w e e k e n d s

 *1

*2

As part of a concerted effort to reclaim weekends back from work, we went to the Hunterian Art Gallery last Saturday to see the 'This Unrivalled Collection' exhibition, which looked back to Captain John Laskey's first catalogue of the museum in 1813. The rooms were lovely and quiet, beautifully lit with dark red walls and the original early-nineteenth century cases. A motley collection of things with my favourites being some of the old typefaces, coins, and natural history illustrations. Less lovely but still grimly fascinating was the stuffed sloth and the enormous clam shell, that made me feel queasy about what the clam must have looked like (a couple of feet across).

On Sunday we went to see the new Ken Loach film, 'Spirit of 45', which is a documentary about the beginning of the welfare state, NHS, and nationalisation of various industries. Since the last part had to be about the systematic dismantling of such things, it was very depressing. Some of the earlier footage was great though, the voices beautiful and so were the ideas of an economy driven not by profit but by collective need. I won't say more because the gulf is so wide between that and George Osborne and it's just too painful to contemplate. But it was a warm film; a populist variation on the Luke Fowler film. [Still from the film comes from here.]

*1 Mask brought back [looted] by Captain Cook from the Society Islands, Tahiti c.1770
*2 Morpho butterfly from William Hunter collection, c. 1780