Category Archives: weird

Sep 25 2012
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park, science, weird

DAY 45 – Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

BATTLE SPHINX!

As I was staying with my friends in Crystal Palace after the interview (which sadly I didn’t get) I thought I’d venture down to Crystal Palace dinosaur park for the blog.

For those of you not in the know, the Crystal Palace dinosaurs are some of the coolest – and weirdest – things in London. Back in 1852 the Crystal Palace (as in the actual palace from the great exhibition, not – as now – simply the name of the area) was moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham Hill (now known as Crystal Palace) and the park surrounding it was transformed into a very odd mish-mash of formal gardens, replica sculptures (a la sphinx, above) and… well, dinosaurs. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was commissioned to create the Dinosaur Court with the help of palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen. These were the first EVER life-sized models of extinct animals and dinosaurs, and pre-dated Darwin’s Origin of Species by several years. Pretty awesome.

They are also, to a greater or lesser extent… er… wrong. And I’m not doing them down here. They were the first ever life-sized representations of dinosaurs and palaeontology was still in its infancy. Not all of them are very wrong, and what’s perhaps the most remarkable thing is that most of them are largely accurate. However, there are enough of them with pretty glaring inaccuracies for me to love this park more than I could ever love any soul-less robotic dinosaur exhibit thing. Let’s take a look at a few of them, starting with those that are largely correct.

Megaloceros, the gigantic prehistoric deer.

Megatherium, the 20ft tall giant ground sloth, in exactly the same pose as the skeleton in the Natural History Museum.

This pterodactyl’s wings are a bit of a funny shape, but otherwise he’s pretty good!

The plesiosaurus is pretty spot on! The icthyosaurus has now been found to have a fish-like tail and dorsal fin, and the eye plates would not have been visible on the outer body of the animal, but over all it’s not bad!

Now it’s time for some of the more… debatable representations.

The most famous models in the park – the iguanodons. Iguanodon here is depicted as a lumbering quadruped with a spiky nose, whereas in fact they mainly walked on two legs, had long back legs and the spikes were extended sharp thumb bones that they used to defend themselves when attacked.

Oops. Probably the least accurate of all the models, this is (believe it or not) a megalosaurus. Megalosaurus was in fact not unlike a t-rex – a bi-ped, much lighter in appearance, with long back legs, short front limbs and absolutely NO hump!

Well, whether accurate or wildly out, I love the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. They’re a bit of history that shows the progression of palaeontology in the most dramatic way, and an amazing way of seeing the scale of Victorian enthusiasm for science and discovery. Can you imagine anyone stumping up to fill a public park with dinosaurs and sphinxes now? I can’t, and more’s the pity.

I think my favourite bit of trivia about this park is that, when it was due to open, Hawkins and his backers had a grand New Year’s dinner inside the shell of one of the Iguanodons.

When bonkers things like this can happen, it makes me weirdly proud to be English.

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Aug 15 2012
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animal, other, weird

DAY 31 – Fun with reptiles!

And just where do you think you’re going, eh?

Ok, here’s the thing: I love amphibians and  reptiles. As anyone who knows me well will be able to testify, Natterjack toads get me all gooey-eyed and newts make me practically weak at the knees! Sadly you see less and less of them all the time in the UK as habitats are uprooted and ponds dry up, so I’m always up for an opportunity to meet some lovely snakes, lizards or frogs.

Today I had thought of going to the Nature Centre (again) but it was raining (again). I decided instead to go to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery but it was pelting down so hard that I decided instead to check out a shop called ‘Weird ‘N’ Wonderful’ about 2 minutes’ walk from my parents’ house in Moseley, Birmingham. And then yeah, a load of snakes happened. Weird ‘N’ Wonderful has only been open for a few weeks and specialises in… well, the more unusual end of the creature spectrum! They have tons of reptiles, plus rats, gerbils, rabbits, hedgehogs and even a shop owl!

His name is Plato and he was asleep on top of a door. Aaaaw! He’s a young barn owl who was rescued by an animal refuge and now lives in the shop.

