I studied 1066 for three years and I am still not allowed to see it.
LONDON, England – There are people in this city who will queue for hours online for a piece of embroidered wool, and I regret to say I am one of them in spirit. I do not have a ticket. I have a reading list, a flatshare with unreliable wifi, and a tutor who looked at me this week and said “you must be going”, in the tone of someone mentioning a train.
Early: The Refresh Button Years
The Bayeux Tapestry has been on display at the British Museum since the middle of September, and it will be there until July next year. This is, for a history student, the equivalent of a rock star announcing a residency in your own kitchen. The trouble is that everyone else has noticed.
I woke at six, made tea, and read ITV’s report on the changes made to ease the Bayeux Tapestry queues while standing in a hallway because my flatmate Dilly had fallen asleep on the sofa under a coat. The museum has added an audio guide, more signage, more seating and a ban on photos, after snap-taking caused significant delays. It has also offered refunds and priority rebooking for ticket-holders who were turned away because of backlogs.
Reading that, I felt something I can only describe as jealousy of people who were refused entry. They at least got turned away by the tapestry in person.
Midmorning: Lecture Hall Maths
Dr Pemberton-Hale opened the lecture with a joke about 1066, then explained it, then explained why the explanation was not necessary. Then she asked how many of us had seen the tapestry. Two hands went up. One of them belonged to a man who had seen it on a cushion cover in a gift shop and counted that.
Here is the arithmetic I did instead of listening. According to ITV, adult tickets cost 33 pounds at peak times and 27 off-peak, and under-16s go free. The museum’s biggest sales day ever came when general tickets went on sale in July, generating over 2.4 million pounds in 24 hours. That is a lot of money for a thing that is, at heart, a very long strip of cloth with a horse in it.
“The response to the Bayeux Tapestry has been extraordinary,” a British Museum spokesperson told ITV News.
I would like to say, as a student, that “extraordinary” is a word that has been doing quite a lot of work this month. The Art Newspaper also reported that the museum was extending the Bayeux Tapestry opening hours, which I take as the museum’s way of saying “we heard you, please stop shouting”.
Afternoon: A Hill, A Kite, A Thought
I took my kite up a hill in north London after the lecture, because that is what I do with grief. The wind was brisk and shifting, the sort that makes a kite twitch like it has a secret. A man walking a lurcher stopped to watch and asked what the kite was called. I said “Harold”. He said “ah”, very quietly, and walked on.
It is a cheap joke, but I had named the kite Harold in a moment of self-pity on the way up. Harold flew well. Harold took a dive. Harold was recovered from a bush by a woman who did not say a word and left behind a faint smell of thyme, which I mention only because it was a very good smell.
Kites, I should say, are the most honest way to experience a queue. You stand, you wait, you hold a piece of string, and at some point something above you either behaves or does not. You cannot refresh a kite.
Evening: A Pumpkin Patch Offers Perspective
Back at the flat I read a story I am now thinking about daily: a pumpkin patch adding a VIP experience where you carry your own pumpkin. I have decided that this is the future of heritage. In ten years the tapestry will have a premium tier in which you hold one end of it and a nice person in a lanyard tells you not to breathe.
The Bayeux queue is the same joke, only with better lighting. Pay more, wait less, carry something. I have asked the flat group chat whether any of us would pay extra to carry a tapestry. Dilly said yes. Fenwick said he would carry the lanyard. Wendeline said she would carry the grudge, and has done so since July.
The London Prat has been writing about exactly this sort of public demand for years, and if you want a guide to sorting real news from the other sort, this UK checklist for telling real news from the rest is a decent start. I used it on the ticket story and the story was, to my regret, real.
The List I Will Keep On The Fridge
- I have not seen the tapestry and I will see the tapestry.
- The photo ban means I will have to remember it, which is the oldest historical method there is.
- If the next ticket release arrives and I miss it, I will build a kite in the shape of a longship and fly it at a high place, quietly.
- The audio guide is not for me, since I would talk over it.
My night ended in the usual way. The pub quiz team, the Doubtful Hastings, lost by a single point after an argument over the spelling of a Norman duke, and we went to the chip shop and talked about what we would do with 2.4 million pounds. Tobes said buy the tapestry. I said you cannot buy the tapestry. Tobes said “not with that attitude”.
For the record I am going to see it, one way or another. I will queue, I will behave, and I will say nothing about the horse. If you want to follow the campaign you can read more of my daily notes at The London Prat, and for the wider city picture there is plenty in London news as the network sees it.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/