Dirty, Filthy Fun

Get your mind out of the gutter, you lot! We had a fantabulous day in London yesterday that started at the Wellcome Museum. It was an exhibit on DIRT. That’s right. DIRT. According to their website:

Bringing together around 200 artefacts spanning visual art, documentary photography, cultural ephemera, scientific artefacts, film and literature, the exhibition uncovers a rich history of disgust and delight in the grimy truths and dirty secrets of our past, and points to the uncertain future of filth, which poses a significant risk to our health but is also vital to our existence.

Following anthropologist Mary Douglas's observation that dirt is 'matter out of place', the exhibition introduces six very different places as a starting point for exploring attitudes towards dirt and cleanliness: a home in 17th-century Delft in Holland, a street in Victorian London, a hospital in Glasgow in the 1860s, a museum in Dresden in the early 20th century, a community in present day New Delhi and a New York landfill site in 2030.

Highlights include paintings by Pieter de Hooch, the earliest sketches of bacteria, John Snow's 'ghost map' of cholera, beautifully crafted delftware, Joseph Lister's scientific paraphernalia and a wide range of contemporary art, from Igor Eskinja's dust carpet, Susan Collis's bejewelled broom and James Croak's dirt window, to video pieces by Bruce Nauman and Mierle Ukeles and a specially commissioned work by Serena Korda.

It was very exciting as the entrance said Warning contains human remains and I thought Woohoo! We’re in for a good time now. And we were. The exhibit was very interesting and there were all sorts of gross but cool stuff to look at. There were German propaganda posters that said:

JEWS ARE LICE

THEY SPREAD TYPHUS

Frightening stuff But the best bit for me was seeing a genuine single lens microscope that belonged to one of my top favourite scientists Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek (yes I have a list of scientists I adore.)  Read more about him here if you don’t know who I mean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_van_Leeuwenhoek He was awesome and was the first to really look at things like protozoa, bacteria, cells, sperm and see tiny things that the naked eye could not see.  

The regular Wellcome Museum collection which was collected by eccentric genius (are they any other kind?) Henry Wellcome was full of thousands of weird and wonderful things (though he collected millions in his life.) Their website says:

  Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936): Pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector

Henry Wellcome had an early interest in medicine and marketing. The first product he advertised was 'invisible ink' (just lemon juice, in fact). In 1880, he joined his college friend Silas Burroughs in setting up a pharmaceutical company, Burroughs Wellcome & Co. They were one of the first to introduce medicine in tablet form under the 1884 trademark 'Tabloid'; previously medicines had been sold as powders or liquids.

Anyway—there were all sorts of weird stuff from rows of amputation saws to a variety of prosthetic limbs—some dating back to the 1800s to shrunken heads to fertility dolls from other cultures to Napoleon’s silver handled toothbrush to Charles Darwin’s carved walking canes to Admiral Nelson’s cut throat razor to Florence Nightingale’s moccasins. Some weird and wonderful stuff. All free.

Then it was off to some health food shops to buy some nice things that we can’t get locally like pomegranate molasses and sweet potato and buckwheat noodles and sriracha—my new favourite Thai hot sauce. How I love the sweet/sour/garlic-y chilli flavoured goodness in that bottle.

Next off to the Illustration Cupboard (which is an awesome art gallery but really is like a cupboard) to see an exhibit of Shaun Tan’s work. He’s here visiting from Down Under to promote his new book and we were seeing him later that night! Double cool with knobs on! I highly recommend his books. Check out his website http://www.shauntan.net he’s also just won an Oscar for Best Short Animated Film for The Lost Thing, which was adapted from the book of the same title. Way to go, Shaun!

Then off to Gosh! Comics for a bit of geek time then to our favourite restaurant to eat their amazing food. I adore Tibits—their healthy buffet of whole foods makes me weep with joy. And they now have gluten free bread rolls which make me want to do a little dance.

Then off to Waterstones to hear one of favourite illustrators Shaun Tan be interviewed. And we got tickets half price due to my Waterstone’s card. Woohoo! Bonus. The interview was so interesting—he showed slides of his illustrations and talked about how he did his art, how he was inspired and his childhood. Then we queued for him to sign our book and a postcard we picked up at the Illustration Cupboard.

Then a very late train home, enjoying our new autographed illustrated version of the Wizard of Oz by Robert Ingpen that we picked up at the Illustration cupboard. It contains the most original illustration of the progression from “meat” to tin of Nick Chopper a.k.a. the Tin Woodman. I have never seen anyone ever attempt to show him as each part is gradually replaced by tin. It is truly a fantastic, beautifully rendered illustration.

What a filthy fun filled day!

