West End
Started: 2023-04-13 18:42:31
Submitted: 2023-04-13 20:24:07
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Breaking codes and baking cakes
On our second full day in London, I felt sufficiently confident in my adaptation to my new time zone to set my alarm for 08:00. This gave me enough time to get pastries and milk for breakfast before the rest of my family woke up.
We set out to take the train to see Bletchley Park, the site of the signals intelligence operation that broke the Enigma code during the Second World War. (I visited Bletchley Park in 2018.) We took the District Line east to Victoria Station, then transferred to the Victoria Line to head across town to Euston Station, the London terminus of the West Coast Main Line. I bought day return tickets to Bletchley and we found our train (the 10:23 service to Birmingham New Street) on the appropriate platform. Soon we rolled out of the station heading north, accelerating up to 110 miles per hour (according to my GPS display on my phone), zipping past suburban London and freight yards and rolling green countryside, covered in pastures divided by low hedges and populated by the occasional flock of sheep.
We pulled into Bletchley 35 minutes later and made our way across the main road to Bletchley Park. We started in the displays in Block C, one of the buildings on the site now used as the main entrance, which tried to provide some context for the Enigma cypher machines used during the Second World War and the very idea of code-breaking, then picked up audio tours before heading out into the grounds.
The audio guide had some opinions about which order we should see the grounds in, starting in the mansion on the far side of the pond in the middle of the site. The mansion had been built as a house at the end of the nineteenth century, and was purchased along with the grounds as the site for the signals intelligence operation before the war.
The tour took us around the back of the mansion, including a garage with a couple of random vehicles vaguely associated with the site and a much-more-modern signals intelligence field office in a shipping container, of the sort that would have been used in the recent conflict in Afghanistan. It was the museum's attempt at tying together the historic code-breaking at this site with the current intelligence operations run by GHCQ, and it felt jarring to be suddenly pulled 75 years into the future without any warning.
We ate lunch at the cafe on the grounds and continued with the tour, stepping into Huts 11 and 11A, which explained some of the process of breaking the Enigma codes. These were the buildings that held the "bombes", electro-mechanical pre-computer machines that tested rotor combinations to guess the day's initial key, brute-forcing the cypher with the help of cryptanalysis and some luck.
We watched a video that connected Bletchley Park to D-Day, with the large "D" written using teleprinter tape used in the Lorenz cypher used by German High Command. We walked through an exhibit in one of the office buildings showing how it had been used during the war (by this point we had been there long enough that I was no longer reading everything and listening to everything on the audio guide) and a small exhibit about data visualization, which included 3d bar graphs illustrating population density in various cities including London, Hong Kong, and Mumbai.
The final building was set up with more museum galleries with display cases full of Enigma machines and other code and code-breaking paraphernalia. By this point it was late in the afternoon and we were running out of time; I didn't get to spend nearly as much time in the final exhibits as I would have liked.
We emerged from the historic site overwhelmed and a little dazed by the weight of everything we'd seen. We returned to the train station and caught the 16:40 service from Bletchley back to London-Euston.
On our return to London we took the Northern Line to Leicester Square and ate supper at Sagar Vegan & Vegetarian Restaurant, serving south Indian food featuring dosa. We each ordered a dosa, and Calvin's paper masala dosa was at least as large as I expected it to be.
After eating (and after dessert) we headed to the Noël Coward Theatre on the other side of Leicester Square, where we had tickets for the evening's performance of The Great British Bake Off Musical. As we were planning our trip to London, it crossed my mind that maybe we should try to see a show, since we were visiting one of the hubs of English-language theater. Then I stumbled upon this musical; we'd watched an arbitrary season of the bake-off with Calvin, and a season of the junior bake-off with Julian, so it seemed like we knew enough about the show to appreciate the musical.
I bought tickets in the first balcony, which turned out to be right at sidewalk level, only a few steps from the street; the orchestra seats, and the stage itself, were below ground level in what was effectively the basement. We had a commanding view of the stage from the balcony, over the heads of the seats in front of me. (During the interval an usher offered Julian a cushion to help him see, which improved his own view of the stage.)
The show was clearly fond of the source material and affectionately parodied the tropes of the original bake-off. We saw elaborate introductions of every baker in the competition, each with their own unique personalities. There were the hosts, and the judges, and elaborate choreographed song-and-dance numbers involving baking. There were two separate "I wish" songs at the beginning of the first act, and both of the characters had a satisfying arc. There was a dramatic moment involving a failed bake and the bin, with an actual spotlight highlighting the bin on the stage. I thought the show was delightful, and Calvin reported that it was "fun", which I think was the most enthusiasm he has expressed for anything in years.
On our way out we received "spread the word" cards for the show.
After the show we took the Piccadilly Line back to our flat in South Kensington to retire for the night.
