Right so it’s that time of day, or rather night, again. I need to think about something entertaining to talk to you about, for free I might add. I really like that I’m starting to have a proper readership, that is made up of personal friends and also people that I don’t personally know. Anyway, I didn’t have too much time to think about what I will write today as my day was quite busy. I guess I’ll just start writing and see if I get anything worthwhile out of it.
So today involved a lot of walking around again. We went around Beeston and then went to Wollaton park. It really is a very nice space over there. We also visited Wollaton manor and the frankly quite freaky taxidermy exhibit, or natural history museum as they call it. The collection is quite extensive for such a small town. I didn’t expect to see all those specimens, especially the giraffe. I always forget how big giraffes actually are. I mean its legs alone are taller than me, although admittedly that’s not too hard to achieve as I am quite short. In fact, some of my friends used to call me ‘échantillon’ which basically means sample. The joke was that my mom and dad wanted to see if they wanted a child and so only got the sample to try out and then decided that the actual version would be too hard to take care of.
So the exhibit was all right I thought, even though taxidermy freaks me out. I just feel bad for the poor animals as they all clearly didn’t die of old age. I’m not a vegetarian or an animal rights activist, I just don’t think it’s right to kill animals for no good reason. I think eating them is a good reason, and some, and I do stress some not all, medical research is a good reason, but I am hard pressed to find any other plausible and reasonable excuse to kill them. I think embalming them and displaying them is definitely not a good reason, especially that we don’t need to do this anymore, what with tvs and computer simulated replicas, as well as the advances in robotics and the very fine models that can be constructed. Admittedly most of the collection came from the 19th and early 20th centuries, when these things were not available. Although that opens up the question of colonialism and big game hunting at the time, which let’s not forget led to the extinction of a lot of species (as well as the suffering of the colonised peoples but that’s not my point).
So even though the exhibition was impressively extensive for such a small place, I did feel a bit uneasy about it. The hall itself is more interesting on the outside than the inside, I thought. They did have a few mannequins to show us how people used to live in there in Victorian times. But weirdly there was a barely audible recording playing over the various exhibits that I think was some kind of audio play thing that was supposed to explain to us how people lived in those times. It however felt like it wasn’t thought through, as what I heard involved a man, that seemed quite cross, telling a woman not to bring up something, I didn’t know what that was as I didn’t hear her speak. That just felt strange and out of place. It seems that there was a whole script that some voice over actors took quite seriously, but unfortunately it was played at such low volume and so randomly that I couldn’t tell what was happening. I’d like to think that there is a whole story line, and I think it would make it very poignant if it was actually good, that we will never fully know because the people at Wollaton didn’t think it was appropriate to raise the volume and put up some sort of sign explaining what’s happening.
After that we walked around in the actual park. We had a coffee at the overpriced cafe there, I’m not complaining that it is overpriced, they all are in touristy places. I had a lovely Victorian lemonade there, it had ginger, Juniper, and some other herbs in it, it was quite tasty. The park itself is lovely, it was calving season for the deer but we did not see any live births. We just sae a group of them quite far away from us. I quite like the park with its trees and rose garden. The lovely open spaces are a nice change from the lovely open spaces of Uni (that was a joke, but I realise that you can only get it if you know the campus of my uni. Otherwise I’m sure it just sounds weird. Although come to think of it I’m sure it sounds weird if you know the campus as well). I should make more of an effort to go and walk there, it’s good exercise in a nice setting.
We had dinner alfresco in Beeston. It was quite a nice dinner and the bouncer/security guard at the place was very talkative. At first I felt weird about him but by the end of the evening the weirdness didn’t completely leave but was joined with a but of sympathy for the guy. We now know that he is married, at least for the second time, has a six year old son from his first marriage, and that he does not live with his current wife, not because they’re separated but because it just worked out like that. As he explained the sleep together every night, sometimes at her place and sometimes at his. We also know that his birthday is tomorrow and that his son’s sixth is on Monday. He is taking a two week break from his day job as he is a bit tired. Oh and he just quite smoking two weeks ago, after 15 years, because of his asthma. This information was given to us voluntarily within the space of an hour. I hope my feeling of weirdness mixed with sympathy now makes a bit more sense.
Another funny thing that happened was that while we were eating a group of ‘youths’ passed by. From far they looked like trouble. The closest one to our restaurant had a hood on and a bandana thing covering his nose and mouth. As they passed close to the restaurant the boy started making martial art like gestured with his arms and hands in what seemed to be a threatening manner at the us and the other people sitting outside. However, as he got closer I heard what he was saying and it was, I swear this is absolutely true: ‘subzero, scorpion, come here, finish him, reptile’. He was saying things from mortal combat, and all of a sudden he stopped being threatening and suddenly became endearing. He was a nerd pretending to be a ninja in a video game. And then I was able to see that in fact the whole group of youths was just a group of nerds trying to look tough. I laughed but our new best friend the bouncer/security guard wasn’t amused and mumbled something about young people today having no respect.
Arab Rhizome 