She's a Da-ay Tripper...

Upon my return to the Isles, I realised that I only had five days left up north, and quite a bit of territory to cover, were I to fulfil my inner-list of desired northern locations to visit.

So Tuesday was York trip II. The main purpose of which was to visit the York Castle Museum, most excellent in its reconstruction of everyday life through the centuries. They have recreated a number of rooms from different periods - I particularly enjoyed gazing upon a nineteen fifties living room, which featured a terribly "modern" tv set and then receiving a whole rundown of the different models available at the time and how that one was a particularly expensive one in its day, from the man beside me who had clearly lived through the period. Also fascinating - bizarrely so - was an exhibition about cleaning through the ages - when soap became available, how it was made, access to fresh water, the invention of the toilet etc. Then moved into exhibitions of different styles of wedding and mourning attire, accessories, household furnishing. Along with my winning conversation about Norwegian barns, goes my new knowledge about English kitchens, particularly ovens and hearths. So many inventions you don't think about - the chimney for example. When it was invented it removed the necessity of having the fireplace in the middle of the room, thus lessening the chance of setting yourself on fire when cooking (v. good), and enabled fires in many more rooms, meaning houses could be bigger, more luxurious, and, (and how I love that this was noted), occupants could toast snacks in their bedrooms. A lot to be said for that in any day and age, the ready supply of muffin.

It took numerous hours to get through this museum, but once I eventually tore myself away I went for a wander through the Shambles again (old shopping district - buildings overhang so much you could hold hands with the people across the street out your upstairs windows.)

Wednesday I headed to Liverpool, arrived via train and headed down to the Tate Liverpool. One guess as to the soundtrack I podded along to. Tate Liverpool is another example of How We Use Contemporary Art for Rejuvenation of City Centres. It isn't as large as I thought it was going to be. Which communicates absolutely nothing, as that is as in relation to? Anyway, good exhibiton of small sculptures and drawings by Henry Moore, and of paintings by Patrick Caulfied, whom I only intermittenly love.

The permanent collection exhibition was very good, a nice sweep of twentieth and twenty-first century art - good samples of work by the usual suspects, the one that particularly stood out was by Jake and Dinos Chapman, which a whole display of tiny sculptures, reminiscent of those little figures that a certain type of gent can spend hours, nay months, moving around on replica battlefields, but they were recreations of Goya's liths of the Acts of War.

Then I headed off to the Beatles Story, a pretty cool exhibition of, wait for it, The Beatles Story. Recreated the different clubs and studios that were key, lots of stuff about how they met, Epstein, the early concerts etc. That inspired me to wander off and find the Cavern Club.

Liverpool seems to have gone through a considerable pulling-of-self-up-via-bootstraps, whereas a few years ago (I'm told) it was rather drab, it now has a very lively vibe, and an endless paved shopping area in the centre of town, which featured some very cool looking shops.

Oooh, I have to go.