Taxidermic Treats at Tring

This week we made one of our regular visits to a favourite museum: the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring. I've been going there since childhood and have taken my own children there many times, yet it never ceases to delight and intrigue me. There's always something new to discover.

Even the finest zoo or most brilliantly filmed wildlife documentary cannot rival the museum for giving you an insight into the scale and physical attributes of the animals on display. The reason? They are all stuffed so you can get pretty close and they're extremely unlikely to move away or attack you!

An Emperor Penguin is much taller than I ever expected, some skates are the width of a box room and you can't help but marvel at the huge size of a gorilla and the incommensurately small size of its gentleman's member!

Today many of us find the idea of shooting and stuffing animals in this way repugnant but if you accept that the exhibits at Tring are of their day, then there's a lot to be gained from a visit. Sir Walter was a fabulously wealthy man, able to buy any animal that caught his fancy and so the collection is both quirky and comprehensive. Some of the stuffing is a little odd, with amused looking polar bears and some rather moth-eaten examples, but it's hard to resist the old fashioned display cases and the general air of being transported back to a bygone age, when being an amateur enthusiast did not imply criticism but imagination and not a little intellectual rigour.

I say hoorah for Tring and Lord Rothschild. Where else are you going to see a flea dressed in a crinoline, a picture of someone harnessing zebras, the most famous racing greyhound of all time and the skeleton of a boa constrictor all in one place?

Wilkinsons and why you can't listen to Joy Division and eat chocolate

Your average musician spends a lot of time trying to conjure an atmosphere. He or she takes into account a plethora of factors including the blend of instruments, dynamics and quality of sound ,all with the aim of evoking an emotional response from their audience. So how galling it must be to hear your painstakingly constructed piece as background music in Wilkinsons.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Wilkos. It's filled the vacuum that Woolworth's left with its pick n mix, cheap and cheerful stationery and useful things like manure, dustpans and toilet brushes.

Yet as I browsed the aisles, I felt rather sorry for the people who had recorded the rather ethereal ditty playing in the background. While the singer emoted delicately, two women next to me discussed the merits of a hair colourant and a whiny voice came over the tannoy requesting assistance in aisle number one, kids screamed and whined and old ladies shuffled about, most of them seemingly unaware of the music.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't ignore even lift music. Friday night was a good example of this 'affliction'. As a monthly treat I always have a 25 g bar of Belgian dark chocolate. It's just enough to satisfy me and as it's only once a month it feels special and, most importantly, doesn't turn me into a great chocolate guzzling elephant of a woman.

I bought my precious bar in Sainsbury's and sat in the car for a few seconds to enjoy the moment. On the CD player I was playing a rather challenging Joy Division number and I found that this was marring the experience. Bizarrely I felt I couldn't taste the chocolate properly because my senses were overwhelmed by the music. So I turned it off and went into chocolate induced state of bliss for a few seconds. I don't know if this if this is an example of synaesthesia or just being a bit strange. I will have to experiment with some different music before making any conclusions.

But back to Wilkinsons. I suspect most people in Wilkinson's today weren't even aware of the music on a superficial level. The group who recorded the song did it all for nothing as far as Wilko's is concerned. I only hope the royalties are good!

My tarot teenager

Saturday saw the kids and I watching the procession for Brighton Pride The rain held off for the actual procession which was just as well as there was an abundance of brightly coloured feathers and game chaps with their bums hanging out of barely there pants.

Not long after the procession, the heavens opened but we were wet anyway so decided to visit the shops. Patrick, perhaps a little traumatised by his exposure to Pride, had his mind set on getting some tarot cards. Seems only yesterday that his goal was a set of Pokemon cards so I was a little surprised.

We found a suitable shop where we discovered that tarot cards come in all sorts of designs, all based roughly on the original design - if there is such a thing. There were fairy tarots, art deco tarots, Lord of the Rings tarots (there would be!), National Trust tarot (alright, I made that one up). However Patrick plumped for a fairly traditional set which cost a princely £26! I asked the rather snooty shopkeeper if there was an economy set and he snorted at me with barely disguised disdain, actually let's just call it disdain; his tarot reading must have been a bit negative that day.

Apparently Patrick will soon get used to his cards which will help his 'reading'. Good. I'm hoping he develops a real talent for it and can earn some money on the side doing little readings. He'll have to tidy his bedroom first and develop a more mysterious persona. When mystery was given out, our family were at the back of the queue so it might be quite hard but I think there's room for a few wide-eyed, chubby cheeked blond tarot readers. He also has a yen to buy a long black coat so that might add to his mystique.

If he does well I might even get him a Pokemon tarot set like the one in the attached picture. They didn't have those in Brighton!

