Undecided.

We spend Sunday morning at the open day for the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the local market town. Founded in July 1776 by a group of knowledgeable locals and still going strong. Ever since they've managed to publish a quarterly magazine without a single interruption despite revolution, wars and occupation.

An amiable older gentleman, who turns out to be the President, gives us a tour of this Aladdin's cave of mysteries. He is quite happy, indeed eager, to let us leaf through the original notebooks containing the first lectures . A wonderful display of original First World War posters is propped, haphazardly, against a wall.

On the staircase an enormous and particularly hideous 19th century painting showing the excommunicated German Emperor Henry 4th pleading for forgiveness in front of the Pope  in 1077. Generations of school children will have been taught this is what happens to naughty boys and girls who stray too far from the church. The Emperor was made to wait in his bare feet in the snow and in the picture is looking decidedly chastened. He never forgot, nor forgave. One of the seminal moments in European history. None of us can determine who the stern looking woman next to the Pope might be. Not a picture I'd want to have above the mantelpiece.

Notebooks from the 1780's showing excavations made by a visitor from Paris - a savant theatrical impresario - who could see something and then draw it exactly from memory. The Roman remains he excavated and recorded are all now lost.

The academy building is an old medieval convent that belonged to the Ursulines. There were no less than 26 convents in the town at the time of the revolution. After the terror it was vacant and they bought it for a song. At some stage the building was divided and the neighbouring tenant became the El Dorado night club. Quite an exotic venue for an agricultural town. From the fallen concrete on the El Dorado's portico I assume it's long closed.

While 'The Font' chats to the 'senior' gentleman Angus talks to an enthusiastic lady who is writing a book on the subject of  'The role of women in the study of apricot and plum diseases in the late 18th century '. As a special treat Angus is shown a variety of scientific instruments and the notes made by a long series of worthy farmers wives.

How marvellous that such calmness, eccentricity and passion co-exist in equal measure.

On our way back to the car we pass a 19th century building . Down below an uninteresting front to the Prune store. Above a mass of architectural detail which could be Moorish or Gothic but seems undecided as to what it wants to be.

Who knew the Norwegian national anthem was the same as the British ? Here's God Save the King sung in that increasingly fashionable Benjamin Britten version I never know when to stand up for . The Swedish King and Queen look bemused : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jK-0AEFPbo


Some people got this Novichok joke. Others didn't. The comments are twitter humour at its best : https://twitter.com/richardosman/status/1040261999555497985