Bad start with no small birds to be seen at all in the scrub opposite Platform 4. And then when we get to Waterloo there was a mild disagreement about where the right bus stop was, but we eventually found our way to the mini bus station between the northern tip of the railway station and the roundabout. Notwithstanding, we are soon at the British Museum, being struck on this occasion by the fine appearance of the pillared main entrance and the piazza in front of it. No doubt the accountants at the Museum are eyeing said piazza with hungry eyes, itching to put income generating buildings on it. Long may they be held off! They have already roofed over what used to be the interior courtyard, with a glass roof which is striking, but I have not got used to what still looks like the outside actually being inside, although I suppose I have to allow that it does provide a lot of all-weather space for customers to mill around in, taking the heat off the museum proper.
Started off with the exhibition of Columbian gold in what used to be the reading room, and is now a rather poor exhibition space. I do hope that the present consultation about the future comes up with a more suitable use for the place (itself, I just learn, a bit of infill itself, being built in the previously empty courtyard, long after the main museum was built). But the Columbian gold was good, despite the bad lighting, the bad manners of some of the visitors and the irritating music in the background. The pots were interesting. The dates were feeble, mostly being given as ranges of the order of a thousand years, presumably reflecting both the inertia of gold and lower grade archaeology. Some of the gold was intriguing in that it looked as if it was woven out of fine wire but was actually made by the lost wax method. The Columbians clearly liked things which glittered as a lot of the body ornaments were hung with small plates of gold which quivered, and so glittered, in the breeze. They also clearly liked their coke, even in those far off days, with a lot of related artefacts being on display, notably a lot of things looking like fancy skewers, which used to be dipped into little jars of lime and then sucked, the lime being necessary to bring out the best from the coca leaves.
From where the plan was to move onto Captain Mausoleum and we asked the information desk where he was to be found. The information desk knew straightaway what I was talking about but told me that, despite all the crowds milling about, the Captain was closed due to staff shortages. They even went to the bother of writing the number to ring to check before setting out the next time we wanted to see him on a compliments slip. But BH knew better and said bother that, let's go and take a look anyway. And she was right, the relevant room was up and running. Very impressive it was too, almost on the scale of the Elgin marbles and the mausoleum must have been the same order of size as the Parthenon before being struck down by an earthquake. I continue to wonder at all the surplus labour available for the massive construction projects of the ancients; I can only think that the switch from hunting to farming must have been a very good move. The only disappointment was that the ticket on the impressive statues of the Captain and his wife suggested that the attribution was conventional but uncertain. There were large statues of the happy pair inside the mausoleum, but whether these were they, or just some rank-and-file aristos from the outside, could not now be known.
And so to lunch at a pleasant restaurant, catering mainly to tourists, across the way in Museum Street and called Amarcord.
From there we strolled down to the Adelphi Hotel which I am convinced was used as the location for lots of scenes in television Poirot and from there to the food market underneath the Festival Hall. A bit of Comté, which saved going to London Bridge for a while, and an excellent sour dough baguette. I am not keen on the sour dough bread from 'Mixed Blessings' in Tooting, but this stuff was indeed excellent.
And so to the train on which we puzzled over the two level crossings in the vicinity of Raynes Park. Hard to see how they got to open much during the rush hour, given the frequency of the trains. Must check on the map.
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