British studies: Day 6

Today was a day filled with magical wonder.  We entered King's Cross today.  I have been waiting to see Platform 9 3/4 for 7 years.  No big deal, right?  Well today I adorned my Harry Potter/Game of Thrones hybrid shirt and my hufflepuff hat and threw a trolley at a wall(okay so it wasn't quite like that, it was actually part of a trolley already in the wall, but still!)  The little shop was amazing!  I bought a souvenir magnet, I am saving a larger purchase for Warner Brothers.

I forgot my luggage!

By afternoon, we went to the British Library and had a guided tour by Kevin Mehmet, an Independence Day and American enthusiast.  Turns out there are those who are just as fascinated with how the other half lives!  He was quite funny and the British Library was quite impressive.  I want to spent more time with their displays, which contain Beowulf and a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, and also see what they could offer me on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The library has around 1700 staff members and collected all published works that are put out within one month of their publishing.  To prove this, we not only saw a scale model(which showed us the library is "built like a ship") but also saw the large glass encasement that runs from the ceiling through the underground.  It is in a cooled, controlled environment, and even has several evacuation procedures.  They are interested in research and digitization, offering patrons hands-on opportunities with rare books only if they have an academic reference.  If not, the work is digitally sent.  Their librarians ask for one hour and ten minutes for retrieval.  Digitization is still unknown to some and unagreed upon at the national bibliography.  They have a 65 million pixel camera.  In 1961 the preservation of the book was ideal and in 1998 the library opened to the public.  It has four founding fathers(Banks, Cotton, Glenville, and Sloane) of which Sloane was the curator for most of the collection.  The British Library has a collection of 35 million and 60% holds.  There are 200 million items in the city linked to them and they personally have 8 miles of shelving with 8000 copies a week received.  To register as a reader, you need an address and a few pieces of ID.  Fun fact, you can request something from ILL here and retrieve it in the states.  The process to send these book around looks simple(add two tags to the book for marking and placement, bar-code the basket, and push the basket it) but there is a more complex working inside.  It is about a mile long.  They even have 1962 Vogue bound.  The books here are as St. Paul's and the Bod, organized by size first to maximize space, and all are cataloged.  There is a huge foreign language section, with each their own language assistant.  Their largest book is the Klencke Atlas but the Australians just acquired a book 6 inches larger, just bumping their record.  It is a restricted item that was given to them by a wealthy donor and made in the 1660s.  It has its original binding.  It requires 6 handlers and is 6'1".  In the spree of Independence enthusiasm, we learned that they have a copy of the Magna Carta that they allowed to be let in D.C in 1976 for the 200 year commemoration.  It was placed in the library(in DC) next to the Bill of Rights.  It was a wonderful tour.

From there, after a small bus mishap of having a malfunctioning Oyster card, I found myself going up Black Friars stop to The Globe.  For  £5, I stood as a groundling would and saw the best Shakespeare I will ever see.  Today the Globe played a comedy called The Tempest with Colin Morgan as Ariel.  The use of the stage was amazing.  Nor only were the costumes epic and the acting greater than great, but they use parts of the stage I would have never thought of.  The spirits, Ariel included, were climbing on and out of parts of the stage- over the exit doors, into the exit arches, on the pillars that hold the roof, and throughout the audience.  There were to be no pictures taken and none of this online, but there is a scene in which the men have a sea feast before them and as they are about to dig in it burst into flames!  I was five bodies away and could feel the heat- but just as soon as it came, it burnt and flipped over and was burnt and then quickly flew into the floor below so that Colin Morgan could emerge as Ariel 2.0.  This Ariel had a scalier body, a dinosaur-like head/helmet that was long, and walked on these sort of stilts with t-rex toes&feet at the end.  Behind him were two other spirits who controlled the motion of his wings- which were unattached- and enfolded around him or expanded for emphasis or turned as he haunted the gluttonous men.  It was stunning.  This showing was the last until August, so I am super stoked I got to go.  Today was the highlight of a lifetime and I surely won't forget it.  

Exuent Globe.