Unwonted Delights

I went walking a few weeks ago and eventually reached the museum of a nearby town, and even were I revealing the names of places local to me I wouldn't do so in this case as I thought the institution concerned was God-awful. In Hornington there's a very humble little volunteer-run museum which is super, a delight to go round. This museum in the county town, however, is dire, with no obvious point to the displays, and peeling and peremptory notices, and the most up-to-date bit, the archaeology gallery, labels list catalogues of objects to be seen in the cases without any clue as to which caption refers to which thing. Having been in the business, I knew what they were, but even though we used to joke that the vast majority of people who visited museums were other museum curators, you should still design your galleries on the assumption that an uninformed member of the public might actually wander in at some point. You can't be too careful.

I did, however, very much like this little Romano-British bronze face:











And upstairs in a darkened room (just right to lie down in so that your brow can be fanned in cases of overexcitement) was this fine display of Victorian maniples:











Look at the spade-ends on that!