Last week there was a launch party for David B's Black Paths, at Clerkenwell Tales, a lovely little bookshop in Exmouth Market. I'd only heard about the launch the previous evening, which meant I was a bit late in getting a place — in fact I didn't get a response until 6:30 that evening, which was exactly when the event started. Oops! As a result, I entirely missed David B being interviewed by Paul Gravett, which was a bit annoying, but at least I got there in time for some free booze, and also a chance to catch up with Dan Lester before he flew off to teach English in South Korea the following day, as well as lots of other people.

I did have a flick through the book, however, and it looks pretty good, with lovely paper stock and full colours throughout. I have to say publisher Self Made Hero really excel at good production values, compared to some other publishers. Having only seen David B's work in black-and-white, where it works so well, it was nice to see that it translates well into colour too (you might think that's a given, but it isn't always). I definitely want to give it a proper read at some point, even though a couple of friends read it over the weekend and said that although it's visually stunning, the story isn't very compelling. I wondered whether this might partly be to do with translating a work from another language, and having read this fascinating post by the book's translator, it seems quite likely. On the other hand, I do remember that, as much as I appreciated the artwork in David B's Epileptic, the story did lose me along the way (although it's been almost 10 years since I read it, so I may feel differently now).

After waiting for friends to get their copies signed, I went to get some food with Woodrow Phoenix, Rob Davis and Glyn Dillon, which I mention only because it gives me a good excuse to plug Nelson again, as I discovered over dinner that even more amazing creators have signed up to participate. It's a shame I can't say who, because I'm sworn to secrecy, and if I told you I'd have to kill you, and there's no easy way to round up a bunch of mostly anonymous readers on the internet and quietly bump them all off, but trust me when I say NELSON IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. Glyn's new book (his first foray into comics publishing since, what, the 90s?), The Nao Of Brown looks likes it's going to be really good, too. If you want more proof than just my word, then have a long browsing session on Glyn's blog, which is chock-fulla-pretties. There's more on Space In Text, too.

Monday saw the launch of Reinhard Kleist's Castro, in the gallery upstairs at Foyles, which had a bit more space than Thursday's bookshop, but wasn't quite as well attended — even though there was the promise of free mojitos! And such promise: this is the pile of mint and limes at the start of the evening. A couple of hours later, the mint was all but gone and there were only about six limes rattling around the basket. The mojitos seemed to get exponentially stronger, too (my third drink was stronger than the first two put together!).

I took a few notes while Reinhard was being interviewed by Paul, which I've tried to knock into some kind of sense rather than the stream of consciousness that my notes read like. I should say to start with that I've not read Kleist's biography of Johnny Cash yet, and I'm not especially fascinated by Fidel Castro, but I am quite interested in the general history of Cuba, as it seems like a interesting country, albeit often romanticised, and in a constant state of some sort of flux (plus, I'll be honest, it is hard to say "no" to free mojitos!)

Kleist himself admitted that he initially had little interest in Cuba — "Cuba was for the old guys" — but he ended up visiting after a German editor asked him if he wanted to go and make a book about another country. This book was Havanna, which doesn't seem to have been translated into English (yet). In Cuba, he sometimes had trouble understanding people because "the Cuban people have horrible Spanish. It sounds very beautiful but they swallow all the syllables" (this made everyone laugh).

Kleist is pretty good at talking in snappy, visual soundbites. Describing some of Castro's early life, he said that "Havana university must have been like a Mafiosi melting pot" and that Castro has a nose "like a Greek statue." He'd wanted the art to look "a little bit more rough" than his art in Cash, but to keep it black-and-white because "you can do so much with black-and-white and create such a strong atmosphere." I'm inclined to agree, but I also think you can create strong atmospheres with colour too. His Greek publisher felt strongly enough that it should be in colour that they showed him a colourised version, but he hated it. (I'm curious about that, because Cuba is so strongly associated with colour in almost all media. Havanna is full colour, though, so maybe that'll get an English translation soon.)

