Bayeaux

 This morning at 10, non-member tickets for the Bayeaux Tapestry at the British Museum became available.
A little later:

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years ago today, I was in my office at the British Museum, which looked out over Russell Square. I have a vague memory of a large bang being heard – but if anything, I assumed it was just one of the many noises you get around central London.

Then, about twenty or so minutes later, one of my team came up to see me – they said that a colleague had just arrived in some shock. He said he’d just seen a bus explode. That must have been the bomb in Tavistock Square, although we didn’t know that at the time. And I believe we may have heard it go off, unknowingly.

In fact we weren’t sure what he’d seen. I made suggestions to help get him looked after, and said he could consider going home and resting.

The traffic began to ease off, outside, and we began to hear sirens. The story circulated that there were problems on the tube lines (power failures).

About an hour or so in, one of the Security team arrived to tell everyone to move away from the windows. Yes, there had been a bomb, and a follow-up attack could shatter the glass dangerously.

By now, apart from distant sirens, it was unsettlingly quiet outside. And our mobile phones had stopped working. The rumour started that the emergency services had commandeered the network, although it might have just been overload.

Around lunchtime, I was called across the estate to a senior managers’ meeting. Yes, there had been a number of bombs, and and many casualties. There was a need to keep people inside while the emergency services worked. Then, mid-afternoon, we would all be needed to help the visitors leave and give them directions. This was mid-summer, and there were 15-18,000 visitors on site, many from overseas. We needed to help them understand how to get home, or to their hotels, in the absence of any public transport.

(During the briefing, I finally received a call from my son at school (they had sensibly let the children use their mobiles) – so I could tell him I was OK, and he could pass the message on to the rest of the family).

Once the Museum was empty, we left, too. I remember walking with others through an eerily quiet city. Finally managing to grab a bus home near Elephant and Castle.

The Mayor, Ken Livingstone, was on the news. He was in Singapore – the day before, he had been celebrating London winning the right to host the 2012 Olympics. He looked tired, but he gave the best speech of his life.

I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever...

Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city.

Yet there was an increase in racist attacks over the following days.

The next day, I think it was, I was on the bus to work, and the atmosphere was very jittery. Years later, I had a letter published in the Guardian about how the marvellous Betty Boothroyd stood up then, and helped everyone stay calm. (This was written a few days after the Manchester Arena bombing).

A week later, several other attacks were attempted, and failed, more by chance than effective security.

Letters 2

If the first letter I had published in the Grauniad was in response to the Wannacry incident, the second, also in May 2017, was a response to the London Bridge terror attack.

Part of me still thinks they were only published because of the decline of print media, and the press in particular, so there is less competition to get on the letters page.

Here it is. Another true story:-

On 7 July, 2005 I was working in central London, at the British Museum. From my office I heard the Tavistock Square bus bomb go off. Much of the rest of the day was eerily quiet. The heart of London was sealed off. No traffic hum. After we’d helped the visitors leave, the museum was closed and we walked away, going home with no public transport.

A day or so later, I came in by train to Victoria, and took the bus across the centre of town to work. Everyone seemed tense. We all had rucksacks, and suspicious, worried looks were shared in silence. Then a grey-haired woman stood up at the front of the bus, and started chatting. She said hello to everyone as she walked down the aisle, asking how people were and sometimes resting her hand gently on people’s shoulders. After a second, we started to smile, and chat back. She was so warm and relaxed. She wanted to put people at ease, and she succeeded. It may have been just my imagination, but I felt the anxiety drain away.

It was Betty Boothroyd. Baroness Boothroyd, ex-Labour MP, ex-Speaker of the House of Commons, and then-chancellor of the Open University (and ex-Tiller girl). She’d just seen the right thing to do, and acted. Calming anxieties, building a sense of common humanity. We need some of that now.

Tour: Foster

Opposite the Temple in Nimes, the Maison Carrée, is a gallery given over to contemporary art, the Carré d'Art.

As can easily be seen, the gallery has been designed (by Norman Foster) as Architecture with a capital A, intending to echo the Roman temple opposite.And as the modest poster indicates, they were mounting a retrospective on Foster's architecture and Art (another big A) while we were there.

