We do sometimes mock the colonials a little for being over awed by anything older than their settling in the Americas, and their tendency to forget that things were created prior to then, and in some cases still exist to this day. This chap however was a gem, he genuinely believed I was taking advantage of his American nativity and pulling his leg about standing parts of the building dating back that far.

Once I gave them the audio tour wands, he handed his directly to his wife and told me conspiratorially “She’ll listen to the whole damn thing, but I’m just going to get some great pictures of her looking like lady of the house.” As Staircase House is full of replica furniture and is wholly hands on, he was very happy to have “Gotten a snap of her pouring tea like a real English lady.” :D

(please don't turn this by having a crack at me about my understanding and perceptions of Americans and their history. I know some very bright and great Americans. I have also met some real doozies. Likewise, us Brits can be astonishingly dumb sometimes!)

Today I've been hidden in the workshop, sticking and slicing foam board labels. It's a different environment to the office, not only due to the powertools, mess and hands on creativity, but also thanks to the different life experiences and mindset of the staff there, and the conversational freedom granted by not sharing an open plan office.

Topics of conversation:
Revenge "He super-glued my paintbrushes to my desk, so I glued his door shut"
Best practice in making IEDs (Improvised explosive devices) "The Provs used mushy pea tins"
Breaking into cars "You can't do it with half a tennis ball anymore"
Washing powder "I use Fairy. Seriously, feel  my trousers, they're really soft"

Even tool wielding, furniture lugging, scenery creating rufty tufty men like their trousers to be nice and soft!

A BBC article on the origins and history of tinned food may not sound like a riot to read, but by golly I've just gained a grand amount of trivia! 

For example: scandals over cheap meat are nothing new!

"Instead of perfectly preserved beef, they found putrid meat so rotten that the stone floors needed to be coated with chloride of lime to mask the stench, according to an account in the Illustrated London News.....The supplier in question was Stephan Goldner, who had won the Admiralty contract in 1845 by undercutting all rivals, thanks to cheap labour working at his meat factory in what is now Romania ."

Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia are apparently planning to complain about the treatment and resulting state of Michelangelo's David, following an exhibition funded by American Sponsors.

The sponsors were:

Many thanks to my mum for sending me the comedy email, this is based on!

On Facebook someone queried why recording would be an issue, as they thought the main problem with photography was the use of a flash.

 In some places, for some objects, it is a major issue of copyright and security. So something privately owned may be shown by a gallery or museum, and part of the agreement is that the owner retains all rights to any images etc, and/or no images can be taken of the cabinet/alarm wires/wall fixtures. (the security/images issue can also sometimes arise in insuring certain items) So the staff then have to try and prevent visitors from taking images of the object and it's surroundings. 

Frustrating, but at least it gets objects from private collections, or which would otherwise be prohibitive to insure and publicly display, on show.

In work I maintain our section of our website, using a slightly cumbersome system. I'm deleting old images and things we no longer need clogging up the system.

Today I learnt that ticking the box at the top of a list to select all in that list, and then unticking the items you don't want to be included, does not actually exclude those items from being deleted when you then press the delete button. 

I was alarmed when the 22 page list of images, media bundles, pdfs and articles went down to only 3 pages. And rightly so it seems, as that would pretty much delete our  whole web section. Now to work out how to fix this, or if I need to start wholly from scratch on the project. 

At least I noticed before pressing the 'make it so' button!