Day 41-43: London

SUNDAY/MONDAY

Six weeks travelling, eating barely any fruit and vegetables and living off mainly beer and bread but remaining completely healthy, and then three days back in London and I pick up a vicious cold. It happened on Saturday, in the space of about 30 minutes. You know when you can literally feel the sickness developing inside, but not being able to stop it? A slight discomfort in the throat, a sneeze and then BAM, death's door. Consequently, after a night out drinking on Saturday, and with this cold to beat all colds (well...not quite...but I was a little poorly) I did absolutely nothing on Sunday. I slummed around, completely guilt-free. I got out of bed around 3pm, and then eventually out of my pyjamas in the evening (rediscovering my onesie and then actual clothes). Tony cooked us a roast dinner and heated up a nutroast for me. Common misconceptions about vegetarian food aside, it was actually really tasty. I mean, it's just nuts and beans joined together with some cheese. You can't really get that wrong.

I still had the cold on Monday, so I moped around in the morning, feeling sorry for myself. I made it out of the house a few times to do errands, played on my Kindle a bit and then waited for Abbie to get home, at which point I stood around annoyingly as she made a tartlette and couscous for dinner. Ian and Ellen came over with baby Charge. It was all going swimmingly, until he threw a bit of a tantrum and started crying. You could confuse him for a few seconds and he’d stop crying, but then a second after he’d remember what he was supposed to be doing and belt out a few more tears. Film and TV baby cries are slightly misleading, or perhaps Charge has just developed his own unique style of crying. He sort of makes sounds like a pterodactyl when he’s in the throes of his unhappiness. Eeeeerch, eeeerch, eaaarrrrck. Those sort of sounds. Ian and Ellen seem to take it in their strides though, and adultly try to reason with him to stop, though there's varying success with that method. The old bounce and bop generally seems the best way to silence him.  

TUESDAY

Things got interesting on Tuesday. Well, in comparison to the past four days, things got interesting. After promising Abbie by text every day that I was going to go to the gym, and then afterwards head to the Design Museum, I finally found my membership card and made it there (no gym, though. I was in recovery from that brutal cold, wasn’t I?). 

The Design Museum is in the Shad Thames wharf and was set up by Terence Conran back in Thatcher's day. He tricked her into agreeing to part-fund the museum be saying that it would be a place to display British design and ingenuity. Terence, father of Jasper and founder of Habitat (R.I.P.), had his own exhibition at the museum a few months back called 'The Way We Live Now', which showed all the cool things he'd done in his life. He takes credit for revolutionising the sex lives of Brits by bringing the duvet to the country. Pre-duvet, we just hard horrible rigid blankets. Not conducive to sexy-times. Aside from the duvet, Jasper and Habitat, he's also designed the chairs and crockery for a lot of top London restaurants. 

As I’ve got a membership, I really need to go to every exhibition to get my money’s worth and the last time I went was a few months before to see the ‘Designed To Win’ exhibition (which I think is closing soon, given that all Olympic feeling is nearly depleted). On the walls as you head up into the exhibition, there are lifesize outlines of lots of famous athletes and a few stats about them. You feel slightly torn looking at these, as whilst you may be only one month younger than Lionel Messi and nowhere near as famous, talented or successful, you’re also the same height. Shorty. The exhibition itself displays all the top developments in sports technology, so from this lethal-looking time-trial bike (here) to the Speedo LZR (here) BSA: START I wrote a joke article about the LZR a few years ago with some friends (here) and then felt pretty pleased with myself when it came up as a question on University Challenge, and I could answer it correctly END

That was a cool exhibition, and at the time they also had the Designs of the Year 2012 displaying on the top floor which was INCREDIBLY cool. Covering all areas (entertainment, transport, public services, architecture, landmine-detonation devices, fashion etc.) it was so impressive and really inspiring to see design being used for things beyond the asthetic of various products. My favourite items were the landmine-clearing device (below), the earthquake table (here) and the Tesco virtual shop in South Korea (here). I bought the book showing all the designs if anyone ever wants to see it. 

At the moment they’re showing ‘Digital Crystal’, which is sponsored by Swarovski (I will consider it a major life achievement when I’m certain of the pronunciation of that word). I don’t know much about crystal or how it’s formed, but if it’s anything like the cool video you see on entry, then it is ridiculously cool. There were two long screens either side of a darkened corridor showing these enhanced, sped up videos of crystal growing as they played these eerie noises littered with crunching sounds as the crystal broke free of the ground:

The exhibition itself was cool (see photos below) and used a variety of devices to display the ideas, including a cool 3D projection thing you could only see as you got close up, like some sort of Star Trek technology. There was this cool ring of crystal, which looked relatively nondescript from the outside, but as you cut down through it, you created polar bear shapes (I've included the white one, as the crystal is too difficult to make out here). 

As a side note, Swarovski was founded by Daniel Swarovski in a place called Wattens in Austria, after he patented a specific sort of crystal cutting machine. Just so you know.