We didn't like the building.   To us it came across as the worst kind of sub-modernism; rather old-fashioned in the same way that a 1960s municipal civic centre is now old-fashioned.  Lots of glass and concrete and cantilevered stairs over voids.  A focus on Spaces (capital S) but with little real joy.  We would hate to work there.

This wasn't the only Foster gallery we encountered on the Tour.  We also visited the Museum of Prehistory of the Gorges du Verdun, in Quinson.  This had the great virtue of having real content, of course.

However, and again, the much vaunted Foster architecture, all sweeping concrete curved walls, did little for us at TANH.  It reminded us of some of those parts of Foster's Great Court, in the British Museum, that are somewhat behind the scenes and less-commonly seen.  The Education Centre in the basement beneath the main courtyard, for example, has the same love of roughened concrete and transitioning curves.  Exciting in theory perhaps, but cold and inhuman in practice.

The weekend before the Great Court was due to be opened by the Queen, we were working on some final IT stuff, and spotted some of the Foster's staff on one of the balconies.  They got some workmen together, and set them to work breaking up the stone slabs in front of the Reading Room.  They were quickly stopped by Museum senior management of course, before too much damage was done, but some slabs were broken and had to be replaced.

Their reasons were aesthetic, and about the look of things: the slabs they wanted to remove were a slightly different colour from the others, and they needed replacing with stone which was a better match.  The offending slabs were damaged, of course, before the workmen were stopped, so we suspect they got their way.  Apocryphally, we heard that the underflow heating and ducting systems were also damaged and never repaired, as a result of the designers focus on surfaces, but we don't know the truth of that.

It did amuse us, however, to see this just outside Foster's Carré d'Art:

Maybe it has become his new signature?  Along with the brutalist concrete, that is...

Finally, one other apocryphal story.
We heard that when the Chairman of the British Museum (a pompous title for a pompous man at that time) attempted to enter the British Museum for the grand opening of the Great Court by the Queen, with the then Sir Norman Foster, the latter was stopped by the gate guard.

'Do you know who this is?', asked the Chairman.
'Yes', came the reply. 'But he can't come in without a pass.  Temporary passes round the back, tradesmen's entrance.'
'But he's with me!'
'Temporary passes round the back, tradesmen's entrance. But you can come in, sir, you've got your pass.'

So the Chairman rang the duty security manager and complained about the 'jobsworth on the gate'.

'Sorry sir, but he's right.  He's doing his job. Temporary passes round the back, tradesmen's entrance.'
'But he's the architect of the whole scheme!'
'Exactly, sir.  Just a supplier.  Not even a member of staff. Temporary passes round the back, tradesmen's entrance.'

So Sir Norman went round the back to the tradesmen's entrance, and got a temporary pass.

And a couple of people from the Security team got bought free drinks on the strength of the story for weeks afterwards.....

The Big Bang Visitor Experience Theory

I suppose it's true to say that over the last two years I've become a little addicted to The Big Bang Theory.  I've become a fan.

At its simplest, part of the attraction arises from the fact that most of the leads are physics or engineering geeks.  Or uber geeks. Sheldon et al have huge IQs and problematic social skills.  And you can't help loving them.

It is great that the main characters are interested in string theory, anisotropic universes and astronautics.  They love tech, and they are also into Stars Wars and Trek, Dr Who, comics, costumes and conventions. And they are surrounded by a bunch of other clever scientist people (and Penny).

Of course, as well as all the nerdy stuff, the other half of the show is admittedly more traditional - it's about relationships and love and stuff, and just how metrosexual is Raj? But it does all seem to fit together; we like watching these gawky individuals navigate a world full of other people.  The main characters are outlandish, at various places on the spectrum (of clever-idiocy, if nothing else), but likeable.

But mostly I think I like it because physics is in some way at its heart.

However, thinking about the show recently I realised that it has a significant weakness, and an obvious one.  The gang are keen on costumes and media SF, but they don't appear to read fiction.  They don't talk about Pterry, or China or Iain or Robert A.  When they argue over Star Trek or Babylon 5 they don't say a word about the writers.  Never a mention of The City on the Edge of Forever.  They appear to hold no opinion about Dean R Koontz. 