I loved the shop, not just because they have tons of awesome animals, but also because they’re very big on rehoming animals that they get from refuges. Sadly, a lot of people buy reptiles without first doing research on them and, while a Burmese python may just be a little cute thing when it’s a baby, when it grows to 18 feet long people start to get less fond of them and chuck them out. It makes me so angry. I held one of the shop pythons, a lovely lady bizarrely named Radox, and she was nice as pie (if a wee bit weighty).

Hee hee, pythonny funtimes!

She was very curious and nosed around the shelves looking at the dog food a lot.

The owners were so lovely, and totally game for me to hold ALL their amazing animals! The most remarkable of the snakes I held was a salmon pastel boa named Mildred (aaaw!). She was smaller than Radox the python, but I’d remarked to the owner that Radox felt incredibly muscular. ‘You think she’s muscular, have a feel of one of the boas!’ he replied, handing me yet another beautiful snake. I’d never held a boa before, but I could see what he meant immediately. As soon as I had her in my hands Mildred wrapped herself round my arm and SQUEEZED. It was like being in the doctor’s and having a blood pressure test! The muscles on that relatively small snake were just phenomenal to feel. She was obviously not being aggressive, just giving herself a good base from which to let her upper body explore the surroundings.

Boas’ muscles are arranged along their bodies width-ways, one after the other, and not – as some people think – legthways along the body. This gives them greater opportunity for constriction when they are wrapped around their prey; as soon as the prey takes a breath, the network of muscles pull in tighter to prevent the animal from taking another. However, though people tend to think that boas suffocate their prey, the latest research actually shows that death is usually caused by their constriction making blood vessels in the prey’s body burst, and the prey haemorrhaging internally. Nice! Mildred was obviously a nice friendly lady though, and I liked her very much. Apparently their common boa, however, a giant sleepy lad by the name of George, could put the same amount of pressure on a person’s chest as would be caused by the weight of a small truck. Yikes!

I also got to meet some lovely monitors.

This is Tigger!

Tigger was AWESOME.

Tigger is a bosc monitor, and a very lively lad! Apparently he was named Tigger because he likes to bounce around.  He’s fully grown and very friendly. Apparently his previous owners didn’t know how to look after him and for the first twelve months of his life he was only fed boiled eggs, poor wee lad, so he has some scarring on his back. He is a very healthy bouncing boy now though, and we hit it off enormously. The owners have also acquired a black-throated monitor called Titch. He was one of only four black-throated monitors up for sale in the UK and, while currently he’s a little smaller than Tigger, he will eventually grow to about 7 foot long. BLIMEY.

In the wild, black-throated monitors will dig burrows to live and lay their eggs in, though they are also diurnal. They will also eat just about any animal they can subdue but – like snakes – this doesn’t mean they don’t make good pets. Obviously you should not keep a wild black-throated, that would be horribly cruel, but a captive-bred monitor won’t know the difference if it has grown up being fed meat by you rather than taking down rats and birds. You can also apparently walk them on a lead and harness in warm weather! I’m not sure how this would go down in my local park, to be honest, especially if it was fully-grown. It’s probably the closest you’d come to taking a dinosaur for a walk!

I then spent a wee while meeting even more lovely animals!

Yay, bearded dragon!

Eeeee, baby bosc monitor!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaw, African pygmy hedgehog!

What a great day! I was taken on a very in-depth tour of the shop by the owners’ daughter (who makes all the animals’ houses herself out of Lego), and was really impressed at the dedication of owners Melissa and Tom to rehousing neglected reptiles and other animals. They also give animal education talks to schools – taking the snakes, of course! – to promote good animal care and learning. Very impressive indeed!

Here is the website for the shop – http://www.weirdnwonderfulltd.co.uk/

Thanks a lot for a great time, guys!

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Aug 08 2012
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challenge, other, weird

DAY 24 – Learning to whistle with my fingers

We’ve all seen it – that guy at the concert who can stick two fingers in his mouth and execute a perfect, piercing whistle. Maybe you are that guy, in which case, you, sir, are an arse. Please be aware that the whole Non-Whistling Fraternity hates you with a passion. It just looks so effortlessly cool, and as we all know, being effortlessly cool is the mark of a tool.

However, Operation Try Anything has now given me the perfect excuse to seriously apply myself to learning this valuable life skill. Quick, Robin! To the internet!

