Yesterday, Friday, was a lazy sort of day. We drove up to the War Memorial Museum in Auckland and walked round the galleries that we missed during our visit earlier in the week. Three hours is about the limit of my ability to concentrate closely on anything. One slightly disturbing thing at the museum is a volcano exhibit in the form of a typical sitting room in a house near Mission Bay overlooking Rangitoto Island, about two miles away. By means of an imagined television news bulletin and the view through the patio windows the effects of a volcano erupting in the sea between Mission Bay and the island are examined, complete with shaking of the building and the near destruction of the Mission Bay waterfront area by pyroclastic flow across the water.

Here’s a picture of Rangitoto Island taken from the sea front at Mission Bay, just a couple of hundred yards from where we are stopping. The hypothetical volcano forms in the sea, about a mile out (hope it stays hypothetical, too). The island is itself a volcano, formed during an eruption about 600-years ago, but is now said the be extinct.

Also at the museum, a fine collection of Korean ceramics on loan from the National Museum at Seoul, many good celadons and some pieces made after the style of Song dynasty Ru-wares too.