Medicine💉Art🎨Food🍖
Well we recently headed up town to a very 'posh' venue as it was a birthday celebration we'd booked dinner at one of London's well known hotels/restaurants. To be honest we got it as a Groupon gig so it was quite a bit cheaper (more affordable) than if we'd just booked without.
One, Gory Museum💉
I had a little nosey around the area to see if there were some things we could do before the dinner at 5:30, although both of us have worked in the past in or around the area it is quite amazing as to how much you miss! We started out by heading to Holborn and from the station wandered down Kingsway turning left onto Lincoln's Inn Fields and passing The Sir John Soanes Museum which we visited a few years ago, we crossed through the park and hit out destination The Hunterian Museum which is quite a little oddity in its own right (I guess not for the squeamish!), if you are into medicine and stuff in glass jars with bits of brain and other human and animal parts it is quite spectacular.
Bearing in mind that some of the specimens were not necessarily acquired in a legitimate way (at least not today), but I guess back at the time there was a thriving business in acquiring bodies for dissection to allow surgeons and other medical practitioners to further their knowledge of the human anatomy and hopefully save future lives, I should have booked some tickets in advance as although it is free to enter on a Saturday the queues are quite long. Catch the link to the Hunterian Museum at the link for more photos and information.
All medicined out we headed past the London School Of Economics and saw 'The World Turned Upside Down' as well as 'The Old Curiosity Shop'.
Sadly, the latter photo didn't seem to take somehow! never mind there is a website link to it with some snap shots at London Walking Tours.
Two, Temple Place🎨
We walked the short distance down to Aldwych where the Waldorf sits and as we had plenty of time to kill headed past it and down onto Temple and hit on another place I had looked up, now this place was really something quite special, Two Temple Place is an Art Gallery and once home of the very man who started the the Waldorf Hotel.
It was filled with decor he loved from things such as carvings of the 3 Musketeers to William Shakespeare, the attention to detail and whole 'gothic opulence' is quite astounding. The art on display was wonderful, the theme at the time we visited was glass, ranging from ceramics to beautiful stained glass windows. It is not a huge art museum, but again it is free and more than worth a look around even if only for the wonderful architecture and style of the building itself and of course its ever changing line up of art exhibitions.
Have a check out of the link to the Two Temple Place website, it is a beautiful place even if the art on show doesn't excite, just the enjoyment and wonder of such a grand old building is quite stunning enough.
Three, Posh Nosh At The Waldorf🍖
We headed back toward Aldwych past a couple of nice looking pubs, the Edgar Wallace which was sadly closed on a Saturday and also the Cheshire Cheese which was open and looked lovely inside, we decided to head to a pub called The Wellington around Aldwych which she had seen and wanted to visit, again a really old pub with lots of history. We had a nice relaxed drink and chat before heading off to 'posh-ville'. Have a look at The Waldorf Hilton at the link.
It was indeed a lovely meal, typical in 'haute cuisine' style, in that you still come out and feel a mild gnawing of hunger. Have to say the food and service were both wonderful, on the way back home we picked up some simple fish and chips for R Kid, so we managed to snaffle some of the huge pile of chips they couldn't manage. All in all a lovey day out and really nice to discover some 'new' places I had never visited before, it was a bit of a weird combination of things to do I guess, but fun nonetheless.
One, Two Three, Four...And Cue The Music🎶
So dropping in with that whole medical gig and after seeing some of the Hunterian Museum exhibits in jars kind of brought back memory of an Indie band from back in 1982 called Shriekback with a track from them is called My Spine Is The Bass Line a slice of slightly funky bass driven electronic/post punk vibes. The track was released on the independent 'Y Records Label', the label's music was distributed by that other well known label previous featured on this site 'Rough Trade Records'.
The Band & Formation
They started out in 1981 forming in Kentish Town London, All of the members of the band had been in other post punk outfits, Allen was formerly with Gang Of 4, Marsh from Out on Blue Six, whilst Andrews had previously been in XTC and played with them for their first two albums. The original line up was:
- Barry Andrews - keyboards/synth/vocas
- Dave Allen - bass
- Carl Marsh - guitar/vocals
You can can XTC with 'Radios In Motion' a track from their first album 'White Music' released in 1978 at the link. And finally catch some more about Shriekback at their website.
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Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash
Photos By: 𝓐 𝓚ⅰ𝓬𝒌 Ìռძⅰ𝓮 𝓝𝒖ꚍⱿ