‘Who was that man then?’

‘You know him alright. That was Two Pints.’

‘How does a man get a name like that?’

‘Feck. There’s nothing hard about that. He’ll just drink two pints for the night and leave it at that. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just the two pints. And he’ll tell you, make it as clear as he can, that there is no more needed. There is no better feeling a man can have than being halfway through that second pint.’

‘The first pint will loosen the back of the mind, shake out the cobwebs and clear up the air. You’ll be bound to finish it too quickly and the glass will be back down on the bar the dregs streaming in. There’ll be a wait then as that second pint is poured into its glass and as you’re doing that your tongue will rattle a bit in the mouth.’

‘There’s no patience to be had as you wait for that pint. But when it is there, in front of you, pause for a while and make that wait last. He’ll not have another pint after that one and you can see in the way he holds the glass that he’d like to have more.’

‘Drink deep there and let the world settle down around you. Two Pints will tell you there’s all sorts of temptation in the world and powders to make you feel good. But that second pint will knock them all down.’

Over the weekend I think I mentioned that I had come across my new favourite record shop on Cowley Road in Oxford.

Eighteen years ago when we used to live just off Cowley Road on East Avenue there was a record shop called Green River Records. I can’t remember the names of the two guys behind the counter but I was in there most Saturdays leafing through the racks of records until I came across something I fancied which was then duly taken up to the counter. Inevitably there would be something playing and I would ask “What is that?” and no matter the answer I bought that as well. I could probably go up to the attic now and start to pull out the various records I bought there. It was mostly obscure post-grunge American bent out of shape – no more so than Truman’s Water, mixed with a bit of Brit-pop and other stuff that caught my eye because the record had a good sleeve.

It perhaps no great surprise that Green River Records shut its doors soon after we moved away from Cowley Road to Liverpool.

So it was a pleasure last year to find that Trunk Store had opened its doors only a few hundred yards up from where Green River had been.

I paid my third visit there this last weekend. Of course its is mostly CD’s now as opposed to albums. It only took me five minutes to lay my eyes on five or six that I wanted. I made a mental list of them as I went through the racks and shelves trying to tick off in my mind what I could afford, what I would probably pick up later, balancing up the risk of not seeing something again and so never acquiring it against the number of times I would actually listen to it.

It took another fifteen minutes to narrow things down to a point at which I could take four CD’s up to the counter to pay for them.

It was at that point the rest of the family found me and we sat down to have coffee on the half dozen or so chairs squeezed up along the side of the shjop. Then Galen decided he wanted to look as well and he was trying to find something by King Krule and there I was flicking through the k’s only to come across a new King Creosote CD. So I had to have that as well.

It was well worth it. They all were although I gather from the questions being raised on me playing the Syrian Wedding music by Omar Souleyman that there may be some pressure that to have that on repeat too many times.

By way of an addendum to last night’s post I should mention that The Pitt Rivers Museum has a web page and if you spend view minutes clicking around you should come across a database of all that they have in the collection.

It is a wee bit clunky but it only took me another two minutes to discover that they have a large number of trumpets fashioned out of the human femur very few of which appear to be on display.

You have to wonder at who was the first person to pick up an old piece of human femur and have a go blowing down it.

So you Google it and discover that a trumpet made from a human thigh bone is properly called a Kangling and you can acquire them for $550 (male) or $600 (female). You can also get them made out wood – but that would appear to be defeating the point.

Anyway, pay them a visit at http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/index.html to see what you are missing and should you happen to be in Oxford spend an hour or two wandering round. If there is a child available take it with you and then send it off to find the shrunken heads and the nit combs made from a walrus’ tusk and the black statue studded with nails.

Should you ever be in Oxford with an hour or two to kill then there is no better way of doing so than going for a wander round The Pitt Rivers Museum. It is down the road from South Parks and almost opposite Keble College and is tucked behind The Natural History Museum.

In fact you have to walk through The Natural history Museum to get to it. This can be a bit of a distraction as The Natural History Museum is itself worth spending time in and if you only have an hour, a large part of this could be taken up dawdling past the cases of stuffed animals and birds, butterflies stuck with a pin and dinosaur bones.

On the moment The Natural history Museum is being renovated so most of the cabinets are either empty or boxed up. There was still a good collection of ape skulls to admire as something of a precursor to the main event.  

The Pitt Rivers Museum itself is like a giant Victorian box of curiosities from all over the world. It has been spruced up and modernised around the edges but the main hall and the floor is just as it was twenty five years ago when I first went and probably not too far off what it was like 100 years ago.

The main floor is open to the iron struts of the roof two stories up and is crammed full of dark wood glass cabinets which in turn are filled to overflowing with the University’s archeological and anthropological collections. Around the side of the room are two open galleries also filled with cabinets. The room is dark and gloomy and the cabinets are badly lit so you have to peer in close to see what is in them.

Each cabinet is devoted to a particular subject be it musical instruments, model boats, toys made from tin cans, swords, guns, pikes and clubs. Items from different continents and countries jostle up next to each and sometimes over and around each other. Some items maybe four hundred years old others almost contemporary. Look closer again and most things are labelled – sometimes by hand in black ink on the item itself. There are dolls and shields, mummified cats and mummies. The room is dominated by a vast totem pole that stands at the far end reaching up almost as high as the ceiling. It is from North America and had to be cut into two to get it to a size it could be brought over the ocean.

Always the highlight is the cabinet of shrunken heads. These are about the size of a large fist, black with dye and made by peeling away the skin from the skull, treating it so it shrinks and stuffing it with sand and then moulding it back into the shape of a head, the lips and other orifices carefully sewn up. The same cabinet has a number of skulls and other trophies of war, some of them decorated with shells and pieces of bone. The labelling reminds us that it was not so long ago that went into cutting off the heads of our enemies and putting them on spikes to ward off others. There is a helpful copy engraving of the Bonfire Nights plotters – heads on spikes.

The whole place is a complete antidote to the idea of a modern museum with its bright light and interactivity and eagerness to please but with nothing to look at. I suspect that there is a type of museum curator who would look on in horror.

The place is dusty with unkempt corners but it is an immersive experience and an hour or two killed does not really do it justice.

Whilst we were there Galen did some drawing including a picture of James Bond’s gum that was in the cabinet of pistols.

I went hoping that there would be a good book to buy about the place and its exhibits. There doesn’t appear to be. There should be – it would make a good one.