British museum

Sunday 16th October

Today we brought the blog up to date. Hooray for that!! It was becoming a hard chore towards the end as we were so far behind, but I’m sure I will appreciate it in years to come.

We had a late start, but we decided to go by tube to Holborn station to visit the British museum. However on the way, I was deciding which train to catch and Jill jumped on the train that was already there with the doors closing and me still on the platform! I signalled to her to go one station and get off, which fortunately she understood. The next train followed two minutes later so I got on this and she was there waiting for me at the next station. She was rather unhappy with me however, as she had absolutely no money with her!!

We eventually found our way to the museum and boy oh boy is it a huge building! We wandered around, but in fact you could spend several days there and Jill wasn’t feeling the best due to the flu bug she got on the final day of the tour. So I will have to place it high on my list for my next visit to London!!???

Several things I did note – there were human skeletons ranging in age from 1,000 to 3,000 years and they all had remarkably good teeth!! Dentistry wouldn’t have been profitable two thousand years ago. We saw a number of Egyptian mummies and other artefacts that had been looted in past centuries, when it was a case of either the museum removed them or coffin thieves raided them and sold them on the black Market. No-one could create a museum such as this now that each country has rights to what is found in its country.

Another thing was the Islamic section which explained the difference between Sunni, which means tradition where followers believe the prophet did not designate an heir on his death in 632 AD. The decision of leader was left to the community. The alternate Shia, meaning party, believed that the prophet’s cousin Ali, who married the prophet’s daughter was the rightful heir. This just goes to show how similar they were to the early British monarchy, as wars have been fought over this just as they did in England.

When we came home we went to go and get some food for our dinner, only to find they don’t work Australian hours and were closed. So I had to walk back to Earls Court Road which was full of life and managed to get our groceries there.

The weather has been quite good and sunny since we returned to London but is about to turn cold tomorrow. I wonder what it is like in Australia, as we have absolutely no news!I??