I found several website which gave tutorials on how to whistle with your fingers, the best of these being the explanation from the marvellously Victorian-looking Art of Manliness. The basic steps are as follows:

  1. Draw your lips back over your teeth.
  2. Curl your tongue back on itself.
  3. Insert two fingers (or the index finger/middle finger combo on both hands), using them to hold your tongue back and your lips in place.
  4. Blow. A lot.
  5. Get a really dry mouth and throat.
  6. Make a cup of tea.
  7. Try again.
  8. Make another cup of tea.
  9. Get some sort of vague sound out that encourages you to keep on trying.
  10. More tea.

And so on. I ended up having to take the video at a point where I’d not quite got it but was producing a short, low whistle after about 20 tries. I honestly couldn’t have tried any longer as my mouth was starting to feel like sandpaper. I’m going to keep on trying though as I think I am getting better! Here’s the video:

Incidentally, if you are in a serious relationship or marriage and fancy trying this out, I recommend doing so in the potting shed. I would imagine that the learning process is about about as much fun to listen to as a small child learning to play the oboe. I’m going to carry on trying with this, as I was encouraged by the progress I made, but I’m not yet at the stage where I can wolf-whistle back at white van men. One can but dream…

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Aug 03 2012
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challenge, cultural, music, weird

DAY 21 – Learning to play John Williams film music on Renaissance instruments

My brother, like most teenage boys, went through a phase of collecting, playing and making Renaissance instruments. It’s pretty standard for most teenagers. My family generally is very big on classical music – my mum’s a piano teacher, my dad used to run an amateur orchestra in his spare time, and both my brother and sister-in-law are professional French horn players – so of course my mum and dad kept the instruments my brother made, along with a shedload of others. I decided that it might be nice to use this opportunity to learn to play some John Williams classics on Renaissance instruments.

The great thing about learning to play Renaissance instruments from scratch is that they all sound a bit crap. There is a lot of leeway for getting stuff wrong and – let’s face it – I was unlikely to get this very right.

The first one I attempted was the bass cornamuse, a capped-reed instrument a bit like an oboe that you can brain someone with. I felt that this morning star of an instrument was perfect for playing the poignant, dramatic theme from Jurassic Park:

Quite, quite beautiful.

The second instrument I graced with my attempts was the cornett, or cornetto, which is played through a small mouthpiece (somewhat smaller than that of a horn or trumpet). It was absolute murder to play as the mouthpiece is so small, but I think you’ll agree I did full justice to the menacing Imperial March from the Star Wars trilogy:

I do hope you all enjoyed that. I know, I probably took you to levels of musicality you never knew existed before. You’re welcome.

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Jul 27 2012
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historic building, museum, weird

DAY 13 – La Pedrera

Strap in, bitches, it’s culture time!

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Barcelona is bristling with Gaudi. You can’t miss the bugger, he’s everywhere. As an earnest Must-See-All-The-Famous-Buildings type (as I can be on occasion) plus something of a fan of Modernism, I’d already whipped through most of the hit parade. La Sagrada Familia, Parc Güell, Casa Batllo, Palau Güell… all had been duly appreciated and ticked off the list. The only remaining one was La Pedrera, and it would have been a scandal if I hadn’t toddled along to see it.

La Pedrera (or Casa Milà, to give it its proper name) was designed by Antoni Gaudi as a residential block for the developer Pere Milà and his wife. After years falling into disrepair it (as well as six of Gaudi’s other notable buildings) was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 and restored to its former glory. These days it’s owned by one of the Catalan banks – Catalunya Caixa – and is taken up mainly with their offices, a few other offices, the public museum-y bit and – apparently – some residential flats.

Here’s a nice picture for you. This is in the courtyard-y bit inside, hence the sky.

Residential flats, eh? I’m not at all sure how I would feel about living in something like La Pedrera. It is constantly, constantly surrounded by tourists snapping pics, has a mile-long queue outside from 10am and the kind of place where you regularly encounter the kind of Americans who say stuff like ‘Oh my Gaaaaahd, it’s so wacky!‘ Christ. On the other hand, you would be living somewhere that looks like this:

‘Wacky’ indeed.

So, you know, rough with the smooth and all that.

I won’t babble on about how the roof is all wibbly-wobbly and the façade is pitted and all that. You probably know all this already. I’ll pop a few more pics in here and then talk about the couple of things I found really interesting from my visit.

