With the current main camera definitely out of action unless and until I can source a replacement battery, it was time to dig around in the deepest corners of the house for a possible replacement — and old pieces of kit, twenty, twenty-five years old maybe, kept turning up. Whether any of these, and their respective batteries, actually work or not remains to be established, though the silver one to the right is looking like the best bet. I am going to buy a new one (and I mean a new one, not second-hand again) but that will have to wait until payday.
The roof is immediately recognisable for, yet again, I am at King’s Cross station for the final leg of a journey home. Still, as railway stations go, it’s decent enough, and infinitely better than Euston, down the road. That really is it for the holidays however. Quite a number of fellow passengers on the 10.30 train were obviously international students making their way north.
Our journey yesterday ended in Luxembourg, which thereby has the honour of being the 50th country to appear on this blog in its fifteen-and-a-bit years. Admittedly this number has been achieved partly by splitting up the various bits of the UK and adding a few airport stopovers and flyovers but nevertheless I suppose it’s a reasonable number. (See the stats for the full list if you like.)
Like a lot of places in Europe, Luxembourg, the city, grew up where it did because it was a very fortifiable spot, and was getting along quite well until the late 18th century when — again, like a lot of places in Europe — Napoleon decided to roll his armies over it. It was decades until the place truly recovered, losing its fortifications along the way but becoming the capital of an independent state and, nowadays, one of the most affluent cities in the world. But the prices in the restaurants remain reasonable (somewhat against my expectations, I must admit) and it seems a rather agreeable spot. There will be more shots over the next few days. For now, a display in the city’s historical museum — because I always gravitate to them first, usually they are the best way of finding out about a new place. Hence, this photograph, and indeed this paragraph.
There are still students writing their dissertations and still some needing to battle through their data. I try to help. AI might be quicker but it will always be worse at discerning meaning than people are because it doesn’t understand the context and never will. Trust me.
Either way, the last two photos indicate that it really is time to leave the house.
Today was one of those days mentioned on Tuesday; inspiration had to be found from indoors. Fortunately the wife has recently engaged in one of her shredding binges. There is a whole landscape of information contained within half-a-dozen blue waste bags, ready to be recycled into…. well, toilet roll quite possibly. But not by us.
There are nine Muses, at least according to most classical mythology. Sculpted representations of three of them currently occupy the lobby of the Weston Library, while the building across the road has some cosmetic surgery undertaken. I’d like to think I have engaged with eight of them at some point in my life although I must have done something in my karma to upset Terpsichore as she and I have never really got together.
Lately if I am to be found in either Oxford or Kew then I’ve gone back to the archive. These days I much prefer making enquiries of archives than of actual people. I don’t have to go through the university ethical approval procedure, and believe me, that is reason alone.
Besides, if looking back into history, any written record is an insight into the minds of the people who made it and so much more reliable than asking someone what they remember about events some 50 years ago. This document was part of a big file recounting the saga of Tony Thornton and the short-lived St Helena Labour Party (1974-1976) is a fine example of what can happen to you if you piss off the British Government too much (and don’t imagine it’s some anti-left-wing thing: in fact, Mr. Thornton was more like what we would now call a libertarian): here is not the place, but see the entry for Thornton on John Turner’s web site.
You may or may not have gone to university but if you did, and lived in a hall of residence, unless you did in fact go to Oxford or Cambridge I will bet it did not look like New College, or indeed any one of the other medieval halls that lie around this great seat of learning. Statues, cloisters, that kind of thing. It says a lot that this can be called “New” when it was founded in 1387.
Our journey home from Bristol is being done via London, as we had cause to visit the capital for the David Bowie archive and exhibition which has recently set up home in the V & A’s ‘East Storehouse’, built on the former Olympic Park site. And here it is. It is like some giant retail warehouse, a huge Ikea or B & Q, only for art, not flatpack furniture or tins of paint. And, in fact, B & Q might well be more clearly organised. Obviously there will be some logic behind it (I guess the people running the V & A do know what they are doing after a century or more of professional work in this area) but it’s certainly not obvious to the casual visitor. All the various stairways and walkways just add to the impression of this being some giant labyrinth, a massive Escher print.
Being 42 