10 a.m.
The National Museum on Kildare Street, with its growling stone lions on the outside and magnificent marble and mosaic rotunda on the inside, opens to the public. Visitors must pass the beady eye of attendant Frank Harte: "People are generally good about checking in bags," he says. "We have to remind them not to bring their cameras in."
The centre-court - where the museum's famous Celtic gold exhibition is located - is flooded with light. The shutters which normally cover the glass windows in the roof have been pulled back, as the windows are being cleaned. Spanning almost the entire length of a side wall, the 4,000-year-old Lurgan longboat (found in a bog in Tuam in 1902) is being examined by two American women, shaking their heads in awe at its massive size. "Would you get in that and sail over the sea to Scotland," one of them asks. "Wheee!" The longboat is made out of the hollowed beam of an oak.
10.30 a.m.
Back out in the Rotunda, Tracey Curran (senior sales assistant) and Aisling Lockhart (sales assistant) are arranging their wares, which include replicas of the Celtic gold jewellery on show. They are particularly proud of the jewellery, because, as Tracey points out, "no-one else sells it". One of the most popular items in the shop is the Sheela-na-gig T-shirt: "People are always looking for replicas of the Sheelas, but we haven't got any," says Tracey. "We do a lot of croziers too."
11 a.m.
"It will be all right on the night." These are the hopeful words of curator Raghnall O Floinn, who is on the balcony, watching the frantic preparations all around him for the opening of the Viking Ships exhibition [which has opened since this reporter's visit]. This is Thursday and the exhibition must be ready for Monday morning and the visit of the Danish royal couple. Office of Public Works (OPW) architect Patrick Gannon, who has designed the exhibition, runs around talking to several different people at once, looking gaunt and stressed. Archaeologist Dr Pat Wallace, the director of the museum, seems in a calm and even jovial mood as he casts his eye over the electricians and painters beavering around him.
He has already survived a disagreement with OPW painter Paul Duffy: "I wanted Kit Kat red," says Pat, "and we had a battle royal over it." Paul is diplomatic: "Everyone sees colour differently." Richard White, another OPW painter, is putting the finishing touches of royal blue to a wooden construction, mimicking the shape of waves, which supports the large stern of a Viking ship. "The lighting men will use a special machine to make this look like waves," says Richard, as he crawls on his hands and knees in overalls, in the midst of the chaos around him. "I'll be in all weekend," he says, "touching up. We're always the last out." "The smell of that wood, isn't it something?" says Pat Wallace, as we almost trip over several lengths of timber. These are the raw materials for the building of a life-sized model Viking ship, which will be ongoing during the exhibition until December, so that visitors can watch different stages of the process. He shows me a replica of a Viking spoon bit, which was used rather like an early drill: "They inserted a small one first and then a large one," explains Pat. "We found them in Wood Quay. They are very sharp." (He was director of archaeological excavations at Wood Quay, 1974 '81).
Noon
Now it's time to go behind the scenes to see the vaults. My guide Sylvia Frawley, registrar and IT manager of the museum, leads me down to what is known as "the crypt". In a windowless room, deep in the bowels of the building, two young women are documenting 18th-century pistols from the arms and armour collection.
"It's like someone's attic," says Amy Miller, who, with Julianne McEvoy, is wearing white gloves and a white coat. They lead me past rusty old suits of armour, dusty saddles, helmets lying on the floor. "They all have to be cleaned and photographed," says Julianne. There are 2,000 items in arms and armour alone. The museum's entire collection, says Sylvia, amounts to some three million items: "There will always be a huge amount in stores at any one time." We go through more doors, past the Oriental collection, past dolls' houses, pianos, tapestries: "We're still waiting to do textiles and furniture," says Sylvia. The art and industry section has already been sent to Collins Barracks.
12.45 p.m.
"I've never actually seen this, but I'm reliably informed that when a head is decapitated, the eyeballs bulge out." Damien Barry of the education department is giving a school tour of the treasury room to a group of Leaving Cert history of art students from Laurel Hill in Limerick, now examining a carved stone Celtic head with bulging eyeballs. The students greet his information with a chorus of "yuck". Encouraged, Damien continues: "I've heard UFO nutcases say this is an alien head, but they're wrong. On the battlefield, a Celtic warrior didn't just kill his enemy, he cut his head off and dipped it in oil and vinegar and nailed it to his chariot." The Ardagh Chalice and Tara Brooch seem rather tame by comparison, but the two teachers with the group get excited when they see an early Celtic head-dress: "That came up on the Leaving Cert last year."
1 p.m.
The museum cafe has its own tiled fireplace, colourful, ornate tiled architrave and glass chandelier. It is a cool and spacious place to eat. There aren't many tourists today, but it is apparently "mad" during the summer. "Off-season, we get the office crowd," says proprietor Joseph Kerrigan. Because it has no kitchen, Joseph and two other chefs prepare between six and eight hot lunches and desserts in Joseph's kitchen in Artane and bring the food in to Kildare Street every day by 11.30 a.m. (baked items such as scones have already arrived by 10 a.m.).
2 p.m.
