Bayeux’s remorse

Here a house is burned (Scene 47)

The Bayeux Tapestry, currently in London, British Museum

Image here via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_47_(cropped).png

Nearly 1,000 years after its creation, the Bayeux Tapestry still resists definitive and uncontested interpretation.

Lively scholarly debate continues on many elements (and long may that continue!)…

What was it for? What was on the now-missing panels? Was it even finished? Where was it displayed before we first find it in Bayeux Cathedral in the fifteenth century? Who is Ælfgyva? What’s a pointedly pointing hand meant to tell us? What about That Arrow? And what’s with all the penises?

Naturally, we’ll be thinking about all of these questions on our upcoming course,

A Stitch in Time: The Bayeux Tapestry.

The road to London

aka: Here Duke Harold returned to the English land (Scene 24)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_24_(cropped).png

Given our respective historical interests - and especially given my former life as an academic researching all things Anglo-Norman - it was inevitable that we’d offer a course to celebrate the British Museum’s landmark exhibition. And we timed our course specifically to take place after my pilgrimage to my erstwhile Bloomsbury stomping ground (via an “iron horse”, courtesy of LNER, rather than via ship and equine horse. I hope you’ll forgive me a little poetic licence with my illustration).

But the scene above - depicting a woman and child fleeing a house which is being torched - could well stand as a metaphor of the British Museum torching its reputation…*

[*I know it won’t… and fair enough, for this is but the latest in a long line of complaints about the management of the British Museum’s big ticket exhibitions. And yet still we get excited about the next one, gamely trusting that lessons will have been learnt…]

As many of you know, I was very excited to be finally seeing the tapestry In Real Life.

As quite a few of you can attest, even getting a ticket was Quite A Thing, with virtual queues of up to ten hours (possibly longer, but ten is the maximum of which I’ve heard). But hey - at least these days one doesn’t have to sit, phone in hand, enduring hold muzak for those ten hours, so it could be worse.

Easy for me to say, though, as it transpired that I was going to be out of action on the day tickets went on sale, so the friend with whom I’d be visiting the exhibition gamely volunteered to make our booking. Tickets duly secured, we booked our train tickets, and looked forward to our BT@theBM pilgrimage.

The BM promises to do right by imminent visitors

aka: Where Harold made an oath to Duke William (Scene 23)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_23_(cropped).png

At the beginning of this month, however, we got a mail from the BM to advise that they had to close the museum early on our chosen day, ‘due to a Museum event’, which rendered our original ticket time no longer possible. They apologised, and offered to rearrange our time within that day.

Not ideal, it’s true, but eh. We assumed that the apparently unanticipated museum event was to allow an oligarch/tech bro/major celebrity/royal a private viewing, and that it’d somehow work out. We were offered a slot which just about worked with our fixed-ticket trains, and assumed that suitable alternatives and recompense would have been offered to those who were not able to attend on their original day.

Most people in the queue, trying to cheer up the few grumblers

aka: Here Bishop Odo, club in hand, encourages the lads (Scene 54)

Image here via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png

Fast-forward to BT Day…

My friend and I rendezvoused at Great Russell Street, and were pleasantly surprised to find that there weren’t hours-long queues to get into the museum as we’d feared (in light of recent press reports). Right enough, there was a small queue at the entrance of The Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery, but hey - we’re British. We can handle a queue.

The museum staff were brilliant at ensuring that people got into the You’re Very Nearly There “snake” queue leading to the actual Thing in the right order, according to their allotted times, and everyone was waiting happily (mostly. There’ll always be a few grumblers in any queue, right?).

My friend and I hadn’t seen each other for a while, so it was lovely to catch up - so much so that I didn’t notice how long the queue was (my guess would be 50m or so, ergo totally within British Comfort Zone).

Odo? Oh no, more like…

aka: Bishop Odo (Scene 44)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_44_(cropped).png

But…

[and I’m sure you’ll have been expecting a ‘but’…]

When we were within sniffing distance of the tapestry itself - perhaps 50-ish people ahead of us - there was an announcement, which the acoustics did not quite convey to us, but the massed response of those closer suggested was not good news. It transpired that nobody else could enter the inner sanctum. Those already in had been taking longer than they should to move along the tapestry, and so those of us currently in the queue wouldn’t be finished and out before the museum had to close for the Big Museum Event.

[Sidebar: Having seen various reports on social and mainstream media, it wasn’t a surprise that people were taking longer than the BM had budgeted for. Indeed, some seemed to actively revel in the prospect of taking as long as they jolly well wanted to. That is, of course, a whole ‘nother issue. But nevertheless an issue of which the museum had been aware for at least 20 days, since the exhibition opened.]

We were handed fliers which apologise for the disruption to our visit today, and give an email address via which we can seek an alternative date or a refund. Members are assured that the museum will aim to rebook them as a priority for the nearest available date.

