A mission to Heathrow and fun in London.

On the mend from the pesky Basque Bug and after a good night's sleep, I am en route to see my Art Historian after collecting the 'purse that was left on a plane'.  It is great to be out and about again and speed  down the hill on Phyllis II.  

Newbury in Bloom Is doing brilliantly.  Well done to the team.

I feel back on form and well enough for my mission.  I chat to a mate on the platform and sort out some phone users in the quiet carriage.  

Soon I am reunited with the purse!!  Various challenges en route.  Not only is Bag Port, where I have been directed to, nothing to do with BA who initially deny all knowledge of same, but also it is actually known as Lost Property and helpfully sign posted as such. Incidentally,  this was the first sign I saw on arrival but I spent the next fifteen minutes doing detective work.  On arrival at Bag Port/Lost Property I initially meet the good old 'Little Britain' 'computer says no'. However I use all the skills learned dealing with difficult teenagers at the NHS coal face and emerge from said Black Hole of Calcutta twenty minutes later with lovely red purse and sanity in tact.  Hoping to not lose anything today. The notes are in a seperate envelope and the driving licence is misplaced and sticky.  Where has it been? Two days passed before it turned up in 'Bag Port'.  Once I misplaced (lost) a purse in Swindon and it turned up four days later in a phone booth.  Like the cat that was found as a stray in Paris after years, we will never know what traumas it had endured.  The Tale of Two purses would be a great novel. 

 So I head off on the Picadilly line to meet the AH. 

After a picnic in Green Park, where we catch up on the news, I get slightly lost on the way to The Courtauld Gallery.  You would think that was impossible.  I come across Edith Cavell's statue.  Firstly, how nice to see a woman commemorated even if the pigeons are running riot.  Second how relevant the sentiments are today.  'Patriotism is not enough.  I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone'.  Perfect.  

Edith Cavell ( 1865 – 1915) was a British nurse who saved the lives of soldiers from both sides in the Great War without discrimination.  She also helped hundreds of allied soldiers escape from German occupied Belgium.  She was accused of treason, found guilty and sentenced to death. Despite international pressure for mercy, she was shot by a German firing squad. Her execution received worldwide condemnation and extensive press coverage.  Maybe we have progressed in some ways......

Here are some sunflowers in Embankment Gardens.  A lovely sight!  Especially as I am off to see to The Courtauld Gallery, which houses some work by Vincent Van Gogh, of sunflower fame.  

But first to the Georgiana Houghton exhibiton.  Georgina, (1814-1884) was a Spiritualist medium who, in the 1860s and 70s, produced an astonishing series of abstract watercolours. Detailed explanations on the back of the works declare that her hand was guided by various spirits, including several Renaissance artists, as well as higher angelic beings. The watercolours have not been shown in the UK for nearly 150 years.

Georgina was a prominent figure of the early spiritualist movement in Victorian England, which played a significant role in various spheres of nineteenth century culture and was later championed by such influential figures as Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Spiritualism emerged as the belief that contact with a spirit realm was possible and that such communication could bring one closer to God. Georgina, a trained artist as well as a medium, pioneered the use of drawing as a method of channelling and expressing communications with spirit entities. She called these works ‘spirit drawings’.  Although produced in a very different context, these abstract works have close connections to the ways in which twentieth century artists developed abstract languages of art to transcend the everyday realm of representation and consciousness.  Her work reminds me of the Swedish Hilma af Klint, who would have been a young woman during this artist's later years.   

In 1871 Georgina rented a prestigious gallery space in Bond Street and presented 155 of her spirit drawings to a perplexed London audience. The Critic from The Era newspaper pronounced it to be “The most astonishing exhibition in London at the present moment.” The Daily News likened the works to “tangled threads of coloured wool” and concluded that “They deserve to be seen as the most extraordinary and instructive example of artistic aberration.” The exhibition proved to be a commercial failure and nearly bankrupted Georgina. Although she continued to make spirit drawings after the exhibition, her ambition of popularising the practice was not realised. Today, less than fifty of her works are known.

Here is The Risen Lord 

And here, an earlier painting, The Flower of William Harman Butler.  

Georgina often painted friends and relatives.  The red petals symbolise William's reliable character.  The yellow lines going down symbolise his errors and those going up, his good deeds.  

On the way out I look at The Haystacks by Paul Gauguin.   

This idyllic scene from Brittany depicts a way of life that Gauguin thought was vanishing 

Next I stand for some time by Vincent's Self Portrait with a Bandaged Ear

I am following the Radio 4 Book of the Week. 'Van Gogh's Ear, The True Story' by Bernadette Murphy read by the brilliant Rebecca Front which is really interesting.  Self harm in the late nineteenth century.  Men Behaving Badly, Sadly and Madly. Treatment for intentional self harm has not really progressed over the last century and a bit.  

I relax for a minute by the fountains.  Peaceful. 

Too tired to do more, I head for Paddington on the warm summer day, by tube rather than my usual Hyde Park walk.   

On the posh, previously first class bit of the 16.18,  I contemplate the very costly Heathrow Express which I took one way to save time and minimise stress.  Fifteen comfortable and cool minutes instead of forty five with two changes on the crowded hot tube using my travel card.  

I was incensed that TfL website gave no other options.  Hence a twitter chat. 

Good morning and sorry for the difficulties in using our journey planner. The system defaults to generate the fastest route hence Heathrow Express service. You can select your preferred mode of transport under "Edit Preferences" for a tube route as shown the following link bit.ly/2ad5BgV Thanks

Thanks that works if I untick everything except tube.  Why does it default to fastest route ?  I am cynical and think it is to suck tourists in.  I had to tell my US visitors that there were options to Heathrow.  Having said that, I had a faboulus 15 min journey for £14 but a bearable ride back that was kind of free as I had a travel card.  Why default to fastes route?

