Wow! UCL is great...the first person we met was a little old geezer from security who looked too nice to ask even a small spider to leave the premises let alone any troublemakers! We asked where the campus tour started and he took us to the head security bloke (we looked dangerous) and said suspiciously that these ladies were looking for the camping tour Someone took us to the main gate and off we went.... Amazing building, a labyrinth of vast echoing halls filled with a fascinating variety of people seemingly just milling about...and collections of strange and alarming things like original surgical instruments. On our right we saw a couple practising latin ballroom dancing in earnest, discussing the moves and referring to a laptop as they practised, oblivious to the crowd of visitors standing right next to them. We passed a pair of statues which looked like Disney cartoon grinning cats but which we were told were at least three and a half thousand years old. A department where you could get your inventions made, apparently, theyd had a humanoid robot strolling up to the quad only last week! The thing which fascinated me most though, was the wax figure of Jeremy Bentham the philosopher, the bloke who inspired the principles on which UCL were founded. He sat with his legs arranged rather awkwardly in a glass display case in another vast hall which appeared to have no other dedicated purpose. He looked like a creepy victorian waxwork, but our guide told us that until not long ago,,,his actual REAL HEAD was on the shoulders! It was eventually removed as it had become too fragile (OMG!) and for a while, they had had the wax head on the shoulders and at the same time, the REAL head was placed carefully between the waxworks feet! Kings College, (UCLs arch rivals) had once stolen the head in a triumphant display of collegiate superiority ...she told us entirely without irony that some people have said that they played football with it, but not to worry, it couldnt be true as the head wouldve fallen apart at the first penalty, and anyway, that would be just too weird Where is the head now? I asked, Oh, in the archives somewhere now was the answer. I expect youd need a library card to get THAT out then..Hahaha! By the end of our camping tour we knew very little about UCL university life but who cares? Id go there purely on the basis that its a magnificent monument to British eccentricity.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 20:17:04 +0000
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