insects

On Saturday I went with a friend to explore The Last Tuesday Society, a very curious museum tucked away in Mile End. It’s a dark, mysterious pit of a place, so I couldn’t get any photos inside, but some exhibits were:

Beautifully carved skulls, giant crab shells, dildos, mummified mermaid corpses, stuffed two-headed cats (and two-headed teddy bears on sale in the shop), skeletons of many animals, books of porn, broken dolls, tropical butterflies, many dead moles in a jar and some strange sculptures. It was very much the personal collection of a rich, artistic and slightly twisted eccentric. That eccentric is the still-living, party throwing artist called Victor Wynd. Wynd is a lecturer at the London Institute of Pataphysics (Pataphysics is what happens when artists get hold of science.)

We also got to meet a number of living animals, such as chameleons, water dragons and snakes. I got to walk around the museum with a Nicaraguan Boa curled around my arm. I’ve not held a snake before, he was reassuringly heavy and mellow, and his skin felt pleasantly shiny and smooth; a beautiful animal.

Upstairs in the cafe, we spotted they sold insects to eat. This is something I’ve been curious about for a while – after all, if our global troubles with population with continue, we may have to start eating insects soon. We got the insect platter and chocolate worms. I have to be honest, I didn’t like the insects much, the flavour was ok, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was eating a load of insects, the texture was too papery and crispy, and just too much like I would expect a dead insect to be like. I also felt sort of guilty, there were so many of them, all those tiny lives snuffed out so that I could crunch on them feeling a bit sick. The chocolate was nice though.