Beamer

Off on a bright cold morning to the British Museum last week, a follow up to the visit noticed at reference 1.

Having carefully shut the two windows next to our seats on the train, we were slightly put out by a young woman who got on a couple of stops later opening them again, leaning over us for the purpose, without so much as a by your leave. We let it go, but ruminated about the poor train manners so exhibited. I also gave some attention to counting the windows in the various Southwest Trains carriages that came by, learning that they are not all the same, not all window pair 1, door pair 1, window pair 2 , door pair 2 , window pair 3, the normal, if not the only, configuration on their trains through Epsom.

A bus took us from Waterloo to somewhere fairly near the museum. Up the steps, noticing the one brass carpet rod holder to each, perhaps good enough for the rare occasions when they get the red carpet out, and into the jade room, a long low room, now known to be the The Selwyn and Ellie Alleyne Gallery, but well worth a second visit, not least to take a closer look at the perforated discs and the perforated pillars - carved and bored from a single piece of jade, not ceramic as I had mistakenly thought. One such pillar, perhaps 2 inches square in cross section and standing 20 inches high had been bored from both ends, with the two holes not quite meeting in the middle. One can just imagine one high caste Chinese smirking at this flaw in the prize of another high caste friend's collection. Perhaps whatever passed for bogoff in ancient China. There was also a lot of delicate relief carving around the outside, also not noticed on the first round. And some of the discs were similarly tricky, some, for example, having been carved so as to have a flat surface decorated with an array of neat raised dots, a bit like Braille dots. It all seemed like a fantastic amount of labour to expend on grave goods - but then I suppose we had our luxury items too, perhaps not that many centuries later. Such as, for example, the Book of Kells.

Along the way we learned that rather than reading the entrails of freshly-killed-for-the-purpose farm animals, in the way of the Romans, the Chinese smashed bones and read their auguries from the fragments, reading the bones being their way of reading the runes. We were not told whether such bones had to be fresh or not, or from what sort of animal they had to come.

We also learned that turning lumps of naturally occurring rock into objets d'art by placing them on fancy stands was not an invention of the decadent west. They have been doing it in China for thousands of years, under the name lingbi.

Back to Konaki for lunch, where we did well. Closing with an entertaining exchange with a couple about their strange language. It turned out that the lady was from Valencia and the gentleman was from Brazil and they agreed that their Spanish would not sound very Castilian Spanish. Very well behaved small boy. Very nice manners all round. See also reference 2.

And then south into the Central Baptist Church on the corner of Bucknell Street. Rather plain, but also rather handsome inside. Sadly, the small swimming pool in front of the altar (or whatever they call that part of a Baptist Church) was covered up so we could not see that. But we were told that the outside was fancy to keep the town planners of the day quiet. They thought that churches should look expensive, at least from the outside, which this one certainly does - so we have a fancy round window above the main entrance which is barely visible, never mind full of stained glass, inside.

Called in the Neal's Yard cheese shop in Shorts Gardens, where they could not do Double Gloucester but they could do a Red Leicester, which turned out to be rather good, even if it also turned out to be dyed red with some berries from Brazil - so not so very traditional after all. We also took some Lincolnshire Poacher, which came rather damper and with rather more holes than the Waitrose offering. Also good to know that there is an alternative supplier as the Epsom Waitrose seem to be cutting back and may not be carrying it for that much longer - for which, I suppose, we have Messrs. Aldi & Lidl to thank. All very neatly wrapped in waxed paper, far more neatly than I could have managed. We also took a white baguette; a bit chewy but which went rather well with the cheese. We thought better of explaining to the two young men serving, keen cheesists both, that we had probably been buying brown rice from Neal's Yard since before they were born. A Neal's Yard which is now very much grander than it was when we used to use it on a more regular basis than we do now; a smart tourist trap rather than a scruffy vegan & bubbles hang-out, with maybe even the odd cloud of smoke from something illegal.

Then back over the river to call in at the Festival Hall, where we were pleased to come across a small display about the Festival of Britain, which I had thought to be a mainly Battersea Park affair. Now I know better! BH was pretty sure that FIL had been along at the time - and she also remembered him saying that the Churchill had had it all taken down, more or less as an act of spite against the people who had him chucked out after the war, more or less as soon as he got back in again in 1951. As far as I could work it out from the model illustrated above, the Shell buildings now being demolished must have taken part of the site. Also illustrating what a wasteful world we live in, when quality office blocks - I think these ones were pretty good by the standards of their day - get knocked down after what could not be much more than 50 years.

But Cortana did a pretty good job on the illustration, not being thrown on this occasion by the glass dome.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/mausolos.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/herald-copse.html.

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