I may be some time...

Sweet Thang always complains that I take up time reading the explanatory label on anything - whether it is a panel in a park, on the side of a building or in a museum. The fact is that she is absolutely right, but I do try to claim a professional interest - after all I do work in the museum field and it is what we call 'interpretation' how do you make what can seem an almost random selection of facts interesting to the general public.

At the moment I am sitting in a train departing Newcastle - that is Newcastle in northern England, not the Newcastle to the north of Sydney - and in the last week I have read more labels and panels then at any time before in my life. This is a work trip that came out of left field, basicvally go and attend a meeting in Oxford about an exhibition  we are going to have in a couple of years and while you are in the UK have a good look around, meet colleagues and do stuff...

So far I have spent three days in London, three days in Oxford, three days in Edinburgh and am on my way to Cambridge and then Dublin. So there have been lots and lots of museums, many photographs, a few really good meetings and lots and lots of labels to read.

Here are some of the facts that I have learnt:
- when you walk into the British Library and turn left from the Foyer they have an amazing array of books, medieval manuscripts, maps, sheet music, letters and journals on display in their Treasures Gallery. However the one which amqazed me the most wasn't some gloriously illuminated medieval book, it was a faitrly nondescript plain paper book, covered with diufficulty to read handwriting - it was Scott's journal from the ill-fated Antarctic expedition open on the page where he describes another member of the party, dying of starvation and cold leaving the tent with the words ' I may be some time.."

- on a fence next to Russell Square in London's Bloomsbury, a gogeous leafy park, there is a small plaque mentioning that near this spot a bomb destroyedf a double decker bus on what they call over here 7/7. Looking around you can easily imagine the disruption and devastation that would cause in this place on a busy day. Bloomsbury is full of blue plaques on buildings - it got quite distracting - here lived some of the most influential thinkers, artists and writers ever.

Of courese there has been a lot more and my main mlearning was that you don't try and do the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and trhe John   Soanes Museum all in one day - your brain will probably explode...

I will post some pictures soonish.