I finished my spreadsheets; everything was in order: my timetables were done. My brain was tired; there was nothing more I could sensibly do on a Friday afternoon other than have another cup of tea and walk aimlessly around the office disrupting colleagues.
I looked at the clock at the corner of my computer screen. It was time to roll the dice. I tapped my phone and looked at the result: a short tube ride, followed by a five minute walk. Easy.
‘Are you Erik?’ I asked a man who was wearing a grey parka jacket.
‘Yes! How are you?’ Erik offered me a broad smile and his hand.
We were stood by the information desk at the British Museum. Whenever I come to the museum, I’m always struck by the interior of the atrium area, which is known as the Great Court. Above us hung a vast glass roof that appeared to be gently draped over a central tower, creating a light airy space.
There were five of us; four guys and one woman. One chap, called Harry, had also come straight from work. Another guy was in London as a part of a project he was working on. There was also a retired artist called Colin who was enjoying a day out.
‘Do you know much about this subject?’ Harry asked. The Meetup had the title: The Parthenon Marbles Spotlight Tour. The Elgin marbles had recently been in the news because the British Museum had loaned some of its exhibits to a Museum in St Petersburg. A couple of months earlier there had been reports of Russian bombers flying close to British airspace, testing air defences. The arguments for loans were simple to understand: art and culture should transcend politics and national sabre rattling.
‘I don’t know much. Obviously, I’ve heard a bit about the marbles, but I don’t know too much about them. History isn’t really my subject’.
Erik gently ushered us across the great court and towards a gallery entrance, where we loitered until our tour guide arrived. Our guide was about six foot tall, wore prominent black glasses and sported a tidy hipster beard. I immediately took an irrational dislike to him because he looked outrageously cool.
‘Hello everyone, my name is Ben, and I’m your guide. I work here as a volunteer for the British Museum, but I’m a teacher in my day job. I’ll be taking you through two different galleries and telling you about the Parthenon and something about the exhibits that you’ll see. When you’re walking about, do be aware of your surroundings since this is the biggest ever group I’ve had!’ Ben had a clear, commanding and authoritative voice. We followed him to the first gallery, which had a model of the Parthenon.
‘A key year in the story of the Parthenon is 479bc’, he began. Ben spoke about the Persian wars, the Peloponnesian league and the Athenian Empire. He told us that it was made from marble, and described it as an astonishing gleaming and shimmering building, that was finished in 432bc. Much of what Ben said went over my head: I didn’t have the historical frameworks or knowledge to connect to what he was saying, but I was enjoying how he said it.
We moved to the main gallery where the Elgin marbles were housed. We stood by what I later discovered was the Selene Horse, which was carefully lit to highlight its bulging eyes and gaping mouth. Ben told us a story about the horse, but it was difficult to hear due to the crowd and the acoustics. Everyone then walked towards a sculpture which depicted a fight between a man and a Centaur. A heroic death, we are told, is one where we are naked.
‘Imagine the worst possible bar room brawl!’ enthused Ben, talking about fights that were presented in other sculptures. He was becoming passionate and animated. Through his words, the statues in front of me were becoming more life-like, showed more action, and were becoming more important.
As we walked through the gallery, Ben told us about the later history of the Parthenon. It became a church, and then under the Ottoman Empire became a Mosque, before being partially destroyed when the Venetians attacked Athens.
As Ben was talking, I was struck by a thought: ‘Could I do that job? Could I become a tour guide? Could I inject inanimate objects with humanity and excitement?’ I thought of a new computing gallery in the Science Museum that I had yet to visit. Another question was: would I want to do that job? It was something I had never considered before.
Ben finished his talk. Everyone clapped. He had done very well, and I had learnt some stuff; my feelings of dislike had dissipated; Ben had won me over.
The Meetup group reformed around our illustrious leader, Erik. It turned out that this was Erik’s first time hosting an event. Erik had apparently been doing a bit of research into Athens and the Parthenon. He had seen the tour advertised at the museum, contacted the group owners, and asked whether he could run something, and they agreed.
We wandered around the gallery, as a group, for around twenty minutes. As we looked at various exhibits, I remembered that Erik had mentioned the poet Lord Byron on the event description. I asked him about it. I turned out that Erik was studying the works of Byron and was a bit of an expert.
‘Byron was really angry about what Elgin had done; he had even written about it in one of his poems’
‘That's interesting... There’s an interesting connection between Byron and computers...’ I said, thinking out loud. Erik looked at me strangely. ‘Byron had a daughter who is considered to be the world’s first ever computer programmer’. I paused, noticing that all other members of the group had tuned into our conversation. ‘Apparently, she was discouraged from studying poetry, or arty stuff, since this had made her father into a bad man, so she was encouraged to study mathematics instead’.
I suddenly had an audience. Even though I was in the wrong museum, I talked about Victorian computation engines, gambling, time, astronomy and drugs, whilst feeling slightly guilty that I had inadvertently dragged discussions to my pet subject.
Ten minutes later, we found ourselves at a coffee shop in the Great Court. For the next half an hour we talked about tea bags, the growth in the cake industry, aliens, beards, visual theory, hipsters, the actor Brad Pitt, chimneys and tattoos.
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