be a tourist in my own town

After work today I shopped a little but bought nothing except a card for a friend. I didn’t feel like going home afterwards (had a crap day and felt sorry for myself). So I went to Starbucks in Borders and had a caramel macchiato and a cinnamon swirl. I sat and flicked through a couple of cookery books – Mexican and Turkish – and felt very much like a tourist but I’m glad I did this for myself..

Hmm not exactly touristy but I went to a new bar on Friday. It was fun. I went with my new colleagues and it was good to get to know them socially, as I’m taking phone calls all day there isn’t much time for chatting at work.

Last Saturday I went to the Natural History Museum with J. I wanted to see the gem room again and it was so lovely! I loved the opals, especially fire opal.

We also walked in the wildlife garden, it was really pretty. There were baby moorhens and a robin.

I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum today, I can’t believe I have lived here for so long and had never been! It was very worthwhile. It is a glorious building, I used to pass it every day for a year on my way to work.

There was nothing there which I absolutely loved, but I appreciated it all and that may be a better frame of mind to view art than my previous emotion-laden recent outings. I was surprised at how many “big name” pieces there were, paintings by Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Seurat, also Millais, whose Ophelia I so loved last month.

I will definitely go again, not least because having got home and looked at their website, I discovered that not only is there Joseph Severn’s minature painting of Keats on display, but they also hold the manuscript of Ode to the Nightingale! I must make an appointment to see it at some point.

Yesterday I went to a cafe I had never been in before with a group of friends. We met up at Starbucks and I’m glad we went somewhere else, it was really nice to sit and drink tea with a street view, King’s College opposite and while away the afternoon chatting over a pot of Earl Grey.

but I went to Tate Britain yesterday with M, to see the Millais portrait of Ophelia.

I sat looking at her for a long time. Someone asked if they could pose me a questionnaire, I agreed. One of the questions was enquiring after the purpose of my visit. I pointed at Ophelia and told the interviewer I had come to see the painting, but she said I had to pick my answer from a list of 15 or so options. The closest match was “I have come for an uplifting experience or emotional inspiration”. There was no option for “I have come to wallow in the parallels between Ophelia and I, for an emotionally overwhelming and sorrowful experience”.

The fact of the inadequate options was on my mind too, when I went into the Rothko room. With the Seagram Murals fresh in my mind from last month in Tate Modern, it was extraordinary to have a different feeling upon seeing them again so soon. My favourite from last time was there but I no longer felt such an attachment to it, because I no longer feel the same way about J. Instead, my new favourite summarised my feelings about M, and brought to mind a Blake poem.

O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

I told him and he said it was a good connection.

I said goodbye to M outside, paralleling my goodbye with G in Seattle. Why do these things repeat themselves in my life? Why did Rothko paint a picture about every man I fall for?

Last night I went to a lecture on quantum theory with M. It is science week, the university is 800 years old and it is Darwin’s bicentenary so there is a ton of science things going on. It was interesting. The lecturer was good enough that M was entertained with the theoretical physics and I was entertained by anecdotes of Einstein forgetting his own theories and Niels Bohr telling his professor his theory was wrong.

I also found a second hand bookshop yesterday and bought a book for B’s birthday, and saw another cafe-bookshop which looks like a great place, I must go there.

This evening all the museums had a twilight evening where they turned the lights off and you had to bring a torch to look at the exhibits!

My mum and I first went to the Botanic Garden to look at the orchids, it was really nice, they had some cool plants. Then we went to the Scott Polar Institute, it was super fun looking at all the artifacts of the polar expeditions. They had some tiny scraps that had been saved, like a snippet of a flag, and the wrapping a packet of biscuits, and scraps of silk from a tent. They had a lot of handwritten records on display, and drawings, it was fascinating. Really sad too, as they had letters from the explorers to their families saying goodbye when they realised they would not make it. These things were found when a search party went after them.

I found it hard to concentrate on the information as it was very busy and noisy (lots of kids) but it was good to see everything. I’ll have to do some reading about it, their website has a lot of information and catalogues of artifacts.

I was glad to go there as I have been past the building many times, it is really beautiful. I had no idea that inside they had two domed ceilings with paintings, one Arctic and one Antarctic. They were painted by Macdonald Gill in 1934 and are really super.

Shackleton in 1909:

Men go out into the void spaces of the world for various reasons. Some are actuated simply by a love of adventure, some have the keen thirst for scientific knowledge, and others again are drawn away from the trodden paths by the ‘lure of little voices’, the mysterious fascination of the unknown.

County Folk Museum

Museum of Technology

University Library

Fitzwilliam Museum ✓

Kettle’s Yard

Museum of Classical Archaeology

Peoples Portraits Exhibition at Girton College

Scott Polar Research Institute ✓

Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology

University Museum of Zoology

Whipple Museum of the History of Science

I should be able to go to all of these this year – one a month!

I went to meet a friend in a cafe I had never been to before. It was really nice there, plus we discovered another friend I hadn’t seen for a while has just started working there!

On my way home I passed several groups of tourists and I thought about how much I take living in the beautiful city for granted. I walk past amazing buildings every day and don’t even notice. I need to start noticing.