I’m back
So finally I get around to updating the blog. Why the long lay-off? Partly because with moving to a new job on the other side of the world - as far as you can go, without starting to come back - I’ve been preoccupied, and partly because my new job has taken me to a role that’s not just museums. I now have responsibility for a library service as well as an art gallery, the council’s (yes, still working in local government) relationship with the museum and a variety of community development projects.
Does that mean I’m no longer a curator? Not really. In here <taps head> I’ll always be a curator, a museum person. I still keep up with museum developments, especially the webby, techie sort. I still get the Museums Journal every month - and strangely it cost me less to join the Museums Association as an overseas member than it would have done to remain a member in the UK. OK, it was only £2, but as Tesco say, every little helps. I just don’t do any actual curating, I have no daily contact with collections and exhibitions. And sometimes I miss that - it was part of my life for more than twenty years.
On the other hand - I have a new job, half way round the world from the old job. Sometimes it strikes me as I’m driving along. New Zealand can seem very like Scotland - very green, hardly any people, lots of sheep, and they drive on the left - but then I’ll see a cabbage tree or something, and I’m forcibly reminded that I’m really here and it makes me laugh out loud. Especially when see the weather reports from the UK.