The book was lettered in Photoshop, and Gravett pointed out the speech balloons are more "emphatic" than in Kleist's previous work. Kleist admitted that in earlier work he had tried to "erase" the balloons, but it didn't really work, as he realised that "text is important". This was an interesting point for me, because one of the things that has put me off reading his books are the cluttered-looking speech balloons — which is only exacerbated in something that is filled with pages of long political speeches, but is evident even in earlier work like Havanna (see pic below). I also noticed from looking at some pages displayed on the gallery wall, that, although Castro is lettered with capitals, there is also an inconsistent use of lower-case i's for no apparent reason other than whimsical idiosyncrasy, which doesn't really fit the general theme of the book and therefore irritated me a bit, because it kept distracting me from what was being said. But maybe most other people don't notice stuff like that.

The interview also touched on some other aspects, such as Cuba's ongoing political situation, and whether the state of the country was doing good for people or getting more corrupted. "Everything raised more questions." There were some comparisons made with China, and Kleist said "we might have a Chinese edition, but I don't know if we'll be allowed to print it." He also mentioned once being asked to sign a copy of Castro "to Fidel" and then learning that it was actually for Castro himself, and that Castro already owned a copy of Havanna, which was a bit nervewracking to discover.

The story itself is a fictionalised biography of Castro, using the character of a young idealistic journalist from Germany, whose look was based on a young French journalist that Kleist saw at an event in Cuba. (I don't know if the young man ever learned how he'd been immortalised), and of course other characters like Che Guevara appear in it as well. According to Kleist, in soundbite mode again, "the main point of the story is how to deal with your ideals" because "there is always another position and you have to show both if you want to be objective". With that in mind, I am quite interested in reading the book now. I quite like his artwork, which in moments reminded me of such disparate artists as Jose Muñoz, Hugo Pratt, Scott Morse and even a touch of Paul Pope in the brushier panels. Overall, it was a pretty interesting evening — and I'm not just saying that because of the free cocktails! Thanks once again to Self Made Hero for the invitations.

I haven't been buying books lately, due to a slight lack of funds, and also having far too many books that I haven't read yet, or haven't read for many years. So I've decided on a new-book moratorium, even though there are so many brilliant books coming out at the moment, at least until I've read (and got rid of) some of the old ones. However, there was one book I had to buy, because I'd been waiting for it to come out for about six years, and that was Carla Speed McNeil's latest Finder book, Voice.

I've been a huge fan of Finder ever since I first discovered it through Sequential Tart in 1999 (side note: I'm sort of amazed that ST still has the same design it started out with in 1998, and that the design still actually works). I was hooked from the first issue I read, enjoying the mix of slice-of-life observation and densely detailed science fiction setting. The deceptively simple artwork was full of intriguing background details that hinted at further stories, and I couldn't wait for each issue to come out just so I could find out more about the world that Carla had created. Even though I had many of the single issues, I bought some of the trade collections too because I loved the end notes printed at the back of them; they were like a director's commentary of extra background detail which added to the richness of the experience. After reading them I always feel a keen desire to visit the places, which is always a good sign that the environment has captured something in my imagination. I was even enough of a fan to buy several pages of original artwork from Carla several years ago (although three of them sadly went missing in the mail and never showed up).

As much as I enjoyed Voice (a lot, and even more so on the second read), there are elements of it that would definitely be very confusing if you'd never read any Finder before. So this post is really an an attempt to convince you all to go and buy Volume 1 of the Finder Library. It's actually really good value, collecting the first 21 issues of the series for only $25, which is probably about twenty quid in UK money at the moment — books don't seem to follow the exact rate of exchange, but that's less than £1 an issue, which is brilliant value. There's something in it for everyone and I promise you you'll thank me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to a book launch. Which I will try to write about later this week…

Fans of light trickery and abstract imagery should visit this exhibition before it ends on March 27th (and hope when they get there that it's not too crowded).

