Blood runs in your veins, that's where our similarity ends

[venta]

A gruesome twosome, here....

So, at the weekend I was supposed to be doing sensible grown up things and fitting towel rails in the kitchen. But ceb said I had to go to the exhibition of anatomical cake at St Barts. And I respond well to firm instructions, so off I went.

If you want to see some gruesome anatomical cakes, you can go and look at some pictures. Overall, sadly, I was a little disappointed.

I like cake. That's a well-known fact. What is perhaps slightly less known is that I'm not a huge fan of icing. And almost any kind of a cake display is usually really an icing display. So as I gazed on cakey lungs, cakey diseased legs, cakey flayed arms, etc, my main thought was hmmm, they don't look that appealing. Not because they were flayed and diseased and so on, but because they were fairly irrelevant cake covered by icing.

And the icing, in many cases, was very impressive. I admire the artistry required to make these cakes, I just feel it's more a matter of fine art or modelling than it is bakery, really. It's certainly not about the food any more.

The other problem I've found with exhibitions like this is that you invariably turn up and find that it seems everyone else is in the know, and you are not. Various bits of blurb I'd seen suggested that people would be trying to raise awareness of differing medical conditions, giving out leaflets, and so on. They weren't: there was a table at the back with leaflets on if you cared to interact, but that was all. The people running the show seemed to be chatting happily to each other, and ignored those of us who shuffled through the door. Many of the cakes I'd seen described didn't really seem to be there... unless you'd somehow ordered them. In which case, they were sitting in (non-visible) boxes waiting to be collected.

In fairness, we arrived just as a talk was ending (I don't know what on, because the doors were closed til it finished). So perhaps we just turned up at a bad time.

However! The exhibition was in the Pathology Museum, which is not usually open to the public. It's a huge, high-ceilinged, galleried room full of... well, full of grim things pickled in jars, basically. The galleries were still closed (ChrisC tells me the Health Protection Agency won't let members of the public up there), but from the ground floor you could still gaze upon lots of... grim pickled things in jars.

The museum, being largely for the use of studying students, does not have user friendly labels. Occasionally there would be a sheet of A4 pinned to the wall which allowed you to match up the cryptic number/letter labels with descriptions that you probably wouldn't understand anyway. Unless you'd done considerably more human biology than I have, which isn't difficult. Some things in jars I identified (pickled conjoined embryos, pickled face of child with hare lip); some things I speculated on wildly.

Not exactly the most fun museum in the world, but very interesting. And I always enjoy the idea of being in somewhere that isn't usually open to the public :)

On the way down stairs, I paused to notice a large, stone Roman sarcophagus plonked on a landing.
.

And, because students are students everywhere:


(And, of course, pedants are pedants everywhere...)




Otherly, my local butcher is getting properly into the Hallowe'en spirit, and has decorated his window. If you don't want to see the sort of window-display which could be created by someone who has a lot of spare animal body parts, I recommend you stop reading right now.

It's a poor photo, I'm afraid, because taking photos of a shiny window (with a phone) is hard.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Oh my!

(As a vegetarian of the "it is very important you appreciate where your food has come from" persuasion, I wholeheartedly approve of this display.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

The butcher is a very, er, meaty butcher. The other one on that road, which just closed, used to have lots of fillets and stir-fry mixes and so on in the window. This one tends to have pigs heads and sheep's heads as standard, and in the (currently Hallowe'en-ed) sidewindow often has half a carcass hanging. Usually with a small black board telling you what it is, where it came from, and why it's hanging around.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Looks like an Icelandic restaurant. Alas I never got a chance to sample the sheep's head trad meal. Splendid display!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, the thing that wigged me out most was the vast quantities of fake cobweb. Becuase even if I rarely buy sheep's heads, the butchers is a food shop and I don't want to buy meat that is covered in cobweb (fake or otherwise). So actually, I thought from a propaganda point of view it was a terrible display, but I loved it and stood in the street laughing like a drain before I got round to taking photos.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's special butcher's cobweb. Let's hope so.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Looks like the outside of a sheep type cobweb to me. But I could be wrong - I don't spin so don't come across unspun wool very often.

[uitlander]

I thoroughly approve of the local butcher. I bet the kids do as well. I fear some of the parents may be less encouraging, but I bet he's been planning that for some time.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I went on Friday about 2pm, and there was plenty of choice then, but not the breast cupcakes I'd set my heart on. If you want more anatomical stuff, the Hunterian museum at the Royal College of Surgeons has similar stuff, but vastly better displayed, even down to mp3 descriptions you can listen to as you wander. I want to go back there.

I think the cake people did a good job enlivening a very dead museum.

Did you go to the Bart's ordinary museum round the corner?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Did you go to the Bart's ordinary museum round the corner?

No! I didn't know there was one.

I'm not sure I like that sort of thing specifically, but I do like things of all kinds in general and have never been to the Hunterian.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

The ordinary Bart's museum is a 2 room history of the hospital, modern presentation but rather dry. Out the back you can peer up at Hogarth's painted staircase. Worth a look-in if you are in the area, not a special visit.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

I stuffed a guinea pig in that museum a few weeks ago. It's a lovely venue, if rather stuffy on a sunny day.

Agree with the recommendation for the Hunterian if you like That Sort of Thing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah! I did see a flyer for taxidermy workshops while in there; how was it?

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Fantastic as an experience, and surprisingly relaxing even if I did make a lot of mistakes. My girlfriend ended up dressing hers up as Boadicea.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I salute you for doing something so unusual!

Out of curiosity, what stage do you join in at? I'd assumed that the process of going from dead animal to stuffable thing was quite time consuming, so do you get the bits pre-tanned (or whatever it is they do)? Or are you just handed a guinea pig and told to start from scratch?

In fact, why are you doing fabulous things like this and not writing them up on your LJ for us to read :p

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

You basically get given a half frozen guinea pig and a scalpel and then get told to get on with it, with short demonstrations along the way. There's a refreshing degree of trust placed in you that you won't skewer yourself. Took about four hours all told.

IKR? I've been meaning to write up visiting the Magnificent Seven cemeteries and going to Tokyo and Lindisfarne and all sorts but haven't ended up getting around to it. I am a bad LJer.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there is a massive load of things I've wanted to write up but never quite got round to it.

Meanwhile, I am obviously not down with the kids as I just had to look up IKR. A merciful case of the Urban Dictionary for once not giving me a definition which involved poo, genitals, or both.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Btw, glad to hear there wasn't too much interesting medical stuff going on at the cake event, purely for the selfish reason that I wanted to go to the day about sexual health but couldn't make it.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

But ceb said I had to go to the exhibition of anatomical cake at St Barts.

Yay! \o/ I am glad someone did :-)

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Although the icing aspect does sound a bit disappointing. Feel free to feel less compelled next time I attempt to distract you from towel rails.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It was pretty good icing, though, and definitely more exciting than towel rails. I consider it a good exchange :)

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Just don't try to combine your interests, or it will all end in tears and sticky towels.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the cake/icing thing. There was a hallowe'en bake sale at work today - about half the cakes had some kind of pumpkin-themed decoration or icing, and none at all involved actual pumpkin. The ones I had were nice, mind, but I like pumpkin.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Our sysadmin makes an ace pumpkin cheesecake :)

Disappointingly, I think he usually makes it for a party he's not holding this year, so I guess there will be no leftovers coming in to work :(