Over for the usual Starbucks office start to the day only to find that their wifi is down. Share this happy news with an American unpacking his laptop. He's quite annoyed. " it was down last night, so this morning I asked THREE times before I got my coffee. British infrastructure is third world." He's wrong about communications infrastructure, which is, overall, better than North American, but the frustration is understandable.
Then to the Imperial War Museum on an appropriate but busy day. It's been renovated recently and looks quite classy, but it takes me a while to find my old favourite, the smallest boat still extant from the Dunkirk evacuation, a brave little craft that looks too small to have crossed the channel. An expedition impressive enough that I was an adult before I realised that Dunkirk was not a victory.
There's an interesting exhibit on espionage and we also watch a some short period films. One shows reconstruction in southern Italy at the end of the war, a moving view of barefoot girls carrying rocks for construction, men repairinge ancient locamotives, olive groves being cultivated again. Another film shows reconstruction in immediate postwar Germany, as people live amidst the rubble, allowed 1000 to 1200 calories a day and tested medically by the occupying Allied forces to see if that was enough!
There's a talk in the evening at the London School of Economics on Kurdish nationalism and the Kurdish liberation struggle in the light of current events. We're interested enough to arrive early and surprised that they haven't chosen a larger room. Then the presentation by Dr. Yaniv Voller of the University of Edinburgh, who is launching a book on Kurdish nationalism. Try to be charitable, but the talk is disappointingly superficial and the question period even more disappointing. Dr Voller must, presumably, know more than we do about the Kurds, but fails to convey it. The questioners, on the other hand, are informed and provocative - and get little in the way of answers. I am so tempted to stand up at the end and say that there is so much depth of knowledge and passion in the room - could we go to the pub and have a real discussion. We share the lift as we're leaving with Kurds who seem to have much the same view, sadly minus the thought about the pub. Ah well.
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