This may be partly because they still have an audience to connect to - there have to be points of contact which aren't too obscure.  Which is why they talk about Batman and the Flash rather than Rorschach or Dr Manhattan.   But the chief reason is more obvious. 

It's because it's on the telly.

Some time back, a fashion started amongst museums and galleries and their ilk to become more open to the public.  To let us 'behind the scenes' to see what they did with our money, and why they ought to be cherished. 

This resulted in lots of new buildings being designed and built to allow this to happen, and the signature element of many of these new ventures was the glass wall.  Physically transparent, it served as the thinnest possible membrane between the public and the behind-the-scenes experts who researched, conserved and curated the displays.  The Darwin Centre is an obvious example in London, but there are many others.

London Zoo caught this fever too.  I recall going to the newly Biodiversity Centre a few years ago, just after it opened.  An attractive, multi-level triangular building towards the southern corner of the site.  And yes, there were these huge glass walls opening on the keepers' offices, so we could see what they did at work.

I only once, ever, saw anyone doing anything in those rooms.

He was reading a book.

Doubtless a worthy and interesting book, about ants or cephalopods or the care and feeding of giraffes, but it didn't make a compelling visual feast.  There was no crowd of happy visitors clustered around the glass wall, watching him turn the pages.

It just wasn't good telly.

And that, I suspect, is ultimately why Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj don't read SF, don't ever compare notes on the Culture or Discworld or Lundun.  Visually, it just ain't got it.  That is why they'll buy a George Pal Time Machine at auction, but never discuss Wells' original novella.

Having all four of them dress as the Flash is just so much funnier.  But that don't make it true.

On Troy

A really nice cryptic today with a theme of the Trojan War.  Many thanks Brendan.  One complaint (a niggle, perhaps) was that "Looter of antiquities" was equated to Elgin. 

Which from my (albeit limited) understanding just isn't true.

On Jubilation

As noted before, I have this memory of floating in a punt on the river Wear with a music box of some kind (portable record player? That doesn’t sound right – a cassette seems so much more likely for all sorts of reasons), drifting past some of the colleges and playing the Sex Pistols at high volume. I’m sure it was the Silver Jubilee in 1977.

We played God Save the Queen (it’s a fascist regime). I wasn’t a punk, but I enjoyed punk music. More importantly, perhaps, I was no fan of the Royal family by that age.

I seem to remember I was more tolerant earlier – Charles’ investiture was in 1969 and I collected the stamps issued for the event. They are sitting in the little album now, looking quite battered (I hadn’t worked out how to look after them and ensure they kept their value at that point).

But even then the royals seemed peripheral at best – other things interested me far more. It was the stamps that held my attention, not the heir to the throne.

In 1977 I suppose I felt vaguely rebellious – and we were also pretty amazed that the BBC had bothered to fiddle the charts to make sure the record wasn’t number one in Jubilee week.

Four years later, for the 1981 Wedding, I felt more strongly, I think.  I sported a 'General Strike Against the Monarchy' badge and a few of us went up a mountain to get away from the general hullabaloo.

Now, as we approach the great beast that is the Diamond Jubilee, I find I have a yet bleaker view of the royal family and indeed the whole idea of monarchy. It seems tied up in a nexus of wholly negative ideas and beliefs that do great harm.

Obvious amongst these, of course, are the ideas of inherited privilege and wealth, and the sense that royalty shores up and normalises the idea of an unequal society. It encourages bad behaviour and a disregard for others.

The one time I was in the same room as the Queen and Prince Philip I saw this at first hand. We were waiting in two lines to meet the so-called Royal party in the British Museum’s Round Reading Room. This was the posh, grand opening of the Great Court, the big open hub at the centre of the Museum. Everyone in the room had been working on the project for many years, and the new, space was the final outcome of all their efforts.

