Freja and I met up with Neil and his girls for a visit to The British Museum yesterday. It was a huge success.

I wasn't by any means sure that it would be. I've taken Freja to the V&A a few times recently. She is happy enough for an hour or so, but she's getting bored and restless by then, so we decamp to the wonderful Science Museum, which is only a few minutes away. And our visit to The National Portrait Gallery didn't go at all well...

But The British Museum was lots more fun. The girls spent a fair amount of time running around, elbowing each other and saying things like "you can see his willy" and such like. Well, shouting to begin with, but Neil and I got them calmed down a bit fairly quickly. The dead bodies were also big hits.

Unfortunately, the Roman galleries seemed to be closed. Freja's looking at the Romans in her topic work, so it was a shame that we missed that section - Freja really wanted a look.

Lunchtime was a bit rough on the pigeons - the girls spent most of the time chasing them. But they needed to blow off a bit off a bit of steam having been kept quiet.

We finished off with Mummy: The Inside Story. We all loved this. The girls liked the gory details of mummy preparation, particularly the brains being pulled out through the nose. I loved the theory as to how the mummy got its hat.

You see, the mummy has what what looks to be a shallow pottery bowl on its head, somewhat like a skull cap. This is the only mummy to have been found with one of these, and since the workmanship of the bowl appears to be pretty rough, its unlikely to be of ritual significance. No, the theory runs that this was on of the embalmers bowls which got stuck to the corpse's head with resin during the embalming process. Rather than own up to this, the embalmers simply wrapped the mummy's head up with the bowl in place. They thought that nobody would ever know! People never change...

Museums are always tiring, especially when you have a good time. Freja and I were both totally knackered on our way back to Reading, and by the time I was back in Colliers Wood again I was nearly comatose.