421: I Like Looking at Pictures

Fun with Google Images – I was searching for an old-fashioned illustration of a spine before and ended up just getting lost amongst all kinds of fantastic images. As an adult it seems to be a little bit embarrassing to admit I like looking at pictures. I'm not particularly talking about art, although I do enjoy art galleries and books; it could equally be kids books, postcards, drawings, sketch books, maps, tickets, playing cards, prints, stamps, paper money. I like looking at pictures.

A dream of mine would be to be curator at a museum of paper ephemera; a vast unending collection of long forgotten images, texts, textures and patterns just waiting to be discovered, arranged, dated, catalogued, displayed and preserved. That would be utter bliss. Perhaps the British Museum has a paper ephemera department and they have a job going.

Here we go, this is what I'm talking about: The British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings. "It is one of the top three collections of its kind in the world," according to the website. "There are approximately 50,000 drawings and over two million prints dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century up to the present day." That really does sound like heaven to me.

As well as having drawings and prints by such important artists as Michelangelo and Goya there is an "important collections of printed ephemera, such as trade and visiting cards, fans and playing cards". Please can I have a job, please. And in my lunch breaks I can just pop over to the Department of Asia to rifle delicately through the collection of Oriental prints and drawings.

Truly if that was my life I would never have to work another day; each day at the office would be a waking fantasy of study, research and appreciation. And with all those drawings by famous artists I could have the world's most expensive paper aeroplane fight in history... ever. That's my CV and cover letter sorted, now all that remains is the interview. A mere formality.

It's things like The British Museum that make London sound like not such a bad place after all. If ever I have a decent amount of money under my (missus') belt, I may consider thinking about possibly considering suggesting that maybe we think about possibly going to London to think about the prospects and possibilities of us one day moving tentatively to London. So I can be curator at the Department of Prints and Drawings.