Bloomsbury

On Tuesday to the AGM of Dignity in Dying at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square. Not such a grand venue as last year's Queen Elizabeth Hall, but it many ways a more suitable one, it turning out that the Conway Hall has a big place in the humanist movement and being, inter alia, the home of the now slightly faded Ethical Society. The hall itself is also slightly faded, reminding one of a university building of the sixties. With roots, which I did not know before, in the Unitarian non-conformist church. Another first was the discovery that Red Lion Square was a square with a well-treed garden, a café and a statue of Fenner Brockway. I had cycled past the western end of the square often enough, but never, for some reason, taken in the square itself.

We were very pleased to learn at the AGM that the winner of this session's private members' ballot is to promote a bill for assisted dying, thus giving it a first airing in the House of Commons, having achieved a very decent majority in the House of Lords last session. There is an outside chance that it might even make it to the statute book in the next year or so. As someone was said to have observed, now is the time to chuck the kitchen sink at it. We have been given a break, so let's get in there and make the most of it. Or given a breach, associating here to a military term from the seventeenth century. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more... With the sequel being tastelessly appropriate.

Which led us away from the lofty moral ground, down to the grubby world of practical politics. We learn, for example, that private members' bills are usually debated on a Friday, the day traditionally reserved by MPs for their constituency duties. And I compromised to the extent that while the proposed bill is hedged around with rather more and rather more onerous safeguards than I would think necessary, if that is what we have to do to get a bill through, so be it.

Another new item was the suggestion that while around 80% of the population favour a change, with support well spread across classes, ages and so on, there are around 10% strongly against on grounds of faith - though I don't see at all why they should be able to inflict their faith on me. At least there have been a couple of high profile, episcopal even, faith converts. The medical profession seems to be moving in the right direction with some bodies which were against having now moved to neutral. Plus an inspiring talk from one Barbara Coombs Lee, mainly about http://www.thebrittanyfund.org/.

Bunked off the afternoon session, preferring a bit of fresh air and lunch in the square, from where we headed off to the British Museum, BH having recently read all about the Portland Vase in a potting books by A. N.Wilson (see reference 2). And Wilson did fire us up to go and look at the original, which is more than the Duke of Portland managed with just a passing mention in his otherwise engaging memoir 'Men, women and things' - this being the Duke of Portland who finally sold the thing in 1945. A sufficiently famous vase that the lady at the information desk knew the room number off pat with no need to look it up at all.

Sadly, I was rather disappointed with the vase, which might have been a great rarity but which did not do much for me. Maybe I would have liked it better had someone (in antiquity) not knocked the pointed, amphora style bottom off. But the visit was well worth while, reminding us what a tremendous collection they have at the museum, even in this one room 70. We were struck, for example, by one of the famous Athenian owls (a reliable coin, much favoured by merchants of the time). By a small pottery figure involving Eros doing something with a butterfly, possibly connected with Pysche also being a butterfly. By a large statue of Septimus Severus, the only Roman emperor with the good taste to die in Britain.

The only irritation was a large banner advertising an exhibition about the aboriginal civilisation in Australia. To me, so describing a stone age culture with no writing, never mind civics, in an attempt to atone for the bad things done to the aboriginals, is unhelpful. Puffing them up as something they were not is almost as disrespectful as ignoring them. The place was also busy, but one should not complain about that.

Tea and white wine in the Radisson Blu in Bloombury Street, the one opposite the Oxfam book shop which used to be quite an interesting, proper second hand book shop. Tea and wine good, in nice surroundings with a nice waitress. Well worth the extra. Didn't find anything in Oxfam, although after a bit of thought they told me the name of the people that who had been there before, but it did not ring any bells and I can neither remember it or track it down now. Must have bought one or two books there over the years.

Onto Royal Mile Whiskies where I went for a drop of Green Spot, a whisky which I have drunk on occasion but never bought by the bottle before. We shall see.

Into the shiny new tube station entrance at Tottenham Court Road to climb out at Waterloo, with the 85 steps or so making me puff a bit. Seemed a lot more than the 65 or so at Vauxhall.

PS: illustration of the Portland Vase courtesy of the British Museum, with its posting here hopefully not contravening the spirit of the use declaration I made when getting it. Given that the museum has caved in and one is allowed to take pictures with one's telephone, I could have made my own, but this one is rather better than I could have made. I note in passing that a lot of people were taking pictures when we were there and it was a bit tiresome at times. Getting a picture of an important object was clearly much more important than looking a the important object in-situ and trying to guess why it might be important...

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/agm-again.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-garden-of-eden.html.