So Brenda spotted someone she knew on the far side of the RRR and ignoring all those who were waiting to meet her, toddled over for a chat. She never did do the handshake thing with the workers. On the other side of the room,

Phil the Greek meanwhile saw one of the new multimedia terminals we were presenting, and went over to look at it. Now, we knew the system was a little flaky, so the deputy head of the team who was demonstrating it had an agreed, safe script she was going to run through for him. To show him some of the gorgeous images and animations in the system (and they really were good).

Instead, with a “what does this button do, luvvy?” he crashed the system. He was then absolutely foul to the woman - who had of course been dedicated to this one project for a number of years.  He berated her and suggested she ought to get a man to sort it for her as she clearly didn’t know what she was doing.  He then strode over to join his missus, leaving the poor member of staff in tears.

Thus, my only experience of the royals so far suggests they are arrogant, selfish, ignorant and crass. Full of an unmerited sense of their own importance and a wholesale disregard for the feelings of others. Just as you might expect if they’ve lived their whole lives in a safe, secure, privileged bubble.

This idea of wealth, power and fame being awarded for no good reason also seems to link to and support the inane celebrity culture we have at present. Children growing up whose only ambition is to be on the telly. The X-Factor generation.

This seemed at its most obvious in the spontaneous, country-wide, outpouring of grief for the death of Diana, the People’s Princess. The whole public response struck me at the time as bizarre in the extreme, and still does. While recognising the great sadness her death will have caused to those who knew her, her family and friends, I cannot get my head around the deep and apparently sincere emotional connection and grief felt by people who had never met her, and indeed weren’t even avid royal watchers. It seems a hard to explain, excessive and overcharged response.

Private Eye got it right...

On the day of  the  funeral, we took the children out to the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway.  Ride the trains and avoid the telly and radio.  But at New Romney station, at 11am, an announcement was made and for the minute's silence all of the engines stopped.  The big, burly drivers stood uptight in their tight little cabs - towering over the trains - and  (I fear) doffed their caps.  Quite, quite surreal.  The resulting image, rather than suggesting respect, was inadvertently and inappropriately funny.

Moving on from this picture, it also appears to me that this sense of privilege, of being able to do whatever they want without consideration of what is right and proper, or of its impact on others, connects in some way to the posh Tory boy’s government we have at the moment. The idea that if you inherit wealth, power and ‘status’ you are entitled. And of course you add to this the banking culture that has caused the financial crisis.   This establishment is immensely strong and infiltrates the culture at so many levels, and there is a small and dwindling sense, it seems to me, of any sense of respect or credit based on merit or morality.

And the Royals contribute to this problem in so many ways.

So what to do? Ignore the street parties and the flotilla of boats on the Thames? Or go along and shout at people? Probably not very wise. 

As mentioned here previously, we managed to get away from the collective insanity of the Royal Wedding, last year, to France – a proper, Republican country that seems to know what to do about royalty and nobility. A smashing couple of days were spent away from the madness.

However, this year we are stuck in London for the event.  No running away this time.

I don’t know. I like parties, meself, and the bread-and-circuses spectacle will at least be interesting. We are celebrating the wrong thing for the wrong reason. (Sixty years in the same job, which as far as I can see she doesn’t do very well at all?  Most of us can’t assume we will keep our jobs for the next year or two in the current economic climate, let alone sixty – aren't we all meant to have portfolio careers and embrace contract culture? And when did she last have a proper appraisal?). But at least we get a party, I suppose.

Anyway, the Trees will remain a little island of Republican sanity.  Hence Marvell's Horation Ode a few days back. 

Now there's an idea: perhaps we might also visit St Mary's church in Putney - home of the Putney debates of 1647. 

Yes, that sounds good...

Howard Carter's Sandals

Today's Google Doodle recognises Howard Carter's birthday (his 138th!):-

... but did you know that his sandals can be found in a storeroom in the Egyptology department of the British Museum?

Mole Back

So I finally got hold of the Adrian Mole (see earlier, and earlier still), then read it in one sitting.  And I still laughed out loud at the school trip entry (when Adrian's class is taken to the BM). 

And I was pleased to see that he also turned up in last Saturday's prize cryptic in the Guardian.

