"Guy King" wrote in message
...
The message t
from "Mary Fisher" contains these words:

er - what's the Secret Hills Centre?

An idea with plenty of potential - there's an area of hills south of
Shrewsbury called the Long Mynd. It's a very strange place, more like
Scotland than Shropshire. Open moorland with lots of hidden valleys and
the like. Used to have substantial mineral deposits, too, being
volcanic. The idea of having a place that explains to anyone who's
interested why it's like that and all about the ecology etc. is a good
one, but utterly and irredeemably[1] let down by the presentation which
is aimed at a the junior school level.

Ah, it's educashonal! You mustn't demand too much of the little darlings, it
might spoil their understanding if they're stretched.

There's nothing wrong with pitching exhibits low like that provided that
more in-depth information is readily to hand for those who might be
interested. Perhaps on pull-out drawers or flip-up things, or maybe even
(stand by for a really old idea) on a bit of paper.

Oh come ON! That would be hard work, you'd have to DO something and not have
it made easy.

But when the only
information available at all is superficial, and asking the curators
gets either a "don't know" or in one case a response that was utterly
wrong then it's failed completely.

We've found that at one or two places and at the Chippenham Town Museum on
Monday we thought we'd come across another because the three ancient (even
older than us) volunteers couldn't answer any of our questions. Nobody had
asked before.

But they did eventually ask a member of staff about something and she was
very helpful, taking us behind the scenes to talk about our questions. Later
we asked about some exhibits which weren't labelled (argh!) and they're
going to be labelled and we'll be e-mailed to give a full explanation of
them.

As always, I suspect it was because I was pushy that we got beyond the desk
staff We ended up offering a couple of our belongings for a Time-Line
exhibit. We should have stopped being surprised about our house being full
of things which we see in museums and 'antique' shops. We use most of them
too.

I was similarly seething when I left the painfully expensive Exploratory
in Birmingham. At least a third of the exhibits weren't working, several
of those that were were incorrectly labled, and the Hurricane[2] hanging
from the ceiling was labled as a Spitfire[2]. Just thinking about it
still makes me cringe.

[1] Short of a satisfying fire.

:-) That's given me an idea ...

[2] May have been the other way round - it was five years ago and for
fairly obvious reasons I've never been back.

I bet it was as you say, many people haven't heard of the Hurricane and they
are rather similar in shape. But it shouldn't happen. All the glamour went
to the Spit ...

Mary