Aaah, electioneering in the springtime...

Spring has finally arrived, thank goodness, and everyone is turning over a new leaf (no pun intended). I, for example, have finally started cycling to work again. Rory Bremner on Newsnight last night commented, "People are starting to see things again that they haven't seen for months - blossom, warm weather, their local MP..."

And it's true! Brown finally got round to announcing that the General Election would be on the date that everyone was expecting, and suddenly canvassers have sprung up from the ground like new season's buds! The clusters of people going door-to-door of an evening are not Jehovah's Witnesses, but canvassers checking you're going to go out and vote ... so strange to think we used to do that ourselves. Not any more. I don't even have any idea how I'm going to vote.

But MPs have certainly been unpopular around the UK in the last few months, as the result of the huge and ever-worsening scandal over expenses claims. People have been very angry about it, so I don't envy the canvassers the reception they're getting on the doorstep. 120 MPs are standing down at these elections, and many of the new candidates are campaigning as Independents, as the confidence has gone out of party politics.

We went out on Sunday - had a walk down to Abbeville Road to buy cheese in the deli, and stopped for a drink at the pub, sitting outside, slightly over-optimistically since the temperature was pretty low and breezy - and had great fun watching some Tories being harangued by a little old lady they had had the naïvety to stop and campaign to. Haranguing is definitely the word, though we were too far away to hear what she was saying, but there was something almost violent about the gestures her arms were making, while the poses of the two blue-rosetted Tories somewhat shrinking and defensive... And it went on for a good long while.

The worst thing about it is the endless media coverage. I am not sure I can cope with watching the news or listening to the radio over the next month! I am fast tiring of Michael Crick's sleazily arrogant style in his Newsnight reports from the campaigning front line. Although The Vote Now Show will be funny... political satire, that's what we need.

It's all so petty and pointless, but they're trying to make it out like it's something as important as the election of the President of the United States! There's a TV debate between the three party leaders tomorrow night, the first of three, which I am sure K will be tempted to watch, but I'll be tucked up reading in bed. Our new local Labour candidate is being 'marketed' as if he were the new Obama, and there is endless talk of 'Change' in the hope that this will catch fire in an Obama-esque way, whereas everyone is just so tired of same old, same old, so change is just good and appealing because it's different.

Well, only 3 more weeks of all this to go...

Where's Obama today?

Turns out he's just arrived in Baghdad!! He's really packing it in on this round-the-world trip! There's a headline in K's Economist (April 4th-10th, p. 59) that says, "If atmospherics were all that mattered, the American president would be well on the way to curing the world's ills". It was good to have him in London, and I loved the fact that he gave the Queen an iPod!! There are some amusing track suggestions for her here. Michelle seemed to go down a storm at the inner London secondary school she visited - we heard some very eloquent teenage girls talking on the radio about how her visit had inspired them. (Talking of radio, did you catch K on Today??) I did not go on any protests, and to be quite honest, I really did not see the point of them. "Jobs, Justice and Climate"? Plus the usual add-ons that you get at protests like that. I tried it over Iraq - it didn't work. Its absolutely shocking, though, about that guy who died of a heart attack, on his way home - especially since it seems like the heart attack was set off by police assault.

Call me shallow, but I was frankly more interested in watching the footage of the Obamas meeting the Sarkozys at Strasbourg - Nicolas looked like a cartoon character next to Barack!! And what was Sarkozy doing with Obama's tie?? There was some fascination with the "sartorial battle" between Carla and Michelle ("two fashion titans"!), which is always amusing to read - though I am not sure I approve that you can now post comments at the end of stories on the Guardian website. I find myself reading them almost against my will, in a sort of morbid fascination, though very rarely do you get anything actually worth paying attention to - and how is it that people have time to participate in this kind of online conversation, sometimes several times??

Anyway, book update. I have finished Chapter 2, and sent that off to my readers, but I am having some difficulty getting going with writing Chapter 3. I have decided it's PMT - well, I've got to have something to blame. It also feels like a holiday - all the schools have broken up, and many of my colleagues have taken the week off, so there is a holiday air which is rather effecting. I also feel it's ok to have a little break between chapters - but there's just no time for that, I keep having to tell myself.

