As a way of mentally preparing myself for the new job, I'm going to alternate articles of things that I'm going to miss about my current job, and things that I will be glad to see the back of.
First up is Bloomsbury. I adore Bloomsbury.
Lying to the east of Tottenham Court Road, Bloomsbury is a maze of Georgian terrace blocks, majestic formal squares, and a few major landmarks including the British Museum with its plundered treasures from around the globe and Senate House, the headquarters of the University of London and apparently the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984.
I think that my fondness for the area is from familiarity. During much of my childhood, my dad worked at Birbeck College on Torrington Place, and so trips up as a child would be frequent. As a result, the British Museum was a regular outing, to the macabre room full of mummified Egyptians, the silverware of the Mildenhall Treasure (immortalised in a short story by Roald Dahl), or the disappointment of the stamp collection (closed for renovation until some point in the far-off 1990s).
The museum now is further enhanced by the beautiful, organic glass ceiling that makes a vast, enclosed, public space around the old British Library reading room. It has been the scene of a few work meetings, the inspiration of the Easter Island statue at one end, and the Rosetta Stone at the other tempered only slightly by the screaming schoolkids.
Outside the front gates of the museum is, for me, a culinary landmark: Pizza Express. The second ever opened (in 1967), one of the ones in an old Express Dairy (the origin of the name), and a regular haunt for me since the late 1970s. The Art Deco tiles, echoing acoustics, and smell of baking dough take me straight back to childhood.
mmitII 