Browsing the Bookshelves

Sundays are rapidly becoming my favourite day of week - a long way from the days of childhood when I used to hate Sundays. My mother was always in a bad mood, struggling to do the washing, the housework and all her marking and lesson preparation for the following week! But no Sundays seem a day of pure luxury - and often the only time that Rod and I get the chance to do things together just for the fun of it.

This afternoon we took ourselves off to Crystal Palace Park to see for ourselves just how much of that magnificant momument to victorian confidence could be detect. In fact, I was surprised how much there was too see. I knew that nothing of the building itself remains (it was burnt down in 1936 and its water towers, which survived the fire, were demolished during the second world war as it was feared that they would provide signposts to London to German bombers). But much of the layout of the garden terraces remains, enough to give clear visual clues to the sheer granduer of the place.

There's a small musuem at the top of the park, detailing the history of the building and some of the people assoicated with it - Joseph Paxton and Owen Jones to name but two.  After a browse around the displays - an a demonstration of sheer willpower on my part by leaving the gift shop without buying anything, not even a book - we spent an hour or so strolling around the park. It is full of oddities - single remaining statutes, an incongruous concert venue, the huge BBC transmitter, almost wild woodland areas, and a major sports stadium slap in the middle. Behind the stadium, at the lower end of the park, is the famous Dinosaur trial, and might weird it is too. Intended by the builder's of Crystal Palace as the world's very first theme park on prehistoric lines, it contains life size reconstructions of dinosaurs - many now over 150 years old - which sort of take you by surprise as you round at corner.

I'm not quite sure the park works. It seems as though no-one has really thought about why it is there and what it should offer to visitors and local residents, leaving the impression that it is a hodge-podge of ill-thought out good ideas. It is, in parts, quite beautiful, and well worth a visit if even for the romance of the The Crystal Palace itself.