A Weekend of Dead Bodies and Ice Cream

Last weekend Sock Monkey went to see 'Bodyworlds and the Mirror of Time' or The Dead Body Exhibition as I like to call it. So for those of you who don't know what this is here is a brief description:

Right there is a very strange German man called Dr Van Hagens. He always wears a fedora which makes him look even more sinister and mad.

Dr Van Hagens gets hold of dead bodies and 'plastinates' them. This is a bit like something from Star Trek (the 1960's wobbly set version). Plastination is basically sucking all the moisture and fat out of said dead body to stop it rotting and going all mushy. *hmmm a bit like packet soup I suppose*. All this wet stuff is then replaced with silicon rubber and epoxy.

This stuff hardens with gas, light or heat curing, which makes the specimens go rigid. So they 'set', sort of like cement. According to the website "This allows them to be studied and displayed in an engaging way, as seen in the BODY WORLDS exhibitions". ie gawped at.

The bodies are displayed in various interesting poses which show muscle groups, tendons, etc. So we have one playing chess with his head opened to reveal his brain, two men in a rugby tackle, one man is holding his own skin aloft.

Some of the bodies are sliced like ham to show various cross sections.




And there are other exhibits where their circulatory system has been
preserved, like this rabbit.



There was even a plastinated giraffe which was pretty impressive. I won't put a picture the 8 months pregnant woman who has been cut open as this tends to give people the vapours. I like stuff like this but even I thought it was wrong, wrong, wrong to have two of the 'plastinates' exhibited shagging each other.

We had a look around there then went for lunch in Greenwich. I fancied Asian food so we went to a Vietnamese restaurant. Here I had pork belly slowly roasted in what appeared to be compost heap and mulch. And it smelled like toilets. Once we had recovered from our luncheon ordeal we got the boat back to central London.

Next day we went to Ben & Jerry's Sundae on the Common. The common in question being Clapham Common. Basically it was a great big ice cream promotion (but not Dr Van Haagen Daas - heh, heh, heh). There was free ice cream but I couldn't be arsed to queue for it. There were also pantomime cows wandering around for added atmosphere.

Sock Monkey hadn't gone there to stuff up on ice cream though. No, Sock Monkey had gone there to see the bands. The first band were horrible. The second band were called Answering Machine and they were v. good. We approved of them. The third band sounded horribly like U2 who I can't stand.

Then the fourth band were.......Camera Obscura hooray! We were within gobbing distance of them. They played mostly from their new album My Maudlin Career but finished off with Razzle Dazzle Rose from their previous album. They seem to like playing this one as their finale 'cause every time I've seen them (lots) this is what they end with.

Here are some nice pics, of Tracyanne and Carey. None of the boys though. I haven't sucked them out of my camera yet.

We didn't bother staying to see the next band or the headline band, The Human League. By then it was beginning to rain so we trundled off to the Two Brewers for a quick drink. I don't think Sock Monkey and P have been there together before. Not that we have missed much. We just couldn't be arsed to walk the extra 2 minutes down the road to the far preferable Kazbah.

So that was Sock Monkey's weekend. Pickled Medical Specimens, seeing my favourite band play live and some outdoor beers. Very nice.