A slice of home

Gosh! Visitors are exhausting, aren't they?

What with taking them out-and-about; visiting, transporting, amusing; then providing with cooking, feeding and another cup of coffee. And in the evening it's all singing and dancing, thanks to how we can't shove her in front of a TV, due to the fact we don't possess one.

I think Britain at the time of the Empire felt exactly as I do.

They'd be all 'What? We have to go out again? Do we have to colonise some godforsaken country just because we can? Can't we please stay at home for five minutes and have a cup of tea?'

And this explains museum curators too. The collators of the world's art treasures had clearly had enough.

There they were, traipsing about everyone else's foreign country, simply to goggle at their treasures. Why do that? Far easier to make a few quick strikes into their most prized territory, nick their stuff, dash home with the loot, and stack it up in the parlour, aka the British Museum.

Then we Brits don't have to go a-wandering about the world! We can have the world come to us. We can look at it, go nice treasure, then sit down and have a proper cup of tea in agreeable surroundings, without all those flies and mosquitoes.

Coincidentally, that's what we do today!

The British Museum has brought a slice of Blighty here to us, miserable exiled people in Hong Kong.


Here in their travelling exhibition at the Museum of Art we can see creatures carved of stone, wood, bone; created in sculpture; decorated with gold; portrayed in paint; and mixed with modern day art from around the world (i.e. treasures lifted from Asia, the Americas, anywhere previously colonised).


It is a fantastic display. Just as well, because it's called Fantastic Creatures!

You should go and see it, if you're passing through Hong Kong. You can pretend you're back at home in Blighty.

And then you can sit down to have a nice cup of tea and some Victoria sponge cake.