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Showing posts from October, 2011

Michael Rosen refers to the Old Operating Theatre Museum in The Family Friendly Museum Award

I'm very pleased to note that Michael Rosen, the poet, mentions the Old Operating Theatre Museum in his piece introducing the The Family Friendly Museum Award - Telegraph : . In response I would like to say how much I enjoyed Rosen's performance of his poem on the number 38 Bus at the Battle of Cable Street celebrations at Wilton's Music Hall. The poem is good but the performance was brilliant.

Deviance and power in late medieval London By Frank Rexroth

Deviance and power in late medieval London By Frank Rexroth Interesting article

Things that have got worst since digitisation

1. A Faceless Society - it is now the case that it is difficult to get to talk to someone on the phone, it is often difficult to even get an email. 2. Alienation from simple machines - once upon a time, with an analogue micro-wave you turned the timer to 5 minutes and the setting to 5. Job done. Try it now! Another example, I have a new bread machine - there seems to be no way of turning it off once it has started on its programme. And that includes unplugging from the wall and taking it for a walk around the block, plug it right back in again and it starts off exactly from where you stopped it. Machine, I pressed the wrong button, will you forgive me? It ignores me These are but two of many possible examples 3. Computer say no - my daughters have had no debts in their lives (except ofcourse to their parents), are first year students, can they get any bank to extend to them a student loan? No, because they have a poor credit rating!!!! One bank even said because they have no liv

SilchesterDig · River Song visits Britain's1st planned town

Silchester Excavation blog has fine pictures of Alex Kingston visiting the excavations - the site has revealed that the rectalinear town planning predates the Roman invasion. SilchesterDig · Just another www.reading.ac.uk/blogs site

Model of lost Surrey Tudor palace unveiled

Nonsuch Palace on in Surrey was an amazing building and this is a new model based on archaeological and other evidence BBC News - Model of lost Surrey Tudor palace unveiled

Tony Robinson: why I’m backing Winchester Palace garden proposal [2 October 2011]

Seems like a good idea to have a garden in the ruins of the Palace - at present it does not really attract that much attention from the thousands who pass by. Tony Robinson: why I’m backing Winchester Palace garden proposal [2 October 2011]

London Walks and Badged Guides

Every so often some organisation or other wants to restrict guiding to City Guides, or Blue Badge Guides and it is rearing its ugly head again. The problem is that some people believe that, after a course of instruction, that the Badged Tourist Guide becomes the sole repositories of accurate knowledge about Heritage in their area. They forget that lecturers, academics, PhDs, writers, actors, specialists and the like have knowledge that only the very best badged guides can match. They also forget that teachers, lecturers and group leaders are often trained pedagogues who know how to teach, and who know their group in a way that is not possible for a hired guided to emulate. They want to return to the restrictive practices of the past and a system better suited to a Totalitarian state than a modern democracy. There is of course a potential problem with control of standards and crowd control in certain places. The Badge Guide solution to this problem is to restrict guiding to badged to

Chelsea Archaeology

Although there has not been a definitive excavation in Chelsea, there have been sufficient finds to add to the documentary evidence to give a fairly clear picture of its development. It shows that Chelsea (or at least the River at Chelsea) was very important in the pre-Roman period, and that there was a significant settlement there in the Middle Saxon period - probably a Royal Vill (palace or Manor). I have just updated my Chelsea walk to take account of the latest archaeological finds. I have not had time to properly record all the details but for the time being this will have to do: Chelsea Walk