Northern Lights

Feeling in need of escape from Willesden, headed up to Oxford last weekend at the kind invite of Mr Fusion. Soon to be Dr Fusion, you know the one.

Saturday was supposed to be an in-depth look at Oxford's world-famous Pitt Rivers museum, home of an endless series of bizarre objects, from shrunken heads to weapons and religious artifacts. The shrunken heads are particularly popular with the kids. Unfortunately, despite spending several hours there, it turns out we'd barely scratched the surface. I was in the room for 2 hours before I realised there was a gigantic trimarine suspended above my head.

The Pitt Rivers is essentially one room, with two galleries (sadly closed at present), however, it's a pretty big room, and stuffed full of artifacts that it starts to do funny things to the senses. That may have just been my hangover though.

The museum is also rumoured to be the home of the His Dark Materials trilogy, which took over an entire fortnight of my life a few months ago. Mr Fusion is similarly into the series, and the museum was part of a larger tour of the places featured in the book. It's a shame Jordan College doesn't really exist. Every so often in the museum, you see objects that might just be related. The bottom-centre picture has to be the althimeter.

Very nice weekend, and nice to catch up with Mr Fusion before he disappears to his new home in the South of France. Anyone got a TGV map?