After Heidi lost her marbles during a recent jaunt of geocaching I decided it best to get her some more.
Thing is, when you’re on holiday, in Dartmoor, and your extremely brilliant other half tells you she needs more marbles…It’s surprisingly hard to locate a shop that sells them.
So, we’re at this otter sanctuary, which is otterly lovely, ha! and in the rack of leaflets I find one entitled – House of Marbles.
A marble museum? An entire museum dedicated to marbles, that’s only ten minutes away, what are the chances?
Off we go to find what I know is Dartmoor’s only marble museum, and very likely the country’s, if not the world’s only marble museum, and in we go.
Big surprise, they sell marbles, which is great because Heidi keeps losing hers, so it’s always good to stock up. You can see the marbles over to the left in another part of the building, but we’ve walked in to a shop selling all manner of perfectly pointless but suddenly very necessary things.
We have to drag each other away from the precious things of the shop to find the museum, the marble museum (I’m saying the words marble museum as many times as I think I can get away with in this blog in an attempt to desensitise you from the utter nonsensery of the very idea of a ……. )
And there it is, the majestic marvel that is the marble museum. Now, I’m not saying this place is small but I’ve seen phone boxes with more elbow room.
I’m no expert on the matter, so I have to take their word that this marble is really old and worth a few quid, and this marble was made by Barry Marble, the man who invented marbles.
All very interesting. But then, behind another glass screen is a curious contraption that at first glance seems like the contorted workings of a steampunk clock, but upon closer inspection turns out to be a marble run.
That’s right, a marble run. For those in the unknow, a marble run is a Victorian gadget, powered by electricity or a crank wheel, that raises marbles to the top then sets them off spinning and swirling and dropping and spiralling down little caged runs.
It sounds a bit pointless, and my lame explanation attempt isn’t doing it justice, but it was curiously mesmerising. It was about 12 inches high, and I thought it would look great in the middle of the table at dinner.
The whole ridiculessness of the marble museum has gone and its become a wonderfully magical realm of fun things you can do with your marbles.
I draw myself away to continue through the museum. And when I say through, I mean
continue rotating on the spot. I’m not saying this place is small but I’ve been in toilet cubicles with more leg room.
Anyway, I turn round and wow, another marble run, this time 2 feet high, with even more half-cage slides and swirles, more drops and spinners, weighted platforms and grabbing launchers.
After ten minutes my eyes have twirley spirals in them and my brain is spinning round and round and round and round….
I’m ready to leave, because I’m overdosing on marble run madness and I just want to watch that one drop from the lifting chain no see which way it rolls…
I drag my eyes from it. It’s dangerous, and luckily the museum is so small or I could quite easily have been pickpocketed if there was room for a second person in there. Did I mention the museum is quite small?
Anyway, I turn round and on the side wall, a great disc 4 feet in diameter, the pinnacle of marble run madness. A device so complicated, so entrancing, I could have suffocated watching it. Did I mention the marble museum was so small one had to hold ones breath to fit in there and exhale after one had left?
I left the museum wide eyed and giggling, swirling my finger in the air and muttering round and round and round…
Well, time to buy some marbles I guess. How much is this one in the glass case? Three hundred pounds! I’m going over here to get my breath back.
There I am, trying to escape rows and tubs and troughs of marbles, and kids in tiger masks excitedly bouncing off the walls and playing with those little tubes that go whoooop in high pitch when you turn them upside down, then whoooop in a low pitch when you turn them back again, and I see fellow adults.
Several of them, standing about at the bottom of a big staircase, just staring up the stairs, not moving, not talking. I edge closer.
There’s a sound coming from upstairs like people shifting furniture, and not doing a very good job. It sounds like heavy objects being dropped onto the floor…and rolling around on the floorboards upstairs.
I reach the stairs and look up. There, built onto the wall, standing thirty feet high and twice that across is a vast marble run, using giant ball bearings as marbles. It’s so big it continues on around the walls on wither side of the double staircase.
And I’m gone. Trapped by the mesmeric genjutsu of the vast, sprawling marble run. Hypnotised by the engineering perfection, entranced by the precision of the mechanism and enthralled by the cycle of the marbles and the sounds of their passage through the contraption.
I may have been there for some time. Vaguely aware of someone by my side I tear my focus from the marble run and notice Heidi standing next to me. She too is engulfed by the machine, her mind under its anaesthetic spell.
“Come on, we’re leaving” I tell her and take her arm. She doesn’t want to leave, the opium of the mechanism is perfectly comfortable. I insist and manage to break the spell long enough for us to pay for our marbles and get through the door.
Once in the car park we see all the staff leave as well and lock up the shop, a chunk of missing time gone from our memory.
Needless to say, the marble museum is a wonderful place to visit. Just don’t go alone!
By the way, it’s a little small in the actual museum, I just thought I ought to mention that.