Rather than write a long review, I'll just post a few pictures, but to really appreciate the work you need to see it in person to get a sense of both the movement of the installation, and the slightly odd dislocation of your vision and balance — it's not as extreme as I described here after seeing his last exhibition, but worth experiencing all the same.

More photos here.

This week the Grant Museum re-opened in a new location, although if you were to visit the new venue and didn't know it was a new venue, it wouldn't be at all obvious.

Housed in an Edwardian library, a double-height room with a balcony on the second level, it feels as though the collection had always been there, with the only modern addition being a few discreet iPads dotted around the room, and some bright green chairs which look a bit out of place, because they are quite a distracting colour.

But they aren't the main draw, so easy enough to ignore in favour of peering into wooden cabinets filled with jars of moles and monkey skulls.

There are some slightly creepy/humorous examples of wonky Victorian taxidermy — it's hard not to anthropomorphise animals that have been given dolls' eyes and funny expressions.

The signage is sometimes funny, too, in a very deadpan way that may in fact be dryly serious. This is not a brain, in case you had any doubts:

Other labels offer philosophical questions — mostly about the running of museums — for example whether it's OK to display animal remains if they can't give their consent, or what makes a bulldog a uniquely British icon.

I like the way you can "adopt" an item in the collection, and have your name displayed on a label, although it's a bit annoying when the label covers the item so much you can't see it properly.

They also have a few lovely examples of glass sea creatures made by the Blaschka brothers. Their work is always incredible to look at — especially when you consider nobody knows how they did it.

More photos here.
More reviews: culture24, Wired UK, Londonist, Hayley Campbell.

visiting the Grant Museum of Zoology
The Grant Museum is in the Rockefeller Building, 21 University Street, just off Gower Street, five minutes walk from Euston Square or Warren Street tube stations. Bus routes 24, 29, 73 and 10 stop across the road, outside the UCL main quad. Entry to the museum is free, but the museum is only open Monday-Friday 1:00pm-5:00pm. Worth a visit in your lunch break, though.

I love the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, although I don't visit it often enough because it's on the opposite side of London to me. A little while ago I happened to pass it on a bus, so I jumped off to have a quick look around, for the first time in a couple of years.

One of the things I have always loved about the place are the old-fashioned wooden cabinets full of stuffed animals. I know lots of people find stuffed animals creepy, but I like them in museums (not so much in houses), especially the ones made in Victorian times when they didn't always know what they were doing. I love the famously overstuffed walrus and his intimidating tusks, for example. He's been a fixture of the museum forever; when I was taking pictures there was an old lady telling her tiny granddaughter how she used to come and see him when she was a little girl. I hope the little girl gets to grow up and take her children to see him, too!

(I've just remembered that one of the most horrifying things things I have ever seen was some violent and extremely bloody footage of a male walrus rampaging on a beach, killing his own young. I'm quite glad I couldn't find that online just now.)

Other animals seem to have been done with a more knowledgeable hand, making them look as though they might even jump through the glass any moment now….

This spectacled elephant shrew is waiting to become a stop-motion animation star any day now…

This proboscis monkey looks just like my old English teacher, Mr Hoskins (he didn't have ginger hair, but he did have a big nose, sticky-out ears, sideburns and a perpetually bemused expression).

Some people might find the labelling and display of the natural history section old-fashioned, but I'm always struck by how well-designed it actually is. The lettering is always readable, and the evolutionary differences and similarities are made clear with an immediate glance that is so helpful! (Thanks to I like for use of these pics)

photo by i like

photo by i like

Sometimes the old-fashioned quality accidentally works in favour too. I giggled when I noticed the cabinet full of bird photos, because the photo of the dodo has faded, giving that part of the chart a ghostly quality that's utterly appropriate for an extinct bird.

As I arrived fairly close to closing time, I didn't have enough time to go around all of the other parts of the museum, but I popped into the African room, where I found these ace statuettes of big cats. Don't you just love their expressions?

