It’s the annual audit committee meeting. The whole bean-counting process is so dull that my eyes glaze as I stare at the assorted mugs on the table, and I ruminate on... ceramics.
I recall one curator who was enraged at two naff brushed-steel lavatory signs that had been inappropriately screwed to his 17th-century panelled museum doors.
He took his revenge by Blu-Tacking over the top a couple of brass signs in Baskerville Old Font announcing “The Gallery of Functional Porcelain”. Drole, though I doubt original.
I glaze disconsolately back at the mugs on the table. One museum tyrant of the mid-1980s had his work-time beverages prepared in a mug simply titled “God”.
Another’s coffee-crusted canister was less modestly titled “Lord of the Universe”. More recently one psychopathic hierarch announced himself with “Lord Voldemort” on one side and “He who must not be named” on the other.
However, the tea mug that really takes the biscuit for me will always be my friend’s plain white “Wipers mug”.
This piece of superannuated ceramic purports to have seen service in the second battle of Ypres and was, she says, slurped by no less than Lloyd George, Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot and Nelson Mandela.
In more recent times, she has served Tetley’s in it to disgruntled colleagues and rebellious shop stewards.
Awestruck by the mug’s staggering if improbable provenance, the poor dupes will instantly resile their issues of outrage and come to heel at the snap of a ginger nut, she assures me.
“More tea, Nelson?’ I mumble. Eyes swivel and stare at me. I’m back in the committee room.
I recall one curator who was enraged at two naff brushed-steel lavatory signs that had been inappropriately screwed to his 17th-century panelled museum doors.
He took his revenge by Blu-Tacking over the top a couple of brass signs in Baskerville Old Font announcing “The Gallery of Functional Porcelain”. Drole, though I doubt original.
I glaze disconsolately back at the mugs on the table. One museum tyrant of the mid-1980s had his work-time beverages prepared in a mug simply titled “God”.
Another’s coffee-crusted canister was less modestly titled “Lord of the Universe”. More recently one psychopathic hierarch announced himself with “Lord Voldemort” on one side and “He who must not be named” on the other.
However, the tea mug that really takes the biscuit for me will always be my friend’s plain white “Wipers mug”.
This piece of superannuated ceramic purports to have seen service in the second battle of Ypres and was, she says, slurped by no less than Lloyd George, Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot and Nelson Mandela.
In more recent times, she has served Tetley’s in it to disgruntled colleagues and rebellious shop stewards.
Awestruck by the mug’s staggering if improbable provenance, the poor dupes will instantly resile their issues of outrage and come to heel at the snap of a ginger nut, she assures me.
“More tea, Nelson?’ I mumble. Eyes swivel and stare at me. I’m back in the committee room.
