Contested Histories; Aborigines, National Museums and controversy

This is a tentative blog post because it's an area into which I wouldn't normally stray; I have no knowledge and no declared interest in either side. It feels like I am stepping in to unknown territory armed with only my wits and – in the current terminology, a bucket of privilege. Still, I can always blame naivety - and the lecturer; Prof Amanda Nettelbeck of the University of Adelaide. She gave a few of us an overview of the national museums project that she and other historian colleagues are working on. The title was: ‘Contested Histories: Settler Colonialism, Aboriginal History and the National Museum’.

I’m not going to present a complete transcription of her lecture but do a brief overview.

The Colour of Money; The New Financial Services Regulations

Two of the best things about being in law librarianship for decades are 1. seeing the changes in colours of institutions’ rule books; 2. the learning and relearning of industry acronyms. London Stock Exchange Listing Rules went from being the ‘yellow’ book to ‘that weird aubergine colour’ and the SFA, SIB, FIMBRA, PIA rule books all had their own coloured binders which had to be painstakingly updated by hand. I vaguely remember one of them being green, though the Bank of England reports tended to be a very elegant expensive looking white and gold. However when the FSA overturned these organisations in 2000-01 all their rules were subsumed into the multiple FSA Handbooks (white, purple and pale turquoise green), horrible new binders which would take your thumb off if you let them. 

A Knitted Landscape

A knitted landscape

Rows upon rows

Textures in twine

Stitched by wheat

Embroidered by barley

Endless colours

Boats casting off




Whimsy from the Isle of Sheppey

The Lime Street Naturalists

It's true what they say

About poems, nature, death and life. 

Pausing for thought whilst looking for 

Scientific heroes amongst rhythm of stones

The musical notes of poetic meter 

The names of my City churches muttered:

Some gone and half forgotten:

Saint Antholin, Benet, Dionis, All Hallows.

The people moved in death by 

A vigorous space needing City

The magpie approaches 

Drawn by my stillness
Looking for life under leaves

His glisten of blue-black-white

Like marble enlivened, shrieks.

The oblivious bee pauses 
Hovers and vanishes
A fleeting meeting of buzz and Ethel
Sweetness over Geranium robertianum

And earthly detritus

The squirrel scratches up the tree

Flickingly shy, peering at me 

Whilst other sounds bring the stones alive

The irony is I'm looking for naturalists 

And they're here, still, looking at nature

Written for the 16th Century Lime Street Naturalists who were moved to the City of London Cemetery in the 1900s.