After two busy days of work I was definitely ready for a day off on Friday. I spent the morning finishing off my book, which was great, and then got ready to leave just before midday.

I was headed to the British Library’s exhibition Unfinished Business, about the fight for women’s rights. On the way there though, I wanted to stop by a nearby sight, the Hardy tree. This is a tree in the St Pancras Churchyard that had been surrounded by a circle of gravestones that it has over time grown into. The circle of stones was placed there when the expansion of St Pancras station and rail lines required extra land - from the churchyard, and the apprentice left with the job of disposing of the stones got a bit creative and placed them around the tree. This apprentice was the author Thomas Hardy! The tree was beautiful and the churchyard full of autumn trees very atmospheric. 

From the churchyard I headed down to the library, where I entered a very well curated and socially distanced exhibition which I very thoroughly enjoyed. Unfinished Business was split thematically into areas such as ‘body’, ‘work’, ‘mind’, ‘politics’ and explored the roles of activists, the media and everyday people in improving women’s rights in these areas. It was very inclusive, discussing the role of transgender people and LGBTQ+ people in these debates, as well as the roles and privileges that race and class can also have. It’s interesting in the UK that they took so long to give women the vote (1928 for women over 21, equal to men at the time), and yet they now have far more female MPs than in Australia - although with plenty of room for improvement as well. There were some thoroughly appalling statistics about the rates of maternal death, women in management roles and proportion of female professors in universities, but also some very hopeful stories of organisations and individuals pushing for change. It was a fascinating couple of hours and a lot of food for thought. 

Afterwards I had a bit of spare time so hopped on a busy down to Marylebone and visited Daunt Books, arguably the most famous book shop in London. It was gorgeous, but I didn’t have a lot of time to look as I needed to get on a train back to Bow to pick up our hire car for the next few days. Despite some train delays, I got there just in time for the 3:30 pick up and drive a little Vauxhall back to our place. 

Once I’d parked the car I had a pretty quick turn around to jump back on a train and head in to Southbank to meet Alex at the London Dungeon! We had a timed ticket for 5pm and headed in at this time to find a socially distanced tour that led us through a ‘horrible histories’-style experience of London. It was very dark with lots of spooky noises and told us plenty of ‘scary stories’ starting from the gunpowder plot in 1605, to the great plague of 1665 and the great fire in 1666, through to Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper. It was definitely geared towards younger children but it was a fun Halloween activity nonetheless! We had a beer at an outdoors bar afterwards and a good catch up, as I haven’t seen Alex in a while. 

After a couple of pints I headed off and down to Deptford, where I met Lee and Peter for a bit of dinner and a beer at a brewery. Then it was home time to quickly pack and get to bed ahead of our weekend away tomorrow!