If There's Room In The Heart, There's Room In The Butt.
On Saturday I went to the British Museum with 
wolfy_writing! We'd known each other for almost a decade online, so it was strange and delightful to meet in person at last and realise she wasn't actually a 100x100-pixel LJ icon.
wolfy_writing has swum with sharks and sat on an elephant and stroked a cheetah and been startled by a Komodo dragon and ridden a lion (one of these things may not, strictly speaking, be true). She is fascinating company, and also understandably unimpressed by the UK's lack of deadly animals for her to hang out with. Still, we do have the seagulls of Brighton.
My favourite exhibit in the British Museum is an enormous detached arm from an ancient Egyptian pharaoh statue, its hand in a fist (someone's posted a photo on Flickr here). It is my favourite because you can watch all the visitors internally struggling with the urge to give it a fistbump. Some linger for a moment and then tear themselves away and move on. Some almost give it a fistbump, leaving a little space between their fist and the stone to avoid breaking the 'no touching' rule. Some quickly give it a fistbump and then turn away and try to look innocent. At one point two guys walked past, looked at it, and then gave each other a fistbump to dispel the tension.
I'm also fond of the Tring tiles, a set of cartoonish fourteenth-century English tiles that depict the young Jesus killing his classmates in various situations and then bringing them back to life. One tile has the description 'Parents shut their children in an oven to prevent them from playing with Jesus'.
Important conversations whilst hanging out the washing:
Rei: I haven't washed all of my socks. Why not, you ask?
Riona: Er, because some of your socks are clean? Because two of your socks are on your feet?
Rei: Both of those things are true. Excellently deduced.
Riona: Thanks.
Rei: Thank you, Shersock Holmes.
Riona: REI, GO AWAY.
wolfy_writing! We'd known each other for almost a decade online, so it was strange and delightful to meet in person at last and realise she wasn't actually a 100x100-pixel LJ icon.
wolfy_writing has swum with sharks and sat on an elephant and stroked a cheetah and been startled by a Komodo dragon and ridden a lion (one of these things may not, strictly speaking, be true). She is fascinating company, and also understandably unimpressed by the UK's lack of deadly animals for her to hang out with. Still, we do have the seagulls of Brighton.
My favourite exhibit in the British Museum is an enormous detached arm from an ancient Egyptian pharaoh statue, its hand in a fist (someone's posted a photo on Flickr here). It is my favourite because you can watch all the visitors internally struggling with the urge to give it a fistbump. Some linger for a moment and then tear themselves away and move on. Some almost give it a fistbump, leaving a little space between their fist and the stone to avoid breaking the 'no touching' rule. Some quickly give it a fistbump and then turn away and try to look innocent. At one point two guys walked past, looked at it, and then gave each other a fistbump to dispel the tension.
I'm also fond of the Tring tiles, a set of cartoonish fourteenth-century English tiles that depict the young Jesus killing his classmates in various situations and then bringing them back to life. One tile has the description 'Parents shut their children in an oven to prevent them from playing with Jesus'.
Important conversations whilst hanging out the washing:
Rei: I haven't washed all of my socks. Why not, you ask?
Riona: Er, because some of your socks are clean? Because two of your socks are on your feet?
Rei: Both of those things are true. Excellently deduced.
Riona: Thanks.
Rei: Thank you, Shersock Holmes.
Riona: REI, GO AWAY.