The House Husband

So they’re replacing the ceiling at work, in the basement. The one that leaks whenever it rains. They’re starting next Wednesday with moving everything out of the way, putting up hoardings and scaffolding it all up. Both sides of the office. Because of this, we (the volunteers) received an email today advising us…actually, telling us, to take a holiday for a month. There’ll be nowhere for us to work after all.

So, Monday will be my last museum day for a month (sad, I know) and I shall have to concentrate on jobs that need doing around the house.

Today I had to try and find something about an agricultural machine that ran on steam and was called a clover seed drawer. I wasn’t very successful. Apparently it was either

1. a seed drill like the one that Jethro Tull invented and which popped seeds into the ground automatically; OR
2. a big old shaky machine that separated the good seeds from the bad seeds, before they were loaded into a machine like the one that Jethro Tull invented and…etc, etc.

I did find out that a Robert Hunt from Essex, had an award winning one in 1853 which he was selling all over southern Britain. Sadly I did not find out what it actually did or who invented it. The record I was researching had no image, so I couldn’t even get a hint. Anyway, it was a pain and totally not fruitful.

Back to the catalogue cards on Monday and then…a void.

By the way, Carmen is showing no ill effects and continues to…do exactly what she does every day.

I was all alone in the basement this afternoon. Kevin was at Blythe House, Nick may or may not have been at Blythe House, Ailsa was on annual leave and Barbara had gone to a training session. The lights down here operate by movement (to save electricity) and the office I work in is all dark when I’m sitting on my own. Mainly because the movement sensors are on the other side of the office. Normally one of the others trigger it. But not this afternoon. So every ten minutes or so, the lights go off.

Fortunately I have the skylight above me which gives a lot of natural light. And then, every now and then one of the guys in the office next door walk by the doorway and trigger the lights. Which is disconcerting!

Kevin actually rang this morning to make sure all was well and to let me know he’s nominated me for the Volunteer of the Year award – I guess because Nick wasn’t around to do it. The ceremony is being held on Thursday but I’ll not be able to make it as I have a Talking Newspaper session. Pity. It’s being held in a part of the museum not normally opened to the public and I’d have liked a bit of a gander.

Kevin also asked if I could change my Monday to some other day because there’s a new volunteer they need to slot in somewhere. As much as I’d like to be helpful, I’m really only happy doing Monday and Friday. As it is, Tuesday is my only guaranteed day at home! Well, once I restart lunch with Mirinda when she returns to work.

And so I spent the day repairing records for models of war stretchers, made during WWI, and pewter hot water bottle records (no breast relievers today), hopefully improving them for general consumption. The records, not the stretchers or hot water bottles.

Here’s a picture I took of the office before the lights went out. This is the view from my Monday desk. Nick is right in front of me, Ailsa is in the far corner, to the right of the photocopier and Barbara sits just to the left, almost behind the pillar.

Down in the basement

At lunchtime I was wandering around the museum, looking for something to blip (I ended up finding something outside) when I came upon this. It’s the boiler from an old (1796 old) early steam engine. I have no idea how it works or what it does but it has an oddly alien look about it. Sort of Jules Verne-ish. It’s as if something from the pages of The First Men on the Moon suddenly leapt from the pages and onto the museum floor.

Steam header thingy

I have typed the above about 40 times today. That was what the majority of today’s records were. They were starting to drive me close to insanity! There was a (very) brief respite brokered by a couple of random rubber teats and a bottle scrubber but, though they tried valiantly, they just weren’t enough.

The fun thing on Mondays is finding lots of duplicate people records. I start going a bit doolally trying to unravel the reasoning behind some of them. Mostly the problem arises because it seems that Victorian companies changed their names with unhindered regularity. In fact, whenever someone dies, someone else steps into the top spot and the name gets changed. This means it’s very important to know when something was made or bought in order to know what the company was called at the time.