I spent this morning in the Baroque exhibition - classic work-avoidance activity. Now, I really do not like baroque as an artistic style - but I liked this exhibition. It is really well laid out, with a simple but effective design - like the section about secular spaces (ie. the palace) being laid out like an enfilade of rooms in a baroque palace, culminating in the king's bedchamber - as you would if you were a courtier visiting. It feels quite empty - though there is not a shortage of objects, though some of them are BIG, but they get a chance to breathe, and so do you - I always find if you're in an original baroque space it is just too overwrought and overwhelming that you just can't appreciate its individual elements, whereas you can here.

The one let-down was that nowhere does it actually tell you what baroque is, or how it develops, or why it spreads as widely as it did - why did it appeal so much? They imply it was through the patronage of the Catholic church and the absolute monarchs of the 17th century - though it doesn't ever really say what they were trying to use this style to express, apart from wealth, and power, which is self-evident. It was also slightly disappointing that - though much is made of this being the "first global style" (because it is the first style to travel out of Europe, though I am not sure this is necessarily something to be proud of, since it's imposed on colonies by European imperialists) this was only represented in a rather tokenistic way, with very few objects (though one of them was, admittedly, again, very large) and just there as "examples", rather than objects in themselves, if you see what I mean.

The theatre section was great - they had found this 17th-century castle theatre in the Czech Republic, which has retained its original stage set and furnishings, and it is obviously still used, since there was a short film of performances underway, and the guys under the stage turning pulleys to change the set. Fascinating. Opera was invented at this time, and much was made about the "total work of art", so that a baroque setting was multi-sensory, and included musical as well as visual stimulation. I really liked the use of music in the spaces, though at certain points these clashed with each other, but I think this experience would have been rather lost on you had you been going round with the audio guide (and you know how I feel about those...)

Anyway I think it has opened this week because of Easter - being, perhaps, the most Baroque of church rituals. And nowhere is it more Baroque than Semana Santa in Seville - of which there were some more film clips. In all my years of visiting Spain, I have never witnessed this, and is something I would really love to do sometime - though I am not sure I could get past been terrified by the penitents in their pointed KKK-inspiring hoods... Some seasonal photos I have enjoyed from the Guardian website (is it obvious which newspaper I read?):

Barbie and Ken go to Mass!

Pinch Punch First of the Month

I always beat K to this – it takes him a while to wake up to what day it is, let alone what date! Anyway, welcome February! I say this with a huge sigh of relief that the intense January I have just had is over. Not that, in the end, I think February will necessarily be any better, just different, and it’s a state of mind. Phew, January was suddenly ridiculously busy, a sudden avalanche of work… Partly self-inflicted as I have crammed into January and February all the appointments and other deadlines I could not attend to during my three-month absence at the end of last year, and the upcoming absence when I go and write my book… But it’s not just me – I get the feeling that everyone feels under pressure at the moment. This is going to be a busy year… There’s a certain element of nervous panic, too, as I near the moment (2 March - coincidentally my father's birthday) when I have to start writing the book – one day a week to research it has never been enough, and over the last few weeks I have fallen back on my default ‘imminent deadline’ mode, which means I am reading, reading, reading at every spare moment, on the tube, after work, all weekend… We have reverted to our old habit of going to the British Library on Saturdays, and spent a very companionable day yesterday in the Manuscripts Reading Room – K looking at actual manuscripts (describing ceremonial at Henry VIII’s court), while I took a break from Spain and worked on making some final amendments to my article on ivories decorated with the technique of incrustation, which took me to Egypt and Sicily, and was rather satisfying, since – though I say it myself – I think it is a good article.

So, picture of the month from our 2009 calendar:

Grand staircase, Crystal Palace © KR

This is one of the pictures that Kent took of the Grand Staircase at what was once the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, when we went up there for our memorable walk on New Year’s Day last year. Walking around the ruins of Crystal Palace gives you a curious sensation of discovering the vestiges of some ancient Egyptian temple in the middle of rural north Europe – the concrete sphinxes of the old Egyptian Court now nestle in amongst deciduous trees and a cover of fallen, rotting leaves – and nothing is that old anyway, it all dates from the 1850s, and was only ruined in the great fire of 1936. But that sense of dislocation from time and place makes it a magical site to visit.

