Offending Shadows

[steepholm]

Well, it was an adventure. I’ve always wanted to spend the night at the British Museum, and now I’ve done it. Midsummer night, too – in the company of the puckish Tony Robinson. Admittedly it wasn’t quite as spooky with a television crew there as well, but still - wandering around in the gloaming amongst all those Rameses II statues, the Assyrian eagle-winged, lion-bodied, human-headed things (what’s the proper word for them?) and then being on my own (almost) with the Elgin marbles was pretty spectacular, as was seeing a sunny dawn break across the huge glass roof of the Great Court.

I was there as a contestant for a Channel 4 programme, Codex (to be aired some time in September, probably). It was gair who put me on to it, to begin with (thanks, gair!). It’s one of those shows where groups of people with particular professions get together to make a team: district nurses, brewers, park attendants and the like. I thought a team of children’s writers might work well, and that we’d get some free publicity to boot – which is how we ended up on the show. Because the BM is filled with people all day, they film the programme overnight. It’s quite an undertaking: they have to set up a fully functioning studio and film two shows, beginning only when the museum closes at 6pm and finishing by 5.30am. We were on the second shift, starting at 2.30am. They kept us awake with caffeine and Haribos. And food. Lots of food. Long trestles of it were laid out in a kind of undercroft area beneath the entrance hall – and it was only after I’d had rather too much that I noticed the mice running about nearby. After that it was Haribos only for your intrepid contestant.

Unfortunately I can’t say anything about the show itself, as I had to sign a contract to that effect. But I can perhaps reveal that the team we children’s writers were up against – in a show all about the artefacts at the British Museum – was composed of professional archaeologists. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination…

Coming back dazed yesterday morning, I noticed only after about half an hour of being on the train that it was entirely covered in mud. The seats, the carpet, the luggage racks. Thick wedges of mud hung from every table, as if some mud creature had been sliming through the corridor, trying to rub itself clean on the way. Half an hour after that (my brain was siezing up by this time) I realized that it was the after effect of Glastonbury: the train had already done the run from Bristol to London several times that day. Bristol Temple Meads still looked like a refugee camp when I got there. The concourse was filled with piles of mud, many with people inside them. Others had despaired of their clothes and were wearing bin bags. They all looked like they’d had adventures too.

And then I went straight on to work, where as I was going up the stairs to my office I met two colleagues – both historians – who told me that a friend and colleague of mine, whom I’ve known for 17 years, had collapsed and died on the campus that morning. No warning. All the historians had been having a meeting, including him, and he’d seemed in good form. He’d popped out to go to the toilet – and was found dying there ten minutes later. He was my age – mid-forties. Didn’t smoke, hardly drank, not overweight, kept fit, both his parents are alive and in good health: no one saw it coming. He was also one of the most thoroughly decent and unfailingly kind people I’ve known at UWE. For what it’s worth, he was an excellent scholar too. The world of seventeenth-century German studies is the poorer today – and so is this one.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I love those Assyrian thingies you describe; I always have to say hello to them when I visit the BM. I look forward to a future book featuring mud monsters and haunted museums.

Sympathies on the death of your friend. Sudden loss of any kind is really tough to process.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I saw Tony Robinson on ... um Tuesday or Wednesday, at 4pm in Liverpool. He gets about.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The show sounds fun, but oh that's awful for the person. I mean, in a sense, it's the best way to go--suddenly, no warming, BUT. After he'd had another fifty or so years of his good life, dammit.

[oenone-borealis.livejournal.com]

According to the New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, they're called lamassi or shedu (I don't know what the plural of this is, but I'd be willing to guess -i). Lamassu seems to almost exclusively refer to the lions. Shedu seems to apply to both bulls and lions, but they appear to be interchangeable.

I'm sorry to hear about your colleague.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was staring a pair of them in the face when they were asking the questions (while a cuneiform-covered lion looked over my shoulder), and I was terrified I'd be asked what they were called. Apart from anything else it would have been embarrassing to admit my ignorance right in front of them.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry about your colleague.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

Wow, congrats on staying awake! I'd have fallen asleep during the filming :) How cool is it that I'll be over there in time to see the show on TV?

I'm sorry about your friend's death.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

How cool is it that I'll be over there in time to see the show on TV?

Very!

[aryky.livejournal.com]

You spent the night with Baldrick!? I am in awe.

And condolences on your friend/colleague :(.

[nwhyte]

I had no idea that you knew Trevor, though of course it makes sense. He and I shared a house together in Cambridge for a year, in 1989-90. He was an absolutely lovely chap; I missed him when he moved away at the end of that year and was deeply shocked when I heard he had died. It's a small world, sometimes in an unhappy way.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Goodness me, another Johnsonian connection. Yes, we arrived at UWE at the same time in 1990, and for a while we taught a module on culture and the scientific revolution together. A lovely chap indeed.