November 16th

from Poseidon’s purse

they drag the big eyed harvest

gasping on hot wharfs

the omniscient

God so fickle and angry

buries them with waves

I popped into the British Museum, I haven’t been there in years, it is an astonishing place, putting aside the dubious origins of how some of the antiquities ended up there, it is a magnificent collection.

This mosaic (Roman, approx 100AD) really caught my eye. The pieces of stone were so tiny, it allowed for fantastic detail. N.b – I know I use the Greek “Poseidon” as opposed to “Neptune”, but I prefer using the Greek names

October 27th

A foundling token

pressed into her grubby palm

mother’s shame, renamed

I went to the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. It’s somewhere I’ve never been before and covers the history of the building, which was London’s first home for abandoned children and the first public art gallery. It was also inspirational for Dickens in some of his works.

One of the most moving parts of the collection was the foundling tokens. Mothers would pin a little token to their child’s clothing, thus if they were able at some stage in the future to reclaim their child, they would use this token to identify the child that was brought in. As the child was given a new name upon entry into the hospital, this was the administrative method they used for identification. The children were not allowed to see or keep their tokens, in case it gave them some clue in later life to their identity. A photo of some of the tokens.

With the child would come a letter of petition, frequently illiterate, the mothers would ask a friend to write them a letter, requesting the hospital take on their child. Poverty, rape, abandonment, the death of a husband and the lack of work led to this desperate act by many mothers. Transcripts of some of their tragic letters are also on display.

There was also a letter from a mother who had married a farmer and found her feet, coming out of poverty, she wanted her child back. The tragedy was her child had died years before. The register shows that many children died, despite the care of the hospital, diseases were still rife. Many though did leave the hospital to employment to become maids or apprentices, or joining the armed forces. Some even became rich and contributed as a benefactor to the hospital in later life, never forgetting the experience that built them.

The art is also impressive, there are prints and painting by Hogarth. Hogarth was a social satirist and pulled no punches in his depictions of poverty stricken London.

The Enraged Musician (shared via Wikipedia) is below, showing the gentleman unable to practice his music due to the din from the people in the street below. The woman on the left is bare breasted, pregnant, holding her child, a little boy is peeing and various street vendors sell their wares.

More famously, a print of Gin Lane is also on display, it actually depicts the Bloomsbury area of London. Note the old man and the dog sharing a bone, the Gin shattered mother dropping her baby, the poor selling whatever they own to the pawnbrokers, the burial in the distance and the man dying in the gutter, his faithful hound by his side. Hogarth works are so detailed and rewarding when given time. This page on the British Museum website gives more info.

The accompanying Hogarth poem for this work is as follows:

Gin, cursed Fiend, with Fury fraught,

Makes human Race a Prey.

It enters by a deadly Draught

And steals our Life away.

Virtue and Truth, driv'n to Despair

Its Rage compells to fly,

But cherishes with hellish Care

Theft, Murder, Perjury.

Damned Cup! that on the Vitals preys

That liquid Fire contains,

Which Madness to the heart conveys,

And rolls it thro' the Veins.

I could write so much more, but I’ll just leave this post to say it’s well worth visiting.

June 11th

Loyal familiar

rope creaks, body twists in breeze

an angry rain comes

There was a small display about Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General in the Aldeburgh Museum / Moot Hall. It was a dreadful, rainy cold day.

For every innocent woman hanged, I wondered if there was ever a malevolent witch who wreaked revenge in her death. Hopkins seemed like a deeply unpleasant character.

Note the names of the familiars in the pic below (from Hopkins book), fascinating. “My imps names are…. Pyewackett, Ilemauzer, Griezzell Greedigutt, Vinegar Tom etc… (the last of which looks like a cross between a greyhound and a bull).

Dreadful weather… view from our window.

February 9th

Well, what a treat (?!), two Haikus today. I popped into the Grant Museum of Zoology after work. There’s an interesting exhibition on animals creating art, I’ll  post about that on my main blog.

But the Haikus today are about two things:

- Some primate skeletons watching the visitors from their high vantage point in the gallery, skeletal CCTV (old Charles Darwin lived on Gower Street).

- And a model of an elephants heart, on average these are an incredible 20 - 30kg’s in weight.

 

Grinning gallery,

Guests of the clergyman’s son,

Old bleached relatives,

Dust kicked, wise eyes weep,

Beneath grey furrows, her hide,

Blood pulses. Slow. Deep.

January 17th

 

From Aegean boats,

To the blood soaked mud and sand,

Evil eye protects.

 

Close ups of two tanks housed in the Imperial War Museum below. I was fascinated to see that the crew (I assume) had painted Evil Eyes on their tanks. The first was a World War 1 tanks, the second from World War 2.

In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, the Evil Eye is a powerful talisman to deflect evil. You see it all over the med, painted on the bow’s of boats, on the top of doorways, around peoples necks, to bring protection, to ensure safe passage, it’s used like a St Christopher. The stylised blue eye is the symbol of choice. Blue eyes are considered to be the eye colour of the devil in the med… so if you mark yourself with a blue eye, you protect yourself, in a kind of perverse backwards logic.

People wear them, not just as a travelling talisman, but to deflect ordinarily well intended compliments. Yes, compliments. As these compliments, whether the person delivering them is genuine or not, have a tendency to turn into a curse when they are intercepted by demons or the devil and actually deliver you the direct opposite of the compliment. For example “your little boy has a beautiful smile” will put that child at risk of some sort of mouth injury.

Hence a compliment is sometimes accompanied by a spit (especially when you are complimenting a child!), to show your good intentions! (This is a double protection on top of the recipient wearing an eye stone). So some older people will be offended if you compliment their children without that going hand in hand with spitting at them! The spit although aimed at the person you are complimenting, is actually trying to shoo a spirit or the devil away from the child to ensure the compliment isn’t going to be turned into a curse. Complicated and weird? Yes. But don’t worry, you don’t have to hoke up a big green grolly and flob it on the childs head… it’s just a pretend spit, a spit sound. So it’s vaguely civilised.

It isn’t so widespread now, but I certainly remember it from my youth and from my mum’s generation. So if you do meet a 95 year old Greek lady, don’t make compliments, don’t spit either. Just smile lots!

Anyway, back to the tanks, I wonder how the idea or the superstition came to these fighting men.

 

Must go back and do the museum justice, the art gallery looked amazing from a brief look and the holocaust exhibition is very moving