Overheard On a Salt Marsh

This was--far and away--my favourite poem as a child. I loved the sinister conversation between the creepy Goblin and the beautiful Nymph. When I was 3 years old or thereabouts I could recite the whole poem from memory except I said "Give me your beads I besire them" (instead of desire them)

Every summer I like to make a stop motion animated film with my Digital Blue camera. This cool camera is made for kids (and I'm just a big old kid at heart, right?) that can make stop motion films and add visual and sound effects if needed. Spiderman recently bought be a microphone to connect to our laptop so I could record myself playing the ukulele to be able to improve. Bless his heart--he paid £4 extra for one that looks like an old fashioned retro mic --I feel like I'm actually at the BBC during the 1940s. Anyway, armed with a new microphone I decided to record the poem and animate a film to go with it. Stop motion animation is a tedious process--I have no idea how Nick Park of Aardman Animation does it--it is 15 frames a second. that's right--15 clicks of the camera button to get one second of film. I tend to do 3 clicks per shot then move the character and do 3 more clicks etc etc until I have made one second of film. There is a small blip where I had moved stuff about 3 times before I realized the camera wasn't connected properly and I couldn't be arsed to go back so the Barbie does a bit of an abrupt move towards the end, but it is for funsies so who cares?

Right, are you sitting comfortably? Turn your volume UP (or ON as the case may be) otherwise you'll not get the full enjoyment.

Overheard On a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro

Animated by Spidergrrl
Staring my Irish Princess Barbie and some troll gonk I found at school

Enjoy!

Fetch!

Yesterday I had a play date with a friend from church and her pair of rascally 18 month old fraternal twins. They are from Germany and so mostly speak German, although they understand a reasonable amount of English (more than I can understand in German) and communicate through facial expression and gesture and song and play. I can say useful things like nein (no!) and I smile a lot so it is mostly fine.  

We were sitting by the river watching the ducks when all of a sudden Arthur takes off his Bob the Builder hat and throws it into the middle of the river! We were shocked and could not figure out why he had done it. His little face was just laughing and laughing and then his little face fell and he got very serious and sad and said something in German. His mum said that he thought that if he threw the hat in the ducks would bring it back to him. We all had a laugh and tried to cheer him up as the yellow hat slow sank and no duck was kind enough to capture the brim in its bill and return it to us. So we sat by the water and waved goodbye. Bye bye hat. Auf Wiedersehen hut. After a while of feeling quite sad, he pulled himself up and said in German, Well I can wear other hats.

Then we went to the swing park and had a marvelous time and ate a picnic lunch. While we were swinging Kiki kept saying something to me and the look on her face said I was clearly not responding. So i asked mum to listen and she said she was asking to be pushed harder so she could go higher. Then her mum turned to her and said Heather cannot speak German and her little eyes got so wide! I'm sure she did not believe it.

At the end we stopped by the river to say another Auf Wiedersehen to the yellow hat which was by now at the bottom of the river.It was a wonderful afternoon filled with joy and laughter. Children that age are so full of joy. Every little thing is such a big exciting thing. If only we could all keep that sort of joy and wonderment in our hearts as we grow older.

Hans (Very) Christian Andersen

I wrote a while back about our groovy Hans Christian Andersen poster that was all shimmery and luminescent. Spiderman, being the best reference librarian in the world (even better than the orang-utan librarian from Disc World), tracked down the poster on line and found out all about the illustrators and the process of making it all shiny. Fascinating stuff.

The painting was originally called Hans Andersen’s Dreams and created by a set of twins named Anne and Janet  Grahame Johnstone. They worked together on every piece of art passing it back and forth between themselves until the end product was a true collaboration between them and one sister‘s work inseparable from the others. . When Janet died, Anne carried on, but had to learn how to draw animals--particularly horses--that had been her sister’s speciality. They led fascinating lives and if you want to read more go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_and_Anne_Grahame_Johnstone

The illustration was used on the cover of the Complete Works of Hans Christian Andersen --our copy in fact. Maybe that is why the print seemed so much like an old friend when we saw it. As soon as we got home from the wedding Spiderman rushed and got our copies of books that contained HCA stories. He went into the back room to put something away and I said, “Um, have you looked at the cover of the book you just gave me?” We were both stunned that there was the print. But it was all flat and 2D and some of the upper images had been excluded to make way for the title. The shiny silvery one we bought was much nicer. But what was it made from?

Spiderman to the rescue again. The process is called dufex and it was developed by FJ Warren in the early 20^th century. It involves printing images onto aluminium foil-lined paper or cardboard, using UV formulated transparent ink which allow the reflective shine to be retained. Engraving techniques are then used to add a range of light reflective textures to the foil.  Now you want to know the *really* weird coincidence? The original dufex factory was here in Hitchin. So the painting has truly come home. 

