Talk: The Black Historical Presence in Surrey

Today, there was a suggestion of seeing Ivan - he fancies a blowout again. But with it being declared a bank holiday, he's instead taken himself off to see the family. Probably. Well, the best Meetup alternative seemed to be a Zoom talk about The Black Historical Presence in Surrey. Courtesy of the Surrey History Meetup. So I signed up to that. There's so much closed, what with the funeral, anyway..

Well, I spent all day watching it, courtesy of Sky News' excellent coverage. On the phone simultaneously with friends who were also watching it, so we had a virtual watch party. By the time she was well and truly dispatched, I was starving, and praying that O' Neill's wasn't one of those businesses that saw fit to close. Happily not - and I managed to get the last free table downstairs, with a good view of the tv, so I could see what the BBC were doing for coverage. Took a while for my food to arrive, but that made it all the more welcome, and I was soon enough fed. Did some essential shopping on the way home, too.

Was home in time for the talk - and then realised, just in time, that - yet again - I hadn't registered separately for the thing. Blast - I did so, with a few minutes to spare. Seeing that the call was already underway, I joined - and then took myself off to do other things, as it became apparent that they had logged on early in case of technical issues, but had no intention of starting for the next half hour. People joined slowly - they blamed the funeral.

Tonight's speaker cowrote a book called "100 Great Black Britons". She began by making a rather redundant statement that most people tended to consider British history without black people, or black history without talking about Britain, and you really shouldn't. What followed might have proved why nobody tends to mix the two, as she gave singularly the most boring talk I've heard since my academic days. Lordy.

Not enough visual cues to keep us interested - we were staring at the same slides for far too long: a monotonous listing of facts with no overriding narrative, no story to engage us: and the worst presentation style I've heard in a long time, faltering and dull. Ironically, in the chat afterwards, someone posted a series of links to the group's website, with information touched on in the talk, and someone else thanked the speaker for highlighting these - was this highlighting of the web pages unintentional? She didn't seem to be actually involved with them! Oh dear.. She should really work on her delivery. Not many people are interested in hearing a dry listing of facts, especially if you can find them elsewhere. Certainly, I'll be avoiding her in future. And if there really wasn't anything more interesting to say about these people - well, frankly, they don't sound worth hearing about, except in a wider context. Yawn. At least it was free,

Tomorrow, I'm also going virtual - this is a new group, called London History & Culture, and the talk is on Jack the Ripper and Victorian Times, courtesy of Heygo, who seem to do a lot of these. You have to register separately with Heygo for the talk, but hey, it's free! Again. Jeez though, this is feeling like lockdown again..

And on Wednesday, back with Civilised London (not Up in the Cheap Seats, mea culpa!) for Eureka Day, with Helen Hunt, at the Old Vic. Oh thank goodness, an in-person Meetup at last!