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I have decided that a blog – this blog anyway – is a bit like a scrapbook. I collect things for it during the week and when I have a little bit of time, sometimes at the weekend, I sit down and stick them all in. What is weird about it is that it is sort of public and private at the same time – public, because it is stuck (or written) on the aether, private because you have absolutely no idea if anyone is looking at it… Is there anyone out there?

Here are some of the things I have collected this week (apart from another cold):

- a new pair of glasses:


It’s about three years since I had an eye test, and the last time I did an intensive period of writing (writing up my PhD) without having had my eyes tested for a while, I developed migraines – the Hildegard of Bingen flashing lights variety, though I am not aware of having received any divine visions. I figured I didn’t want them to develop again while I am writing my book in the spring, and it did turn out I needed a new prescription. It is also a long time since I had new frames – I was too impoverished, and kept reusing old ones – so this time I treated myself to a new look. They’re still tortoiseshell, but lighter, and I decided to go square. They’re also Giorgio Armani!

- some Iraqi coins:


On Monday we took some Iraqi curators out for lunch, who are spending a few months undertaking placements at the British Museum, under the auspices of the World Collections Programme. It was wonderful to see how much more upbeat they are than previous visitors we have had over the last few years – they actually said that for the first time they feel full of hope for the future. One of them was from Basra – his family was forcibly resettled to the north of Iraq by Saddam Hussein but they have recently gone back. Amazingly, they seemed to be really happy with the way the British army has handled the situation in Basra. It was possible to laugh about all the fish options on the menu – “I eat fish all the time in Basra [it’s a port city], I don’t want to eat fish in London”! One of them was a specialist in Islamic coins. After expressing disappointment that we didn’t have any Islamic coins on display (we have very few in the collection), he dug into his wallet and gave both of us a set of the new Iraqi coins. They seemed really proud of them.

- Carnivàle:


We have been Lovefilm members for years – it’s brilliant, films or TV series you missed or are nostalgic about or were too young ever to see come right through your front door and you can watch them in your own good time! I had once read something about a new HBO series, Carnivàle – I am not sure if it was even aired in the UK – so I put it on our Lovefilm list and the first disc arrived some time ago, but we were a bit unsure (not to mention too busy in the evenings), so we only just got round to watching it last week. We’ve had the second disc since then, and I’m completely hooked. K is not so sure. But it’s just Twin Peaks-y enough (and not just because of the presence of Michael J. Anderson) to keep me interested. Only two episodes per disc though, which is very annoying! (our Lovefilm deal is only four discs a month… which, realistically, is quite enough)

- more Obama hagiography (with thanks to Karen):

This is really touching – I only watched it once, but the chorus has been haunting me all week.

Rosa sat, so Martin could walk - Martin walked,
So Barack could run - Barack ran,
He ran and he won,
So that all our children could fly.

What is great about all the coverage of Obama at the moment, is the utter absence of cynicism – it’s so refreshing to just really believe in someone for a change. Have you noticed how Jon Stewart is like an innocent young child idolising a hero at the moment? Of course I know there are cynics out there – I am just choosing to ignore them.

Obamania!

Wasn't it amazing? Was that really only two million people filling the Mall?? I smile a big smile every time I hear the words "President Obama", and what a wonderful moment to hear him swear the oath of office as Barack Hussein Obama! On Lincoln's Bible!

We had intended to hold an inauguration party, but then it turned out that it fell on the same evening as the last of a series of four Islamic Art lectures at SOAS, all of which I very diligently went to. In fact, the lecturer - a prominent American curator at the British Museum - had to rush off at the end of the questions to change and attend an inauguration ball at the Embassy! I got home some time after 9, and we settled down to watch all two hours of the 'live' BBC coverage ... though I had cheated slightly by watching it online on my computer at work! I'm sorry, but some things are just more important - especially at 5 o'clock in the afternoon!



