Behind the scenes

I mentioned the price that the view from my office exacts. Yesterday it was ten degrees celsius. That is bearable if you are moving around, but while sitting at the desk…shiver!

So I relocated to the office at the front of the building which was a good ten degrees warmer, and worked from there - isn’t technology wonderful?

Today my office is a balmy fourteen degrees. So I’m still in the front office…

The Tuesday Lunchtime Natural History Half-Hour

My knowledge of natural history is not extensive. My background is in Egyptian Archaeology and then military and social history. So when Jo asked if I wanted to go and see the bittern at Seafield Pond, I said ‘Of course’. Mind you my knowledge of bitterns was limited to a) it’s a bird, b) it lives in marshes and c) they make a booming noise (which I have never heard). I had no idea what one looked like. Luckily Jo was able to show me a picture before we set out. So at least I knew I’d be looking for something brown with light bits. In amongst the reeds. Hiding.

So off we went. The pond has been drained to a very low level, splitting it into two sections. The site used to be the town dump, so there’s all kinds of interesting bits of rubbish poking up through the mud - broken pottery, bottles and bricks. Jo set up her scope on the ‘landbridge’ (or rather ‘mudbridge’) looking back towards one of the reed beds and after no more than a couple of minutes she had acquired the target. It was impossible to see with the naked eye from that distance, even when you knew exactly where it was, but through the scope… perfectly sharp. The bittern (which I guess is here over the winter) had the good grace to not just sit there doing nothing but to actually catch a couple of fish. Mind you, it happened so fast all I saw was a small splash, a flash of silver and the end of the fish disappearing into the bird. It was suprisingly exciting, perhaps because it has the additional attraction of seeing something that usually happens out of sight, or that is hard to get to see. I don’t think I’ll be becoming a twitcher quite yet though.

As it happens Jo did a dissertation on bitterns while working for her degree, and spent many hours observing them. Or rather many hours waiting for them to appear, and a considerably smaller time actually watching them. I may quit while I’m ahead with a 100% strike rate on bittern-observation.

Update: my visit was yesterday. Those who went today registered a zero on the bittern-o-meter. 

One of the tasks that falls to many curators is working with a trust or society that’s involved in the ownership or running of a museum. This morning Jo and I attended a regular meeting of the John Muir Birthplace Trust (surprisingly enough at John Muir’s Birthplace).

It’s an interesting set-up. The building and the ‘permanent’ exhibition (the whole project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, ELC and private donations) are owned by the Trust, while the building is operated by the Council’s Museums Service and the revenue cost of opening to the public and running all our public programmes comes from East Lothian Council (and any additional funding we can find).

This creates the potential for ‘interesting’ situations, particularly when you consider that the Council is itself one of the Trust partners. Who sets the mission for the Birthplace? Who has ultimate responsibility for the activities, exhibitions, workshops and events that take place there? Who has the final say, even, on how and when the building is open to the public? In practical terms, much of this is going to be driven by the limits of the Museums Service budget, but it’s not something that we can take unilateral decisions on. Of course, we do have a management agreement that sets out parameters for some of these things, but as is the nature of such agreements, it is not exhaustive, and each situation needs to be judged [cliche alert!] on its merits.

It’s the Museums Service staff, after all, who have the knowledge, skills and experience of running the Birthplace (and our other museums). But we have to be aware that what we do here reflects not just on the Council, but also on the wider community represented on the Trust, and on the Trustees themselves.There will always be a judgement call to be made as to what we can do (for example to take advantage of a new opportunity) without consulting the Trustees - based always on our now two-and-a-half years experience of operating the building and working with the Trust - and what we need to talk to them about. Of course we always hope that we will all agree anyway. I have to say that so far no situations have arisen where there has been a disagreement between the Museums Service and the JMBT. Hmmm, is there any wood handy…?

I suppose what I’m saying is that, in a relationship like this, it all really depends on Trust.

What a good morning to have a site visit at Prestongrange with some members of the Living Landmarks bid team. I don’t think I’ve been as cold as that since 1982. Of course I hadn’t dressed for the occasion, so I have only myself to blame. I could hardly have been unaware of the weather conditions as it had taken 15 minutes to be able to see out of my car windscreen first thing (and that involved driving up the road with my head out of the window to somewhere where the sun would shine on it.

Still, I spent a good two hours exploring the site including the areas to the south amongst the trees. It’s fascinating to see what has survived amongst the growth of the last forty years. I haven’t explored the back areas of the site during winter before, and it’s surprising how much more you can see when there are no leaves on the trees. The two reservoirs are amazing - like little walled gardens - but while some of the infrastructure of drainage pies and sluices it still visible, it mostly exists in small reminders sticking just out of the earth. As you explore you can follow these pipelines, but it’s hard to know just what they are for or when they date from. Of course on a site with a history as long as Prestongrange’s it’s not always clear to what extent later structures have wiped away or re-used existing ones. But that’s for phase 2 of the Community Archaeology Project to sort out.

We don’t make enough use of much of the site, largely because we have lacked the resources to make it more accessible and meaningful. But I can imagine how the site might be - of course I’ve been imagining how Prestongrange could look since I first saw the site when I was up here for my interview for the Museums Officer post in 1994, so I may be a serial dreamer. But this time - who knows?

So with my fingers and toes completely numb, I climbed back into my car and the windscreen wipers and screenwash wouldn’t work. Bizarrely, when I pulled the lever to wash/wipe the windscreen the rear wiper went on. But that, as they say, is another story.