Station X

Euston Station: Ghost soldiers in WW1 kit to remember
 the beginning of the Battle of the Somme

The Mansion at Bletchley Park, the first place you
went when you arrived to sign the Offical Secrets Act

Inside the Mansion

Everything was removed from Bletchley Park
at the end of WW2, years later during restoration
a few scraps of codes where found in the walls
(to block out cold and wind)

Waiting for the tour to start and thought I might
get some inspiration for my daily puzzle.
Alas I did not!

One of the restored huts used for the codebreaking

Little side exhibition about pigeons
 saving lives and getting vital messages through, fascinating 

Some of the newer huts by the lake

Our election gets a small side column
 on Page 26 of the Evening Standard

Up out of bed, better get moving. A song from Love Actually is playing on the radio and I am bopping along in the kitchen. Oh oh the BBC news is on - Boris, has done this, Jeremy has done that. When will it ever end. Can we please go back to the music. Yes, now they are playing I’m too sexy for my cat. Gotta love BBC2.

Bletchley Park, home of the codebreakers is the chosen destination for today. A quick journey out of London on the train. What is those weird long coloured boxes in the fields. There is people on them. I get it, its a canal and they are boats.

At Bletchley Park during day and night all through WW2 a melting pot of mathematic geniuses like Alan Turing and many other Oxbridge dons, debutantes with language skills, fast typists and military personnel worked hard to decode German communications. It is said that they shortened the war by 2 years and saved millions of lives. All of this was kept secret until 1974.

Bletchley Park was a big house set in acres of land, during the war they quickly out grew the mansion and huts where built to for all stages of the codebreaking. After the war everything was removed but in recent years the trust has restored the huts and created an amazing museum. As you walk around exploring there are sounds of what it was like with motorbikes zooming by to deliver dispatches.

Its pretty cool to be exploring where the bombe (to crack the enigma machine used by the germans) and colossus, the first semi programmable computer where developed. This really is the birthplace of the computer age. Necessity is the mother of innovation.

What I can’t get over is the lengths the British went to with having all parts of the process in different huts. Secrecy was so serious that a husband and wife who met after the war where both invited to the first ever reunion (about 50 years later). Neither of them had told the other about their war time service at Bletchley Park but all was revealed when the reunion invitations turned up in the mail!

I could go on and on about the stories, oddballs and achievements. But it is much easier to watch the 2 minute trailer for The Imitation Game.

Back at Ladywell lodge, to finish the day with a perfect fish and veggies dinner. There is strange stuff on the TV, Mary Poppins then kids making commentary. It is SOOOO funny. Googlesprogs is my new fav TV show. Now Googlebox is on, in pommie accents this is SOOOO funny. Great way to spend a Friday night.