Looking precisely as shattered as I was here. Oh good.

A pal of mine from school, Claire, was getting married and, since we hadn’t seen each other since we were 17, I had no idea what to get her. In the end I settled on the usual bubbly, but also decided to draw her a picture with All The Best Things In The World in it. This is what I did. I gave them the picture along with their card and other pressie. I haven’t heard back from them, so I assume they’re just overwhelmed with the magnificence of this artwork. Well, either that or they’re enjoying their honeymoon, but let’s assume the former. Here is a list, in no particular order, of what is in the picture. Poor Ryan Gosling, turns out I have some kind of grudge against him…

Zombies, prog rock, Neil Peart, guns, mushrooms, tea, Will’s face, skeleton army and seraphim army killing Ryan Gosling, bats, a warlock, vampires eating Ryan Gosling, pirates, explosions, booze, tigers eating Ryan Gosling, owls, a cool hat, lasers, teapots, a giant ant army, anthropomorphic furniture, burps, zombies eating Ryan Gosling, taxidermy, life, the concept of a geocentric universe, Santa, a kraken ascendant, boobs, a pantheon of gods and goddesses, fannies, bacon, eggs, bananas, the complete works of Shakespeare condensed into a sentence and Ancient Egypt.

Job done, I reckon!

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.

It was a bit bloomin’ soggy.

Yet another job interview/blog entry combo here! I had an interview in Peterborough so decided to pop into Peterborough Cathedral for my new thing. I’m so glad I did – I don’t reckon I’d have made the effort to go to Peterborough and see the cathedral otherwise, but it was absolutely stunning.

See? Pretty.

Peterborough Cathedral also seems to have more than its fair share of important history too.  Katharine of Aragon and Mary Queen of Scots were buried here (though Mary was later dug up and shipped off elsewhere, poor lass) and it apparently housed for some time the arm of St Oswald as a relic. I love that. Need something holy? No probs, we’ll just hack up this nice man after he’s dead and you can be near a bit of him. Instant holification. The arm got stolen though, which is a shame. I’m not sure how much holier the cathedral felt back when it had the arm, but I’m sure it always came in… handy! Eh? Eh? Ach, sod you then, let’s have some pictures.

I’ve no idea who gets to decide that all cathedral choirs have to look like the walls of Mordor, but I heartily approve.

Katharine of Aragon’s resting place. She was the first ‘divorced’ in Henry VIII’s ‘Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’ saga.

Gorgeous fan vaulting in the rebuilt Norman tower.

The altar. Quite nice I s’pose.

The Hedda Stone – an 8th Century relic from the original church which occupied the cathedral ground.

Plenty of skulls for the metalheads.

See what I mean?

Marker to let budding history and DNA buffs know they shouldn’t bother digging here for mosquitoes trapped in amber that have sucked the blood of the murdered queen. Though to be honest, Stuart Park would make a really crap film.

So there we go! Awesome cathedral, much more exciting than St Philip’s in Birmingham (and yes, I’m still grumbling about that) although I have to say that a photo permit costing 3 quid and then being pressured to buy a guide for a fiver is a BIT much. And no, I didn’t buy the guide, which is why you’ve had to endure flimsy Jurassic Park-themed jokes that don’t really scan.

Yes, there is another one on the left if you look closely.

This brightened up my Megabus journey back from Edinburgh. First double rainbow I’ve ever seen!

And before you ask, no, I didn’t cry or go crazy, I just went ‘Oh look, it’s a double rainbow! That’s quite nice’ and looked at it for a bit.

Trapped in an obscure blog! Aaaaaaargh! Photo credit: Steve Ullathorne

Bec Hill is hands-down one of my favourite comedians in the UK. Talented, hilarious, cute and always surprising. I couldn’t wait to see her latest show in Edinburgh, themed around her paralysing fear of audiences. As always, it was amazing.

