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More black ties
24 February 2015 17:56


We've been on a trip to the cultural deserts and republican strongholds of the East Midlands this weekend. The explanation for those descriptive phrases will become apparent as you read on.

Saturday afternoon we went to the Snibstone Discovery Park. This is an excellent museum, on the site of a former coal mine. It has some science and technology bits, some engineering bits, some local history bits, some transport bits, and some fashion bits. For Hampshire readers, think of a cross between Milestones and Intech (the latter of which, incidentally, I also visited last week).

One display asked you to vote for the most important discovery or invention – giving a list of about 80 to choose from. I chose the printing press, on the basis that this allowed discovery and knowledge to be more easily distributed to a large audience and so contributed to many other subsequent inventions. Not many people think the way I do – only 0.41% of people my age.

The most popular invention was ... the bra. Possibly a testament to the demographic of the respondents – mostly school children who found the bra the funniest thing on the list. Or maybe (and female readers are free to respond) it really is more important than the wheel, the printing press, controllable fire, electricity, etc.

Outside, there is a large play area (with science-related games), a transportable theatre (portacabin-type buildings that could be dismantled and transported by train), rides along a short section of railway track (not operating all the time, and not when we were there), and tours of the colliery (ditto and ditto).

Anyway, if this brief description has whetted your appetite and you would like to visit the place, you better hurry because it is closing down in June. A victim of local government spending cuts. Hence the cultural desert reference.

It is probably a victim of the "we mustn’t increase council tax" dogma. Keeping council tax low is all very well, but if councils have less money to spend, cuts have to be made. Personally I would rather pay an extra £10 council tax if it means that museum like this can be kept open.

Apparently a lot of money needs to be spent on the fabric of the building, and the council can't afford it. That argument doesn't carry much weight with me. Surely if you are responsible for a building, you allow a maintenance budget so that these repairs can be afforded when they are needed. Or maybe councils don’t work like that. Like fire insurance*.

*In general, council-owned buildings are not insured for fire. The rationale being that the council owns lots of buildings and it is cheaper to rebuild on the rare occasions that one catches fire than it is to pay insurance on all of them.

In the evening The Aged took us to a Ladies’ Night. It was a really good evening – good food, a bit of entertainment, some dancing. Dinner service was fast and efficient - there wasn’t the “one person on the table waiting for the meal” or “one table finished eating while another is yet to be served” problems that you often get at these functions.

The speeches were a bit lack-lustre. In fact the reply to the toast to the ladies was more “thank you for coming and hope you have a good time”, which was a bit rubbish. Not that such a sentiment shouldn’t have been expressed - but not as part of that speech. And – here’s the really odd bit – there was no Loyal Toast (hence the earlier comment about the republican strongholds). So I couldn’t remove my jacket. I know formal etiquette, me.

Speaking of etiquette, what is now seen as the correct way to eat a bread roll at a formal engagement? When I was younger, The Aged insisted that we broke off pieces of bread and buttered each separately. Now everyone just butters the whole roll in one go.

Entertainment (both as a cabaret during the meal, and for dancing afterwards) was provided by two local singers. They were really good – one belted out a couple of operatic arias to a very high standard. We were getting quite annoyed with the woman at the next table who continued to talk very loudly through the rendition. A couple of the diners also sang a few numbers in a kind of pre-arranged karaoke. One is a retired professional singer. Unfortunately, the backing track was taped, so when he went off-piste to put his own take on the song, the backing got left behind. Doesn’t happen with live musicians, who adjust their playing to match the singer.

Dancing was ballroom-type at first (well, we held on to each other and shuffled round the dance floor, without stepping on each other’s toes or bumping into other couples), followed by a disco – which went better once the DJ realised that “All about that bass” and “uptown funk” weren’t really suitable for the audience.

I was going to write something about the raffle, but that’s enough for now. The raffle can wait for another post.

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