I am … unhindered by talent

We just finished two consecutive day trips to London (Friday and yesterday) and I’m thoroughly tired, and full of undigested photos. This fellow, one of the few I have processed, is from the Egyptian mummification exhibit at the British Museum (Rooms 62 and 63).

On Friday we started down in Greenwich. It was our first time through the Docklands on the DLR — it would be nice to walk those canals and take photos — and our first time to the Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian. I wish we’d had more time there - it was a beautiful day and there was a ton of cool stuff one could see. Time was tight, though, so we zoomed off to the British Museum before rush hour hit, and spent the rest of the evening there.

While WeatherGirl wandered the museum, however, Sub-Evil and I snuck off and bought tickets for Avenue Q at the Noël Coward Theatre for the following night. He’s been keen to see that ever sense we got here, and it was nice to finally make that happen, but it did mean two consecutive days into London, which is frankly pretty tiring.

Yesterday Sub-Evil and I started at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology on the UCL campus. Sub-Evil is very into Egyptian history, writing, artifacts, etc., so he really wanted to see this. It’s a very cool collection, but pretty desperately in need of a new home, with the collection crammed into old victorian cabinets and spilling down an emergency exit staircase! Next was the British Library, which was just tremendous! The King’s Library alone was worth the (free) price of admission, and the display of the treasures (Magna Carta, illuminated manuscripts, handwritten scores, drafts, diaries, and letters by amazing folks) was really wonderful.

After all that we grabbed some dinner and then headed off to Avenue Q! We both had listened to the soundtrack about a zillion times, so there weren’t a lot of surprises. The production was tons of fun, however, and watching the puppet masters sing, dance, act, and run the puppets at the same time reminded me of the line about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels :-).

Now we pack and organize, for tomorrow we’re off to Methwold Old Vicarage for our first stay in a Landmark Trust property!

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We’re back from an excellent little 24 hour whirlwind visit to the Mighty Metropolis aka London. Most of it was spent in the British Museum, where we had tickets to see the Chinese terra cotta army. No photos from that, but it was quite remarkable and absolutely worth it.

I took lots of photos (many quite mediocre, or worse) in other parts of the British Museum, including this in a small temporary exhibit right by the entrace called "Divine Cat". This bronze egyptian scuplture was donated to the Museum by a Major Gayer-Anderson, who "was a keen restorer of ancient metal objects". Recent analysis (including X-rays) revealed that the good Major jammed a metal cylinder in the head to give it more strength, repaired a major crack, and applied a thick layer of green paint to help hide the repairs.

Oh.

An excellent little exhibit, and a nice example of the many complexities of managing a collection such as theirs.

And the cat was cool too.

I’ve posted the whole unedited lot up on my Flickr events account, and will post tidied up versions of some of the more interesting ones to my “main” Flickr account.

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On my Twitter stream this morning was this from kjell_:

“The disappearance of age-old pleasures and privileges is the first unmistakable sign of progress.” -Bernard Rudofsky

followed by this from Vaguery:

scanning an 1850 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, just ’cause. And for the Agassiz

Of course it’s convenient that Vaguery’s Twitter things have a very high proportion of “scanning some cool old document to save it for the world”. Still, I thought it was cool :-).

And I don’t know what the rest of you are doing this evening, but we’re going to the British Museum to see the Chinese terra cotta army (or the bit of it that’s on display there at the moment)! You never know, I might take a photo (or 200).

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