A Museum Christmas Carol

St.Acetone, patron saint of museum workers composed this Christmas carol in a Byzantine prison cell where he was facing charges of excessive cleaning in the face of silver artefact tarnishing.

Any similarity to the tune of Away in a Manger is entirely coincidental


A day in a museum, no dosh and mislead,
The hassled curator lays down his tired head,
The boss in the office walked to where
he lay,
The sleeping curator was snoring away.

The public are moaning, the curator awakes
But tired curator, no excuses he makes
He asks museum manager, come down from on high
And stay by the front desk till home time is nigh

desk bells they ring, they are rung out by visitors all day,
until tours are done and delivered until Christmas day,

Be near me, scotch whisky, I ask thee to stay
Close by me for ever and soothe me, I pray
Bless all underpaid curators with their unkempt hair
And take us to conference and drink the tea there

desk bells they ring, are rung out by visitors all day,
until tours are done, and delivered until Christmas day,
thank Christ was born, for our 1 day off is Christmas day



Festive greetings to museum staff and volunteers everywhere

Always look on the bright side of life

Does the title seem familiar? Fans of Monty Python's Life of Brian will recognise it immediately. Although, if I'm ever crucified in a case of mistaken identity I feel I would struggle to find the same sense of optimism on display there, but I might find the high notes easier to reach.

Why Monty Python? Well, this week I read an article concerning 'The Monty Python Guide to Running a Business'*. Silly me, I hadn't realised that the Pythons were actually business gurus and not just very naughty boys.

Thus while I sit here in my Santa Claus suit in the Museum of Unreason Christmas Grotto, my thoughts have turned to the benefits of ageing Oxbridge educated schoolboy humour for museums. The Christmas Grotto is a last minute innovation for the museum sparked by the news that Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is not having theirs this year**. So I have persuaded the volunteers to wrap up unwanted artefacts for grotto presents as an acceptable form of ethical disposal. Unfortunately by charging £10 per child to enter the grotto (double for adults) means that we are not overwhelmed with visitors and I'm sitting here surrounded by a mound of festively wrapped horse gelding*** implements (for the girls) and scold's bridles**** (for the boys).

I'm now on my 3rd pint of the eminently quaffable Santa's Butt Porter***** that I've discreetly hidden in the seat of Santa's chair. In actuality Santa's chair is a Victorian commode reputedly used by Friedrich Engels when a young man in Manchester after a particularly excessive evening sampling some slightly undercooked Hindle Wakes******. It was this particular experience that inspired him to write the Communist Manifesto... apparently. Now it makes an excellent beer store.

So, I've decided the best way forward is to ignore Monty Python's business acumen and simply suggest renaming museums and their galleries after famous Monty Python quotes. Try this at your museum Christmas party. Here's my effort:

Museum of London Archaeology Gallery - What have the Romans ever done for us?

British Historical Taxidermy Society - The parrot is no more

People's History Museum - Come and see the violence inherent in the system

National Trust Cheddar Gorge Visitor Centre  & Shop - Blessed are the cheesemakers

Thackray Medical Museum - I've got no option but to sell you all for scientific experiments

Imperial War Museum - Well, warfare isn't all fun

National Horseracing Museum - You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together

Museum of the Dead - Well, that's cast a gloom over the evening...

The Veterinary Museum - Your cat is suffering from what we vets haven’t found a word for

Natural History Museum - All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle, and the thin again at the far end

Museum of Unreason - Your type really makes me puke you vacuous, toffy-nosed, malodorous pervert! (which coincidentally is an extract from our customer care policy)


What this all means is......(at this point a large cartoon foot descends to squash the blog)


Merry Christmas!


*http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/the-monty-python-guide-to-running-a-business.html

**http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-25230304

*** gelding - as a verb relates to the act of castration of horses primarily to make the animal calmer and better behaved  (source Wikipedia)

***scold's bridle -  An instrument of punishment used primarily on women, as a form of torture and public humiliation. The device was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head. A bridle-bit, about 2 inches long and 1 inch broad, projected into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue.The curb-plate was frequently studded with spikes, so that if the offender moved her tongue, it inflicted pain and made speaking impossible (source Wikipedia)

**** This special holiday porter brewed by Ridgeway in Reading is made for winter - rich and warming, the way they like it at the North Pole. It was inspired by this famous line from a well-loved children’s storybook: "And Santa sat on his great butt, enjoying a hardy brew...", ideal for museum staff everywhere.

*****Boiled chicken stuffed with prunes, simmered overnight and served, hot or cold, with a lemon-flavoured gravy - yum

10 Words to Cut From Your Writing*

In my constant efforts at self improvement I was drawn to an article on 'lean writing'. The thrust of the article suggested that you could easily cut out 10 unnecessary words from your sentences. The words in question were:

Just
Really
Very
Perhaps/maybe
Quite
Amazing
Literally
Stuff
Things
Got

I'm sure you have written a sentence with all of them in before. I have.

