Thank you for all the Team Middlemarch discussions over the weekend. We are off to a flying start with our year-long read conducted at Victorian instalment speed. Some of us are loving it, others are persevering and if you fancy joining us on board the virtual brougham it is never too late so here are a few housekeeping arrangements.
'Joining' only involves getting a copy of the book, either real or digital, reading Part One Miss Brooke and leaving a comment with your thoughts, or discussing what others have written on this weekend's post here, and to read any previous posts in the build up just click on this Team Middlemarch tag. Part Two Old and Young arrived through Victorian letter boxes on February 1st 1872 so we will start reading that on the same day 140 years later and then gather here over the weekend of March 24th - 25th to share our thoughts.
So back to the real world and the training days last week were actually not as terrible as even the optimist in me had feared.
The course leaders were excellent; engaging, assertive, clear and unequivocal about the issues which is exactly what you need where child protection is concerned, and nicely terrifying enough for me not to even think about taking the prolonged blink which then has you falling off your elbow in the post-lunch session.
I was in a 4* hotel nearer Bedford then Luton so that could have been much worse, and working from home and online I only meet up with my work colleagues twice a year, so it was lovely to see them all.
I found myself sitting opposite a consultant gynaecologist on the way to London. Well the briefcase advertising a world conference suggested as much (unless he'd bought it on eBay of course) ... and his diary, though impossible to read upsidedown looked very full indeed. He was reading Colm Toibin's The Master just for your information, and making copious notes. I did take The Virgin in the Garden by A.S.Byatt and it was perfect reading, both on the train and at 4am in a hotel room with an inaccessible wireless signal and strange pillows that just refused to meet my exacting standards of comfort. Needless to say I dropped off at about 6.50am ready to be woken by the 7am alarm, but only a hundred fifty pages to go.
I had planned an overnight stop in London on the way home rather than arriving in Plymouth towards midnight and had scheduled in an evening of browsing in Foyle's and a day of exhibitions before catching a late afternoon train home the following day and it all went nicely to plan.
Undaunted by the weather on Wednesday morning...
The secret is to go with someone who has been sensible enough to bring a large-scale map which won't need glasses, and to have looked up the bus numbers beforehand...
And so it was lovely to spend the day in Fran H-B's company as we headed for the Dickens exhibition at the Museum of London, passing the London Wall, which to my chagrin I don't think I have ever really noticed before...
Early for our 10 am tickets we nipped into Postman's Park just opposite the museum and behind St Botolph-without-Aldgate Church (the other secret is to go with a professional 'Nanny' who has prammed her way around most of the city and knows these little tucked away corners)
A neat little pond...
and there, surrounded on all sides by the towering City of London, the G.F. Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice...
Everday heroes immortalised in a plein-air gallery of exquisite, Arts and Crafts-like tiles...
No pics allowed in the Dickens Exhibition but well worth a visit if you are interested, and especially if you want to pay homage to the famous desk and the chair. Given to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in 2008 to auction for funds and now in a private collection but on loan for this exhibition. The commentary of Dickens's essay Night Walks, narrated to a film playing on a loop in a side gallery, provided an interesting backdrop to the viewing, the occasional words would float up and out into the air... houselessness...Newgate... are not the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lay dreaming... and it would seem completely relevant to whatever I was looking at.
From there we were headed for the William Morris Exhibition at 2 Temple Place (more of which soon) and walked via St Paul's to get there. I pass no judgement whatsoever on the Occupation or the reasons for its existence, but suffice to say we were slightly dubious about a large container of very yellow-brown liquid outside one tent. Fran suggested it was beer, the nurse in me thought more a by-product of consumption.
Anyway here's a picture of the dome with a leafless wintery accompaniment and always a splendid sight.
Recent Comments