Collins Barracks on Benburb Street is some distance from Kildare Street, but (along with the Natural History Museum on Merrion Street), it is an extension of the National Museum, specialising in decorative arts and economic, social, political and military history. The site of the oldest military barracks in Europe, this part of the museum only opened to the public last year, and plans are underway for two more phases before the already impressive development has been completed. Pat Wallace estimates that more than £30 million will be spent by the time everything is finished.
Bernadette O'Neill, the museum's head of marketing, is having a meeting here with head of museum services, Noel Delany. In his airy office, with its large 18th-century windows flanked by trees, Bernadette shows Noel newly designed letterheads and logos for the museum's three proposed support groups: the Patrons, Friends and Young Friends (in marketing lingo, this is part of "creating corporate identities"). "That's a bit bland," says Noel of one of the designs, a spare and understated affair in black and lavender. "That has more punch," he indicates another, in burgundy red. Decisions, decisions. There is also the 1999 calendar to be made up, and a toy exhibition for Christmas has yet to be researched.
3 p.m.
En route to a meeting in the Irish Silver Gallery, we walk through the Curators' Choice exhibition, with its wooden hurdygurdy from Derry, tiny 1860s ladies' ankle boots, and fabulous Tiffany glass roundel (which had been kept wrapped up in newspaper in Kildare Street since the 1950s). We then fly through the Out of Storage exhibition, which is full of other items rescued from the cellars of Kildare Street: everything from a lifebelt off the Lusitania to art nouveau pots made by Frederick Vadrey in Dublin's Mary Street in the 1880s. To save space, there are no labels. You can find out about each exhibit by simply touching a computer screen.
3.15 p.m.
In the Irish silver gallery, we meet Mairead Dunlevy (keeper, art and industry) and Michael Kenny (assistant keeper, art and history). Michael has been responsible for putting together this gleaming show, which includes silver made as early as the 15th century to silver work from present-day NCAD graduates.
Michael and Mairead are delighted with the amount of space they have in Collins Barracks, which allows them to display 500 of the museum's 2,000 pieces of silver: "In Kildare Street, there were much fewer on display," says Mairead. We stop to debate the possible purpose of a scissor-like object shaped like a stork: "A ribbon threader?" says Michael. "Sugar tongs? Or maybe an umbilical cord clamp? The jury is still out." He peers at the label. "What did we decide? Oh yes, sugar tongs."
3.45 p.m.
Over on Merrion Street at the Natural History Museum (or "The Dead Zoo" as it's popularly known), RTE's Mary Kingston of The Disney Club is asking six children to tell her about "the creepiest things in the museum" while the cameras roll. The museum is stuffed to the gills with, well, animals that have been stuffed to the gills: walruses, hippos, elephants and warthogs. The ground floor is dominated by the enormous skeletons of three Giant Irish deer and contains other Irish fauna, from foxes and badgers to a variety of birds and fish. Colm O'Brien (13) from Stillorgan gravitates towards the big wild boar on the first floor, indicating his no-nonsense tusks: "Look at his stick-out teeth. He looks pretty real to me." Colm prefers this to the zoo: "You learn more here. Like I never knew there used to be bears in Ireland." Niall O'Loughlin (12), also from Stillorgan, is unfazed by the fact that the animals in the museum are stuffed - he says it's "cool". He points to a polar bear: "The only thing is, they should fill in the hole in his head where the bullet went in."
4.30 p.m.
Damien has been busy showing the children around the museum: "This place hasn't been touched since 1857 when it opened. It's pure Victoriana, a museum piece in itself," he enthuses. He describes it as "a curio shop, owing more to big-game hunting than science". The exotic animals are labelled with information that often includes the name of the man who shot them.
We trot up the stairs to the next level, which is packed with birds and fish, including a malevolent-looking crocodile and a 22foot python, "capable of eating a full human", says Damien with glee. We press on to the next storey, to see his favourite exhibits: delicate coloured glass models of sea anemones and jellyfish: "This is one of the largest unspoilt collections of its kind from the late Victorian era in the world." Here is his least favourite specimen, the nightmarish furry beige spider, Ladiodors roeipes from Guyana, bigger than a man's hand: "It puts the wind up me," he shivers.
We whizz down the stairs to the ground floor, because the museum is about to close. Damien leads me past otters, hedgehogs and a huge halibut to show me the delightful kingfishers. "This is where Freddy the Frog lives," he explains. Freddy is apparently the most legendary creature in the whole museum: "We get Americans coming in asking just to see him," says Damien. Where is Freddy? There is a tiny frog suspended on a wire at the bottom of the kingfishers' display case. Damien flicks his finger against the glass and hey presto, Freddy begins to jiggle in his pool. Kermit, eat your heart out.
5 p.m.
"We're closing now." Museum attendant Noel MacHale is taking off his green blazer. "We have to nudge people gently to leave," he explains. Is it difficult to stop people touching the exhibits? "Officially, people aren't allowed to touch. It would be nearly impossible to replace these exhibits. A lot of the animals are extinct now. But when you get a hundred kids in here, you try to discourage them from touching, and it's hard." He smiles benignly. " 'Tis their heritage, after all."
