Archangel Janet and Mal moved from Glastonbury to March a few months ago, and so this holiday I decided to pop up and see them. I stopped along the way in Huntingdon, where the parish church was just setting up for its drop-in café when I arrived, too tempting a chance to turn down. Huntingdon was clearly very smart at one time, though I don't think has that much to show for it in the 21st century.
Everyone told me there was nothing to see in March, though it has a grand church and market place, and a river with canal boats, and I thought it was fairly neat, albeit apparently under wholesale reconstruction at the moment, a bit like Janet and Mal's house.
My last appointment was to see Dr Bones, sister and brother-in-law at her father's vicarage in Ashambury near Cambridge, where he has been incumbent since Abraham was a young man. On the way I revisited Ely, its cathedral long and narrow before exploding outwards into the unique space of the Octagon - the closest medieval English cathedral architecture got to a dome.
The afforded me two contrasting museum experiences. Ely City Museum in the Old Gaol dates to 1972 but was refurbished a couple of years ago, and is now swish and stylish, designed to the hilt ...
... but some of the displays at March Museum look as though they haven't changed since about 1972, and it crams in more objects than you might think possible. It's every bit of slightly corroded farm equipment you've ever imagined, and then some more. Were I designing a museum nowadays, it would look like Ely; but I have a suspicion that March's model is more fun.
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