how prolific his career has been. The exhibit was mostly drawings, with some 3D renderings of his creations.
These photos uploaded in random order, but it doesn’t really matter.
To get home, we had to change buses at Hyde Park. I could see the Winter Wonderand carnival in the distance. We’d gone before, during the day, just walking in to see what it was all about and to take pictures. I was hoping we’d get to go back again this time.
Back in the hotel room, there was time enough to download and label pictures, then upload them to Blogger and to back them up to the cloud. If I took any pictures with my Canon PowerShot, I had to upload them to my iPhone first because setting up the link to the iPad would break the link to the phone, and I didn’t want that. The whole process took so long that there was no time to write before bed.
It’s 9:43 p.m. GMT, 4:43 p..m. on the east coast. We should be landing in less than an hour. I’m determined to get my money’s worth from this paid internet connection.
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