The friend I went to see the show with remarked afterwards that if he’s seen the same show on at the Apollo he wouldn’t have thought it out of place.  This is very true. Bec’s material, her expertly-timed show, her rapport with the audience (despite her declared fear of us), the twists and surprises along the way and her ever-present flipchart of cartoons and moving pictures are all characteristics of a truly exceptional performer who must surely hit the big time soon.

A running theme throughout the show was her attempt to cure an audience member’s own fear (in this show it was a guy afraid of failure) by talking about her own, which included not only audiences but also clowns, mugging and giant monsters. Highlights for me included a mock dating advice tape, how-to-avoid-being-mugged stories, the secret surprise at the end and Bec’s gorgeous flip-chart song collaboration with Jay Foreman: ‘Dinosaurs’. Here it is. Just lovely!

All aboard the friendshid!

Well, what a bloody lovely show this was! I’d been recommended to go along to this show and – since it was free and I had nothing better to do – I did! All I can say is, it was the nicest surprise of the Fringe.

The premise of the show is that the members of the sketch troupe – Alex, Ben and Sam – are best friends. The live and breathe friendship – or friendshid, as Alex often pronounces it – and want to define it and make a new friend in every show they do. This process involves role play, hats and the participation of their chosen friend in a show of almost unprecedented silliness.

The stories and sketches that the three perform are augmented by props which they make themselves – some deliberately rubbish, and some very impressive indeed. My personal favourite is the cautionary tale of a Good Kid who gets into Bad Drugs at school (the drugs themselves being represented by a four-foot long spliff emblazoned with the word ‘DRUGS’). The rapport between the three lads is quite lovely and surreal, and the whole show delightfully whimsical. It’s a real breath of fresh air and a break from the rape jokes and ‘who can shock the most grannies’ competition which seems to be the norm now for much of the amateur circuit.

The Fringe is over now of course, but if you see that these guys are performing somewhere, do yourself a favour and go and see them. You’ll leave with a smile on your face, and quite possibly some trading cards too.

Fantasti-pic source: Scott Barbour/Getty Images AsiaPac

While up in Edinburgh for the Fringe I met a smashing bloke from Australia called Brett. He was a bit homesick and wanted to find some Aussie booze so we found an Aussie bar which, to his delight, was also playing an AFL match of his team: Richmond Tigers.

One reason I like doing this blog is that it makes me enthusiastic about doing stuff I’d never usually even contemplate. I’m about as far removed from being a sports fanatic as you can be, so normally if someone went ‘Do you fancy watching an AFL metch?’ my response would be ‘About as much as I’d enjoy sticking felt tip pens into my eye sockets and colouring in my brain’. However, my response this time was, ‘Oh great! I’ve never done this before, let’s grab a beer and settle down for it!’

AFL looks a bit like slightly effeminate rugby – it’s got a bladder-like ball and sticky-uppy goal things, but all the blokes taking part are terribly pretty and not one of them looks like they’ve had a club initiation involving paddles and carrots. The rules, as far as I can remember them, are like so (yes, it’s time for another list):

1. The bloke holding the ball can run with it, but he has to bounce it on the ground every few seconds. I asked Brett what would happen if he didn’t, but apparently they’ve just got it drilled into them that they have to, so the refs never pull anyone up for not bouncing the ball enough.
2. There are three goals. If you get the ball through the middle one you get 6 points. If you get it through either of the outer ones you one get 1 point, and if you hit the post or someone from the opposing team touches the ball before it goes in you only get 1 point as well.
3. If you catch the ball properly and don’t bugger it up or drop it and look like a tit you get a free kick that the opposing team can’t interfere with, or you can just carry on running with the thing. If you do manage to bugger up the catch somehow everyone can pile onto the ball in a terribly polite version of rugby where nobody really gets hurt or ends up with too much brain damage.

