Back to work....

Well after finding ourselves a new home ahead of schedule yippee...we decided to use our pre booked week of leave from work to better ourselves culturally. So this week Clive & I have been to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk) Plenty of fab art work-Van Gogh, Manet, Latrec, Degas and even a couple of Pissaro's along with many statures pinched from the Greeks/Romans. They was a great stature of Livia which if I remember correctly from watching 'I Claudius' was Claudius' evil Grandmother? They even have a funeral temple which was lifted block by from the sandy climes of the Sudan-the biggest stone shed I've ever seen. Then it was a short walk on to the University of Oxford's Natural History Faculty (www.oum.ac.uk) which has a huge collection of specimens captured long ago including a stuffed Dodo. Top fact of the visit was that the character of the Oxford Dodo which featured in Lewis Carrolls' novel 'Alice in Wonderland' was based on Carroll himself who had a stutter and had difficulty in pronouncing his own 'real' name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Do-Do. His name comes from a latin translation of Charles Lutwidge=Carolus Ludovicus. Top quiz question!

The Museum was recently the vicitm of a elaborate hoax concerning the existence of dragons. In a glass specimen jar sitting on top of a wooden chest is what convincingly appears to be a sleeping baby dragon. It is approximately a foot tall, of a pale white appearance with what can cleary be seen as muscle fibre and having the skin texture of a lizard. The story goes that it was sent to the Museum by a secret benefactor and that it was discovered perfectly preserved inside an egg that itself was inside a volcanic formation. Very strange. After investigation it turns out rather disappointingly to be a clever latex creation (very X-files) and the guy who followed the story has written a book about the con.

We then moved on to the Pitt Rivers Museum (www.prm.ox.ac.uk) which as Will put it is like looking through an old wizards attic. Less Harry Potter more Saruman me thinks. Items range from japanese samurai swords with full armour (including hairy slippers), a blunderbuss (which I've only ever seen on cartoons aka Elmer Fudd) to ancient South American shrunken heads, dried sheeps/toads hearts/dried slugs, which were used by saxons to heal all sortsl. Urgh! On the less gross side there was plenty of pretty ornate jewellery collected from all over the world especially Peru and the Far East.

Later in the week we drove over to Whipsnade. The only directions Dad gave me was to drive to Ivinghoe and follow your nose and look out for the White Lion set into the hillside which proved a foolproof plan. I stopped at a set of traffic lights waiting for the light change to cross a small bridge, when looking out the window I had a flash back and realised we had stopped outside the White Lion Inn at not sure if this is correct but Marshingham/Marlingham! Sound familiar Nic?! The infamous site where a young Will ate his way through a whole T-bone steak.

Clive and I had been to London Zoo last March and had seen many adverts for their sister zoo at Whipsnade (www.whipsnade.co.uk). I'd been there years ago with G&G and Will and I think Nic was there too. So decide it was well worth a return trip. You name it we saw it. A group of adult Chimps having a fruit lunch with their new addition named Elvis. We reckoned the little fellas name comes from his dark stickey up bedhair. Other animals included the seal lions, elephants,bison, camels, penguins (smelt like cats bad breath fish and damp hair!), Rhinos, ringtailed lemurs, cheetahs, Siberian Lions as well as peacocks and muntjacs dotted around the grounds.

The best part by far was the european grey wolves. In an large enclosure populated with pine trees and long grass was a muddy mound with one solitary wolf on top keeping watch. As we were about to move on, one by one of the wolves joined the first wolf from their dens. Within seconds 12 wolves were lined up along the mound staring through us into the middle distance. Concerned that perhaps a giant drooling, snarling wolf was behind us we turned around. Looking into the trees we couldn't see anything not even a peacock or wandering deer. Turning back to look at the wolves they became nore excited jumping over each other yet their gaze was unchanged. After a minute watching this behaviour and being the only visitors to witness the behaviours we decided to wait and see what the fuss was. Another minute passed and then out of the trees came a keeper pushing a wheelbarrow full of beef. The wolves has smelt the raw meat over 2 minutes before we even saw or even heard the keepers squeaky wheel. Wow fantastic creatures.

To finish off the week, last night we went to the RSC at Stratford (www.rsc.org.uk) and saw a impressive staging of Hamlet. It helped that one of my favorite actors Toby Stephens was the lead (Maggie Smiths son & well known award winning actor in his own right) and he was a suitably sarcastic and witty Hamlet driven by his fathers purgatory revenge. We enjoyed it so much that I think we'll join the RSC membership and make it a regular treat. Good news is that I'm still young enough to get a 50% discount because I'm under 30 years!

Well only 2.5 weeks to go till the move so enough with all this fun and I'd better get packing/chucking.

love to all you Merrows out there

Gems xxx