Friday half-holiday

[shewhomust]

durham_rambler and I had a lunch date with anef, who has been in town for a week long summer school. Having liked the Tapas Factory when we ate there on Gala Day, we went back there and liked it even better. Good food (leave room for dessert; I particularly recommend the churros), chilled rosé, pleasant service: the lunchtime customers came and went and we were still talking (about Thucidydes, deep fried octopus, accountancy and the Cambridge Folk Festival, among other things) without anyone making us feel we should move on: I like that in a restaurant!

After lunch, we went our separate ways: anef wanted to visit the Botanic Gardens, and durham_rambler and I to see the Bodies of Evidence exhibition, as recommended by F. who had been visiting earlier this week. It's in Palace Green library, about the skeletons found during the building of the library's new café, explaining how it had been established, by the most up-to-date scientific methods, that they were indeed, as everyone but the experts had assumed from the moment of discovery, the remains of Scottish soldiers marched to Durham after their defeat at the battle of Dunbar and imprisoned in the cathedral. (This is not a criticism of up-to-date scientific methods). An interesting exhibition - actually, two interesting exhibitions, one of them about the context of the English Civil War / Wars of the Three Kingdoms. and what we know about these soldiers from the historical record, including what became of those of the group who survived their imprisonment, the other about what we can learn from the bodies, which was, as these tend to be, a little defensive in tone. There was much emphasis on the sensitivity with which the bodies (many of them partial, since their unexcavated parts still lie beneath the library) had been reburied, so that the display did not include any of the actual bodies, but a 3D printing of one of them (the one which was the basis for the facial reconstruction. There was, however, a perfectly genuine skeleton excavated from an eighteenth century Quaker burial ground (and this is different because...?).

We encountered a couple we know in the exhibition, and then again as we were walking down Windy Gap on our way home, and they had interesting thoughts about it, which may lead to other things. But there were rumblings of thunder, so we didn't linger, and got home only slightly damp. The more serious thunderstorm has held off until this evening - no hope of seeing the lunar eclipse.

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[shewhomust]

The storms carried on into yesterday, and we still have rain with the odd distant rumble - have they reached you, yet?