My parents and I received an invitation to a friend’s 70th birthday party in London, so I decided to take a few extra days off to meet up with some long lost friends and spend time with family. I woke up a little earlier than usual to catch the 6:45 train from Penzance, and I spent the five and a half hours gazing out of the window at beautiful scenery, plugged in to Every Kingdom by Ben Howard, and enjoying a bag full of train snacks, feeling gradually more chilly with each mile and frost-covered field.
Coming from the balmy 8° of Cornwall I wasn’t quite ready for the bitter London cold, but I soon warmed up in one of my favourite London museums, the V&A.   I made a beeline for the spider silk cape, which is on display in the V&A until the 5th of June 2012. The cape is made from silk produced by the Golden Orb Spider, which is naturally a rich yellow-gold colour, very light and incredibly strong.
The surface of the cape has been beautifully hand embroidered with lovely elegant spiders and flowers.
Alongside the cape is a large brocaded shawl woven with traditional patterns; the shawl alone was made using silk extracted from over a million Golden Orb spiders.
I had read various articles before my trip to London about this exhibit, and they all mentioned how extraordinary the silk feels, I longed to touch a little corner, but I’m glad it’s safely away from all our grubby hands for many generations to enjoy in the future.
I loved the cape so much that I had to go back and see it again during my stay, before a trip to Chelsea to see some of the grandeur that London has to offer.
I’ve never loved London’s busy streets, and don’t have any plans to move up, but on a crisp sunny day the city can sparkle. There are many interesting and elegant buildings in among the chaos. I often forget how old these buildings are and how lucky we are to use them on a daily basis, many artefacts the same age are now carefully guarded in museums.
Hot lunch from Greenwich Market to warm chilly hands.
A trip to London wouldn’t be the same without a little protest, this was Amnesty International in Trafalgar Square, and a demonstration of the temperature too….
Luckily I was staying with my cousin and her family in a lovely cosy warm house.