'Just a short note to really thank you very much for all the quite literally amazing stuff you've donated to the museum which we've already got, so perhaps you maybe want to retrieve your things from the skip out the back''

Now try that sentence without the unnecessary words.

''A short note to thank you for all you've donated to the museum which we have already, so you can retrieve it all from the skip out the back'''

It works! So not everything you read on the internet is bad advice.

But the larger point is that we can be prisoners of our language, free up some words and free up your mind. Can this liberating effect be applied to museums? What words can a museum do without? What would be the effect? Here are some suggestions in no particular order:

Backlog
Accreditation
Trustee
Friends
Curator
Concession
School
Conservation
Object
Volunteer

Abolish those words and instantly your museum is a happier place. You don't have a backlog! Yippee. No objects and no conservation issues means we don't have to have a curator, instantly creating savings. With no concessions you can charge full price all the time. You'll have no friends (nothing new there), but no trustees telling you what to do either. They just turn into greying busybodies and therefore indistinguishable from the paying public. With no volunteers they'll just become unpaid staff, and therefore you can now sack the staff who have the temerity to ask for pay - yet more savings! No school groups means no graffiti in the toilets and no headaches at the end of the day from all the noise. Finally, no accreditation and heritage nirvana is surely reached while the dustbin will be full of unloved and unused paperwork.

Just reflect on that for a moment and don't pretend that I'm not offering you a seductive vision of the future for your museum.

I might apply this to my personal life, and after the week I've had I'm going to abolish the following:

Rain
Queue
Tax
Breathalyser
Fine
Mortgage
Arrears
Cholesterol
Erectile dysfunction
Hangover

Happy Friday 13th to one and all!

*http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229369

Twitter Wars - @WillyShaking v @FrannyBacon

Having discovered in last week's blog that Shakespeare may have been the first person to use the word 'tweep', further research uncovered the fact that William Shakespeare was a prolific user of the micro blogging phenomenon that is Twitter. I understand academics have erroneously suggested that Francis Bacon composed his tweets. The evidence is scant, and if you follow Twitter, Francis Bacon's @FrannyBacon user aphorisms seem to lack the poetry of a finely honed William Shakespeare @WillyShaking tweet. All of which must give the lie to that particular conspiracy theory. The evidence is right there before your very eyes. Compare them for yourself below and see if you agree.

Here are some from the William Shakespeare @WillyShaking archive.

"Tweet all, retweet a few, do wrong to none"

"If twitter be the food of love, tweet on"

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but our twitter feed"

"Tweet to many, message to a few"

"Better a witty tweet than a foolish tweet"

"There is nothing either good or bad but tweeting makes it so"

"Hell is empty and all the devils are on twitter"

"The course of retweets never did run smooth"

"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tweets in trees, tweets in the running brooks, tweets in stones, and tweets in everything"

"But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's tweets"

"How far that little tweet throws its beams! So shines a good tweet in a naughty world"

"Life is as tedious as retweeted tale, vexing the twitter feed of a drowsy man"

"Tweets without thoughts never retweeted go"

"Tweeting isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet tweets are not deeds"

"A retweet sought is good, but given unsought, is better"

"The empty tweet makes the loudest sound"

"Now, God be praised, that twitter gives light in darkness, comfort in despair"

"Pleasure of tweeting make the hours seem short"

"When tweets come, they come not single spies, but in battalions"


Here are a handful of Francis Bacon @BaconButty

"Tweeting is power"

"It is impossible to tweet and be wise"

"A prudent tweet is one half of wisdom"

"Twitter makes dull men witty"

"The job of the tweeter is to always deepen the mystery"

"Tweets are thieves of time"

and finally.

"blogging about tweets steals even more time" @museumu

Follow us all at @museumu, @WillyShaking, @FrannyBacon for insightful and poetic thoughts on social media

England's Green and Pleasant Car Park

I am conscious I have been neglecting our car parking heritage lately. I note there was not a single mention of car parking  heritage at the Museums Association Conference. However, yesterday I was privileged to place my modest limousine in a car parking slot that is proof of Oliver Cromwell's assertion that 'God is an Englishman'. 

Suitably organic, lacking the geometric precision of other European spaces, and placed in a suitably bucolic setting. Just drink in its beauty, feel the sun on your face and bask in the distant memory of summer and thank heavens you are part of 'this happy breed of men [in] this little world'. 

 

And did those cars in ancient time 

Drive upon England's roadways green? 

And was the holy park for cars 

On England's pleasant pastures seen?