It wibbles and it wobbles.

CATENARY ARCHES. Listen closely, my children.

Catenary arches feature pretty heavily in the slightly creepily-enunciated audioguide which I of course got for the visit (touristy I know, but I like being lectured sometimes). It seems that old Gaudi was quite fond of a catenary arch or two.  Put simply (or rather, put in the way I can remember the audioguide telling me) a catenary arch is the ideal curve that a thread or chain takes on when supported at each end, inverted to form an arch. Gaudi was a fan because the arch formed doesn’t need buttresses to support it – it has a natural strength, and frequently occurs in nature in the form of fines, creepers and whatnot.

Gaudi planned many of his buildings by drawing a floorplan for them, then suspending it from the ceiling and attaching hanging chains to show how the arches needed should be formed. The building’s shape could be seen by placing a mirror underneath the chain/floorplan combo.

Here’s one they made earlier. Nifty, eh?

I thought this was ace – a really interesting demonstration of a very practical architectural method.

La Pedrera’s exhibition space was well set-out. There was the roof to wander round, then the attic (given over to demonstrations of how Gaudi’s most famous buildings were constructed) and then a flat in the building was set aside as an example of how it might have looked in the 1920s.

Living room/bedroom

Kitchen

Hall

All in all it’s a very interesting exhibition, taking in not only Gaudi’s artistic vision but also his design and building methods and everyday life in the 20s. The audioguide was also pretty good, and didn’t have the weird, slightly frenzied adoration that you get in the Casa Batllo guide (this sentence was sponsored by the Society for the Appreciation of Excellent Audioguides about Gaudi).

While I prefer the actual buildings of La Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo because… well, they’re fancier (and I’m a pleb like that) I think La Pedrera is the building you walk away from having learnt the most interesting stuff.

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Jul 24 2012
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food and drink, weird

DAY 10 – Eating a brain

Apparently I’m going to eat you. Yaaaaaay.

*Sigh*. The things I’m making myself do for this blog. Yes, I ate a brain. A little brain, to be sure. But a whole brain. I saw a packet of two sheep’s brains in a supermarket, thought Ooh, I’ve never eaten a brain before!, bought the brains (€2.50) and then… well, I was kind of committed to doing it. I won’t say I leapt into the activity with no misgivings. The brains did look pretty… well, brain-y.

See?

Stiff upper lip though eh, best foot forward and once more unto the breach, dear friends. You never know – in some cultures (Chinese for example) eating brain is supposed to help cure innumerable ailments, from impotence and epilepsy to forgetfulness and a simple bump on the noggin. As far as I know I’m neither impotent or epileptic but I am quite forgetful and I knock myself about a fair bit. Oh well, let’s see if brain helps me! I’m also a big fan of zombie films, so having these around gave me a great opportunity to shuffle around my flat going ‘Braaaaaaaains… Braaaaaaaaaaains…’

Should any of you wish to cook yourself a brain, here is a handy step-by-step guide. I got the recipe off the internet somewhere.

Step 1: Wash your brains thoroughly in cold water.

Step 2: Boil the brains for 10 minutes in salted water with a dash of vinegar added. My brains went grey in the first 30 seconds.

Step 3: After 10 minutes of boiling, plunge the brains into cold water. When they’re cool, drain them and pat dry with kitchen towel.

Step 4: Using a sharp knife, cut away any membrane or veins from the brains. I also cut away the stem, because it was freaking me out slightly.

Step 5: Roll the brains in a mixture of flour, salt and pepper until they are coated all over.

Step 6: Dunk the floury brains into beaten egg until they are coated.

Step 8: Melt some butter in a frying pan and drop the brains into it, turning them from time to time until they look brownish and the egg is cooked. It’s basically like making French toast only… French brains.

Step 9: Not really a step, but at this point the pan started to fill with white froth. I’m not sure whether this was something to do with the butter, or whether it was just brain juice.

Step 10: Eat the hell out of those brains! I served mine with carrot sticks, chives and a squeeze of lemon, because I’m fancy like that.

Ok, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so how were the brains, I hear you ask. Sadly nobody accepted my invitation to eat the second brain, so I was all on my own with this. They actually didn’t smell too bad – sort of sweet and chickeny. Here is my reaction to the first mouthful:

Not a good start. The texture was mushy and it was quite sweet. What did it remind me of…?