Rejection

Famously, the British Museum used to have a form letter, which they would use to reply to many of the enquiries and questions they would receive each year about the collections, ancient history, culture so forth.  It read something like:

I regret to inform you that your letter has not been selected for reply.

Note the subtle paradox of a response telling the member of the public that this is just what he or she is not going to get.

I've now come across a more up-to-date equivalent for our modern world.  It reads:

I could find no compelling purpose in answering your email.

Plus ça change...

Recognition

So, the boy playing the Artful Dodger in the original West End run of Oliver! bunked off, and this fresh-faced chap took over at short notice:

After just a moment, it is possible to see who this is.  You can recognise the young Tony Robinson - Baldrick in Blackadder.  And of course, the presenter of Time Team, the Worst Jobs in History and (urghh) Codex.

He's been recognised by several institutions who've awarded him honorary degrees, he's president of the Young Archeologist's Club, has been a vice-President of Equity, and he was on the Labour NEC from 2000 to 2004.

Although he has no Honours Young Tony has also just been recognised by Radio 4 - he got to pick his Desert Island Discs on Saturday.  Hurrah!

The next question is, can you recognise this man?

He has been recognised with an MBE, and is the subject, it appears, of next week's Desert Island Discs:

Quite so.  It is John Galbraith Graham, ex C of E priest, briefly chaplain and tutor at St Chad's, Durham,  cruciverbalist extraordinaire and,  indeed, Araucaria of The Guardian.  He remains leftwing, and, it appears,  will never work for a Murdoch paper.

Again, Hurrah!

Deja Views

I've been revisiting places from my past over the last few weeks.  Nothing planned, it just happened that way, but it has felt slightly strange.

So a little while ago I went back to Liverpool.  This was strictly a work trip, aimed at starting a conversation with a social enterprise (I hate that term) we might be able to work with. 

I ended up lugging a huge overweight laptop around, so I had less time than you might expect for sightseeing - the places I spotted or remembered were either significant or just a little random

Now for over two years, immediately after leaving University, I lived and worked on Merseyside.  That is, I lived on the Wirral and worked in centre of Liverpool.  There used to be an old Plessey factory and offices off of Dale St, on Cheapside (demolished now).

For the trip, all we did was walk along Lime St/Renshaw St and up Mount Pleasant to the Catholic cathedral, visited some offices, had a snack in the cathedral coffee shop and walk back the same way.  So we barely touched the surface of the city.  But it did strange things to my head, all the same.

Liverpool has been through a lot of development and change.  So the old Lewis's is closed (with the 'statue exceedingly bare' that people used to meet beneath), and looks rather sad, while cathedral seemed virtuall unchanged.  Similarly the Everyman theatre, where I saw The Warp, presided over by Ken Campbell in the early '80s.  Apparently the Everyman is about to undergo some significant refurbishment and will be closed for a couple of years.

A lot of the buildings, on Hope St (which joins the cathedrals of course, and used to have late night jazz club/drinking dens in some of the basements - sounds romantic perhaps in hindsight, but I just remember them being very sleazy and violent), and Mount Pleasant, seemed unchanged - spruced up even; they seemed oddly new/old.  When I was there origninally, it had been in the dark, sad days of Thatcher, and the heavy-handed policing that led to the Liverpool riots (in Liverpool 8, not Toxteth, please). 

From the top floor of the bright, managed offices we could see across the city, and of course the Liver Building dominated the view.  That seemed wholly unchanged from the distance.

The other place of significant note was the Great Court of the British Musuem - which I can recall when it was first opened, and the Duke of Edinburgh was such a repellent visitor for the first day.

We dashed through it quickly, on the way elsewhere, and it felt strangely alien.  The central commercial hub wrapping the Reading Room was always a little clinical, and on the day we were there the light - to me - seemed a little garish.  Either way, it felt unusual and odd, for somewhere I worked for many years.

And then this week, the Museum won the Art Fund prize for "The History of the World in 100 things" on BBC Radio.  About which we should be pleased.  But the photo they used in The Guardian was quite old, and went back to the Michelangelo Drawings exhibition mounted around five years ago.  When I worked there, and the Great Court was a place I was in almost every day.

