Wildlife in London

To London this afternoon. Firstly to go to the Natural History Museum with two of my daughters to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. The main photo is of the Blue Whale skeleton that now greets visitors to the Museum's main entrance hall. One of the extras is from the exhibition itself, showing a turtle retreating into its shell as it was trying to cross a road to get to a water course. The photos in the exhibition are of a very high standard but sadly the captions for so many of them describe how humankind is threatening their species and habitat through climate change, deforestation, agricultural practice, urban sprawl, overfishing and hunting. We seem to learn nothing about the need to live harmoniously on this precious planet, both with our fellow humans and with nature and the animal world. And so it was good to have my faith in human nature restored by going to see the folk group, The Young'uns, at Cecil Sharp House near Regent's Park/Camden Town. I went with a couple of friends -  my dentist, who hails from the US and her husband, who hails from Hartlepool, the same part of the North East that the Young'uns are from. It was an excellent evening, lots of Christmas themed songs, expertly sung in harmony, humour and good cheer in front of a packed house at the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Ralph Vaughan Williams has been the composer of the week on the Radio 3 midday slot this week and he was a keen collector of English folk songs and used a lot of the melodies in his orchestral works, so it was a nice connection.