I did, however, sport the Obama pin I had found in a hotel in Philadelphia, when I was there in October for the Historians of Islamic Art Association symposium. I wore this pin religiously in the period running up to the Presidential Election, and strangely found that I felt it emanated a kind of protective aura... This was in the uncertain days when it was by no means clear whether he would win, whether there would be more of what my friend Glaire described as "Republican shenanigans". But wearing this pin felt like an amulet, somehow. I can't really explain it - but then I came across a passage in Obama's amazing memoir, Dreams from my Father, which I recently finished reading (by the way, can you believe that has its own Wikipedia entry?!). He's still in his 20s, and it's just after he has moved to Chicago to take up a job as a community organiser, in the days after Harold Washington has just been elected the city's first black mayor. Obama wanders into Smitty's barbershop for a haircut and overhears the regulars discussing "Harold":

That's how black people talked about Chicago's mayor, with a familiarity and affection normally reserved for a relative. His picture was everywhere: on the walls of shoe repair shops and beauty parlors; still glued to lampposts from the last campaign; even in the windows of the Korean dry cleaners and Arab grocery stores, displayed prominently, like some protective totem. From the barbershop wall, that portrait looked down on me now: the handsome, grizzled face, the bushy eyebrows and mustache, the twinkle in the eyes ...

Smitty said, "The night Harold won, let me tell you, people just ran in the streets... People weren't just proud of Harold. They were proud of themselves. I stayed inside, but my wife and I, we couldn't get to bed until three, we were so excited. When I woke up the next morning, it seemed like the most beautiful day of my life..."

Could he ever have imagined that he could almost be writing about his own political victory, twenty years later?? Reading this, the parallel between the intensity of feeling among Chicago's black community in the 1980s and the response to Obama's election seemed almost miraculously close, like some kind of sealing of fate.

One of the great souvenirs I found in the souk in Damascus was a t-shirt with 'Obama' written on it in Arabic!


I bought a couple of these - unfortunately, for some reason the printer or shopowner had cut out all the size labels, so I had to go back a couple of times to get the sizes I wanted, and after all that, K's didn't fit him! But it sits in his wardrobe - like a protective totem (we might frame it!). Apparently 'u-ba-ma' in Farsi means 'he is with us'. Well, I guess they don't see it like that in Tehran, since they're already burning his effigy. I proudly showed this purchase to one of the Syrian security guards at the exhibition I was there to manage, and though he seemed amused by it, he did not seem to share my enthusiasm. He must have wondered what kind of strange English woman is this... I can understand that in Gaza at the moment they are thinking, this is just another new president who will not risk his re-election chances to help us. But then, there has to be a market for these t-shirts if one of the shops in the souq was selling them - and he had a fair few, in a whole range of colours!

I am hoping - that new emotion that America was waking up to this morning - that Obama abides by the principles he manifests, utterly honestly, in Dreams from my Father, where he genuinely believes that it is possible to make life better for a people who have suffered unjustly for too long, and tirelessly works towards trying to make this happen - I hope that he applies this generosity of spirit to the problems in the Middle East, unadulterated (or, at least, not much) by political compromises and vested interests. After all, as I read someone say in one of the newspapers in the last few days - "He's not Jesus". Cynics say he won't be able to do anything - his hands will be tied by Washington process - but I would just love to believe we can surf on this amazing wave of history for a bit longer, and see the United States of America as a genuine force for good in the world. I am trying not to think too hard about that gorgeous spring day in 1997 when it felt like we had woken up to a 'brave new world'. Then look what happened.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Very Excellent New Year!!

Capilla de los Condestables, Burgos Cathedral © KR

On New Year’s Day 2008, we went for a walk in Crystal Palace, among the ruins of the venue of the Great Exhibition of 1851 – an easy bus ride from Brixton on the number 3 bus, which transports you to the rather ghostly traces of what must have been an amazing spectacle until it was destroyed by fire in 1936… K had to give a paper in Oxford on 4th January, and has resolved never to ruin the Christmas holidays like that again.

In February, we celebrated our twelfth anniversary, and K was viva’d in Oxford for his PhD, which he passed with minor corrections.

At Easter, we visited Waddesdon in the snow, and joined the National Trust, which inspired us to visit London properties, such as William Morris’s Arts and Crafts home in Bexleyheath, The Red House, which we did the next day. It was still snowing on Easter Monday when we walked up to Alexandra Palace for a drink with Helen G.