Brollies

I remember how Nick Lowe, in his great and witty talk Black Wine of Thentis, told us that creative writers - and especially the typical authors of science fiction and fantasy - would sometimes find that their muse had failed and as a result they would frantically look around their horrible writer's den seeking inspiration. 

The author's eyes would light upon that constant to almost all writers: a cup of a warm, mildly stimulating beverage, usually coffee, and they would use this desperately, somehow, anyhow, to pad out the text and prod their narratives back into life.

Klatchian coffee.  Black wine.

In a more mundane vein, I do the same when I'm attempting to solve the crossword and I'm lost for inspiration.  I look around, seeking help anywhere.  Thankfully, the Guardian helps with short articles of interest, appropriate to the back page, alongside the grid.  Weatherwatch, Starwatch, Spacewatch.  Rarely dull. 

And, to be scrupulously honest, they rarely help directly with the crossword.

A week ago on Friday, Kate Ravilious wrote in Weatherwatch:

Umbrellas first emerged in dry, hot places, to provide protection from the hot sun. The word umbrella comes from the Latin word "umbra", meaning shade or shadow. It isn't clear where and when the very first umbrella was made, but evidence from India, China and Egypt indicate that umbrellas have been around for more than 4,000 years. The Chinese were the first people to make waterproof umbrellas, by waxing and lacquering the paper parasol cover. Eventually umbrellas caught on in the west, especially northern Europe, during the 16th century. Many of these umbrellas were made from wood or whalebone and had oiled canvas parasols.

Amazingly they didn't find favour in soggy Great Britain until the Restoration, in the late 17th century. Rumour has it that the Puritans' disapproved of such frivolous devices, which would prevent Heaven-sent rain from properly wetting a person.

However, when umbrellas did arrive in Great Britain, the unpredictable climate soon made them popular. Coffee houses started the fashion; providing umbrellas to shelter customers as they walked to their carriages. At first they were considered a woman's accessory, but when English traveller and philanthropist Jonas Hanway began to carry one during the mid 18th century, men began to adopt them too. By 1830 the UK had its first dedicated umbrella shop in London, and nowadays every British household usually has at least one umbrella.

Which was a piece I quietly enjoyed (despite the weakness of the last line about 'every British household'), but it put me in mind of a more political take on the brolly by Neil MacGregor, presented to staff at the British Museum a few years ago (I was staff then). 

He looked at images across cultures and history showing umbrellas and sunshades, and found that in an awful lot of them they were used to show a power relationship.  The servant shades the Lord or Queen,  protecting them from the elements while having no cover themselves.  From overlords in ancient middle-Eastern cultures reviewing grain harvests to 1930s politicians speaking at rallies in wet North-of-England  rain, the brolly shows who is important and who is not.

Now it would, I think, be perfectly possible to construct an argument that the BM, built in part upon the spoils of political power, still can't avoid probing and testing issues of power, morality and hierarchy, like a tongue testing out a rotten tooth.  While the Guardian article by contrast is more free, and about personal use - liberal without even thinking about it.  Aren't stereotypes wonderful?

However, I'm minded instead to think about the UK's "first dedicated umbrella shop" - that Ravilious mentions in her piece.  This is James Smith and Sons, established 1830 and still going strong in New Oxford Street.  An establishment brand, the tiniest of walking distances from the Museum.

And I have to say, at the time a few of us suspected it was the inspiration for the Director's talk. You can see how it might happen, inspiration briefly fails, not even the black wine helps, so you decide to nip out for a walk around the block to clear the mind and get the creative juices flowing again.  And the first thing you spot is...

Brollies.  That will do nicely.

(Of course, I'm writing this after a week off, when I haven't felt minded or inspired to post much at all.  So maybe this whole meander is just my version of Klatchian coffee...)

Poem of the Week

In The British Museum
Thomas Hardy

'What do you see in that time-touched stone,
When nothing is there
But ashen blankness, although you give it
A rigid stare?

'You look not quite as if you saw,
But as if you heard,
Parting your lips, and treading softly
As mouse or bird.

'It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you,
That came to us
From a far old hill men used to name
Areopagus.'


