nanila | Day out in London (Reply)

[Colour-changing lights in the Wellcome Collection cafe, Euston Road, London, UK]

Yesterday I was picked up by a friend to drive to London to meet another friend who was over visiting from the States. We had a vague plan for lunch, museum trip, coffee, and cocktails. It worked out organically.

We met second friend just outside Euston station and walked to Drummond Street to have lunch in an Indian vegetarian restaurant. Tragically I forgot to take a photo of my paneer and spinach dosa. Please rest assured it was beautifully crisp as well as delicious.

Photos start from the above, where we had a post-lunch coffee and vegan cake in the Wellcome Collection cafe. I can heartily recommend both the carrot cake and the red velvet cake. I can also recommend the all-gender, fully accessible, well-lit toilets, of which there were about 30 individual stalls. I was so impressed with these I took a photo (see below).

As it turns out, the main exhibition, "In Plain Sight" was also quite good. I enjoyed all the different iterations of human understanding of eye anatomy and visual perception, and all the whacky and wonderful designs for corrective visual aids. I got my first pair of varifocals this year and I love them. When I received them, the optician warned me, "Now, it can sometimes take a few weeks to adjust to these--" Me: "Nope, never taking them off again, kthxbai!"

Indian sandalwood glasses frames from the late 1600s. Dear UK opticians, the first one of you to turn this into a varifocal model that I can buy will have my money in a heartbeat, all love, Nanila.

These goggles are from an unknown maker in an unknown century in an unknown location. Shame, because I want a pair of these as well.

Tortoiseshell rims with a clip for the nose bridge and an elegant case, from the 1800s, China.

From the late 1800s, these "double-d" eye protectors with their side panels were meant to keep smoke and dust from the eyes of those driving steam engines and open-topped vehicles, and the blue tint filtered bright light.

"Hands Glasses", Jeremy Scott for Linda Farrow, 2020.

An exhibit in which the objects on the left could be rearranged to alter the machine-learning-produced image on the right. I found it funny that as soon as I touched it, it went from a calm ocean scene to FIRE. Apparently my true nature will out [I am a fire dragon, according to the Chinese zodiac].

An illustration from a late 1400s medical text (Ortus Saniatis, "Garden of Health"), possibly one of the earliest known depictions of a guide dog. The figure is also peering through an opal crystal, which was thought at the time to strengthen vision and heal eye conditions.

Rainbow light from a prism on cork board.

God-eye weaving display. My children made these in forest school. This was one of the displays you could touch, so I did. Every room in the exhibition had rooms with items you could interact with, which I loved.

Opthamological teaching aid.

Protective anting-anting amulets from the Philippines! These were brass and you could touch them. They had a very pleasing weight and finish.

An odd-looking face plate, designed to fool facial recognition technology when worn. (I accidentally typed that as "racial recognition" at first, which, well, doesn't feel like that much of a typo.)

I also watched snippets of a number of video exhibitions, many of which had been designed to convey the experience of a partially sighted or blind person. They were really interesting, but - ironically - difficult to immerse yourself in fully due to the background noise of attendees looking at other parts of the exhibition.

When we'd had our fill, we popped into the gift shop, where I bought a book for the bloke and a cuddly mitochondrion and antibody for Keiki and Humuhumu. Then we walked to the St Pancras Hotel to have a cocktail in the swanky bar there. We hadn't realised there were multiple swanky bars and it took us a few minutes to locate the one that was right for us - dark and a bit quiet and attended by a superb mixologist.

There were tables with chessboards in our chosen bar area. Yes, this is the correct gear.

Round 1. Mine (in the middle) was Suntory whisky, matcha syrup, soda water and mint. It was crisp and refreshing and beautifully balanced.

Me after my first cocktail.

The hotel roof, quite nice to gaze through when feeling a bit warm and fuzzy.

Light on the table, after the second cocktail (tequila, mescal, lime juice, dirty olives). Definitely fuzzy now.

I glanced at my phone in my happy haze and suddenly realised it was 15 minutes until my train was scheduled to depart. I exchanged hugs with and said a hasty goodbye to my friends and dashed down the road back to the station. I needn't have bothered. Although we boarded quite close to the alleged departure time, we sat on the train, driverless, for 45 minutes before actually leaving the station. Fortunately, I ended up next to a retired arts professor and his delightfully fluffy dog, Moss, whose fluffy butt kept my toes warm for a good proportion of the journey home.