My initial reaction was not, as you can see, one of joy. I’m not a big fan of mushy-textured meat and this was very mushy indeed, a bit like blended ham fat or something. It definitely reminded me of something specific though, which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The carrot sticks began to be a great help to me. As long as I could balance out brain with carrot stick, I was ok.

Perhaps a squeeze of lemon will help? It didn’t.

I think this was the exact moment when I realised that what it reminded me of most, texture- and smell-wise, was cat sick. From this moment on I really struggled.

Only a little left to eat but AAAAAARGH! Only one carrot stick left! By this point I was swigging diet coke like there was no tomorrow

Chewing the last mouthful. Are we done yet?

Yay, clean plates club! I did it! The other brain sadly went in the bin – I couldn’t even get my cat interested in it.

Well, what can I say: eating a brain was quite astonishingly awful. I did it, but I will not be in a hurry to do it again. Maybe someone else out there would enjoy it. I don’t generally like offal apart from liver and I’m suspicious of meat with mushy textures so I probably wasn’t the best candidate for this experiment. It really was shit though. Oh well…

And they all lived happily ever after.

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Jul 23 2012
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animal, cultural, dance, historical, other, weird

DAY 9 – Tortosa Renaissance Festival

They played for me, pa rum pum pum pum!

Sometimes when I’m getting on with whatever it is I’m doing during my day, I’ll stop and wonder about something. These little ponders can be about anything. For example, I might wonder how, when I put a train ticket into one of the machines at the platform gates, the machine knows whether it’s valid or not. I might perhaps wonder if I was swimming with a gun and a shark attacked me, whether or not I could use the gun to shoot the shark or whether the gun’s being wet would render it useless and I would be better using it to bop the shark on the nose.

Deep philosophical questions like these often occur to me. One of the most regular ponders I get when seeing somebody doing something in the nature of a hobby is, ‘I wonder how s/he got into doing that in the first place?’ Yesterday my whole day was pretty much one long extension of that very ponder.

While idly browsing the net yesterday looking for new things I found out that Tortosa – a town a couple of hours away from Barcelona by train – was celebrating the last day of its four-day Renaissance Festival. Not one to pass up an opportunity of a new experience these days, I jumped on a train and headed for Tortosa. When I arrived in Tortosa at about 6:40pm I discovered that the last train back to Barcelona was leaving in 45 minutes’ time. The first train in the morning left at 6am. I had a decision to make: should I have a quick shufty at the festival then beat a hasty retreat, or should I try and make it an all-nighter and take the first train back? I of course plumped for the latter option, and I am very, very glad I did.

I arrived just in time to see three bands dressed in Renaissance garb playing drums and shawms (a kind of medieval oboe) marching down the road. I marched right after them and came upon a park full of people milling around dressed in Renaissance costumes.

What? I’m just relaxing with my pal, Mr Half-An-Eagle.

It’s a Renaissance interpretation of a snowy owl. Or something.

For the record, it was bloody hot, I have no idea how they coped.

Dude in the middle was a massive flirt, it was highly satisfactory.

The costumes everybody wore were amazing – so detailed and beautiful – and I was really happy to be pottering about amongst them all and chatting. Well, that was definitely worth staying for, I thought. Perhaps I’ll find somewhere to sit down in a while for a coffee. Little did I know this was just the precursor to a gruelling schedule of fun.

As I wandered back down the road the crowd seemed to have grown noticeably larger. Something looked like it was about to happen. It did. All the assembled Renaissance folk in the park gathered together and took part in a giant parade down the main street. They were led by two riders on beautiful high-stepping horses who danced their way down the parade route.

Horsies!

They were followed by everything you could possibly imagine.

Mythical beasties!

Giants!

Musicians!

The military!

Tumblers!

Stilt walkers!

Geese!

Trumpeters!

Fishermen!

Mini horses!

Horse display team!

CAMELS!

I’ll tell you, there is nothing that makes a day better than unexpected camels. They were so lovely! I’ve decided that some day I want to own a camel. I’ll give it a good stock camel name like Alice or Hump-phrey and we’ll ride around together all day long. This is my new mission.

