Maybe It's Because I'm Not a Londoner...

This Saturday just gone I was in London to watch a musical. Now I want to go back for at least a week.

We arrived on an early train, see, and so decided to play a flying visit to the British Museum. I haven't been for years - certainly not since they enclosed the space around the the old Library Reading Room - so I was just awed. Hurrying past all the re-enactors plugging the Hadrian exhibition, we shot through the galleries. I wibbled incoherently, waved my hands a lot, and desperately restrained myself from licking the Assyrian sculpture. Heading at top speed through the Ancient Levant galleries we saw the Standard of Ur and the Ram in the Thicket and then ... there it was ... sitting quietly in an Ancient Iran case: the next Piece for Heart of Flame. I hadn't been looking for it, hadn't known anything about it, but there it was, like a gift.

I've just sent my characters off to look for a special Tree, you see, and this tree must have a guardian. The Senmurw pictured above happens to live in a very special "tree without evil and of many seeds", according to pre-Arabic legend.

Bang. Thank-you, gods of writing.

And here's another reason, below, that I'd like to spend some time in London...