Too wet for ducks!

Even the ducks are heading into space as it's wet and windy tonight!

This morning it was windy but dry and I went to a really great talk on "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum". Paul Roberts, curator of the blockbusting British Museum exhibition of the same name, took us through a presentation of the main exhibits and the background to the construction of the exhibition.

He has been fascinated by the two Roman cities since a visit to them as a teenager and his passion for his subject came across. I really felt I was transported to AD79 when Vesuvius erupted and the two cities were covered in ash and preserved, giving us aazing insight into how the Roman's lived... and in this case died.

I hadn't realised the Roman toilet was in the same room as the kitchen. Of course the masters and mistresses of the house would use chambers pots and the slaves would empty them into the loo. However, the slaves could easily use the toilet, turn around and then serve dinner....nothing was known in those days about the spreading of germs. This meant dysentry and typhoid were customary and levels of infant death were high. We attribute the Romans with so many inventions, central heating, viaducts etc that it comes as quite a shock to remember that an understanding of hygiene was so basic.

My Dad visited Pompeii in 1944 as part of the allied forces and saw Vesuvius erupt that same year. He sent a postcard to my Mum, "Vesuvius Erupting, Love Eric" . My Dad was a man of few words and of course you had to be careful what you said because of the censorship of troop communications. He also collected lots of postcards about Pompeii and gave them to me when I was ten and I did a project on the subject at school. He would have loved today's presentation too.