Your blog is no longer something that belongs to you alone, so if there’s a reason why you’re not updating it, then you need to communicate that. Please ensure that you are reachable at all times. You didn’t reply to my messages, and I was concerned for you.
The relevance of this quote from my current read, Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, feels like a fitting way to resurface after an almost month-long hiatus. The story follows a socially awkward woman named Eriko, who becomes obsessed with a popular blogger known for her unfiltered posts. Eriko is so self-unaware that even when she intentionally bumps into the blogger, Shoko, at her favourite café, she doesn’t realize how stalkerish her actions are. Initially, Shoko bonds with Eriko, but Shoko soon realizes that something is off about the woman. Sensing impending rejection, Eriko scrambles to manipulate Shoko’s impression of her to align with her idealized self-image.
Like Shoko, I did not start my blog aspiring to become an influencer, especially since “influencer” wasn’t yet in the lexicon when I started blogging in 2000. Unlike Shoko, my candour has yet to attract a large following. This blog remains a niche within a nearly dead form of digital media.
So, thanks for sticking around awaiting my resurrection.
I got back from Slovenia last Thursday, spent an evening in Vancouver and then, from Swartz Bay, carrying nearly the same amount of load as I did three weeks earlier, I made the sunny return home riding on the Lochside Trail. Three weeks continues to be my limit for being away from home. I travel because I seek adventure, not because I don’t already live in a place bursting with beauty, as was evident while rolling towards home. Even the annoyingly strong headwind wasn’t enough to wipe the smile off my face.
Summarizing my three-week trip will be no small feat. I plan on publishing it in fun-sized, easily digestible bits, peppered with post-trip events; otherwise, I’ll never catch up, and you guys will kick into tl;dr mode.
Also relevant:
This portent was seen behind a glass display case at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. An elephant died so that Johann Christoph Ludwig von Lücke could carve this snotty-nosed crying infant.
Here it is in all its horror:
I guess there wasn’t much else to do in 1730: there was no tv and pickleball had yet to be invented. Heck, it would be another 90 years before the world’s first bicycle–a wooden push bike–would exist. For all I know, the world’s first bicycle could have been on display among the 1.3 million other objects at the V&A museum. Ed, Hannah, and I didn’t arrive until 90 minutes before close, so we decided in haste which collection to check out based on a list by each level’s floor plan.
“Furniture!” was my vote.
I’ve spent nearly a lifetime of privately enthusing over visually appealing home comforts. Growing up, Ikea catalogues were my most-loved bathroom reading material. Despite my personal furniture collection being composed of mostly curbside freebies, I continue to fantasize about someday cozying up inside an Ovalia Egg Chair with my e-reader.
To my delight, Ed and Hannah seemed open to the idea of viewing the V&A furniture collection. Sadly, that floor was closed due to the stifling heat. Instead, we hurried through various corridors and slid into any room that piqued our interest, including The Raphael Cartoons, which I quickly learned weren’t meant to be humorous. In this context, the term “cartoon” originates from the Italian word cartone, meaning “large, heavy paper”. Not labelling this resplendent room the Large, Heavy Raphael Papers was the correct decision by the V&A curators.
The most interesting piece in this hall wasn’t by Raphael, but by German painter Andrès Marçal de Sas, who painted 20 panels representing the life and legend of Saint George, 8 of which feature scenes of torture, including getting sawn in half… after being boiled in oil and stuffed in a box full of protruding nails, and beheaded. A splendour of gilded torment presented in questionable sequence.
This was one of the seven cartoons on display:
The look of exasperation on Hannah’s face captures our fatigue with the excessive reverence given to men in historical imagery. Yeah, we get it, men are great and Jesus was the holiest one of all.
One of the rooms in which our pace quickened was the hall of wrought iron. 18th-century balusters? Boring!
The V&A had been our third and final museum of the day. Our museum tour began with what we agreed was the best of the day: The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret. We entered this place via a 52-step narrow spiral wooden staircase, which had a dedicated traffic light system at the top and bottom to prevent arriving visitors from coming face-to-crotch with exiting visitors.
The museum was located in the attic of the 18th-century St Thomas’ Church near the London Bridge (not to be mistaken with the Tower Bridge), lending an appropriately creepy ambience for the macabre objects on display, such as this cervical dilator for xenomorphs:
Envisioning eyeball surgery in Victorian London gave me the heebie jeebies.
I was relieved that there were no old dental instruments on display given how traumatized I am from enduring two years of modern dentistry.
Dried herbs were displayed alongside old recipes for healing potions that read more like they were formulated by witches rather than anyone with medical knowledge. A carbuncle poultice in the 18th century, for example, was a concoction of onions, garlic, mustard seed, treacle, and pigeon crap. I guess in that period one must throw everything at the wall until something sticks, and when it came to carbuncle treatment, pigeon poop really stuck.
The finale of this tour brought us into the operating theatre itself. From around 1822 to 1862, in the era of lopping off infected body parts and hoping for the best, students gathered in the tiered galleries to witness these medical sacrifices. The procedures performed in this gallery took place before the advent of anesthesia, antisepsis, and effective pain relief, likely amidst the haze of tobacco smoke from both spectators and medical personnel. And pigeon poop?
Even browsing the little gift shop while waiting for the traffic signal above the staircase to give us the ok to descend to street level was a treat. I bought two cards, one to be mailed to a friend and the other to myself in hopes it’ll get back to me in better shape than if I’d toted it through Slovenia in a pannier.
London has more than 170 registered and independent museums, including one that houses the world’s largest collection of stolen artifacts: The British Museum. I did not visit this museum. Obviously the British Dental Association Museum was out, as was the Canada House Gallery.
The second museum, the Natural History Museum, featured the best single object on display I’ve ever seen: a 25m blue whale skeleton suspended in the main hall. This is what total awe looks like on me:
We visited the dinosaurs and acknowledged the geodes in the gallery of minerals, the latter of which resulted in Ed poking fun at my posture: “You’re like an old man!”
He wasn’t wrong.
We kept returning to the main hall to gape at the behemoth.
Of my six days in London, Museum Day was the only day we spent downtown, which I found almost overwhelming. We considered attending a deaf drag show in Camden Town, until Hannah and Ed described the neighbourhood as being “even more crowded” and instead opted to return to their home district of Catford.
So, all the above was a single-day account of my trip. I have, what, 18 more days of retrospection to document? This monster of a recap to tackle notwithstanding, life goes on. Today the Eriko to my Shoko, Zoée, was in town. (Like Eriko in terms of dedication as a long-time reader of my blog rather than creepiness.)
We met up at the ever-windy Clover Point for a 3km run along Dallas Road. As we started trotting, we happened upon a paraglider preparing to launch.
“Would you try that?” Zoée asked.
“No fucking way.”
My audacity is reserved for venturing into the unknown, for I do not dabble in daredevilry. Showering in the midst of a thunderstorm, as I did an hour ago, is as far as my pitiful bravery will carry me. Even then, I shut off the water to lather up and rinsed the soap off as quickly as possible. The imagery of electricity zapping out of the shower head and frying me intruded on my thoughts. The roomie accurately described it as “playing Russian roulette with the gods holding the gun!”
But here I am, clean, alive, and raring for my next low-risk adventure!