My favourite is a company called Maws. It goes a little something like this:
1807 – Hornby & Maw
1826 – George Maw & Son
1832 – J&S Maw
1860 – S Maw & Son
1870 – S Maw Son & Thompson
1901 – S Maw Son & Sons
1940 – Maws Pharmacy Supplies
1965 – S Maw Son & Sons [AGAIN]
1973 – purchased by ITT Inc, an American company

All of these should have separate people records. Now, the biggest problem comes when an object is dated by a range because no-one really knows the exact date of manufacture. Say, for instance 1820-1870. That makes it impossible to pin down unless there’s some other sort of dating evidence (inscriptions sometimes can help). For this reason, there is a ‘catch-all’ people record just called Maws!

And that’s just one. Today I’ve visited quite a few of these changeling companies.

The other annoying thing is when the original record is spelled wrong. Today I spent ages looking for a company called Joblin to find, eventually, it should be JA Jobling Ltd. Now that’s just frustrating.

Fun though in that odd sort of way I enjoy.

The weather was rubbish today so the only photo I have is part of the lovely big red engine at the Science Museum that I look at every lunchtime.

Big red steam engine that sometimes works

The British Museum just sent me a hiRes version of the papyrus from Saturday so I thought I’d best include it.

hiRes version of the crocodile spell papyrus

Today at work, Nick had me fixing up all the errors I’ve been making. Like leaving things out, not being consistent, generally being sloppy. This was in the People records that I’ve been adding since I started on the Art Project. It meant I didn’t get to input any new records but the records I fixed sure look pretty now!

Because of work, nothing much happened today. Mirinda managed to get the same train home as me so we travelled home together, which was lovely. And I made lightly smoked salmon with an avocado crust on spinach and leek, for dinner. We watched two episodes of Criminal Minds and Mirinda tried to buy out an IKEA store online.

We’re going out to dinner tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have something a little more interesting to write about.

Oh, and I did not get a reply to my email today.

I really hate wearing shoes and socks. When I was at Telewest, I usually had no shoes on under my desk. Granted I kept the socks on but more often than not, I was shoeless.

Today, on the train into work (it still sounds weird having been off work for so long), as usual, I slipped my shoes off. It just feels more comfortable. I’m amazed more people don’t do it.

At work, after getting myself comfortable in the Dome of Silence, I slipped them off, feeling free and easy. Well, my toes did from inside my socks, anyway!

Ok, I don’t like feet, never have, never will. Of all the fetishes in the world, this one is the weirdest, if you ask me. No-one has sexy feet. They are just ugly. If you don’t believe me, watch Kill Bill 2, just for the scene with Uma Thurman, generally considered a pretty sexy woman, trying to make her legs work after coming out the coma. Now they are some ugly feet she has! Actually I’m amazed they didn’t use a foot double.

I concede, they do a job, and generally they do it well but that’s it. I’m not going to willingly take something that’s been carrying a human being around all day, having been wrapped in some airless space, into my hand and kiss it. Not going to happen.

BUT…and that’s a big but…I hate shoes. You’d think with my revulsion-bordering-on-phobia for feet that I want them covered up all the time. No. Not at all. Over and above everything else is comfort. I love comfort and I hate shoes and socks.

But enough of me talking about shoes and socks…It’s off to Bath.

My wheelie bag and I set off from the Science Museum after work, eager for the delights of Bath. Paddington Station is just the other side of Hyde Park, which is just down the end of Exhibition Road, where the Science Museum is. I figured it would be a nice leisurely stroll after work. Halfway to the station in the morning I realised I’d forgotten my A-Z. I walked in the opposite direction and caught the tube three stops.

Paddington is a typical London mainline station. A bit of Victorian, a bit of modern (glass and steel), lots of people milling, High Street shops and takeaways and train indicators that never seem to change very fast. My train left at 5.30. All the other trains had platforms except mine. 5.10 no platform; 5.20 no platform. I had a seat booked but it didn’t bode well for anyone who didn’t. 5.25 and, finally, a platform. A collective groan went up as everyone realised it was the platform furthest away.

