Journal entries - June 2010
Bye Bye London
When I was twenty-two,
It was a very good year,
It was a very good year for independent life,
And nights in London town,
We rarely felt down,
And had great things to do,
When I was twenty-two
Thus Ervin Drake’s song (popularised by Frank Sinatra) would have gone, had the composer of “It Was A Very Good Year” benefited from my support as lyricist.
The academic year of 2009-2010 has now come and gone, and I believe my time in London was not only well spent but also great fun.
Between work and play, squirrels and pigeons, Irish and Indian, cuisine and grub, it was a wonderful blend of smiles and tears (well, not quite) from mid-September to end of June.
The Order of the Two Magpies
An art historian, P.C., who wishes to remain anonymous, has uncovered a plot deeper and more fascinating than any work of fiction by Dan Brown: that of the Order of the Two Magpies.
It is a tale of intrigue and mystery to which the only clues are to be found in art, in a vast collection of paintings dating back to the 15th century.
The existence of the Order of the Two Magpies was unknown to most of the world for many centuries, but on 3 June 2010, P.C. discovered an anomaly in a number of paintings exhibited at the National Gallery, London: there appeared to be a motif common to art of different eras, namely a constant depiction of two birds, generally resembling magpies. Their significance, at first deemed to be a mere coincidence, soon led to the unraveling of the greatest mystery known to man.