London, Part Two

Current work: [shuffles guiltily – worked on Mundesley beach yesterday instead of at home, but it was the outline for one of next year’s romance novels…]
Listening to: Newton Faulkner, Made By Robots
Reading: I will start Jane’s book tonight…

I had a fab day with Fi on Saturday in one of my favourite places.

[British Museum]

Sadly we hadn’t managed to get tickets (even though Fi had tried for a month) for the Terracotta Army exhibition, but there was still much to see. Went via Russell Square - Bloomsbury is such a gorgeous area. (And it was all research for the current book – set in Bloomsbury, would you believe?) The Korean harvest festival was going on, so we dallied a little to see some of the exhibitions. There was a moon jar there – one of only TWENTY left in the whole world. (Used to store grain – and any imperfections during firing were greeted with pleasure because life isn’t perfect and they thought that something perfect would be unlucky. Just for the record, only one out of ten modern moon jars is fired successfully.)

[moon jar at the British Museum]

Another thing that really attracted me was one of the dances. I was fascinated by the dancer, whose face was painted COMPLETELY white (grease paint, I assume). Such graceful, slow movements. That headdress was quite something, too.

[moon dancer]

Then to the Roman section. I would’ve posted the rat with a trumpet sculpture here – sadly, no replicas in the shop or I would’ve bought one because it was gorgeous – but I hadn’t fiddled with the settings properly on the camera and it came out blurry. Very inspired now for my book (and Fi pointed out something I hadn’t considered but which does make a big difference... Thanks, Fi). Thoroughly interesting exhibition. Amazed how some technology has barely changed in the best part of two millennia – this cake pan, for example. (Well, obviously now you can get the posh silicone non-stick ones… the material has changed but the shape hasn’t much.)

[Roman cake pan]

We decided to be decadent and have lunch in the posh restaurant at the top of the Great Court – I think I may have burbled on about the architecture here in the past but I think this is stunning. (I like light and space in a building.)

[Great Court]

The food’s pretty good, too. We had the best gnocchi I’ve ever tasted, followed by my second fave pudding, crème caramel. (I walked off the calories. In fact, I lost weight while I was in London. Go figure.)

Then home - had a fab time in London but so good to be home with DH and the children. Nice welcome home, too – met me at the train station with flowers.

Will post about Sunday tomorrow. Plan for today: school run, work, piano lesson, work, school run, osteopath, work. And work.