I actually didn’t mind the game as we watched it. It was pretty easy to follow, even for a complete sports-klutz like me. Brett was happy too as Richmond Tigers – his team – were beating the Essendon Bombers, something which apparently doesn’t happen all that often. He remained quietly confident that they would lose despite their early advantage, and was pleasantly surprised when in fact they won. I maintain that it was because I was there. I am a natural winner after all (just don’t ever ask me to do anything on the spot to prove this).

See? From just a single image you can tell it’s amazing.

As anyone who knows me can testify, I am a massive fan of horror films. I don’t mean slick, Hollywood, some-bulging-bit-of-muscley-CGI-leaps-out-at-the-screen-after-a-suitably-obvious-orchestral-build-up sort of horror. The horror I like falls into one of two categories (and yes it’s time for another short list):

1. Expertly crafted, eerie, suspenseful horror that leaves you afraid to go to bed, à la The Ring (the Japanese version, not the Hollywood monstrosity), A Tale of Two Sisters, Thirst, Dark Water, The Grudge… basically, look to Japan and Korea, they’re doing it better than anyone these days.
2. The cheesiest, schlockiest, daftest silly-fests imaginable, aka Phantasm, The Blob, Puppert Master, Return of the Living Dead, Braindead, From Beyond and – of course – Re-Animator.

If anyone for any conceivable reason hasn’t seen Re-Animator (and I really hope this doesn’t include any of my pals) the basic plot is this: Herbert West is a medical student who creates a serum that brings the dead back to life. The end. NAH, just kidding! All sorts of bad stuff starts happening of course, and West needs more and more fresh bodies for his research. The story is reasonably-loosely based on one by H.P Lovecraft. Of course, when I was up in Edinburgh and found out there was a live musical version of Re-Animator showing I had to go and see it, accompanied once again by my long-suffering companion Will (remember the volleyball? He’s just a glutton for punishment, that lad!).

To make the experience even more piquant, we discovered that there was a ‘splatter zone’ which took up the first few rows of the theatre. If you wanted to sit there you were first given a plastic poncho to protect you from the flying blood. We decided on reflection not to sit there, mainly because I didn’t have a great many clothes with me and no way to wash them. (I’m quite glad I didn’t sit there to be honest – I saw a lady who had in the toilets after the show desperately scrubbing her face to get the fake blood off it. It wasn’t shifting.)

What followed was just wonderful. The musical was a great re-working of the Re-Animator film, featuring amazing songs, a hilarious cast and – most impressively – fantastic prop work with very minimal props to depict the supernatural bits of the film (the cat coming back to life and the decapitating of Dr Hill are particularly good). And, as promised, the gore flew and sprayed!

I would recommend this to anyone who loves the Re-Animator series, schlock horror, musicals… er… dead cat puppets… whatever really, it was just ace. See it if you can!

The hairy gawk that is JV.

Reader, my deepest apologies for not foisting inane posts on you for ages and ages. For once I’ve been legitimately run off my feet with job interviews, moving to London, furniture shifting and starting work for my old charity, and I’ve not had much of a chance to get my breath. HOWEVER, I’ve got a few spare minutes now, so I reckon it’s time to catch up on the about-a-million posts I’ve got to do. This should be a barrel of laughs. Sorry if some (or all) of these are a bit bloody short.

A year or two ago I dabbled with doing stand-up comedy. From this two main realisations came to me:

1. The realisation that stand-up comedy is very, very difficult indeed.
2. The realisation that no matter how hard I try, I will always be unbelievably wooden and unnatural onstage.

Jackson Voorhaar does not suffer from this problem. His dry, near-the-knuckle humour is at its best when he is giving his all onstage. I was really looking forward to his show this year at the Edinburgh Fringe, which charted all the things Jackson most loves and loathes about music, relationships, his native Australia and… stuff in general. As always, he was ace.

Jackson’s cartoon-esque appearance – a towering, stalk-like physique and gigantic hair – are what strike most people when they first see him, and he used this to great effect in the opening of the show, which was a crazed, epileptic spider-dance to a Mars Volta song. Once he got his breath back – and given Jackson’s pathetic level of fitness this took about 10 minutes – the audience was treated to a marvellous show, by turns filthy, touching and whimsical.

