Tonight we have been to the Spring lecture at the Museum in Truro and heard the wonderful Professor Joann Fletcher, Egyptologist, speaking  so enthusiastically about her work in Egypt, about the history and the magic.

I have loved all things Egyptian since I was a child visiting the Royal Cornwall Museum. The Mummy fascinated me along with the tomb drawings and the hieroglyphics. It was my dream to visit and we have now done so three times. The photos are from those times.

A speech from Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare is today’s poem. Enobarbus is describing the moment when Antony first saw Cleopatra.

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description; she did lie
In her pavilion,–cloth-of-gold of tissue,–
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature; on each side her
Stood pretty-dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.