Hi , all systems have a default setting so a search can be carried out. Most of our passengers prefer to see the quickest route available to them. 

We also include many editable options on the planner, so the traveller has the choice to search for an alternative route too. 

Thanks for your feedback on the planner.

I think you need to cater for all passengers not most.  I know plenty of people who want to save money when going to airports and other places too,  we aren't all billionaires!  The Rail Delivery Group will be interested in this!   

I arrive home all posessions with me.   Phyllis2 and I get up the Hill with out stopping. What a lovely afternoon, despite missing out on the last minute chance to go to a lecture with the AH

A nice quiet eve with T of N

Seehttp://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/about

A day in Oxford

Today we meet up with our lovely friends who date back to Sheffield University days. We are doing the dress rehearsal for our Tour of Oxford's Medical History.  Details will be very brief as we do not intend to steel our own thunder. 

This is the restored twelth century Norman doorway of St Ebbe's church which is two minutes walk from the Castle. 

Here they all are listening intently and seriously to C's introduction at Cafe 1855.  This is a great spot with outside seating at the castle entrance. 

The castle was a prison in the past and is now a luxury hotel. 

Folly Bridge.  There has been a bridge on this site since Saxon times. 

Green Templeton College Oxford

The Old Parsonage Hotel.   Constructed in the seventeenth century on the site of a medieval hospice. 

Penrose Paving at the Mathematical Institute. 

It has been a lovely summer day and our feedback is good.  At the end we have a toast to our absent but present in spirit dear departed friend.  

A Full Day in Oxford

Today I am off out as soon as the rush hour has finished to meet my chum in Cafe Loco, Oxford.  One of my favourite coffee bars, which I have written about before.  We sit and look over Christchurch Gardens while planning the 'Oxford Medical Tour'.  More later!  

All sorted and the route covered, we have lunch at the Mathmatical Institute.  Fascinating modern building, all based on equations somehow and a cheap and cheerful baguette. 

So now for the treat.  It is off to the new exhibition at the Ashmolean, first musuem in Britain. 

Storms, War & Shipwrecks

This exhibiton is about Sicily's history interpreted through the finds from ship wrecks deep beneath the sea.  For 2500 years, Sicily was the place where the great powers of the ancient and medieval eras met and fought. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans battled for control, with many of their ships sinking off the island’s rocky shores. Sicily’s azure waters have since become a focus for underwater exploration and dozens of shipwrecks have been recovered.

We immerse ourselves in the world of the underwater archaeologist and explore the multicultural history of Sicily revealed through stunning and unusual artefacts brought up from the depths of the sea.

We also explore the roots of this multicultural heritage with over 200 spectacular and unusual objects rescued from the bottom of the sea.  The Arab and Norman eras seem to be enlightened and tolerant, with multiculturalism working well.  They could teach today's post Brexit Britain a thing or two.  We see the marble pieces of a Byzantine ‘flat-pack’ church and learn about intrepid prehistoric traders and  enlightened rule of the Norman kings.  This exhibition illuminates the movement of peoples, goods and ideas. 

The treasures on show in Storms, War and Shipwrecks have been uncovered over the last 60 years since the advent of SCUBA diving equipment which made possible sustained underwater exploration. While some of the objects are chance finds pulled up by local fishermen, most are from shipwrecks excavated by archaeological divers.   One of the earliest pioneers of underwater archaeology, whose legacy is explored in the exhibition, was the remarkable British woman, Honor Frost (1917–2010). Frost trained as an artist in London and at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.   But her enduring passion was for diving. In her book Under the Mediterranean (1963), she describes how she started out as a young woman by submerging herself in a well at a home in Wimbledon using a garden hose. Her mentor was the French archaeologist, Frédéric Dumas, who took Frost on her first dive to the wreck of a Roman ship at Anthéor on the south coast of France. 

Finds from several shipwrecks are dispalyed.  Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean and lying at the heart of historic maritime routes, is a leading centre for underwater archaeology. Eleven Roman and Carthaginian warship rams have been recovered near Levanzo, in the Egadi Islands off the northwestern coast.  These are one of the most important discoveries to date. These powerful weapons, mounted on the fronts of ships, were designed to plough into enemy vessels with great force. 

Together with helmets and other debris, the rams are proof of the exact location of the Battle of the Egadi Islands fought between the Romans and the Carthaginians on 10 March 241 BC. In the exhibition we display several rams, with a digital reconstruction of the battle, bringing to life the victory of Rome over Carthage, an event that changed history and ensured Rome’s ultimate domination of the Mediterranean.

Another spectacular discovery on display is an example of a Byzantine ‘flat-pack’ church. The Emperor Justinian (c. 482-565), in his efforts to fortify and regulate Christianity across his empire, was a prolific builder of churches. Under his rule, based at Constantinople, large stone-carrying ships, laden with prefabricated marble church interiors were sent out from quarries around the Sea of Marmara (the ‘marble sea’) to sites in Italy and north Africa. Some of these ships never made it to their intended destination. Heavy and slow, they became unbalanced and sank during stormy weather. 

A Greek merchant ship was ship wrecked near Gela in about 500BC.  This jug shows the godess Athena. 

Plate for seafood with central depression for dipping, cerca 300BC Greek.  

Arch with Godess Roma AD 100, found off coast of Camarina

After buying a couple of gifts we treat ourselves to tea and lemon drizzle in the Ashmolean Restaurant.

 

Then back to earth and a non functioning clip card, followed by a busy A34.  Home to an Oakham Citra!