The material charted his greatest loves – prog rock, travel, love itself – and his pet hates (babies and Australia were top of the list). The show was a mixture of straight stand-up, one liners and storytelling, which last Jackson particularly excels at. The thing that I always take away from his shows is that, no matter how controversial the subject matter may be, he always manages to inject it with a cheekiness and a wink that suggests not even he takes his opinions very seriously.

This makes the ending of the show – a heartfelt story about the breakdown of a relationship he truly cared about and the awakening of new affection in the aftermath – even more powerful than it would otherwise have been. There are definite raw edges to the material, but these are honed more and more with every show I see, and I came out of this one already excited to see what he does next. Very impressive indeed.

Comfortably numb (sorry).

I popped up to London for another job interview last week and – while I was there – decided to go to an intriguingly bizarre place I found out about on the internet: the Anaesthesia Museum. I’ll be honest, I’m not terribly well up on anaesthesia techniques but hey, I’m always up for learning something new. I bowled along there after the interview to the address – 21 Portland Place – and found, not a museum, but the offices of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. I rang the bell and the guy at the reception desk let me in. I hesitantly asked whether the Anaesthesia Museum was somewhere around and he cheerfully replied that, yes, it was in the basement, and he’d get someone to take me down there. Well, this was all very cheerfully odd!

A lovely chap came to see me almost at once and showed me down to the Museum. This, in case you haven’t already guessed, is a room filled with anaesthesia stuff. Hooray! It was founded by a donation of historic anaesthesia equipment from Charles King, an engineer and instrument maker who specialised in anaesthetic apparatus, and encompasses the entire history of anaesthesia. It even has a temporary exhibit taking up one corner of the room, which at the moment is taken up by a display on the ‘Misuse of Anaesthetics’. Hooray! Without further ado, here are some highlights:

A charmingly graphic demonstation of early anaesthesia, in which snow was packed round a severed thumb to render it numb before stitching. Nice!

Facsimile of an early ether inhaler.

The terrifying-looking Fuchain Gag. This was not rendered any more palatable by the description, ‘A toggle gag with a long tongue depressor and central two-pronged tooth plate.’ Gags were essential, however, to keep the person being operated on from swallowing his own tongue and choking to death. Still terrifying though.

The ECG machine which was used on King George VI!

A drowning victim resuscitation kit. Yup, it’s basically just a bellows! Apparently they were once placed in houses in strategic locations all along the Thames. Very thoughtful. Bet they were useful for getting the fire going as well.

I loved this museum. It was small and bonkers, but also really interesting and informative. I particularly liked the temporary exhibition on the misuse of anaesthetic drugs. Apparently ether, after doctors and vets started using it for pain relief, became a popular party drug, particularly in America, giving rise to the wonderful term ‘ether frolics’ (or ‘laughing gas revels’ in Britain) to refer to the kinds of parties at which people were off their tits on ether! A doctor named Crawford Long then realised that party-goers seemed insensible to pain and used ether to successfully remove two neck tumours from a patient. I loved this – a massive druggy binge leading to an important scientific discovery.

The early scientists investigating anaesthetics seemed to have had a very gung-ho attitude to testing their theories, and almost all seemed to be taking opium and cocaine, with one particular scientist, James Young Simpson (Professor of Obstetrics in Edinburgh) trying out new drugs on friends at his dinner parties! Predictably, they all became massively addicted to the drugs they were testing, but I admired the spirit of enquiry very much.

I’d really recommend a visit to this tiny free museum. The staff were super helpful, and it’s a lovely concise look at a really interesting field of medical science. It’s also great if – like me – you really appreciate a room full of drawers with labels on them like ‘Masks and harnesses’ and ‘Various gags and forceps’. No kidding.

Masks and harnesses

Loads of forceps. See!