Caves

So, I've just spent the last few days in the fair city of Nottingham, visiting my little brother. Nottingham, interestingly not only has the highest per capita car crime in the country, but also the highest per capita gun crime. It is said that one has the highest statistical likelyhood of getting shot in the whole country if one stood outside the KFC in Radford. For anyone who cares, here it is:

Of the many activities that Little Bro and I got up to, visiting the fast food restaurant with the most recorded shootings in the UK was not the highlight. Oh no. We found something far more exciting than that to get on with!

The eponymous caves. Oh yes. Voted the Number One Family Attraction of 2004 (probably by someone's cat) this had the potential to be one of the most exciting things EVER! Feast your eyes on their website to get a taste of the wonders that awaited us! I know, I know. Wow. Words failed us, too.

Well, when we turned up at the entrance to the caves, deep inside a slightly grubby shopping mall, nestled between the public toilets and a Wilkinson (actually I can't remember what it was nestled between, but you get the idea), we knew we were in for a good time. After being conned out of £5 per person, we were summarily issued with a hat and led down into the caves by a very, very enthusiastic young lady who told us many interesting things about tanning and the use of poo therein.

The best part was still to come, though. She led us into a cave that was decked out like an authentic WW2 air raid shelter.

"This is not," she told us, "one of the caves that was used as an air raid shelter in the war."

Good start, we thought.

"And actually," she continued, "it wouldn't have looked much like this. There wouldn't have been any of this authentic WW2 corrugated iron on the walls, nor any of these authentic WW2 posters, nor even any of these authentic WW2 shelves with authentic WW2 artefacts on them."

"How about this authentic WW2 bench that we're sat on?" we enquired. "Would this have been in the authentic WW2 air raid shelter?"

Apparently not. The lady went on to explain that actaully, the shelter would have consisted of a rather damp hole in the ground, which would provide no safety against a falling bomb on account of the tendency of the sandstone walls and ceiling to collapse when it was blown up, or sneezed on. The authentic WW2 corrugated iron, posters, shelving, artefacts and bench, were merely donated by various old people who were clearing out their crap and someone decided that it would be a good idea to deceive the public into thinking that authentic WW2 air raid shelters had all of this stuff.

Good, eh?

Anyway. The point of all of this is to get to the terribly exciting bit. The lady made a fatal mistake. Having told us lots of lies about the presence of authentic WW2 stuff in caves, she then left us alone with the authentic WW2 gas masks and the authentic WW2 warden's helmets.

So we put them on. Obviously.





Sadly I only had my rather crappy camera phone handy and it was rather dim, so the picture quality is a bit poor. That's me in the bottom photo.

Oh. And there was a hilarious poster about girls in there too:


And that is the end of my exciting post about Nottingham.

(It is worth pointing out, for our American chums, that the town of Nottingham is not and should never be pronounced with the emphasis on the 'ham', nor with an 'a' instead of an 'o'. Please speak properly. Nottingham. Nottingham. Nottingham.)