Mar 26

Today I worked all day and was just catching up on everything since the break. We are just organizing and boxing up for the move and also planning the summer festival.

Mar 27

Today I worked a half day. Mark suggested that since it was a nice day I go to Regents Park for a couple of hours. I walked around for about two hours, it is a huge park, and it is so nice. Their gardens are really nice and just flowers everywhere. I walked by three large duck ponds, one with paddle boats even. The park was beautiful, and I didn't even see half of it. There is even a zoo on one side of it, but I didn't go to that today.

I went back to work for a while, then left early and went to the British Library for about an hour and a half. It was really interesting. They have one room of historical "treasures." They had the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, lots of old illuminated manuscripts, original song lyric sketches by the Beatles (yesterday, fool on a hill, and some more), the first full collection of plays by Shakespeare, four pages from da Vinci's notebooks, Captain Cook's diary, handwritten scores by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, and lots of other historical texts.

Mar 28

Today I worked all day. Nisa has been sick all week with the flu, so she hasn't been to work. I just did little jobs for mark.

I also went to the Wellcome Centre for about 2 hours. It is a science museum a couple blocks away from Diorama that does research to improve health for humans and animals and then they display their findings artistically. For a science museum it was pretty interesting.

Mar 31, Apr 1

Nisa and I got a lot done on the summer festival. We have been in contact with a lot of performers, and most all of them have agreed to be a part of the festival this year. We invited some of the ones that have been in it before, and also some new acts. Phil and I have also been moving stuff over to the Crypt (our new office space).

Apr 2

I had the day off and decided to check out this cemetery in Hackney that Mark told me about. It's called Abney Park and it was one of the most interesting places I have ever been. It has graves from the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. It is so overgrown in some places that the park is officially a nature reserve and the dense brush and trees cannot be cleared. There are a few main paths with small foot trail winding through the forest. Tree roots have caused the ground to shift, knocking over and skewing many grave stones. It is such a big place you could spend hours looking. There were so many interesting graves in there. There were huge stones with lots of people in the same plot then they just added the names as they died. The memorials were different then too. They would say their name and how old they were and when they died, no birthday, and many times it would say what they died from and a short phrase. For example, "Frederick Smith died suddenly Monday night 15 September 1864 at the age of 59 "For you will never know the hour the spirit will come"". It was just so different than cemeteries from Oklahoma, or different from any place in London. I looked like a great place to film a scene in a movie. If I were a director I would purposefully find something to film there.

Apr 3

Today I had a day off and went to the Geffrye Museum. This is a museum recreating middle class homes in London of the 15th century to the late
20th century. This used to be a complex where around 50 people lived. They have set up a series of living rooms in chronological order skipping 30 or 40 year in between each one. Through this you can notice the change of style and function of the rooms. In the middle of the long building is a small chapel preserved as when it was used by the residents for Sunday church. Also in the back is a nice herb and flower garden that they designed to look like the same gardens of the time with the same plants that were popular and available then.

Mark and Lawry took me out to dinner at this nice pub near our house called Pembury Tavern. If you are in Hackney and looking for a place to eat or get a drink this is the place.