all sorts of things
Two weeks ago, I wandered across the road to the pub, got my pint and settled in to watch the running of the famous Grand National. Fortunately before I got too settled someone pointed out that there's a bookies just down the road, so I went and put on what turned out to be a winning bet.
All I can say is what absolute carnage!!! An unusual year apparently, neither horse nor man was put down. But the number of falls was absolutely incredible. One thing's for sure, made the 2 miles around Flemington look like a tame walk in the park. For quite a significnat part of the race at least half the field was made up of riderless horses. Eventually they got wise and realised there were ways around those gigantic fences and headed off on their own somewhere else.
Oh and the winner - how could I go past a horse with the name "Comply or Die"?
Rico joined me this week and on Saturday we went into the the science and technology museaum to see Body World. I can safely say I've never seen anything even remotely resembling this exhibition. Real human bodies that are stripped of skin and fat and plasticised sort of to make them last. Then put in all sorts of weird configuration. For example, one (real) body, separated into three (eg one with bones and organs, one with muscles, one with blood vessels) joined at the complete foot and playing badmington with itself. Or the relay runner, whose skeleton hands the baton over to the muscles version of itself.
Check out some photos here. http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/media/picture_database/thumbnails.html?category=14
and more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2008/01/02/220208_bodyworlds_interview_feature.shtml
I imagine certain bits of the exhibition were a little disturbing for the blokes too.
If you got bored of the complete specimens, you could see all the bits of pieces, healthy and not separately. I now know exactly what an advanced case of arthritis looks like for example. Or the complete body that had been cut into about 100 slices all hanging suspended together like those perpetual motion office desk toys.
It's hard to describe the effect. The most disturbing thing was that at one stage I was definitely getting hungry!
On the science theme, I noticed both that Saturday and Sunday travelling to and from Liverpool airport that there was an absolute plague of identical twins.
