Thursday 28 August 2014

Exploding Myth Daisy

submarine museum haslar jetty road gosportI woke him up at 9, got sent away. And yes, I forgot to eat my breakfast so my rice pops got soggy, and I forgot to take the bowl out so the Minecraft tablet got taken away but by elevenish we had the repaired bike back and we were loading up to go across the Gosport Straits to the Royal Naval Explosion Museum.
Then Jof phoned and said O Yea, not only did my Uncle Ron die last night but the Estate Agents we spoke to yesterday had gone into Nanna's house to do the measuring of the rooms and the taking of the pictures, had opened the big slidey windows by the dining table and couldn't get them shut again.
This meant that unless we could get hold of the local handyman, we would have to drive for 4 hours back to her house just to close a stuck door. OK, so we could pick up some more furniture, but really, you don't need it.
royal naval submarine museum gosportSo we thought, Poldarks to this, let's go to the Explosion Museum anyway and if we still can't get hold of the Magic Handyman, we'll just have to lump it and drive back to the Glue Factory. Cycling into a stiff headwind, we met Mrs Pops and crossed the Bosphorus of Doom to the other side where I changed my mind at the last minute and said no, I can't be bothered to cycle a whole 1.2 miles to the Explosion Museum, let's do the Royal Naval Submarine Museum instead (0.6 miles).
Ignoring the no-cycling signs, we rolled south and met Pops and Baby Edward by the bridge and all agreed that we were looking forward to going back to school. The tickets for the Submarine Museum were £24, and there's only 2 of us, and only 1 of us pays attention. We pulled out our money while pulling faces and noted with interest that you can get in free again for up to a year, like the Royal Marines Museum.
royal naval submarine museum gosportWe checked out the diving suit and the conning tower and the railway tracks on the road and the giant propeller and the Navy's first submarine (1902) and went in it. It spent 69 years on the seabed outside Plymouth so was somewhat rusty but they play a video and you can bang your head on the stanchions for free. The shop next door was expensive. I quite like rugby shirts but not at £35, I don't, and I've already got a submarine hat that wasn't £12.
But we joined the tour of HMS Alliance which is a World War 2-era sub that has been totally renovated and we poked our noses in to the heads and the captain's wardroom and some of the bunk beds snore at you and the engines come on and make a racket and I couldn't move the periscope but I did twist a lot of levers and dials and you're not allowed in the conning tower.
naval submarine museum gosportAfter lunch (a sub roll, didn't see that one coming) we looked in the upstairs bit and found the German Iron Cross medal like the one we have and the models of subs through the ages and the periscopes that stick out of the top of the building so you can see the ferries coming into Portsmouth Harbour. Many of the display cabinets had plastic cockroaches in, in the same way as the ones in Dover Castle have plastic rats.
We grudgingly bought a polo shirt and some genuine submarine clotted cream fudge for the PuddleMummies. There was still a biting headwind on our cycle home, because the wind can blow 2 ways at once in Pompey, and Jof had left a message to say the Estate Agent had fixed the door and you don't have to drive to bleedin' Eastbourne and back today.
After a quick go in the park, we met Pops who invited me for dinner and we bounced on her trampoline in the back garden and shot her bow and 1 remaining arrow at the conservatory window actually while bouncing, and bounced on each other for ages, mm.

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