Earlier this year I was invited to an amazing lecture by the first man to walk in space (with whom I incidentally share a birthday), Alexei Leonov. Yes, being a well-known amateur astronomer has its perks indeed. The event was to be held at the Science Museum in London and other guests included my pal Brian May and Stephen Hawking. Robin Rees would also be there, making sure people could order their copy of the book “Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space”. I was happy to come over for this!
The trip went smoothly. People are generally even nicer to you when you’re expecting a baby; they let me jump the queue at the airport and I was also allowed to drink the Innocent smoothie I had forgotten in my bag at the security check. The turbulence was a bit scary, but I had forgotten about that when I was on the DLR again, just smiling because I was here and it was sunny. I was early, so I had a snooze on the grass near Princes Diana’s Memorial Fountain, thinking that in a next life I wouldn’t mind being a squirrel in Hyde Park.
Anyway, the lecture was impressive! Alexei Leonov drew his story on a chalk board and while he was explaining the details of his space trip, I felt even more silly for not even being able to hold my cool in a roller coaster. Also impressive were the translating skills of the ladies live translating Russian to English and vice versa. My pal Graham Bowes wrote more about the event on another blog, so I’ll end this reminder of the day with a link to that. He is also responsible for most of the pictures, including the one of us escaping the crowd, while Phil was joking about me giving birth in the lift.
(I didn’t). It was another great trip and I’m a lucky girl. More pictures can be seen on my Flickr page.
One Comment
A nice account of a great day (and always good to see you). Thanks for the link too