I didn't bother going in Designed to Win again, but headed to the top floor which is now displaying an exhibition called 'Thrift' by the Designers in Residence 2012. I think the museum funds a few young designers each year to get them started. Supposedly after being given access to as many materials and equipment as possible at university, when designers leave they've not got the funds to buy any of those things, so generally have to start out using either cheap goods or changing their styles completely. This is only a small display, but there was a cool PCB (Printed Circuit Board...) that looked like a tube map:

And another woman had created a new product from wool cast-offs from carpet factories, by mixing it with starch. She showed how firm the material could come by putting it in a toastie maker. Yummy, gluey wool toasties. 

After the exhibition I had a walk along the Thames, and took some photos of the nice sky and the seagulls flying over the river in front of Canary Wharf. Beauty in what would otherwise be a pretty grotty area. 

I then headed to the Woolpack pub on Bermondsey Street. This was my first day living as a London Tourist, so I had to resume my European lifestyle of a glass of wine at 3pm each day. Their house wine was a Hungarian wine called 'Moonriver Pinot Noir' (from Aszar-Neszemly, Hungary). Compared to cheap European prices for decent wine, I felt a bit hard done by for the £5.60 medium glass cost for something that was pretty minting. Probably not going to take Gabo up on his offer to show me round the Hungarian vineyards. 

I had to bring my costs up to a £10 card-payment minimum, so I ordered the next one up, which was 'Tilia Malbec' (Mendoza, Argentina) for £6.10. Steep cost, but it tasted much better. I probably can't afford this on a daily basis though. I mean, I've got no job. Can't really justify expensive wine purchases over paying my bills. Before going for the second glass, I went to the loo (don't worry, this is going somewhere) only to find the toilet didn't flush. I told the barmaid, but said it was fine and didn't look bad; it just had a bit of tissue down it but it wasn't gruesome. She went silent for a moment and I presumed the conversation was over when she suddenly said "Have you seen Dogma?". I have seen Dogma. I imagine it must be considered an appalling film by the reviewing community, but I loved it. Alan Rickman with no penis? Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as fallen angels? Alanis Morrisette as God? Amazing. I immediately knew the barmaid was thinking about the Shit Monster scene, where Jay and Silent-Bob have to fight a monster made of shit that comes out of the toilet. That barmaid is a legend. What a brilliant response to a non-flushing toilet warning! 

Went back to the flat to meet Abbie, Tony, Lewis and Abbie's Mum for a group cinema outing to finally see Skyfall. There's a big Odeon near us in Surrey Quays, and on Tuesdays with Abbie's premium card (which I think is a free loyalty card), tickets are only £5.50. Cheap for London. Abbie's mum bought us ice-cream to thanks us for taking her out to the cinema (it was originally supposed to be a date between her and Tony, until Abbie, Lewis and I crashed) and we settled in.

So, given that our housemate has been working on the score to Skyfall, and has had the film lying around on his computer since June, we've all done pretty well to not know any of the plot. Cue a phone conversation with my brother on Friday telling me he'd seen the film, and before I could even draw a breath, revealing what happens in the last scene. Thanks, bro. I presume it's payback for me convincing him to let me tell him what happens in HP and the Half Blood Prince (about a certain wizard dying...). In my defence, I at least gave him the option of not knowing. He just blurted it out before I could stop him. Also, when Abbie was booking our tickets online, in the customer reviews below the ticket options the  douchebag reviewer had revealed the same plot development in the first line of the review. So we went into it knowing at least part of what was about to happen.

Pre-film, there was the benefit of the Kevin Bacon advert being shown in the trailers, and then the Les Mis trailer. That's a family-induced guilty pleasure. Can't wait for it. All those celebs singing? Brilliant. They also showed the Life of Pi trailer which looks insane; it's been given a sort of mystical realism style and whilst I'm not sure I'll actually see it or if it's any good, I reckon it'll be visually impressive if nothing else. Another version of Great Expectations is coming out soon as well, though given that there's only just been another BBC version, not sure there was any point to a film? I wonder why they never check what's coming out before releasing two versions of the same thing in a short period. They did the same with Robin Hood.

Back to Bond; I haven't seen Quantam of Solace and I fell asleep during Casino Royale, so I wasn't really expecting to be blown away. But boy, was I blown away! I'm not going to reveal anything (because that's cruel, isn't it Tom?) but the opening credits are amazing (they go on for about 5 minutes and it's the most visually amazing thing I've seen in a while) and the film is generally great. Action, but without having unnecessary explosions/car chases serving no purpose to the plot, a good story, beautiful/bleak/hectic locations, a great villain (whose first scene might be my favourite Bond/Villain scene in the film series' entire history. It's hilarious. Watch it if only for that) and just brilliant cinematography. Not like your traditional Bond lady-killer stories, but for the first time I felt that it didn't matter. Daniel Craig's Bond is so much more engaging than any of the former ones. If you haven't seen it, I seriously recommend it. Also, there are loads of London scenes, and a nice Ben Whishaw in the National Gallery moment. BLOWN AWAY. We stayed to watch our housemate's name in the credits and then went home to have a beer.