Wake up museums, wake up! It’s 2010, almost too late, only 133 weeks to go!
Once in a lifetime opportunity, innit? Your tills will ring like a banker’s change pocket, your shops will be emptied – yes, even the sale corner of those William Morris bath caps that didn’t quite take off as expected in the Millennium year – and by 10am you’ll be sending an orphan to Tesco to stock up, because the cafe will be down to half a rock bun and a slightly chewed sausage roll.
I see it so clearly: by lunchtime the British medal hope of the day has tragically sunk in the quarter finals; heart-breaking last week with the men’s coxless fours; downright annoying with the women’s volleyball; and the next gold contender is synchronised cross-stitch on Friday – and so the crowds whimper for culture.
They may decide it’s a bit late to head for the new visitor centre at Stonehenge – not just a prefab site-hut, a prefab site-hut with attitude – given that they’re walking back into central London because of the minor hiccup with the Stratford East signals.
And the Imperial War Museum North’s magnificent re-creation of the Christmas Day football match between the trenches, complete with live artillery, will have to wait for another day.
Shame the rapid rail link from Heathrow fell into those old mines near Milton Keynes, but really quite often the replacement bus service is working very well.
But there should be time to see the husky dogs in the snow-dome extension of the National Maritime Museum, the animatronic dinosaurs on the parallel bars at the Natural History Museum, the unique display of Queen Victoria’s running kit (who knew she was secretly training for the 400m relay in Windsor Great Park?) at Kensington Palace, or the Tracey Emin sculpture covering the Doughty Street home of the poster-boy of the Cultural Olympiad: Charles Dikens (sic) Game Boy in pink neon – genuinely awesome.
No, don’t just roll over and pull the duvet up. Sorry. I haven’t said a word about it since last year, and I promise not to mention it again until next year.