I can see you are dying to see the painting. So here it is. It is not our best photo as the luminosity is really hard to capture. But you’ll get the idea. Click on it to enlarge it. How many stories can you name? Before we got home from the wedding we correctly identified 16 stories at a glance, but after many hours of research we have identified 44.

Here it is in close up. Sorry for the quality. That might be easier for identification purposes.  This is the top—click to enlarge.

This is the bottom—also click to enlarge.

If you only know the Disney versions of stories like The Little Mermaid then it is well worth taking a look. HCA was a pious man who struggled with his sexuality (and excessive masturbation that he recorded faithfully in his journal with a + sign) and many of his stories are moralistic tales with sins like pride or vanity being punished in the most startling ways. Check out The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf and The Red Shoes if you don’t believe me. Most of his stories were wholly original, but a few were based on older variations or there is a Brothers Grimm story that is similar.  But my favourite has to be The Tinder Box with the 3 dogs with the giant eyes--eyes as big as saucers, eyes as big as mill wheels and eyes as big as the round tower of Copenhagen.  He also does many delightful anthropomorphic tales where an inanimate object like a shirt collar (who is a big flirt and tells the scissors she must be a dancer with such great legs) or a darning needle (who fancies herself an embroidery needle and when the eye snaps off she tells everyone she’s a brooch) tell their stories (and again are often punished for their lying and thinking better of themselves than they should)

Here are the 44 we have identified so far:

* means it was one of our original 16 identified

**means there is another version similar elsewhere

In a Thousand Years

*  **The Wild Swans (similar Grimms)

Ol’ Shut Eye

The Angel

*The Snow Queen

*The Flying Trunk

*The Nightingale

The Storks

*The Red Shoes

Little Tuk

*The Fir Tree

*The Steadfast Tin Soldier
*The Tinder Box

*The Little Match Girl

The Old Street Lamp

Under the Willow Tree
The Flax

The Elder Tree Mother

*Great Claus and Little Claus

* The Little Mermaid

 *Thumbelina

The Darning Needle

The Shadow

Little Ida’s Flowers

*The Swineherd

The Pen and Ink Stand

The Snowman

The Drop of Water

The Candles

The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep

The Naughty Boy

The Bottle Neck

The Lovers

The Shirt Collar

*The Ugly Duckling

*The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf

The Silver Shilling

Brownie and the Dame

The Snail

The Galoshes of Fortune

** The Rose Elf ( version of Isabella and the Pot of Basil)

*The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Bronze Boar

*The Princess and the Pea  (which actually is the Princess ON the Pea in the original translation)

How many can you identify now?  

5-7-5

Last year on this date

I decided to journal

In haiku format

Karen from New York

And her daughter Gwendolyn

Each keep a journal

They write in it each night

And share what they have written

Mother/daughter time

I watched them write it

When we saw them in Cardiff

On our holiday

They write a few lines

And each talk about their day

But not in haiku

I chose haiku form

To challenge myself and build

Vocabulary

It’s really quite hard

To get the syllables right

And make it all fit

Just write your 3 lines

5-7-5 syllables

And now it’s a poem

Please give it a try

It is highly addictive

And quite hard to stop

I told them at work

They said I should get a life

And everyone laughed

I really don’t mind

Because I know I am weird

And they’re just teasing

Their idea of fun

Is to get completely pissed

And act like a twat

Don’t know about you

But I’d rather write haikus

Ya know what I mean?

Blueberry Orange Quick Bread

Spiderman and I definitely have a sweet tooth, but it is certainly not as sweet as it used to be. I can’t eat tooth achingly sweet frosting without feeling ill and I refuse to make a recipe that calls for more than ¾ cup sugar. I can’t justify it for my heath or my teeth. But I do love a bit of sweetness. I got a good deal on blueberries at the market on Saturday and so I thought I’d try my hand at a gluten free version of Blueberry Orange Quick Bread. This recipe originally came from my vita mix cookbook. What I liked about it, besides the fact that it was low in sugar and fat was that it used a whole orange pureed as the liquid component so you got all the fibre as well as the juice. I just subbed in gluten free flour and a bit of xanthan gum and kept the rest the same. The loaf didn’t rise up at all--duh, it wouldn’t as there was no gluten in it--but it was a moist, compact, lightly sweet, bursting with marble sized blueberries and hint of orange quick bread.

Sorry there are no pictures. Someone (naming no names) thinks he accidentally left the camera on  after downloading some photos and the batteries are all run down. But nobodies perfect.

