Now that i’ve finally got myself into gear with this blogging – and sorted out my widgets from my .wavs and title bar pixel widths – I guess you’ll want to know what I’m up to. Well, looking in my diary, there’s a note that says “Monday July 21: 9.08 train to London”. From the complete lack of packing I’ve done, and my intention to spend Sunday’s last rays of daylight walking down to Penryn to get a copy of Vogue, you wouldn’t know I’ve got a train to catch in the morning. However, it does make a nice excuse for keeping this blog short and sweet.

So I’m at the beck and call of First Great Western tomorrow – and hopefully they’ll sit me next to a male model again, instead of the three ancient women I endured last time (who kindly explained what was wrong with the youth of today). It’s off to London for two days – where I plan to immerse myself in the British Museum and, if i ever find my way back out into Russell Square, the Victoria & Albert and Science Museums.

Crystal Skull at the BM

With my shiny new membership card for the British Museum and a contact in the press office I’m allowed to attend the press preview for the BM’s new Hadrian: Empire and Conflict exhibition. While I have been told I am not a priority in terms of speaking with curators on Tuesday at the event, hopefully I might be able to grab the exhibit’s guru Thorsten Opper for a second or two. Also, it will be a good chance to talk to arts correspondents and journalists about how they think the public’s appetite for history has changed.

At Denis’ kind suggestion, I also plan to get off to see the latest Indiana Jones flick. There’s been a bit of controversy about that crystal skull – a life-size carving the BM picked up from Tiffany & Co. in New York in 1897, and reportedly brought from Mexico by a Spanish officer before the French occupation. Made from a single block of quartz crystal, thought to have been an example of Aztec art and iconography in Mexico at a time when first contact with the Spanish was made in AD 1519, I’ll have to check out the fancy paperweight in room 27.

If you want to check out a little bit more on the crystal skull, or maybe you’ve thought of investing in a life-size crystal carving of Harrison Ford, check out http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_news/studying_the_crystal_skull.aspx or http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/news_and_press_releases/statements/the_crystal_skull.aspx for the BM’s official position, or http://www.archaeology.org/0805/etc/indy.html for something a bit more glam (the Archaeological Institute of America’s attempt at Heat magazine style editorial).

Hadrian sculpture at the BM

From the original Indiana Jones (or as close as digital retouching can get Mr Ford these days) to what RadioTimes yesterday described as a man “striding through the desert like a modern-day Indiana Jones”: last night’s BBC2 documentary Hadrian was a good way to ease myself into MA mode. Presented by Dan Snow to coincide with the BM exhibition, the show set about “uncovering the genius and the dark side of Hadrian: peace-maker, frontier-builder, star-crossed lover, architect – and ruthless oppressor of the jews”.

Considering I am going to see the press preview, it was most interesting – and fairly entertaining in a Tony-Robinson-kind-of-way (no, not the motivationally-speaking Yankee, I refer to the C4 history buff and ex Blackadder star). To catch it on iplayer (it is worth it) just head to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00cr3by. But you’d better be quick….

If you do miss it you’ll have to settle with the BBC News & Current Affair’s pre-exhibition plug at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7516157.stm.

But for now…. it’s off to do some packing. And I am actually going to York, on Wednesday, to interview Dr JoAnn Fletcher at the University of York. I probably intended for that to be the main point of this posting… but It would seem I got a little carried away.

As Teal’c would say: Indeed. Xx.