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Dr Tooms and I arrived early at Royal Gunpowder Mills,
where we were met by Liz and Brian, who was looking
dapper in his Santa
hat. Unlike our last visit the weather was fantastic and very cold;
lucky for us it was going to be a short day.
It was to be another great day at RGPM for us with the usual array
of eager visitors; we have become such regulars now that we often
see the same people so it is always nice to have a couple of new
things lined up. The trouble with this is that every new thing made
needs a home and at some point we are going to run out of room.
My latest acquisition is an Ifugao
bulul; this dark, squatting figure is a rice guardian deity
from the Philippines.
I found it in a charity shop in North London, sitting there, looking
at the world waiting for Prof. Grymm to come by and suddenly
exclaim “I know what that this! I’ve been after one for ages!” Originals
go for a considerable amount of money so at £7 this was not just
a major find but real bargain. Next season it will hopefully become
the central figure in the tribal section.
We had a visit by a reporter from a local paper, she wanted to
get a photo of me, something I dreaded, and especially since a few
minutes earlier a little girl asked me if I was Guy
Fawkes! The reporter also managed to press
gang a young lad into posing with one of the mermaids, I am
not entirely sure what sort of memory that will be for him!
I was impressed that at least two girls who not only identified
the hand
axes but could also tell me how they are made. One of our visitors
was a lady who had worked with a wide variety of wildlife including
the [platypus] and a young lad kept us all entertained with lots
of cheeky questions, doing the usual trick of asking about one item
and then asking about another before I had finished. As I talked
to a lady about the intricacies of Victorian collections I spied
a hand slowly rising…I was starting to dread the next question.
As the almost mid-winter sun headed for the other side of the world
we started packing up our stuff, it had been a short but intense
session and we were looking forward to a hot meal.
This is Prof Grymm wishing everyone a very prosperous 2008 season
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