Anyway, when that had gone past I realised that the party was just getting started. For the festival the whole of the old neighbourhood of Tortosa is transformed into a Renaissance town and so far I had only had a tiny glimpse of it. All the streets were hung with banners – not plasticky Disneyworld-Renaissance-Experience affairs but festoons of velvet and gaily coloured cotton emblazoned with heraldic sigils and gold thread.

Rejoice!

Ain’t no party like a Renaissance part-AY! HO! HEY!

Stalls packed into the little winding streets sold everything from spices to swords, hippy jewellery and fans to stinking cheeses and lanterns, mead to mojitos. The scale of the thing was just mind-boggling.

I decided to try and find a hostel room – not an easy task considering the streets were packed with thousands upon thousands of people and there appeared to be only two hotels. However, as luck would have it I got a room immediately at a very comfortable hotel with breakfast included for only 15 euros. SCORE! Back to the party!

The choice of food was endless but I settled for a no-doubt terribly Renaissance baldana (black pudding) sandwich and a timeless frosty beer.

Giant racks of ribs being sizzled to a crisp.

The cauldron had some kind of potion in it no doubt.

It would be useless for me to enumerate all the awesome things about this festival. I would go back in a heartbeat. It had the atmosphere of a metal festival, but enclosed in a small, cosy town with a castle, amazing cathedral and more monasteries than you can waggle a monk at. Highlights included an impromptu Renaissance flag dancing display at midnight, being serenaded by a guy playing a lute and chatting to some terribly attractive bagpipers.

Seriously. Amazing.

The town itself is worth going to as well, though I didn’t get to see inside the cathedral this morning as it was closed. My hotel – the Tortosa Parc – was very comfortable and gave me a breakfast which included ham, eggs, cheese, pains au chocolat, orange juice, coffee, bread, jam and chocolate Swiss roll. AMAZING.

The gigantic slab of a cathedral.

Cathedral from the castle above it! The castle is now a hotel, which is a bit of a shame but hey.

Oh, and just one more thing, just in case you needed an extra incentive to go to this insane and lovely festival…

I totally met some camels. BOOM!

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Jul 21 2012
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dance, historic building, other, weird

DAY 7 – Buster Keaton film at Montjuïc Castle with live pianist and tap-dancing accompaniment

This was one of those opportunities that when I heard about it made me go, ‘I have to do that’. In the summer Montjuïc Castle in Barcelona hosts an open-air cinema, with movies projected onto a huge screen set up against the castle walls. Vast crowds flock to watch movies at the castle, picnic and have a few beers. The castle itself is lovely, which was one very compelling reason to go.

See? Pretty.

I also love Buster Keaton films and the one playing last night was Sherlock Jr, a classic to end all classics. My cousin Emily and her pal Rachael were very game and said they’d like to go too when I asked (thanks guys!) so off we trooped. Montjuïc Castle is at the top of a very high, very steep hill with amazing views of Barcelona.

See? View-y.

This does mean, however, that it’s a bit of a bugger to climb so we did the sensible thing and engaged a four-wheeled equipage to do the hard work for us. When we arrived the crowd was already a couple of thousand strong and growing so we grabbed a likely looking spot and spread out with our picnic supplies (note: one litre of Carrefour own-brand champagne-esque cider at 79 cents a bottle is very drinkable). The screen was set up in front of the castle’s ivy-clad wall and a jazz band was tootling away on the stage in front of it.

It was just like the Odeon, only without teenagers fingering each other in the back row and dodgy smells. Oh, did I also mention it was at a castle?

Castle jazz… Nice.

Pretty ladies!

Quite excited now!

The film was due to begin at 10pm but I hadn’t allowed for the fact that this was Catalan timing, so this actually translated as ‘Trailers and assorted other stuff will begin at 10:20pm, the film will not start for aaaaaaaages.’ It was fun though! The ‘assorted other stuff’ ended up being the pianist who was accompanying the film (as Buster Keaton movies are of course silent) playing some of his Joplin-esque compositions and two incredibly talented tap-dancers doing a kind of tap-duel to a djembe accompaniment. So far, so average-night-out-at-the-cinema.

We were starting to wonder, great as they were, what the tap dancers were doing there, but all became clear when the film started, the piano began to play an accompaniment and the tap-dancers started to… well, dance along to it.

