Some sort of learning at the British Museum

I recently went to the British museum for the first time ever. What a great place! When you arrive you know it's special. It's in the type of building that has droves of tourists outside taking selfies in front of it. I have no idea if the architecture is as significant as it looks because what's inside is even more distracting. The British Museum basically houses everything we Brits ever stole from another country as we expanded our empire throughout the world.

Did I make full use of this fantastic resource and learn extensively about all the relics of rich culture around the globe? No. Well, maybe sort of.

During the course of that museum visit, I came to develop a theory that one's experience of an exhibit depends entirely on who you go with. I just so happened to be there with  Jess (who you may remember from the aqua aerobics class). We are two highly energetic and distractable souls, so happy to see each other that we couldn't stop talking long enough to read any of the placards in the building. In this way we educated each other about everything we saw. I told her all I knew about Roman coinage and she taught me about the Rosetta stone. Neither of us knew much about mummies so we swept through the Egypt section and speculated briefly. Sometimes if something was particularly  interesting, we would read half the placard, usually out loud in order to share the information with the other (and stop them from talking!) When you look at a sign and a particular word jumps out, that's how you know you've found the half worth reading. If you're wrong, you'll never know. Sometimes we stood in front of the sign, intending to read it, but couldn't get to a suitable point to pause our conversation and so just generally got in the way.

One of my favourite stories was the Elgin marbles (a great game - I suggest you ask a member of museum staff how to play). Apparently Greece want them back but we keep telling them that the marbles are too delicate to move and so for many years now we've been bound to keep them in the British museum. Our lies were then totally blown open when we took the marbles on a tour of Russia. That's awkward! But our blushes were spared as the Greeks then accidentally blew up the Parthenon (an old building storing old Greek treasures and, apparently, gunpowder) so now we tell them that they are too irresponsible to have their marbles back and we'll be keeping them safe in the British museum for the foreseeable future. At least, that is my recollection of Jess' version of events and with a story like that who cares for an alternative?!

The Elgin Marbles. To be honest, they're already broken.

Loving what we're seeing. Don't know what it is.

It's the type of architecture that tourists take selfies with.