Among the many housekeeping duties at the museum is getting rid of the rubbish. I never cease to be amazed at the pile that collects every week and before assumptions are made, it's the staff who are the worst offenders by far.

Yesterday it was my turn to get rid of the rubbish. I had no choice. A delivery driver strode in bearing documents and asked for assistance in getting his delivery off the truck and into the premises, which given our location wasn't unreasonable. I left the desk in the hands of a colleague and went down to the truck waiting at the roadside to see a wooden pallet with a tall load. This was no mere parcel.

Of course wiith my extensive experience in warehousing getting the pallet to the museum proved no great obstacle. The driver got my signature (keep that, mate, it'll be worth something one day) and that, as I well know, means the driver exits stage left.

Our enormous delivery is now in the hands of those who ordered it. It's up them to get the heavyweight cabinet downstairs. Good luck.

Anyhow, we had all the packaging to get rid of, so instead of simply filling a dustbin as I usually do, I had to go out the back door and find the skip in the service area. What a revelation! It's like a cold war bunker down there, a segmented concrete tunnel with air shafts here and there. Now if only I could find the right blue door to get back in the museum.... Nope, not that one... Ooops, sorry mate....

Our Surreal And Pleasant Land

Have you ever had a dream that was so vivid you remember it? It's been a long time since I've had dreams of that sort but last night I made a surreal journey into an otherworldly factory. It's strange how it sticks in the mind. Obviously I'm thinking about it now because I'm writing this paragraph on it.

I have a fascination for ruins and gloomy industrial buildings. Not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with distant early childhood memories of those last run-down days of steam railways in London. Steam and dripping water. Soot and grime. Shadows and dust. Who knows? Perhaps it has something to do with Swindon, which has any number of forgotten tunnels and brick caverns forgotten beneath our feet, almost as if there's some sort of folk memory of dark cellars behind the cupboard in some Narnia-esque townscape.

My dream was no more than a rambling exploration of some imaginary place. Probably just as well, because it certainly wouldn't be my dream factory to work in. Now that Britain is no longer the 'Workshop of the World' it used to be, far fewer people experience dark satanic mills. In the library I often see heritage and archeological magazines that depict an industrial landscape that in many cases no longer exists. I saw a photograph of an extensive mine complex, festooned with brick edifice and iron gantry. Now it's a green field, a place where animnals graze and crops are harvested, with almost no sign of the grimey industry that once provided work for the local population.

Was this a case of an eyesore returned to classic english pastoral bliss, or simply the passing of a dark satanic mill? On the one hand we sigh and enjoy the slightly artifical rural english park we've come to expect of our green and pleasant land. On the other we conveniently forget that those very same smoking chimneys provided work for a population that seems to be ever more inclined toward laziness, as a recent news article reveals.

I woke this morning to sunny weather, a brief respite before Hurricane Katia arrives in the next few days. I really didn't feel like getting out of bed today.