Museums at Night...um, Day!

I'd never heard of this one before but came across it whilst researching something else and thought it'd be worth looking into whether there was anything going on locally.

And there was - Harewood House was holding a Twilight Experience on Thursday 16th May.  This was to include House and Collection talks, food and drink in the candlelit Terrace Cafe, silhouette portraiture and exclusive viewings of previously unseen areas of the house.

So I gathered as many of the 'boys' as I could (Kevin and Ken) and off we went...

As you can see it was less twilight and more broad daylight!

 

So the story is that this statue of Orpheus used to reside in the front entrance but caused something of  a stir (can't possibly think why?!) so was moved out to the garden.

 

And was replaced with this - obviously much less offensive with its enormous marble phallus! 

(In fact the whole statue is enormous which kind of begs the question "How did kevin not see this?", not only did he not see it but as he was turning he had a rather close encounter with said phallus, promptly apologised to it and then walked off - and didn't realise until Ken and I pointed out that he hadn't almost walked into a living person but had, in fact, apologised to a giant marble penis - is it wrong that this was one of the highlights of my evening?!)

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin - Lord of the Manor

 

So, apart from the fact that there wasn't the slightest hint of twilight it was still a very enjoyable visit. Things did come to a rather abrupt end though at the point Kevin discovered that the Terrace Cafe was only serving tea and cake.

 

Ray often says that Kevin is the calmest, most reasonable of people...unless he hasn't been fed. At which point he turns into something else altogether!  I started to feel uneasy when we were trying to actually find the cafe (very well hidden) and his pace quickened to an almost desperate haste as we retraced our steps through stone corridors and round increasingly familiar corners.

 

We finally located the cafe (which wasn't candle lit - it was still daylight), and sat down with the menu, Kevin was genuinely horrified to discover the limited (and in my opinion over-priced) fare on offer so we made a sharp exit and headed for the nearest eatery.  Which happened to be the pub across the road - where Kevin was then told it would be a long wait for food due to the party of 20 who were being served first.  Obviously this wasn't acceptable at all so off we headed back to Harrogate and the Pine Marten, by the time we got there I was genuinely concerned that Kevin might start gnawing on my arm but still couldn't help being amused when, on being told it was a 20 minute wait, he hopefully asked whether that was 20 minutes until our food was in front of us. The (rather scared looking) bar staff was very apologetic as he explained that, no,  it would be 20 minutes until we were seated.

 

So, after Ken and I forcibly removed Kevin from around the throat of the poor hapless bar man (only joking!) we all headed off for a drive around town on a mission to find somewhere still open that would feed Kevin before he entered some sort of full blown Jekyll/Hyde episode.

 

Having driven round for a while Ken skillfully found a parking place in the vicinity of Graveley's and we, just, made it in time to place an order to appease the angry food god.

 

The museum at night jaunt was enjoyable but it was the desperate mission afterwards which turned out to be the real adventure!  I am seriously considering though always making sure I have some sort of edible treat in my pocket, just in case, when out with Mr Matthews!