Peterborough

The length of time that has elapsed since I last saw Ms Rainbowshunt is demonstrated by the fact that, on Thursday 25th when I did see her, her daughter had just received her GCSE results, and I'd never met the daughter at all. It took longer to get to Peterborough than advertised because the line had to be checked for safety: Ms Rainbowshunt reckoned that the checks would specifically have been on the drains, and ironically (having been a rail engineer since university days) she was working with various rail companies on a laser-powered AI thing that you can strap on the front of an engine and send it off to find things like drains that might get overloaded in heavy rain before it actually happens. 'You'll have to wait about five years for it, though', she warned. 

In Cathedral Square the fountains spouted intermittently across the flagstones and the children danced among them while the adults dodged the water coming from the sky rather than the ground. 

We'd booked our advance tickets for the dinosaur show at the Cathedral - a range of skeletons, fossils, information and animatronic creatures which were actually extremely impressive. The Tyrannosaurus rolled its eyes, blinked and wagged its tail in a very convincing manner. Why dinosaurs, I wondered? Was this making a comment about the Dean & Chapter? 'Why not?' was Ms Rainbowshunt's answer: the family has links with the Cathedral which, they told me, virtually went bankrupt a few years ago and is maximising its income as best it can. I don't mind religious buildings hosting educational or artistic events, even if the main focus is making money, but I did feel it was a shame that the dinos had taken the building over to quite the extent they had, meaning the side chapels and quire were closed off. In the south transept chapel the altar and associated kit were pushed to one side. I took the photo of the quire ceiling with its image of Christ Pantocrator by sticking my camera through the railings and hoping for the best.

The City Museum was fun. Set in a building which started off as a mansion house, then became an infirmary, and finally a museum in 1931, it had a big refurb a few years ago and as a result opened the old operating theatre from its incarnation as a hospital. It's more clinical and untheatrical than its older counterpart in Southwark, but you can still easily imagine the dramas of life and death that took place there. Equally stunning in its way is the decorated turtle shell over one of the doorways, apparently the source of the turtle soup served at a municipal banquet in 1688, and the very vessel in which it was served. Enough to make anyone gulp.