Part of my post-Sardinia plan was to take care of business closer to home while getting a little more rest as well so that we didn’t travel as much for a few weeks but still had fun. Following the visit with our friends Hannah and Micah, that meant getting over to Milton Keynes to take care of some domestic errands like picking up a digital projector for the house so we could arrange the rooms differently and achieve a better separation of work and after-work hours. That also meant heading back to PC World, a place that loves the color purple more than any reasonable business should. They had a fantastic deal on a projector though so I really couldn’t complain.
My cashier’s turban was also purple. I’m not sure if that was required but it certainly seems to have been on purpose.
After that we went to Bletchley Park to tour the complex. I’d seen a film (Enigma) about the work that the codebreakers did back during World War 2 to break the Nazi code using the captured Enigma machines.
In addition to the code breaking material, they also had exhibits on children’s toys particularly during the wartime era. I’m fascinated by vintage toys and would probably own a ton if it weren’t for Bear’s somewhat OCD tendencies, so I had to satisfy my curiosity through the exhibit.
It’s hard to explain how this was really interesting and yet so sad at the same time.
This toy castle was played with by Stephen Hawking as a boy
While thankfully the anticipated gas attacks never came, this gas mask for babies was a stark, sad reminder of the fear that England lived in for the years of the war
On the lighter side, some do it yourself molds for lead soldiers. Just “ask your Mother which saucepan to use before boiling the lead on the stove”.
Bletchley Park also has an extensive section devoted to the work of Alan Turing, the mathematician and pioneering computer scientist who worked there during the war as part of the code breaking team. Without him, I shudder to think where we would be in the computer science field today. His work was light years ahead of anyone else, including the Turing Machine and the Turing Test. (I actually built a model of a Turing Machine in college using a little piece of software and I recall it took me way too many jumps to get the job done but I was just relieved that it worked in time for class.)
Statue of Turing — his 100th birthday was the week we visited
Alan Turing’s story had a very sad ending though as when he reported a burglary it became apparent he was in a relationship with the man who had broken in and Turing wound up prosecuted for being gay and underwent chemical treatments to avoid prison. He lost his security clearance, his work access, and died a few years later. (There’s some debate as to whether it was a suicide or an accident — the balance seems to be tipping more towards a chemical accident now.) He was relatively young and it was something like losing Newton decades before his time. The UK government has issued an official apology signed by David Cameron which is also posted in the museum.
Porgy, the teddy bear that Turing practiced his college lectures on (on loan from the Turing family).
On the morning we visited, the museum was running a test demonstration to show how the Enigma machines were used to translate messages. They had a secondary station set up at a remote location (OK, in some kind of shopping mall so it wasn’t all that remote) and people could go up to the desk there and send a message here to Bletchley Park. The message was received and put through the same procedures to decode using replica coding machines, including I believe a model of Colossus, the computer built to help in decoding. Because of the security clearances involved, the work of the Colossus creators wasn’t recognized until the 70s and later, so the history of computer science we now know began much earlier than previously thought. (They have an actual replica of Colossus as a part of the museum but we ran out of time. Fortunately the tickets are good for a full year so we’ll be heading back.)
Translation team at work
After the museum we went over to the shopping mall area, which is a little unique for England. Milton Keynes is something of a planned community and they have features you wouldn’t commonly expect, like…parking. We had lunch at a cafe in the mall area where we’d been once before and then over to T Mobile to get some answers about why Bear’s phone hadn’t worked in over 3 months. (I know that sounds pathetic but we honestly hadn’t had time off from everything that was already scheduled to come over and get something basic fixed like that.) They had to send the phone off, so we went over to IKEA to pick up some other needed items like a better chair for work since my back was starting to feel weird and some trays to carry food up and down the stairs. It’s only a matter of time before I trip on the stairs and do a glorious face plant complete with tikka masala up and down the stairs.
With all the business out of the way, we headed to the next door Xscape leisure center where they had lots of restaurants and indoor sports activities as well as a theater. We checked out the giant rock climbing tower and the indoor skydiving tunnel (the wind force keeps you aloft) where Bear Grylls had set a Guinness world record (no, that had nothing to do with Guinness ale).
Bear paid his respects to the most famous celebrity Bear of all–Bear Grylls.
Rock climbing up through the floors of the mall area
Indoor ski and snowboarding slope! (This was a birthday party for little kids riding on tubes and sleds down a marked off part of the slope.)
After checking out everything we’d like to come back to do, we headed to the movies which is usually my favorite part of the week. The Cineworld movie theater chain does lots of cool special events, like broadcasting operas, plays and other special events.
Cineworld also has Baskin Robbins right in the theater–good news for hungry bears!
They also bring back classic movies for special showings and this week they celebrated Jaws. I’ve seen Jaws at least a dozen times but never on the big screen and they chose to run a version with some additional scenes. It was one of my favorite movies to watch in grad school with my roommate Laura and we could pick up watching at any point whenever TNT re-ran it at night. (For some reason TNT ran nothing but Jaws, Aliens and The Road Warrior for about 18 straight months in 1996-97 but as those are three of our favorite movies, I never complained.)
If you thought they needed a bigger boat before, wait until you see Bruce the Stunt Shark on the big screen!
Next week we’ll be scouting more of the places we’ll be taking my Mom when she comes to visit, including Wrest Park!
Cambridge Chipmunk 