JJ hits the slippery slope and the Museum

Well yesterday John became even older, having reached his 36th (that's right folks, 36th birthday. Who would have thought he would have lasted this long? Anyway, as he is in Birmingham at the moment I hopped on the train to see him for the evening. It was a fairly chily day and by the time I got there it was dark. We arranged to meet in the coffee bar just outside the station, unfortunately it was shut so I wandered to his building and waited in the foyer until his flat mate came and found me. JJ was only about 10 minutes behing me so, once Martin had headed off to Scotland and JJ had opened his presents, we decided to go to Broad Street, through the Mail Box, and find somewhere to eat.
After wandering back and forth a couple of times we found the "Around the World in 80 dishes", a buffet restaurant with chinese, mexican and italian food. The food was good but not excellent, but the service was very good and the drinks were even better - we were gently glowing once when left, stuffed to the gills, to go in search of the rock bar that JJ passes on a daily basis but had never been in.
We couldn't have been more obvious in there - with J in his suit and being almost twice the age of everyone else, still we enjoyed it and had a couple of drinks before deciding to move on. Unfortunately, as John stood up, he smacked his head on the underside of the metal stairs and had really hurt himself, so we decided to head home.
Next day JJ had to work so I had a couple of hours to myself. JJ pointed out the museum to me and as it was only two minutes walk I headed that way. I stopped in Victoria square on the way and took some photos of the statues and fountain:











I then realised I only had about 2 and a bit hours to go round the museum, but when I wandered around there, it turns out it doesn't open until 10.30. Luckily, I spyed a maccy d's, so I grabbed some breakfast and sat in the chilly sun to eat. There was some filming/photo shoot going on across the square, the giant box said I want a referendum, but I didn't work out what it is they want a referendum on.




The bench I am sitting on has a great view - statues and ornate architechure surround me:






and the requisite pigeons:



The following seed pod (?) was nigh on impossible to take a picture of as it was so windy that I had to shorten the shutter speed radically and use flash, hence the werid lighting. If anyone can tell me what this is I would apprciated it as I have NO idea.



I then realised that my hands had gone numb and the museum was open so headed into the building. I signed up for a photographic permit and headed off. The first thing that greeted me was this statue of lucifer which I never did get a decent photo of.



I then, quite quickly, became quite obsessed with a group of statues that were really quite disturbing. They were human height and, unlike most statuary, stood on the floor so that, when you walked around the room, you almost felt that they were going to follow you.













Other items of beauty:











I finished dashing round and headed towards home but got momentarily delayed on the way back by the architecture, fountains etc and the blueness of the sky.



















Then we headed back home to drop off JJ's stuff and then headed to London to see Lord of the Rings. It was a bit disappointing but I did still enjoy it, whereas JJ loathed it. I felt that the music was unmemorable, that they choose some of the wrong points to emphasise (such as the dancing in the prancing pony which I enjoyed for a while but quickly became bored of) and the crow-barring of women into the story line. Now I am a feminist but, if the women barely enter the orignal story, why do they every two minutes have them turn up and sing a long and boring song?! Drove me up the wall. On top of all that, the elves all seemed to been deaf as they made hand gestures whenever they said anything and Galadriel had a strange nervious twitch which was really off putting. But despite all that, I did actually enjoy most of it, the sceanery was amazing, the costuming wonderful and the acting, though dodgy at times, wasn't bad enough to ruin the story.



We finally headed home to our bed, pooped and were snoring within minutes.