Maps and Birthday Cakes.

Have to share the twins' birthday cakes. As you can see, their interests are not the same these days,  so they NEED separate cakes!

Both are very fond of cake but being twins they are quite good at sharing, so the cakes were a success with their little friends too.

I thought I'd share with you a couple of the exhibits from the British Library's fascinating exhibition "Maps and the 20th Century - Drawing the Line".  It's on till 1 March and if you're in London I recommend it - it shows very many different aspects of maps and mapping in the 20th century. Some were quite surprising to me. 

For instance, after the war there was a great shortage of dress fabric, but there were many military "Escape and Evasion" maps left unused in the Army stores.  These  splendid maps had been printed on silk, in order to be (a) lightweight (b) more durable than paper and (c) less likely to rustle when secretly opened.   With the war over, there was no further use for them as maps, so someone had the bright idea of making clothes out of them.  

I've never seen a dress made out of a map before. I wondered why, then I realised that after the war, people most likely dyed them to make the dresses look more "normal." I can't say I really blame anyone for not fancying going round dressed in a map of a war zone.   

These days, though, if the map showed somewhere I liked, I'd be happy to wear it.  Maybe that sounds a bit weird to you?

Among my other favourite exhibits in the show were watercolour designs that were used to decorate the covers of Ordnance Survey leisure maps of 90 years ago. The one below is for the stretch of the Thames between Wallingford and Kew, which covers some really beautiful landscapes.  It is still fun looking at boats going through locks, but I have never seen anything as colourful in real life as this group with their parasols and - yes, boater hats.  I suppose that's how the hats got their name, come to think of it... 

Do you find maps interesting?