It begins!

The tap-dancers and pianist provided a perfectly synchronised accompaniment to Sherlock Jr, which added an extra element of fun to watching this wonderful film. If you have never seen Sherlock Jr, do so please. In brief, Keaton plays a cinema projectionist who falls asleep and has a dream that he is a great detective helping his fiancée out of a scrape with his rival. It’s hilarious and a masterpiece of slapstick – the billiards scene and the motorbike chase in particular are incredible – and the crowd at the castle loved it. Peels of laughter rang out and there was a lovely party atmosphere to the proceedings.

We headed home after the movie had finished with a definite sense that we had seen something unique and special. My feeling is that everyone should see a Buster Keaton film, if possible projected on a castle with tap-dancers and a pianist. Accept no substitutes!

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Jul 18 2012
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museum, weird

DAY 4 – Collection of Collections (Frederic Marès Museum)

This was a visit that I felt lukewarm about before going, and then when I got there I completely loved it. It’s… just… odd!

Frederic Marès was a sculptor and historian who lived in Barcelona until his death in 1991. He amassed a vast collection of Hispanic sculpture – mainly Christian – which takes up the first two floors of the museum.

I’ll be honest here – I’m not usually much of a one for poring over sculpture after sculpture of the same thing, and in religious sculpture collections this is often what you get. Serried ranks of Jesae, Buddha after Buddha after Buddha… I can’t muster up the enthusiasm to appreciate the subtle differences between Crucified Jesus from 1225 and Crucified Jesus from 1272. Sorry. However, there were enough sculptures on these floors for me to find ones which appealed (these generally being ones which were a bit strange or full of skulls). See below for funsies!

Metal Mary throws the horns.

This collection of YMCA-ing Jesae could give you an inkling of what is to come later on.

Naked St John the Evangelist with a serpent in his cup (representing the poison which rose out of his wine when he blessed it).

Aw. The tiny baby Jesus loves his gnarly skull.

Incase it’s not clear from the pic, this is a guy being clubbed with a rock, eye-gouged and bitten while he tries to throttle a baby. I have no idea why, though my best guess is ‘The Old Testament was brutal’.

‘Hey guys, check it out! There’s a sheep in ma book!’

So far quite interesting, but steel yourselves. This is where is gets weird. It seem that Frederic Marès also liked collecting stuff. Lots of stuff. The top two floors of the museum are called the Collector’s Cabinet and are a collection of his collections. There are too many of these to remember them all, but the ones I can call to mind are (deep breath):

Fans, combs, mirrors, locks, scissors, pictures made with human hair, hatpins, china boxes, bone ornaments, reliquaries, nutcrackers, keys, rulers, playing cards, pince nez, weighing scales, swords, helmets, ashtrays, walking sticks, lorgnettes, snuff boxes, cigarette cases, cigar cases, evening bags, calling cards, photography studio cards, pipes, flowers made from seashells, dolls, pillboxes, Bibles, bowls, tiles, rosaries, spectacles, opera glasses, doll’s house furniture, dioramas, music boxes, combs, bicycles and zoetropes.

BLIMEY.

More sticks than you can shake a… er…

It makes for a gleefully mish-mash collection which looks like it’s bunged in all higgledy-piggledy (but I’m sure is actually very well arranged to create just this effect). One of the most delightful aspects of it is that although some items are clearly made by master craftsmen and probably cost a bomb, others are… well, tat, to be quite frank. Exquisitely painted fans and jewelled hatpins rub shoulders with china souvenir boxes from Margate and ashtrays which were obviously bought from a pound shop. It’s like those collectors you see in the news sometimes with their 7,000 beer cans and 300 beanie babies have suddenly been given a beautiful exhibition space and told to go to town on it. It’s brill.

AWESOME rosary.

Kwaint Kurios obviously had a job lot in.

Scissors galore!

Back when people had to make their own fun, someone thought ‘I wonder if we can make flowers out of HUMAN HAIR?’

I need to find the house for whose front door this is the key.

Bet you never knew there were this many flowers made of seashells in the world.

Go. Just go. This place is awesome!

There should be more museums like this in the world: weird, daft, obsessive, tongue in cheek. Everyone should check it out!

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