Yesterday, I had a lovely time in Cambridge, with the god-daughter, who had to look at something in the university archive there.  I think I may have visited Cambridge once before when I was about 16, and vaguely considering applying to the university.  Things were rather awful for me at the time, and although I was down to take some sort of ( Read more... )

So, the weekend was great fun, but very tiring indeed. I still can’t get over how very convenient the Eurostar is, especially now it goes from St Pancras. Twenty minutes on the bus, then two and a half hours on the train, and I was trotting across Paris with my little wheely bag full of English tea, Boot’s moisturiser and cheddar cheese (yes, I ( Read more... )

Home again, after a lovely weekend of food, museums and wine. I've been sitting about for over an hour, too tired to actually get up and go to bed. Sometime tomorrow, I'll probably post a few of my numerous fuzzy pictures of museum exhibits, but meanwhile here is one of a lovely little ivory-veneered cabinet, full of personality.


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Yesterday was lovely but also tiring. I met pondhopper at the British Library, and proceeded to drag her around two more museums, with only brief stops for food. We took in some of the manuscripts in the BL, then the History of Medicine collection at the Wellcome (plus a tasty lunch), and since they are all on the same bus route, we then made for the ( Read more... )

I am rather fond of filling in surveys and questionnaires and I'm even signed up for several online survey companies, so I usually stop for anyone with a clipboard. This is partly because I feel sorry for the clipboard wielder, and partly because I enjoy being asked my opinions on practically anything. A lot of these market research people give ( Read more... )

This weekend was a Bank Holiday, so the weather got progressively wetter and wetter and colder and colder, but I did manage to get out and do stuff, despite crawling back home on Friday feeling half dead after my last upholstery class (and last class of all).

On Saturday, I met up with idahoswede, mitzimaybe and pondhopper at the Victoria and Albert, where we spent a ( Read more... )

Just watched a wonderful documentary on BBC4 (via the Open University) about cabinets of curiosity, and their development into modern museum collections, specifically the British Museum. It seems to be a year or so old, as it goes on about the 250th anniversary of the BM, which I think was in 2003 and the setting up of the Enlightenment gallery ( Read more... )