Jack's Mooseasaurus
21 November 2014
Jack is off to a meeting. I'm in the house, blogging, drinking coffee, doing laundry, and losing track of time.
Our second trip into London went more smoothly. The X90 was on time and there were no traffic jams. Our first stop was at the Natural History Museum, where we made our customary visit to the extinct mule deer, which Jack calls "mooseasaurus."
PDaniel had told us about the museum's Spirit Collection tour. We signed up for the extended one.
This tour isn't for the faint of heart. If you don't like seeing colorless animals in jars of brownish alcohol, stay away. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so I'm not going to show you colorless animals in jars of brownish alcohol. For that, you can follow the link above. Anyway, for 50 minutes we were guided around the vast specimen collection and peered into research labs. (Working in a glass box full of nerds myself, I have vast amounts of sympathy for the poor technicians who get started at daily.)
Next we went to the British Library to see an exhibition on Gothic literature. It was a good companion to the one on witches that we saw the day before; there was no overlap except for one artist who liked to draw this sort of thing. Jack, having taught courses on Gothic literature, was disappointed because there was no context provided for why writing about the supernatural in the eighteenth century was a big deal. It was a big deal because everyone was into writing realistic novels and ghosts were considered a lowbrow thing of the past. Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otronto" combined the two, which became a thing, and now we have Goth. (Jack is probably going to tell me I got this all wrong.)
There are two places I must visit when I go into central London. First is Beadworks in Covent Garden.
Several decades ago, I worked briefly in Philadelphia's Beadworks on South Street while I was in grad school. Back then, there were three or four Beadworks, and a warehouse in Connecticut, all owned by one person who really did run the show. Nancy would bring rare and expensive beads to the store several times each year. On these days I'd spend my wages and she'd give me discounts. Nancy adored art glass as much as I did.
I went off and found a full-time job. Nancy sold the business to her niece. The South Street store moved around the corner, ditched the art glass, and became high-priced and pretentious. I stopped visiting. Meanwhile, the store in Covent Garden continued to carry some of the art glass that Nancy had sought out years before. On each visit, I'd come home with more of it, until my supply far outpaced my production.
Nowadays I go out of pure tradition, sometimes buying nothing at all. Yesterday, though, I bought a lot. This is because Michelle, the woman who runs Beechwood House, noticed my beadwork on the desk in Jack's room. "Make me something!" she implored. "What colors do you like?" I asked her. "Red!" Having no red beads with me, my trip to Beadworks became a mission.
As we approached Seven Dials, we saw the first holiday lights of the season.
On the walk from Seven Dials to the Covent Garden market, there were more lights. I got pictures of some of this last year, as a close-up. Here's the effect from the top of one street.
The second tradition is to find cheap candy. We used to go to a trashy shop on Picadilly Circus, but the place has gone downhill in recent years. A quick search (the "Around Me" app is best in these situations) found a stall in the Covent Garden market. Now, I'm no stranger to cheap candy. I'll eat almost anything. However, Jack's favorite, marshmallow bananas, are an abomination. I mean to say, they're downright gross. Think mushy-crunchy styrofoam with a horrid unripe fake banana taste. They never made it to the States, so when we're here, Jack loads up on them. I go for varieties of licorice, which England does better than the US, and Europe does better than England. English licorice can be found as ropes, wheels, and animals. It can be embedded in a candy shell, at the center of blackcurrant hard candy (some of us like that), and, well, have a look. I buy lots of small samples.
In the plaza is a lit tree:
Most of our Covent Garden visits have ended with dinner in Chinatown, a few blocks away. We used to have a favorite restaurant, which we found randomly, but in recent years it hasn't been very good. We chose another one at random. It wasn't very good either. But that's OK, because the X90 bus to Oxford was on time and we ate our candy on the ride home.
*****
I have to put in a brief requiem for Omygod, an over-the-top jewelry shop in Soho. We used to spend at least an hour there, not only buying, but also talking to Steven, the owner. Steven was doing well, even opening a store in posh Knightsbridge. But when the economy tanked, he closed that store, and then the Soho one. Nowadays he sells at fashion shows and online, but it's not the same as the sensory bombardment of four black walls loaded with glittering crystal. I still buy from him; Cheryl needs her birthday and Christmas presents, after all.
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