- 'I know no art, and I only view
A stone from a wall,
But I am thinking that stone has echoed
The voice of Paul,

'Paul as he stood and preached beside it
Facing the crowd,
A small gaunt figure with wasted features,
Calling out loud

'Words that in all their intimate accents
Pattered upon
That marble front, and were far reflected,
And then were gone.

'I'm a labouring man, and know but little,
Or nothing at all;
But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed
The voice of Paul.'

Spain Tour 1: Portland and Chesil Beach

Portland and Chesil Beach. This summer's main break (our Tour) was to Spain - we called in here on the way to Plymouth. Part of the Jurassic Coast (World Heritage Site), source of Portland stone for great buildings in London like the British Museum, an ex naval base, and so forth. We didn't really get enough time to explore. I was struck by the classic British seaside-town architecture that we did see.


And, of course, by Chesil Beach itself. A long (18-plus miles) 'linear shingle storm beach' - read the Web sites linked above, they really are good. We merely visited a small part of the Portland end, taking in the barenness, scale, wind and silence.

The trees around Nunhead on Tour 16: Hadrian's Wall and Vindolanda

One of the greatest treasures in the British Museum are some dull-looking thin wooden tablets. These were found during an excavation of a fort on Hadrian's Wall, on the Scottish borders. Many of the tablets are on display in the Museum's Romano-British galleries (room 49, The Weston Galleries). However, to see where the people lived who wrote the tablets, you have to go to Vindolanda itself. So on the way back from the Lake of Menteith that is exactly what we did.
The fort in the picture above is not original....

In a rather neat way, the great Northern Tour was thus bookended by major archaeological sites. We began, pretty much, with Cresswell Crags and ended with Vindolanda. Both with strong links to the local landscape, and also with the Museum.

In between, we did an awful lot of history. York, Durham, Edinburgh and Stirling, of course - but also smaller locales such as Inchmahome and Doune. Well it's all over now; so time for another Tour, I think.

End of Year Review 2008

Well 2008 has been pretty rich for me, in many ways:-

• I attended a school reunion (thanks, Jacqueline, for organising it).
• I had a big birthday (and a big birthday party to go along with it, when we saw lots and lots of old friends and some new ones).
• I spent my first year in a new job.
• We had a smashing holiday in the Summer (see the entries for the Trees Around Nunhead on Tour for some of the details).

At the same time, of course, a few people died in 2008 and I’d like to record and remember one or two of them.

When I was in my early teens, in the early seventies, I went to a small local exhibition on science fiction, astronomy and astronautics. (This was the 'Space Age Exhibition' held at the Arts Centre in Wood Green). I remember David Hardy paintings and a diorama showing (I think) the Selene from A Fall of Moondust. The exhibition lead, fairly directly I think, to the founding of the Astronomical Society of Haringey. I don’t think I made the first couple or so meetings, but went fairly regularly after that and for around five years. I remember watching the Apollo 17 moonwalk during a meeting in Christmas, 1972. “I was walking on the moon one day/In the merry, merry month of May December” (Cernan and Schmitt).

What surprised me at first was that the chairman, Fred and secretary Mat managed to get so many good (well, famous) speakers to come along. However, Mat was Mat Irvine (designer and maker of models for Dr Who, Blake’s Seven and many other shows) - and Fred was Fred Clarke, Arthur C. Clarke’s brother. When the latter was in the UK, and times matched, he would attend meetings, chat and answer questions. He gave me my first inklings of understanding about special relativity, when he answered, patiently and with some humour, my schoolboy questions. I remember him explaining how acceleration would remove the symmetry of most of the classical SR thought experiments (clocks, rulers, etc) - which is why they specify uniform motion. When Isaac Asimov came briefly to the UK, the Society got tickets to his Mensa lecture in London (introduced by ACC). I went – and he autographed a battered copy of The End of Eternity. I still have the tape of the talk somewhere.

