Museum Talk No. 3

Today we spent our session all in the Discoveries section. This is better than trooping all over the museum, looking at a piece of gold in the shape of the UK here, and a teaspoon there...

We sat at the Millennium Clock and our tutor told us all about it read from the catalogue notes. There’s actually a really good video explaining it all. School holidays, I believe, though not in the city, so there were loads of kids yahooing around.

Every item on display is really interesting, but I’ve walked past them all many times. There is a large portrait of a lady. Who she? If I had bothered to stop and read the info, I would have found out that she was Frances Teresa Stuart, and she is indeed Mrs Rule Britannia. King Charles 11 was infatuated with her, but she resisted his charms and married Charles Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond. When he died, she bought an estate south of Edinburgh and renamed it ‘Lennoxlove’. There was a huge ornate trunk, with all her toiletries laid around it. All in silver and gold, made in France. One of only three surviving, as Louis X1V had all silver and gold melted down to pay for his wars.

There was an actual mounted sample of penicillin mould - every time Sir Alexander Fleming got an award (and there are many on display, including his Nobel Medal) he liked to give a sample as a present.

Charles Darwin was at Edinburgh University, and in fact, lived in a boarding house that used to be on the site of the museum. There is a tiny stuffed bird with a bendy beak (a scaly throated earthcreeper), brought back from South America on HMS Beagle.

There were many more interesting items connected to illustrious Scots, and all it takes is to stop and read the info, although the tutor did fill in a few more background facts.

These folk are sitting round a large feast bowl.

That’s enough facts for one day.

But here’s another one: Steady Eddie from Scottish Power, after all his promises, has not yet rung back...