Pimp my filing cabinet

I am the proud owner of a second hand filing cabinet which I acquired from work where a number of pieces of office furniture are being disposed of. I am that rather inconvenient type who is deeply untidy but isn't happy about it. I am hoping my new filing cabinet will bring some order to my environment which so far it is doing very well.

But now the important thing for we form over function types. What does it look like? Well, as filing cabinets go it isn't bad really. It's a reasonably inoffensive shade of cream with contrasting brown trim - OK it is pretty ugly. However it is robust, functional and the drawers are capacious and open and shut smoothly.

Now though I want to pimp my filing cabinet. My plan is to spray it a more fetching colour with shocking pink being at the top of my list. I might buy some nice stickers to put on it or something similarly decorative. In my dreams I imagine studding it with LEDS that light up when I open the drawer or perhaps I could rig it up with fairy lights.

I've found a rather wonderful customised filing cabinet on the web, picture attached to this post,. which is giving me some inspiration. Looks a rather challenging design but you can't deny it's rather stylish, for a filing cabinet.

Having seen what others can do, I feel quite overcome with excitement. When does B and Q open?

Scare crows? Scare me more like!

Why are scarecrows scary? To scare crows I suppose is the obvious answer but there's more than that to it. We were up in Whipsnade earlier in the week and took some photos of some brilliant scarecrows created for the Scarecrow Festival.

While I could appreciate the creativity involved in making the scarecrows, I couldn't help feeling a bit disturbed by them. Some more than others including a rather lascivious looking Postman Pat and a deranged Wizard of Oz scarecrow that makes Worzel Gummidge look like Cary Grant.

I wondered if my feeling of discomfort has something to do with the theory of the Uncanny Valley, something S is very interested in. Posited by Masahiro Mori in 1970 the hypothesis is 'that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathetic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.' (Wikipedia).

The theory is known as the 'uncanny valley' as, plotted on a graph, the transition from empathy to revulsion back to empathy makes a valley shape.

So do scarecrows fit the bill? Well, some of them are disturbingly human like but not enough to allow you to ignore the fact that they are not human and empathise with them in a human-to-human fashion. Scarecrows occupy, with clowns, that uncomfortable territory where humanity is expressed in a grotesque and exaggerated form; 'like' us but in a form that distorts and plays with notions of humanity.

As someone who has always been afraid of clowns, I've never really understood why some people expect children to think them funny and endearing rather than creepy and unpleasant. Equally, while Jon Pertwee was a marvellous, dashing Dr Who, Worzel Gummidge was , quite often, the stuff of nightmares.

Recently the current Dr Who, David Tennant, was seen battling some homicidal scarecrows, although I'd have been happy to be exposed to those if I could have run screeching along a few corridors holding David's hand. There are some compensations! But sadly Dr 'David Tennant' Who was not in evidence in Whipsnade. So with motherly indulgence, I allowed my daughter to use my camera to photograph the scarecrows while I waited in the car. Nothing to do with my plan to hit the accelerator should one of them start walking, of course!

The boy who sang

So anyway, Michael Jackson eh? What was he all about?

I was a big fan of the Jackson Five as a little girl. For me they offered a really exciting alternative to the rather anodyne Osmonds. I knew instinctively that Donny Osmond was naff and Michael Jackson has something amazing.

What a voice he had as a boy. He could be as raunchy and soulful as a junior James Brown and then deliver a ballad with a tender assurance that seemed as though it couldn't just be the result of training and, as we know in retrospect, bullying from his father. The voice was deeply affecting, tremulous when needed, strong and emotionally wracked, passionate and even, dare I say it, sensual. So many qualities you just don't expect from a boy's voice.

To me he lost a lot of this when he became a man. He forsook his beautiful voice for affectation and ridiculous vocal posturing when all the time he had this most wonderful gift. Every now and now and then you would hear that voice but as time went on it was subsumed by the weirdness, the posing, the lack of artistic direction that felt really genuine.

I didn't feel that sad when I heard of Michael Jackson's death to be honest - he died years ago for me.

The mysteries of summer dressing

It's too hot. I can't sleep, I've got the wrong type of skin for hot and worst of all I don't know what to wear. I lurch from looking like a 1970s hippy to a sort of RE teacher on a tour of the Holy Land look. On the way I've explored 'Tender is the Night' nautical looks (palazzo pants and stripey tops - well as palazzo as you get in Primark) and ladylike pruning roses looks.

The clothes in autumn and winter are so much better. I love woolly tights, I love proper shoes, I love coats and hats, I love boots and lace up shoes. In the autumn I feel like Gudrun and Ursula in 'Women in Love', in the summer I feel like The Famous Five.

I'm working the hippy RE teacher vibe tomorrow. A sort of combination of all my summer clothes. As long as I'm not hot, I've ceased caring.