Blueberry Orange Quick Bread

If you want to make this with regular flour just use 1 cup white and 1 cup wholemeal then do the rest the same.  To make it gluten free, but with other flours then you need 1 1/3 cup wholegrain flour and 2/3 cup starch.

Preheat your oven to 160C/325F. I just set my dial to between 150 and 175. Grease a loaf pan.

Sift all the flours together in a large bowl and whisk to combine them.

2/3 cup buckwheat flour

1/3 cup quinoa flour

1/3 cup teff flour

2/3 cup tapioca starch

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

Place all the liquid ingredients in your blender. But not the blueberries, obviously.

2 TB butter or margarine

¼ cup water

½ cup sugar--I used Demerara

1 egg or one flax egg (Mix 1 TB flax meal with 3 TB hot water until it goes all gooey)

1 orange peeled and pulled into segments

¼ inch strip of orange peel

1 tsp vanilla essence

To stir in in a minute:

1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries--frozen is supposed to help them not to “bleed” so much all over your dough. It didn’t work this time as my blueberries were enormous--the finished bread looks like a Jackson Pollock painting

Blend until the orange is fully liquefied. Mix the wet with the dry and fold in the blueberries.

Bake for 60-70 minutes until a knife comes out clean.

That’s it! The loaf seemed very delicate when it came out of the oven--I was afraid it would crumble. Thankfully it did not. I let it cool in my loaf pan for about 10 minutes then I *carefully* tipped it out onto a wire rack and let it cool for several hours while I went to church. When I got home it was easy to slice with a serrated knife. The taste was moist and lightly sweet and the blueberries were all exploded like paintballs throughout making it look very pretty. I am storing it in an airtight tin.

Invitation

Yesterday I received an invitation in the post. It read “I am writing to invite you for a cervical screening test” like it was an invitation to a Tupperware party or a night at the opera. In the UK you only get a PAP smear every 3 years and as many woman are still suspicious there are loads of campaigns to convince you that it is important. Your invitation comes with a leaflet explaining what to expect and why it is important. When 15 minutes of fame celebrity (and I use the term loosely) Jade Goody got cervical cancer her tearful pleas on telly made something like 30% more women have a PAP smear. That was truly her most valuable contribution to society.  If you ignore the letter then others will follow until you are buried under a pile of paperwork and have no choice but to go if only to stop the deforestation of the planet that you are singlehandedly responsible for from your mountains of invitations and leaflets.

I have no problem having a PAP smear done. In the US I had one every year since I was 18. They are not a party, but a necessary part of being a sexually active adult. There is one tiny problem, though. You see—I don’t actually have a cervix anymore. Nope. When I was up for the big op last year, my surgeon asked me if I wanted to keep it. Like a balloon from a really disappointing birthday party, presumably. I toyed with the idea as I had read that some women are less orgasmic without one.  He did say that if I lost my womb but kept my cervix I could expect unexpected breakthrough bleeding or spotting—a.k.a. mini periods and so I declined graciously and opted for a total hysterectomy. That’s not like a valley girl having a hysterectomy—“it was a total hysterectomy, gag me with a spoon”sort of thing. That is the proper name for it. A subtotal hysterectomy takes the womb but leaves the cervix and may or may not take the ovaries and fallopian tubes. A total hysterectomy takes the cervix and the womb and may or may not take the ovaries and fallopian tubes ( I kept mine with the understanding they would probably fail early.) Lastly the skater version—the radical hysterectomy where they take the whole shebang. Dude, that’s radical. Now that the anatomy lesson is over, back to the story.

So I’ll nip over to my local surgery (don’t be freaked out like I was the first time I heard that. All my US peeps are probably thinking surgery means cut, artery, spurt, murder psycho, but a surgery here is just the doctor’s office) and I’ll politely mention it and see if they can write something in the national medical database so I don’t have to keep getting letters until the age of 64 which is when my invitation says they’ll stop sending them. Why 64? Who knows. Probably what Paul McCartney was thinking when he wrote the song.

   

When I get old

and don’t need a smear

Many years from now.

I am tempted to go ahead and make an appointment and then when they put you in stirrups and have a squinty I can leap up and shout “Ha ha! Made you look!”  since there would be nothing to see. But Spiderman says he doesn’t think the NHS has a sense of humour, so probably not. And I lied about the stirrups. I had 3 smears since I arrived and NONE of them involved stirrups. Maybe if you went to a posh Harley Street gynecologist you might get them, but free smears on the NHS involve a nurse practitioner at your local surgery and you lying on your back like a dead bug and a metal speculum that had been kept in the fridge.

So maybe I won’t really miss this after all. Oh and in case you were worried—you can be plenty orgasmic without a cervix. Thank God for that.