Cats are all female.
I'm writing this in the uncomfortable new Members' Room in the British Museum. The old Friends' Room - we are no longer 'friends'. The relationship has been formalised to 'members'. - had a kind of shabby gentility about it and always reminded me of a rather seedy first class waiting room from the age of steam trains. The 'friends, more often than not, ranged from the slightly eccentric to the completely batty and laptops were banned: The 'members' all look like lecturers from Milton Keynes University and have Apple laptops and iPads. (I write this on my Apple laptop,)
From where I sit I can look down on the riffraff milling around down in the Great Court. I'm glad I was around for the last years of the Friends Room. It was friendly and has left fond memories.
I came to London especially to see The Act of Killing but also visited the Ice Age Exhibition at the BM, a marvellous Mughal art exhibition at the British Library, Trogg at the Cartoon Museum and Light Show at the Hayward.
I came down with Viv and stayed with her sister. - The one with the tortoisehell kitten. - Viv was Katie Patterson's mentor/fairy godmother/knew her mother and was very keen to see Katie's light bulb.
The bulb gave had the just same luminescence as the moon and in an extraordinary coincidence look almost exactly the the same as the ones I have at home in NuL. I bought mine from a Pound Shop.
I particularly enjoyed the fountains in strobe lighting. Sensitive, artistic souls see the water as a delicate frozen sculpture,but Philistines just see flickering water, and come away with a headache.
I'm writing this in the uncomfortable new Members' Room in the British Museum. The old Friends' Room - we are no longer 'friends'. The relationship has been formalised to 'members'. - had a kind of shabby gentility about it and always reminded me of a rather seedy first class waiting room from the age of steam trains. The 'friends, more often than not, ranged from the slightly eccentric to the completely batty and laptops were banned: The 'members' all look like lecturers from Milton Keynes University and have Apple laptops and iPads. (I write this on my Apple laptop,)
From where I sit I can look down on the riffraff milling around down in the Great Court. I'm glad I was around for the last years of the Friends Room. It was friendly and has left fond memories.
I came to London especially to see The Act of Killing but also visited the Ice Age Exhibition at the BM, a marvellous Mughal art exhibition at the British Library, Trogg at the Cartoon Museum and Light Show at the Hayward.
I came down with Viv and stayed with her sister. - The one with the tortoisehell kitten. - Viv was Katie Patterson's mentor/fairy godmother/knew her mother and was very keen to see Katie's light bulb.
The bulb gave had the just same luminescence as the moon and in an extraordinary coincidence look almost exactly the the same as the ones I have at home in NuL. I bought mine from a Pound Shop.
I particularly enjoyed the fountains in strobe lighting. Sensitive, artistic souls see the water as a delicate frozen sculpture,but Philistines just see flickering water, and come away with a headache.
There was one exhibit however that could be enjoyed by Eloi and Morlock alike and that was the three coloured rooms.
Now I must dash for my train, so can say no more.
Read the reviews if you want to know the details.
Now on the train back to Oop North. Viv commented that there were no depictions of plants In the Ice Age exhibition. It is rather curious given the huge time span covered by the Ice Age art. In fact, it was two Ice Ages, not just the one. Fruits, nuts and berries must have played a very important part in Stone Age diet and the shape and colour of flowers makes them ideal for decoration and design. But can anyone think of a cave painting of a plant?
Portraits of people are rare and landscapes, plants, fruit, and flowers are unknown. Perhaps this gives strength to the theory that cave paintings are a kind of ancient animated cartoon. Who goes to the cinema to see plants? Just like us an early audience sitting watching the changing shapes in the flickering torchlight would have wanted the excitement of mammoths, lions, bison and so on.
What is the earliest depiction of a plant?
I also wanted to do some searching for the S dragon in prehistoric art but did not have time on this trip.
There was a dragon in the Mughal art exhibition, but I would guess it it was Chinese and had come to India via Tibet.
There was a very interesting depiction of a tusked crocodile in the Emperor Babur's natural history book. Mughal artists were brilliant nature painters and their birds, animals and plants are nearly always accurate and precise.
They would have been very familiar with ordinary crocodiles, so why did they include this distorted beast?
Unless, perhaps, the remnant of a species of tusked crocodile was still around, or more likely the ancient skull had been preserved in some collection or temple. Who knows?
Read the reviews if you want to know the details.
Now on the train back to Oop North. Viv commented that there were no depictions of plants In the Ice Age exhibition. It is rather curious given the huge time span covered by the Ice Age art. In fact, it was two Ice Ages, not just the one. Fruits, nuts and berries must have played a very important part in Stone Age diet and the shape and colour of flowers makes them ideal for decoration and design. But can anyone think of a cave painting of a plant?
Portraits of people are rare and landscapes, plants, fruit, and flowers are unknown. Perhaps this gives strength to the theory that cave paintings are a kind of ancient animated cartoon. Who goes to the cinema to see plants? Just like us an early audience sitting watching the changing shapes in the flickering torchlight would have wanted the excitement of mammoths, lions, bison and so on.
What is the earliest depiction of a plant?
I also wanted to do some searching for the S dragon in prehistoric art but did not have time on this trip.
There was a dragon in the Mughal art exhibition, but I would guess it it was Chinese and had come to India via Tibet.
There was a very interesting depiction of a tusked crocodile in the Emperor Babur's natural history book. Mughal artists were brilliant nature painters and their birds, animals and plants are nearly always accurate and precise.
They would have been very familiar with ordinary crocodiles, so why did they include this distorted beast?
Unless, perhaps, the remnant of a species of tusked crocodile was still around, or more likely the ancient skull had been preserved in some collection or temple. Who knows?