[british museum 00134704003]
The object of interest being a clay mask, getting on for 4,000 years old, to be found at reference 1 and previously noticed at reference 2. I thought I would try and track down the paper by Sidney Smith in which he tells us something about the entrails of a sacrificial sheep or goat which have been worked in the face of the Babylonian demon Humbaba. Which was to be found at reference 3, a series that I thought might be held by the SOAS library in London - without checking that is. The people at reference 4.
An overcast day and after much early morning indecision, I decided against Bullingdons. I didn't fancy cycling up to Russell Square from Waterloo - maybe a few years ago - and all things considered it seemed better not to be lumbered with cycling gear.
With the result that I had a long walk at Green Park from the Victoria Line to the Piccadilly Line. I had been sure that it was just a 25 yard walk from one platform to the next.
But a plus was learning all about an important dog called Bingo, from a young lady in the lift at Russell Square. The one at reference 6, although I believe there is a link back to reference 5. Maybe a relation of the pig called Peppa.
Old and new at the SOAS corner of Russell Square. A while since I have seen one of these green huts, let alone used one. I should have done on this occasion.
Slowed down slightly at the front door by not having made a proper appointment. But I put on my doleful old gentleman look and they let me in cheerfully enough. It is not as if they were busy. Followed by a cheerful lady at the library desk proper, and in not very many minutes I had a reader's card, good for a year - no charge - with the result that library cards now occupy three slots of the eight available in my wallet.
But it then turned out that they did not carry the Annals of reference 4 and they suggested that I try the library in Senate House next door. Which was all terribly grand, top of the range inter-war public building. Lots of money lavished on the public areas downstairs. But no annals at all. It then occurred to me that maybe I could do better at SOAS - so back through various courtyards, past lots of street food and back into the SOAS library where, after a bit of digging in the catalogue, I found my way to a copy of Budge - the very same edition as my own, which I had not thought to bring with me.
Maybe there would be something useful in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. This the library did carry, quite nearby too. Not relegated to some stack in upper or lower regions.
And there was a note by Sidney Smith about the mask, plus the picture from which Budge had lifted his, rather crudely if I may say so. The RAS version was much better than his. And I now know a bit more about the mask. But no speculations of the sort that Freud might have enjoyed about how the intestines got to be mixed in with a face. Or, and this is the bit that particularly interests me, the significance of a drawing made of a single, unbroken line.
More work in progress.
What would a UBS client advisor being doing in the university part of town? Even if there was a Gulf flavoured vehicle parked right behind?
The umbrella shop of New Oxford Street survives, people from whom I once bought an umbrella, many years ago, an umbrella which did not have a particularly long life. It struck me on this occasion that some of their fancy goods had a slight whiff of fetish about them.
Onto the cheese shop in Shorts Garden, where a well dressed older chap - but younger than me I dare say - pushed in to buy 2oz of cheese. I think his wife was slightly embarrassed, but perhaps she was used to it. Worse things could happen. But then I got overcharged by a tenner or so, almost certainly an innocent error, but one which the counter hand did not notice until I queried it.
And then I had a brain wave. Never mind all the fancy stuff in Covent Garden. Down to the old-style caff in Duncannon Street, where I took tea and a double bacon sandwich on factory white. Just the thing, even if it was the sort of place that preferred cash. Good that such places still exist in the middle of town.
I not sure that I ever knew that the cross at Charing Cross was a reconstruction, Edward I's original having been taken down by Cromwell - perhaps he had the same problem with the cross as he did with the sculptures in the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral, eventually to make way for the equestrian statue of his arch enemy, King Charles I, at the top of Whitehall. See reference 8.
The upper spot marks the caff, the lower spot the original site of the cross. With the street below still retaining its old name. An important junction for hundreds of years, also used as the notional centre of London for the purpose of signage, milestones and the like.
I also found some cash for 'Help for Heroes' at Waterloo, with heroes being wanted again. Just in time to catch a shiny new train to Epsom. Complete with lots of all too audible announcements. I wondered whether spraying foam on every loudspeaker in sight would count as a terrorist offence and result in tooled up transport police rushing aboard at Clapham Junction?
I noticed a large graffiti over the entrance of the Waitrose at Wimbledon. How long will it take them to get rid of it?
I also remembered about Simpson's paradox, which had kept me busy during my last stay in hospital. It did very well as a pastime - supplemented by a Pukka Pad from the Smiths downstairs and my telephone. I wonder this afternoon whether the Smiths in the hospital has been rebranded in the way of the one at the Ashley Centre.
Home to capture the trolley noticed at reference 9. More than twenty trolleys ago now.
And to take a pint of Jaipur at Wetherspoon's. A pale ale with a strong flavour from somewhere up north. I rather liked it, even though it was a bit dear by Wetherspoons's standards.
PS 1: as advertised in Wikipedia, Sidney Smith and this wife are the dedicatees of the Agatha Christie story 'The moving finger' - dedicatees who survived to appear at the front of the story in our near complete complete works from Heron. I had thought that Heron might not have bothered with that sort of thing.
PS 2: I had previously identified an online copy of the relevant volume of the Annals in a library in Bombay, but I was uneasy about paying 100 rupees or something to join up. Then today, I thought I had found one in the world of Google Books, and he certainly had an image of the front page - but when I loaded the relevant application on my telephone - Play Books - it seemed to have vanished. Maybe another go later.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolley-944.html.
Reference 2: Amulets and Talismans - E A Wallis Budge - 1961 (USA).
Reference 3: Annals of archaeology and anthropology - University of Liverpool, Institute of Archaeology - Volume XI, 1924.
Reference 4: https://www.soas.ac.uk/.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingo_(folk_song).
Reference 6: https://www.bluey.tv/characters/.
Reference 7: https://www.james-smith.co.uk/.
Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross.
Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolley-951.html.
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