As I put my name on the mailing list for the recent Story of London month of events, I have just received an email asking me to fill in a survey asking what I thought of it all.

Making an evil laugh and rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of being able to vent my frustration with it all, I dutifully clicked on the link in the email, to be greeted with this warning from my email program.

Fortunately, I have a background in bulk email applications, so was able to know the email wasn’t a scam. However, I wouldn’t have sent the email out in the first place without checking that it wouldn’t trigger such a warning. Also, I wonder how many people getting that warning run away as fast as possible?

Working through the fairly bland list of questions, I came to a page asking how I knew about the events – and which (if any) website I had found out about it.

I noticed that Diamond Geezer wasn’t listed, although I can’t imagine why!

More seriously, I wonder why The Guardian was explicitly listed, but not the websites of other newspapers.

Finally, at the end of the survey, we got to the bit I wanted, a general “what can we do better” box, where I vented my annoyance that the bulk the walking tours were squashed into the same weekend. Spreading them over the whole month would have been much more sensible.

While I appreciate the organisers wanted to make the series of events sound as impressive as possible, at least half of them were just routine things that happen anyway, so it would have helped to have exclusive and one-off’s highlighted. That would have made it easier to isolate those events that can’t be enjoyed another time.

Earlier this afternoon, I wandered over to Southwark for a genuinely rare treat – a general open day at the London Fire Brigade Museum. By coincidence, just as I arrived, I spied Caroline of Caroline’s Miscellany coming out, so it was almost as if the London bloggers were on a tag team. One in, one out.

The museum itself is split into two buildings, one – a former fire engine garage holds the “big boys toys”, while a nearby building hosts a museum of smaller collectables.

Going into the garage first, there is a smallish, but interesting collection of old fire fighting engines and some much earlier hand pumps. It’s a bit cramped in there, and difficult to get up close and personal with some of the really older stuff, but there is a big classic fire engine (with bell!) to excite people. In total, seven five engines – dating from 1750 to 1980 – are on show.

As I wandered round the nearly empty shed, someone who sounded like a member of staff was overheard to comment that it was quite busy! As I left, a small army of children was being herded into the building.

The remainder of the museum is housed in the imposing building next door. Built in 1820, Winchester House – for that is its name – was both home and workplace to London’s chief fire officers between 1878 and 1937.

In here, things got a lot more interesting, as there are two whole floors full of memorabilia running from the early emergency of fire fighting and insurance, aptly just after the Fire of London in 1666, up to modern times. Laid out in the rooms which would have originally been offices and private quarters, this part of the museum took up most of my visit and is packed full of glass cases and displays to look at.

The ubiquitous gift shop was largely dominated by plastic fireman’s hats for the kids to play with and some clothing. However, it also had a small collection of books. A guidebook looked a bit lightweight, but they had more heavyweight tome with a good listing of London’s fire stations, which could prove interesting. My traditional purchase of a branded mug was also carried out

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The museum normally charges £3 admission, although today was free as part of the Story of London events – and even at £3 would be very good value for money.

However, the place is not actually open to the public to visit!

I exaggerate – slightly – the public can visit, but only by booking a tour with the museum, and only on Mon-Fri. This is a museum that is to all practical effect, closed to the average adult visitor.

The museum reportedly gets around 6,000 visitors per year, and I am convinced the visitor numbers would soar upwards if only it was open on a Saturday! If it were a private museum, then they could do whatever they want – but the running costs come from a taxpayer subsidy of around £80,000 a year. Last year, plans to close the museum were scrapped, which is excellent news, but they really need to make it easier for us tax payers to actually visit the place.

During the meeting to save the museum, it was noted that the museum doesn’t really appeal to kids, and is not interactive or modern. However, why does every museum now have to dumb down to the lowest common denominator and only appeal to children? What’s wrong with static displays of artifacts that people can look at? Does everything have to be in plastic day-glo boxes and computer screens now?

I found it to be a very impressive museum – it’s just a pity that it is so damn difficult to visit the place.

If change has to happen, then my personal suggestion would be to move the museum to a larger site, and try to merge it with collections from the other emergency services to create a “destination” that could easily rival the Transport Museum for visitor traffic. Just don’t make the traditional presumption that the only people who visit museums are school children, as some of us (childless) adults quite like visiting them as well – especially at weekends.

Photos at my usual Flickr account.

Next month (June) will be filled with a vast array of events all around the city focusing largely on the history of the city and the lives of people who have lived here.

The website with all the events has now gone live, and I have gone down the rather mammoth list of things happening to try and tease out those which are one-offs or catch my eye as interesting. I’ve then added them to my own events guide to save you the hassle of hunting down the more interesting stuff.

I’ve tried to ignore those events (mainly walking tours) which I am fairly sure occur at other times, although I did include a few semi-regulars as they don’t happen that often anway.

Next weekend (6th-7th June) seems to be the BIG ONE for walking tours, then it calms down a bit later in the month. Tip for organisers in the future – don’t put almost all the walking tours on the same weekend!

Another one which did catch my eye – is a rare chance to visit the Fire Brigade Museum. That place is only open to pre-booked tours, so being able to just wander in is an opportunity not to be missed – although, very annoyingly the museum is still not opening at weekends, so you’ll need to book a Friday afternoon off work.

Otherwise, two others which caught my eye are both canal walks – the lost Cumberland Arm of the Regent’s canal which is a one-off tour, and a “semi-regular but not that often” tour of the canal which ends up with a climb up a water tower.