Day 3: Hangin with the homeys in Bloomsbury

What a glorious spring day! Last night we decontaminated ourselves and slept the sleep of the dead for oh, a good three or four hours until woken by the cheerful but never-ending trillings of a nearby nightingale or lark at 4.45am. Geoff reached for his sawn-off shotty but then realised he hadn't packed it. So we were up and about bright and early.

I promise this is my last story about the flight over (did I mention we came business class?).  Yesterday morning shortly after departure from Guangzhou and following our inedible breakfast, I decided to turn my seat into a bed and have a nap.  Geoff said that he would stay upright for the time being.  But our very attentive steward had other ideas and suddenly started reclining Geoff's seat while Geoff protested (in vain) that no, he wasn't ready for bed yet. The steward ignored him and almost held him down as the seat became a bed, then removed a doona from its wrapping and tucked Geoff in.  Fortunately he stopped short of kissing him goodnight.  We're not sure why Geoff received this special treatment. Other passengers looked on with bemused fascination. I was chortling so long and hard that there was no danger of me nodding off, so I reconfigured my bed to a seat while Geoff wondered what might be a polite period of time to pass before he too could resume sitting, rather than lying horizontal and feigning sleep.

We have solved our Wi Fi problem. It transpires that Geoff's laptop recalls the password from the last time we were here and it needed to be deleted from some obscure 'properties' file before the new one could be keyed. We feel much better now, if slightly sheepish and bewildered by technology.

Our first port of call after our chores with laptops, phone shops and supermarkets this morning was a visit to the Wellcome Collection around the corner in Euston Rd. Wellcome was a wealthy pharmacist and entrepreneur who died in the 1930s. Although housed in quite a modern building, the collection was a strange sort of experience - it had artifacts like 16th century obstetric forceps and shrunken heads, as well as exhibitions relating to forensic medicine and sexology.  It was a bit bewildering - we couldn't figure out how it all hung together. Perhaps I should have read the introductory pamphlet.  But the toilets were very clean and that is always a plus in my book.  

Next stop, the British Library, also in Bloomsbury. And look. There I am!

The building itself is ugly as sin but oh, the Treasures Room was simply magnificent.  You could spend days in there, utterly captivated. We saw the handwritten lyrics of "A Hard Day's Night" that John Lennon wrote on the back of his son Julian's 1st birthday card (the inconsiderate bastard!). Music scores written by Handl, Gluck and Brahms.  An original Gutenberg bible. A 15th century copy of Aesop's Fables. A letter written by Sir Thomas More to his daughter when imprisoned and awaiting execution for refusing to recognise Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn. Heaps of other fabulous stuff. But my favourite document was the deathbed Will of Prince Aethelstan the Atheling, eldest son (and therefore prospective king) of the fabulously named Ethelred the Unready.  Aethelstan died in 1016, predeceasing his father and so never became king. But he was a generous soul and bequeathed much of his property to Ethelweard the Stammerer and Godwine the Driveller.  One of the items up for grabs in his estate was a  sword that once belonged to Offa, King of Mercia in the AD 600s.. Those who read our previous blog might recall our acquaintance with Offa, whose legendary dyke along the Welsh border proved elusive despite our efforts to find it.

The man of the house here ... To show  off today's balmy weather, here is half the population of the Bloomsbury district enjoying the sunshine in Russell Square, with the gothic-style Hotel Russell in the background.

The last time they can remember spring weather like this was before most of them were born. 

 

From the British Library we made a return visit to the British Museum, on the way encountering the St Pancras Hotel, which for the architecturally minded of you (surely there must be somebody) will hopefully prove pretty damned impressive.

 

 

 

The question I have about the British Museum (in fact pretty much all their cultural institutions) is: how come they've got the best of everything?  One answer might lie in the explanation about an ancient artefact to the effect that it was 'found' in Rome in the 16th century, and subsequently 'acquired' by Sir Reginald Bartley Crump of Worthington on Fotheringale and then found its way into the British Museum.  Nice work if you can get it, and reminiscent of the manner of their acquisition of the Parthenon (otherwise Elgin) Marbles, one of their biggest attractions.  Anyway, here are a couple of views of the Museum's splendour:

 

 



... which show a very small number of the teeming multitudes of today's patrons (none of whom seemed to be British:

 

 



And to remind us of the birthplace of our current beloved leader, here's the accompanying explanation for an exhibit devoted just to him: it references a 15th century gold ring that evokes St Anthony Abbott as a protection against the plague. Conservatives eh? Always so easily duped. 

 

Till tomorrow, grasshoppers!