Wednesday 5 August 2009

Hmm, OK, missed out a week.

Dinner with Kate at the (very crowded) Alto Lounge a week or so ago was enlivened by the sheer outrageousness of them running out of wine glasses. We were offered rosé in tumblers instead. Imagine! I opted for brandy glasses as a slightly more elegant alternative to tumblers, but really.

Ruth and I trekked over to the O2 a couple of Saturdays ago to see the Body Worlds exhibition, featuring a display of Dr Gunther von Hagens' ‘plastinated’ bodies and body parts. The overall theme was the human life cycle and the arc of ageing, accompanied by the inevitable topical advice about healthy living, some of which is now becoming frankly tedious ("hey, here’s yet ANOTHER pair of smoker’s lungs, if you haven’t got the message from the previous half a dozen pairs, and the pictures of smokers’ lungs that you’ll have been seeing in books since childhood." Actually, I have to say that judging by the pair on display at the exhibition, healthy lungs don’t look that attractive either.). The exhibits of body parts and slices of organs were fascinating, if your interests run to that sort of thing, which mine, on the whole, do. And in fairness, some of the stuff from the bodies of e.g. heart attack victims were enough to put one off butter and bacon sandwiches for a while. On leaving the exhibition, we were unsure whether to deal with our slight queasiness by immediately adopting a healthier fruit- and berry-eating lifestyle, or by going somewhere for a stiff drink.

I still don’t like the O2 as a venue (see my post of 3 September 2008) but getting there does entail using the Jubilee Line extension, which still looks quite snazzy. Here’s a picture of me in the foyer, just to prove we were there. We didn't hang around there after the exhibition as we both felt a strong urge to return to civilisation, so we went over to the King's Road to coo over things in Habitat.

As part of our general mooching around Chelsea we popped into the Queen's Head on Tryon Street for a quick drink. I had been there once before, but completely failed to notice on either occasion that it's a gay pub - Ruth asked wearily (by no means for the first time) whether I had completely failed to notice the rainbow flag on the way in. Indeed I had. Have no gaydar whatsover (assuming that term can be applied to places as well as people). Certainly the bar was full of older men, but as that applies to a lot of pubs I didn't think much of it.

Ruth's unconventional yet poignant friendship with Barry the caterpillar (pictured) appears to have fizzled out, as a direct result of his sudden disappearance from our lives. One minute he is munching his way through the small willow tree near the back door, the next he's gone, in not-at-all similar manner to celluloid animal friends such as Gentle Ben and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Ruth's obviously-still-grieving comment was "He ate all the leaves, and then he buggered off."

The tomatoes in the garden are growing well, but are staying resolutely green. Green tomato chutney it is then. Feel a late summer of bottling fruit and making chutneys and jams coming on. May also make an apron or two out of gingham.