Thornton's chocolate shop in the centre of Lancaster is ablaze!
Fire engines from across the county are being rushed in and the city centre is closed to pedestrians. Both children and adults alike are racing towards the fire carrying buckets, jars, bottles and vases; anything they can use to collect the chocolate from melting Easter egg that is pouring out of the burning building and flooding the street. I even saw a fireman remove his helmet and dip it into the steaming liquid delight . Tragic as the destruction is, today all of Lancaster is filled with the most delicious smell of hot chocolate.
On Tuesday I drove down to Liverpool to meet my friend Jill, who I had not seen for almost a year. Maybe it was a year! As well as drinking coffee and eating cakes we tried to visit an exhibition of cutting edge digital art
It was close because of technical problems. I don't remember an art exhibition closing because they had run out of frames. Or paint, or cubes for the cubists.
So we moved on to one of the great cubist buildings of Liverpool. The Waterhouse designed university building that has recently opened as a museum. The dreadful website and Facebook page don't give you a picture of the main attraction, the beautiful and elaborate tiled interior. We took a small guided tour and the guide lavished much praise on the great Liverpool philanthropist merchants, chief amongst them Mr Tate the Sugar King. We made obeisance at his bearded bust.
The Henry Tate sugar business started some fifty years after the abolition of slavery so all his wealth was made from from a happy, well paid, workforce cutting cane in the sunny Caribbean, singing their finest work songs as they did so. So that's alright. Hurrah for Mr Tate.
But I went away reminded of the plain of Pagan that was once covered with ten thousand temples, built by rich aristocrats and merchants in the hope of a good rebirth despite the sins they had committed to make them wealthy enough to build a temple. Two thousand or so temples still exist but no one in Bagan thought of building a university and making it look like a temple.Besides you can't litter a plain with ten thousand universities.