M gave a ridiculous number of lectures this year, including a series of three in April, on Córdoba, Granada and Seville, to members of The Art Fund. She is resolving to learn how to say ‘no’ but already the line-up for 2009 suggests she has a lot of practising to do.

In May, M led a group of V&A Patrons on a tailor-made guided tour of ‘Islamic Spain’, visiting Granada, Córdoba and Seville over the course of a week, and then staying on in Spain for the rest of the month, travelling from south to very north researching for the book she will be writing in Spring 2009. K joined her for the last two weeks, and we celebrated his 32nd birthday in a lovely local place at the end of an alley in Zaragoza, which was about the only restaurant we could find open. Almost everything in the city was closed, in the calm before the storm of the international expo! We had arranged to meet Glaire in Toledo, but also met Jeremy quite by chance, and spent an excellent few days in their company. In Barcelona, it was wonderful as always to see Sarah, Julius, Leila and Isaac, and spent what later turned out to be our last few days in their old home.

In June, K graduated for his PhD in Durham Cathedral, attended by his parents and his (then) 94-year-old grandfather. He wore a very exuberant red and purple gown, which he did not want to give back at the end of the day. (There are some photos here)

In July, we were visited by Bev and James, our long-lost friends returned from Australia for a round of visits. It was brilliant to see them and spend so much time with them! K gave another conference paper, at Leeds International Medieval Congress, and M had the honour to attend her mother’s graduation ceremony (photos here), in Guildford Cathedral, which she suspected and later confirmed was the church that scared Damien in The Omen. We spent a lovely evening with Alison, Steve and Ellie, a few months before the arrival of Nathan.

In August, M took her customary two weeks off work to make the most of living in London, but the weather was terrible, so it was largely spent indoors. Though we did go with Isla to the Canary Wharf Jazz Festival, and picnicked in the rain – something the English will have to get used to doing more and more, I suspect. Gareth celebrated her birthday with us, at Gastro in Clapham. At the end of the month we went to Hereford for a few days to celebrate K’s mother’s 60th birthday and retirement party.

In September, we spent a very pleasant day with Cornelius, visiting buildings all over London which threw open their doors for Open House Weekend – the highlight was definitely the former Granada Cinema in Tooting, now a bingo hall, built in the 1930s in high Victorian Gothic style (see http://cinematreasures.org/theater/9424). We joined K’s family again to celebrate his grandfather’s 95th birthday. K ran a 10k charity run at Hampton Court in aid of Cancer Research, which he made in 58 minutes, and he’s now addicted to running!

M left for New York at the end of the month, to participate in a curatorial exchange at the Metropolitan Museum for a month, but was away in the States for six weeks altogether, with a week in California at the beginning (book research again – honest!), and most of a week in Philadelphia attending the Historians of Islamic Art Association conference. Again K joined her for the last two weeks, having given a paper at the Sixteenth-Century Society conference in St Louis. We were in the States for the Presidential Election which was hugely exciting, especially because of the excellent result. Election night with Albert at Cleopatra’s Needle, watching the early results on a TV whose sound we could not hear and whose subtitling software was spitting out gobbledegook, followed by a late supper at Karen’s in Spanish Harlem where the result was declared and you could hear the whooping in the streets from all over Manhattan! Walking back through the Upper East Side at 1 in the morning with groups of happy people periodically shouting out, ‘Yes we can!’

We were visited in New York by another long-lost friend, Rebecca (though sadly Adam couldn’t make it), and we celebrated the release of her debut EP! (details here).

M was back in London for four days before flying to Damascus to install an exhibition of World Ceramics, the first time the V&A has ever loaned an exhibition to the Middle East, which was hailed in the British press as the right kind of diplomacy (see the excellent Guardian comment by Simon Jenkins here). She then stayed on to supervise it for the first half of its run, and was in Syria for five weeks altogether, trying to make the most of her one day off a week to visit some of the amazing classical, early Christian, and Crusader sites, not to mention Islamic, for which Syria is justly famous. A fantastic experience.

She is very happy, though, to be back home just in time for Christmas, and to be spending the festive season with loved ones. We’re confident that 2009 will be a good year, with Obama at the helm, and we look forward to all the happy hours we’ll spend with friends and family over the coming months. A very Happy New Year to one and all!