A mass migration, resembling an edge of panic stampede of wildebeest, started moving towards the far reaches of the station. From the station concourse the mob turned left towards the platform, immediately funnelling the numbers into a squishy crowd trying to get through three automatic ticket machines. Of course, my ticket wouldn’t work so I had to back up, annoying a few people, and show it to the non-automatic station guy who let me through the barrier.

I found my carriage and thence my seat. Ah, comfort. I had intended to use my Netbook but it was too crowded. I had ordered a table seat but with all four seats taken, there really wasn’t room for a laptop, no matter how small. So, instead, I read.

The train gradually emptied so that about halfway through the journey I had enough room to stretch my legs and had a fairly comfortable trip.

Weir

We visited Bath for a weekend in 2005, and, although it was five years ago, after walking a few hundred yards from the station, I recognised everything and, without aid of map or need to ask guidance, I walked straight to the hotel. It helped that we’re staying in the same hotel, the wonderful Villa Magdala.

Mirinda had already arrived. The receptionist said she’d only beaten me by about two minutes but after hearing how much transpired between the two, I think it was probably an hour before me.

After a chance for my feet to relax after the stress of a day in shoes and socks, we strolled up to the Abbey then had dinner in Brasserie Gerard, one of which we have in Farnham. We had a lovely dinner then a short stroll then back to the hotel.

Oddly, we are in the exact same room as we were five years ago though, since this area has had their analogue signal switched off, the size of the TV has been reduced. I’m not sure why but we have the smallest flat screen TV I think I’ve ever seen. Not that it mattered. All I wanted was to sleep and all I did was sleep.

My main job since the takeover is to set up a factory for the creation of new degrees at ABC College where I work. Instead of letting everyone do their own thing, it is my role to work out how to coordinate and systemise this across the College. And as part of that I have decided to set up a pilot to trial using some of the methods employed by University of the Resuscitated Bird. This pilot has taken several months to organise (not least because some of the Americans didn’t have passports and have taken time to get this organised) but at last this week a team of five arrived in London to start working with us.
All of them come from Dead Bird City in the middle of the American desert – a strange artificial place about which our Dean of the Law School once commented that the world would lose nothing if it were “abruptly wiped off the face of the planet”.

Now let me tell you about these 5 visitors. Bobby is a real live Mormon – he managed to find a church in Kensington last Sunday and told us all about listening to the “supreme authority” (ie the pastor) – though currently he is still single. Greg I have nicknamed Texas boy (the first thing out of Texas that I have ever liked), Marcia brought me a bag of trail mix (nuts and sultanas and things) that I had in Dead Bird City on my visit last year that I really liked (she remembered – very sweet), and Jan and Cindy are two young American females obsessed with hygiene.

Now I thought they would like a true English experience, so I booked Jan and Cindy into a lovely Georgian flat in Islington. Big mistake, as gradually over the week complaints have trickled back to me – no wifi, nail sticking out of the floor, leaky shower head, dirty rug and so on. I tried to explain that England is old, lots of places are shabby, and bathrooms almost always a bit grim. But once I heard that they were actually in tears about the place I thought I am going to have to move them – and pay for a second flat! (another £6000 note) The real issue turned out to be they thought the place was dirty. They cleaned it twice themselves– and still thought it was dirty. My PA suggested we get a professional cleaning company in – but they said (and I kid you not) that they didn’t think it could ever be clean because they would always know that there was dirt under the floor boards (ground floor flat you see).

I mean, what do they think the planet is made of? Plastic? Well I guess it kind of is these days thanks to hygiene obsessed Americans!!

Sometimes I could just kiss the (very muddy) ground in thanks for my upbringing of Angledool, guinea pig shit and an agricultural high school.

Despite all this I like all 5 of them very much and am very impressed with their calm professionalism at work. So much more professionalised in their approach than ABC College tends to be. It is a whole new way of working and I am learning a lot –and clearly they are as well.

But even so …. seriously, what do they think is underneath the houses in Dead Bird City??

And I doubt I will be able to get through the next week without giving in to the temptation of telling them that in London no one is ever more than 7 feet from a rat.