Off to what was nearly a bad start by rushing up the stairs to platform 4 at Epsom, just to miss a train to Waterloo. But then discovering that rather than a travelcard and a receipt, I was clutching two receipts - the receipts being in the same orange and yellow format as the tickets. Rush back down the stairs to recover the travelcard from the the hatch of the ticket machine, this particular ticket machine delivering tickets vertically right up against the left hand side of the hatch, rather than horizontally in the middle for easier extraction. All of which rather amused the young lady who was by then trying her luck with the machine.
And then, having recently been puzzled to learn that Germans made up the third largest community of foreigners in this country (after Poles and Paddies), while I only rarely came across them, found four or five young Germans next to me in the train. Noisy, but decent and cheerful. A Southern train to Victoria which was definitely a ten coacher as one of the in-train announcements told me so.
And so, via Warren Street, into the museum.
A quick look at a new-to-me jade gallery, where I was struck by the handsome jade discs. some more than six inches in diameter and half an inch thick, nicely polished and with a neat hole drilled in the middle. Clearly luxury goods, widely used as grave goods, along with tall, very thin pots. Hard to see what else any of it might have been useful for, apart from flaunting one's wealth and power.
Passed some shaped tablets with very small and very neat cuneiform writing on them - writing which must have been hard to execute in poor light without spectacles. It also struck me that the tablets came close to being printing blocks, from where I associated to cylinder seals which I think were so used. A sort of early version of the printing from wood blocks which we came to in Europe a couple of thousand years or so later.
Arrived at Room 21, the home of the relics from the first ever mausoleum, that for King Mausolos and his wife, Queen Artemisia. I was reminded that the two large statues of the pair (or at least possibly of the pair) were quite crudely executed, the main point of interest being their size. They must have been awkward things to get into position without breaking them. But oddly, the folds of cloth at the Queen's feet, snapped above, were quite carefully executed.
On the way out to lunch, struck by the numbers of shops and restaurants, clearly the way places of this sort are going, having lost most of their funding to austerity and much of their founding purpose to the internet.
Lunch at Coptic Street in a new-to-me Greek restaurant called Konaki, a restaurant which was quiet without being empty (it was around 1500 by this point) and which had a very pleasant dining area. Good service.
I was warned off the Retsina but I persisted with 500ml of what turned out to be an entirely respectable white wine. At which point the waiter explained that while it was all the same stuff, in the way that Chablis is all the same stuff, like Chablis you do get good brands and not so good brands. He liked to think of this one as one of the good brands.
Humous and flat bread to start. Followed by some sort of kebab and a variety of pasta which I now know to be called orzo. Served up on this occasion with a bit of cheese to flavour it, working rather well - so well that I have now bought some of the stuff from M&S, with which to have a go at home. Rounded off with Greek coffee and brandy, having not had either for some years. A long time since we used to live near Green Lanes and eat Greek & Greek Cypriot on a regular basis.
PS: I find this morning that there seems to be some kind of tie up between Google Culture and the British Museum (among many other illustrious institutions) regarding the display of pictures of things. But a tie up which has left me rather confused about where to find things. Maybe something to sort out after a good lunch - from where I associate to how one used, in the world of work, to keep back a supply of suitable jobs against such a time.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/captain-mausoleum.html.
Reference 2: http://www.konaki.co.uk/.
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