Hearing about Arthur C Clarke’s death this year brought a lot of those memories back. My first reaction was amazement I think, that I had had the good luck to be around in Wood Green and Tottenham, and hence had a chance to meet him. I almost doubted my own memories, but found the ASH Web site on line, which confirmed all the cronologies; it also, amazingly, named Fred Clarke still as President and Mat Irvine as magazine editor, vice-chair and PR. They clearly build things to last up there in Wood Green and Southgate. Thinking about those days, I was also reminded of the strange hope that the Apollo missions created (in me, and for a while, at least).

When I first left University, I worked for a couple of years in Liverpool. I remember seeing Talent (Victoria Wood and Julie Walters) at the Playhouse, I think, as well as Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers. But most of all I recall Ken Campbell’s The Warp at the Everyman. For those unfamiliar with the piece, it is a 24 hour play by Neil Oram that previewed at the Edinburgh Fringe. Campbell, as artistic director, produced this as ten two-and-a-half hour plays, running over ten weeks (a different play each week). I went every Wednesday with friends. As the plays moved us through the different stages of the protagonist, Phil’s life the music changed (there was a very versatile house band, that partied in the interval and at the end of each play) and so did some of the scenes. The Everyman was set up as theatre “in the round”, with the audience mostly in the middle, and various stages scattered around them.

These plays were no-holds-barred: I recall the first play quickly presented full nudity and simulated sex. Notoriously, the Echo reported that the mayor of Liverpool walked out in disgust after five or so minutes but his daughter (the lady mayoress?) stayed and said something like “Daddy was just being silly”.

Another highlight from the Campbell incumbency at the Everyman was a production of War With The Newts which included not only actors in newt costumes but a deeply flooded stage around which the audience sat. Hearing about Ken Campbell’s death reminded me of those times in the early eighties when the Everyman was doing wonderful things, testing what could be done with space and setting.

Another sad loss this year was Humphrey Lyttelton. In some ways, as Clue was still being broadcast regularly up until his death, this somehow felt more immediate, although I must have known his voice for over thirty-five years – given that I listened, on-and-off, to the show from near the beginning. At first, I know, I missed I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again and felt that the quiz was something of a poor relation. But that soon passed. Alongside Humph, we should also I guess remember Geoffrey Perkins, who also worked for a while on Clue – as well HHGTTG and Radio-Active, amongst much else.

After Humph’s death, I’ve bought his books on Jazz and also his autobiography. Good enough, and I’ve learnt a lot, but I will still miss his voice.

Another unique voice belonged to Oliver Postgate. When he died, the Guardian ran remembrances on an astonishing dozen or more pages. Or perhaps not so astonishing really – from Ivor the Engine onwards, Postgate and Firmin’s quirky children’s programmes must have been seen by so many, and remembered with love.

When I worked at the British Museum the excellent British Museum film society invited them to give a lecture (4/10/2003), on the almost but not quite wholly spurious basis that the artwork for Noggin the Nog was partly based on the Lewis chess pieces. I went along, with our eldest, and had a fascinating evening. There were clips from Noggin, Ivor and the Clangers, etc and lots of stories. One of my favourites was told by Oliver Postgate (that voice!) – and it has also appeared elsewhere, I know.

Apparently, their practise was to write out the scripts for the Clangers, before they then whistled the words on swanee whistles. Apparently someone at the BBC objected to a script which had father Clanger swearing at a stuck door, and demanded changes to the words.

“But we are going to whistle it,” said Postgate.

“Yes, but people will know,” came back the reply from on high, so changes had to be made.

Postgate, a conscientious objector during the War, felt bad about being censored like this, and about compromising his principles, so when, that Christmas, Woollies put out knitted Clanger dolls which whistled when their tummies were pushed, father Clanger tootled something like “Bugger. The bloody door’s stuck again.” Or so Oliver Postgate said.

We had a brief chat with them at the end, and they signed a very old Noggin the Nog book of my wife’s, from her childhood (and seemed politely amazed and gratified to see it). I think that was also where I bought Seeing Things – Postgate’s autobiography, highly recommended, and quietly innovative in its own way. It bundles onto an enclosed CD ROM clips from the shows, along with photos and chapters that he hadn’t been able to get into the main book, and a complete e-copy of the main book itself.

However, I have to admit, Bagpuss came along a little too late for me; it is the earlier shows that I remember best.