London Day 3

A museum, Exmouth Market, a former residence with a history, some pubs and some fish, a very long walk

I came to London because of my friend inviting me, but since I am here, there are a couple of things I must do. I wasn’t actually going to go to the Silk Roads Exhibition at the British Museum, as I have just traversed a version of them and seen some wonderful museums along the way. But then I see posts from a couple of people who know much better than me who rate the exhibition very highly so bite the bullet.

I take the bus to Kings Cross - the day before I had gone to Crystal Palace on a double decker bus, sitting in the front top seat. The streets are so narrow on this route with some very tight turns - there are times I fear the lumbering bus won’t make it, or will hit something to do so. The streets leading to Kings Cross don’t face so many challenges. Not that I make it the whole way - we pass Borough Market, which I have heard so much about. It’s very busy, and much more actual market than I realised - I had thought there would be places to sit down for lunch. So I give up and head to Exmouth Market. There are several kiwi touches to this market - the donut place I go to has Allpress coffee, I see another has Ozone, and I go to Caravan (started by three kiwis) for a coffee.

Since I am so close, I walk to the museum past my former house - I lived here for the whole two years I was in London in the late 80’s. I was originally supposed to stay just for the summer while the people who lived here went to France, but when they come back, they let me stay on. I later learn that they were squatting, but by collecting rent from me, they stayed in occupation. This became important in 2004, when they made a successful application to the County Court to be declared the legal owners - having had 31 years of continuous occupation. My job at the time of living here was, of course, to evict squatters - but for a far more efficient council.

When I lived with them, there were three of them, doing children’s theatre shows - I even went with them a couple of times to do their sound. Earlier on, they had been part of a rather more radical hippy art movement in the 1960’s. I don’t know if they are still alive - I know one member, my age, left decades ago. I also know that they were still performing five years ago, as I’ve found some videos, but haven’t seen any trace since then.

As for the museum visit: spoiler, I think I would have been better off not coming. It is in a relatively small space, each item has rather a lot of writing about it and there are a lot of people there. So progress is very slow - I spend more time waiting my turn to read about and see the next item than actually reading and seeing. The first thing they say is that items from the Silk Roads have been found in Scandinavia and try to claim that this means they extended that far. It’s far more likely that the trade routes around and from Scandinavia intersected with the Silk Road. This is actually acknowledged a bit further along.

The layout is to trace a route for the Silk Road, from a starting point in Chang’an in central China, and to illustrate important points along the way with artefacts from them. There’s quite a heavy emphasis on religion - while these routes would obviously been an important vehicle for transmitting religious beliefs, they were primarily for trade. Anyway, here are some ceramic figurines of foreigners you’d find in the market in Chang’an.

Moving on a fair way, to Dunhuang, they focus on the cave libraries found there in 1900, containing tens of thousands of manuscripts, with some “acquired” (that’s a carefully chosen word!) by an archeologists and lodged in the British Museum. This panel tells the story of how the methods of silk farming were smuggled west, by the princess in the centre who married the King of Khotan and wanted to bring something special for her new people. I remember visiting her tomb, but not quite where it is. I’m not sure what the next item is, but it may well be about the same thing.

Next, there’s a part of a mural from Samarkand, possibly 1500 years old as it depicts a procession likely to have been in 660. The next items are actually chess pieces - the earliest known ones, made from ivory and probably from India.

The labelling becomes a bit less specific after this - there’s a poster mentioning the spread of ideas enabled by the discovery of paper, and of printing copies of the Qur’an from the 600’s onwards, so this might actually be one, although there is no specific identification.

Towards the end, there’s a brief mention that the trade on these trade routes was sometimes in slaves, with a deed of sale of one. The last item is actually a late eighth-century Anglo-Saxon stone carving discovered in 2003 at Lichfield Cathedral called the Lichfield Angel. It’s here because it has some middle Eastern features, resulting from artistic techniques transmitted along the Silk Roads to England. I then look back over how far I have come - it’s not a long way!

I wander the area for a bit: finding myself on Lamb’s Conduit Street, I feel obliged to go into the Lamb for a pint - I was here a few times when I lived nearby and, built in 1720, it has history.

I shouldn’t really have gone in here, as I’m actually on my way to another pub. Exmouth Market has a Mikkeller brewbar - it’s a fairly famous Danish craft brewery. In under 20 years of operation, they have produced more than 2,000 beers! Of absolutely no importance to me, but others may have another opinion - this bar is owned by Rick Astley.

I’m not quite ready for dinner, but could do with a snack to tide me over. There are plenty of choices, but the name Black Bear Burger has stuck in my head.

I collect my bag and cross the street to take the photo, then start wandering off. The guy from Black Bear catches up with me “what are you doing? I thought you were alright”. I hadn’t paid! Back inside, they give me, for free, the world’s smallest cone ice cream.

I have a plan for dinner, but Google doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. I want to go to Greenwich but don’t notice that Google doesn’t know where Greenwich is, locating it in a roundabout near the O2, about 2 miles from the centre of town. So its directions to get to Greenwich North station might not have been very good - a bit more than 2 miles to dinner and 5 miles home. I guess no-one forced me to walk!

But dinner was good!

That’s haddock, which I prefer to cod. The Golden Chippy was started in the late 70’s. The owner had come from Cyprus in 1977 to study medicine but when Thatcher became PM, fees for foreign students rose dramatically.

With my phone very short on battery, I am very glad to make it back home!

Cheers!