From Waterloo I took the Tube to Goodge Street, and walked through Bloomsbury to the British Museum, where I took many, many blurry photographs:
And an occasional sharpish one:
I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life at the British Museum. I think it’s my favourite. It’s not just the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Marbles (as they’re now called), it has so much gorgeous stuff displayed, from all over the world, that I can literally see that it’s impossible to have anything more than a superficial grasp of most cultures. Look at this gold hat with ears that I snapped as I walked past. I think it’s Assyrian:
There are clocks, canoes, a machine for printing pound notes, a painting from 1943 of the Ethiopian army fighting the Italian army whose rows of troops:
reminded my daughter that there are similar rows in the Plains Indians drawings.
At the top of the stairs was an exhibition of the full 100 etchings of Picasso’s Vollard Suite, where I took more blurry photographs:
And then I went and sat in a sunken garden – I’m not sure it has a name – that seems to belong to University College. I went down two curved flights of steps until I was one storey below Malet Street and all the noise and fumes. What a great idea, I wonder why there aren’t more sunken public squares.
Afterwards I went to some of the remaining second-hand bookshops in Charing Cross Road, and so back to Richmond, and beyond.
A Bad Guide 
Your RECENT COMMENTS sidebar maintains that this post is a comment at the old thread about Plains Indian drawings.
Yeah, I think it’s having a nervous breakdown. It may explode. Or I may explode. I’ve got Part II coming before Part I and it seems impossible to fix.
To be pedantic; I think it isn’t that the garden is sunken but that the road is raised.
You may know this AJP but it is also the reason for there being so many basement flats in London. This tend to be level with the back garden but below road level at the front. It was all a cunning way of building cheaply.
best
PK
Here is a gold hat with eyes.
PK,
Thank you very much for that bit of information. I must admit I didn’t know it. One long side of the garden* has a terrace and the basements all have access, the other three sides are bounded by streets. I remember that many of the wonderful Notting Hill (where I grew up) communal back gardens had direct basement access, but the squares in front of the houses were at street level. So were the roads raised so the developer could lay sewers underneath?
How do you know about this? Does everyone except me know, or did you get it from a very interesting source (Pevsner, for example)?
*I see now it’s called Malet Street Gardens
Ø,
Here is a hat with eyes, nose & mouth.
I wish I could draw in this comments box. Perhaps we need a sketch based blogging system.
Anyway…
It was a way of only digging half a basement. Piling the excavations up in the road gave a (more) level entrance from the street for the owners whilst still having a cellar for coal and servants. (it also allowed the coal chute in the footpath). ..and, yes, you need less excavation for sewers if you raise the ground level rather than sink the pipes. All very neat.
I don’t know how I know this. A lifetime’s interest in elegant solutions probably. But don’t get me started on the crystal palace.
It was a way of only digging half a basement.
Maybe even less, if it’s coming from both sides of the street.
I’d certainly love to hear anything you’ve got to say about the Crystal Palace…
Oh the Crystal Palace was wonderful.
The Crystal Palace, Joseph Paxton & even Prince Albert were all pretty wonderful. I’ve got on display in my kitchen a medal from the Great Exhibition, it was awarded to my great-great-something-or-other. I think he did something crucial but hitherto and henceforth unsung – like manufacturing hinges, the British army for the use of.
The Beeb (or maybe Channel 4) did a good documentary on the Crystal Palace within (I guess) the last decade.
Come to think of it, if it was meant to celebrate the 150-th birthday, perhaps it was in 2001.
Thank you.
Incidentally, why are people in Britain so hung up on Brunel? Wasn’t he voted Greatest Dead Briton, on the BBC? And then he or someone portraying him appeared on that Olympics opening show. What’s the big deal about Brunel, all of a sudden? Britain had Brunel, the US had Roebling, the French had Eiffel, the Germans…must have had an equivalent, but I can’t see the French, for example, voting Gustav Eiffel ‘Greatest Dead Frenchperson’.
I know, it’s very odd. Maybe people got fed up of Americans overestimating Edison and thought that we’d better have someone to oversestimate ourselves. Given how many genuinely remarkable engineers we’ve had, it’s just bonkers.
My guess is the woman is knitting Pablo a jumper since he seems to have hit hard times in the wardrobe department. He is unable to comprehend the complexity of her craft.
He does look confused. He doesn’t deserve a jumper, but he probably had many knitted for him.
Dearie, I’m glad you agree.
I believe that the woman is knitting an image of him even as he is drawing her. It’s a sort of, what did Language Hat call it?, mise en abyme.
No, actually what I think of when I look at the woman is that she is holding a tiny baby. Not that she is, but that’s what I think of, and here’s why.
You mean because it’s blurry?
I don’t know what happened there. I didn’t mean to link to your other post. I wanted to link to something I had written, but I hadn’t written it yet … This makes no sense. Never mind, let’s start again.
No, actually what I think of when I look at the woman is that she is holding a tiny baby. Not that she is, but that’s what I think of, and here’s why.
How bitter sweet. Well, you’re one year ahead of us.