BM staff, dealing with a lot of disappointed and disgruntled punters, with empathy and admirable professionalism

aka King Edward (Scene 1)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_01_(cropped)2.png

You can, I suspect, imagine the ensuing scene.

I want to stress right away that the staff on the ground were absolutely brilliant. I sincerely hope (although having worked in customer services, sadly doubt) that they’ll get a bonus for how well they handled everything.

Ironically, given the tapestry’s subject matter, there was much on display in thwarted visitors’ reactions which demonstrated how very much our current national psyche is inflected by what we might see as stereotypically French and British characteristics! Let’s just say that not everybody’s entente was very cordiale, but the staff who were at the coalface really were super.

What was less super was the marked absence of even the hint of an apologetic sop by way of customer service (a paltry 10% discount voucher for any merch bought on the day would have gone a long way) or a token management presence (we’d never have known whether it was actual management, or some poor soul quickly shovelled into a suit and tie to represent the powers that be. Because presumably all the actual management would have been too busy getting ready for the imminent gala).

Here the British Museum shoots itself in the foot

aka Here King Harold is slain (Scene 57)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_57_(cropped).png

Because yes… it seems that the Big Museum Event, which meant that our original tickets had to be changed, was simply the opening junket for the Korea exhibition.

Admittedly, it was to be attended by the great and the good - as confirmed by the understandably formidable security contingent as we lesser, ticket-buying mortals shuffled away - so there were obvious logistic concerns.

But it was clearly not an unexpected calendar clash, and I can’t see how those concerns weren’t obvious when the tickets went on sale or even, months later, a few days into the BT exhibition once the “I’m not moving quickly for anyone” posse had been selfishly dawdling along the tapestry and we got our mail telling us we needed to go for a different timeslot. But then I don’t get paid a (presumably-)hefty salary for anticipating such things, so what do I know?

So yes… The headline news is that I - and quite a few others - didn’t get to see the Bayeux Tapestry. In the scheme of things, of course, worse things happen at sea. But it is nevertheless disappointing.

Had our ticket been cancelled with the email at the beginning of the month, I might have been able to change my train tickets, and wouldn’t have incurred A Day In London expenses for no reason. But even though we’ve got the option of a new booking, I don’t know right now that I can afford the travel and expense of another trip to London. I’m fortunate to be able to rearrange my work around a day trip, but my colleague used up a day’s leave for our trip. Others had built their trip around their tickets from much further afield (we came across people from America and Mexico, and I’m sure they weren’t the only ones who won’t be able to arrange another jaunt).

Did somebody order tapas and increasingly bad puns?

aka: Here the bishop [Odo] blesses the food and drink (Scene 43)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_43_(cropped)2.png

But hey.

We did our best to wrest a happy time from the jaws of disappointment.

My fellow would-be pilgrim is a renowned and esteemed editor of medieval scholarship, and we had arranged to meet up after our encounter with the Bayeux Tapestry with an equally renowned and esteemed academic working with things nationally archival.

I am carefully protecting their anonymity, as they still have academic reputations to maintain, but suffice it to say that as the tapas arrived, and the wine was poured, our puns, dad jokes, and faux-tabloid headlines got progressively worse. (“Bayeux’s remorse”, “Caveat embroideror”, “It’s just bobbins”, “I’m really needled”, and “It’s a Tapestry travesty!” are the only non-sweary ones I can currently recall…)

Here the body of King Edward is carried to the Church of St Paul the Apostle (Scene 26)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_26_(cropped)2.png

And of course it’s early days.

I have always been a defiantly optimistic bunny, and remain determined to maintain a sense of perspective (unlike the embroiderers who stitched the respective dimensions of Edward the Confessor’s cortège and Westminster Abbey, apparently. Ahem).

As my friend booked the tickets, it may well be that the British Museum has already responded to an email from her.

They marvel at a star (Scene 32)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_Scene_32_(cropped).png

It’s more than possible that they will have offered appropriate recompense, in which case, they will have proven themselves to be absolute stars.

I’ll be sure to update here as and when.

I truly hope that you are not disappointed if you are planning to make your own pilgrimage to the Bayeux Tapestry. But whether you end up seeing it In Real Life or not, we’ll do our utmost not to disappoint with our course!

PS I’ve not ventured into the realms of social media much since I got home, but my brief forays showed a lot of “Well it’s not been that far away for years. If you cared that much, you could have done it in a day without any hassle and no queues” comments addressed to those complaining online. At one level, yes of course. And yet there are all sorts of reasons (e.g. geography, finance, caring responsibilities, not having a partner/family who would enjoy their annual holiday in that part of the world…) which might preclude even the briefest of forays into Normandy.

PPS Yes, there is indeed an excellent replica (replete with modesty-covering knickers) at Reading. Yes it’s wonderful, and yes it’s well worth a visit, but it’s not quite the same.