More photos here.
More reviews here and here.

Visiting the Horniman Museum
The Horniman Museum & Gardens are at 100 London Rd in Forest Hill, south London. Entry to the museum is free. There are directions on the museum's website, but I find the easiest way to get there from central London is to take one of the buses that stops right outside: either the 176 from Charing Cross Road or the 185 from Victoria.

Anyway. Having also read about the Euston Tap on East London Drinker, I decided to try the peach lambic Alan mentioned in his post (although I managed to miss seeing the man himself). I don't usually like peach-flavoured things (though I like peaches), and it had a very perfumey smell, but it was tasty, reminding me a bit of pear cider. Just as well it was pear, because regular cider made from apples makes me feel ill.

The bar is on the small side, even with the seating upstairs (which you have to reach by a narrow wrought iron spiral staircase), and as I half-expected from a beer-focused pub, it doesn't feel especially female-friendly, being mostly full of men in groups and not many women — which is ironic, given the venue's former life as a lesbian club. (I should point out, not all beer-focused pubs feel like that: the Southampton Arms is one which doesn't.)

The decor and general ambiance is very reminiscent of some American bars I've been in, right down to the fact that, even though they don't do food themselves, you can order pizza from a local delivery joint. I've often found myself wishing that this was something that happened more often in British drinking establishments that don't serve food — one of the things I loved about drinking in American bars was often having the choice to order in whatever you wanted, so there's no arguing if one of you wants sushi, one wants pizza, and one wants a hot dog with all the trimmings. In this case, you can only order pizza but there are some tasty-looking ones to choose from. We ordered a 26″ margarita pizza, which is ENORMOUS, needing three people to hold the box! But it was pretty tasty.

So it's not a bad little joint, although its tiny size means it's horrible when it's crowded, so probably best to avoid on Saturdays or when it's full of businessmen grabbing a drink before their commuter trains out to the suburbs. A good place for a swift half — and all the better for being the kind of place where no one bats an eyelid if a half is all you want.

Last month I went to a great, if small, exhibition of influential designer Barney Bubbles' work, at the tiny Chelsea Space gallery. Although it's a subject arguably deserving of a much larger overview — at the Design Museum, for example — it was dense with inspiring imagery, including working proofs and glimpses into sketchbooks. I took some pictures on my phone, which you can see here (they're very blurry, so you should really check out the work on Reasons To Be Cheerful). 

My favourite part was seeing his process of ideas, from taking inspiration from old newspaper illustrations, to experiments noted in his sketchbooks. 

One sketchbook in particular was opened to the description of an intriguing artistic experiment Bubbles undertook at home with a friend, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

This is a transcription of his notes (which tantalisingly break off because I couldn't turn the page of a sketchbook on display in a glass cabinet). The comics fan in me found his musings on the relationship between images and words of particular interest (emphasis mine): 

"An interesting experiment in visual and oral arts. Nothing is more important to artists than the 4-dimensions. I tried to achieve this by drawing, painting, reading, talking, etc (in fact in length, breadth, depth tried to assimilate a piece of time that is coming, has come and is now gone and must be caught for always) similar to the Chinese artist poets. The time, Sat. 27 Oct. 1962. The location. My house at Whitton. We played "Thelonious at Blackhawk", "Beethoven's 5th", and read Tennyson. I painted between 8 o/c and 9.30 o/c, interspersed with writing these notes and talking. We talked about boyfriends and girlfriends, and leather coats, and college at Birmingham, and the Royal College of Art. And we wrote poetry as the mood took us. 
_________________________
N.B. 1st point. We came to the conclusion that writing and painting are the same thing, so that one leads on to the next and necessarily helps the other. Building up inevitably to a climax. Which in our case was a discussion of Religion, black magic, Cuba and the planes that flew over from London Airport. Why can't writing be on  a canvas to help the painting? The visual helps the spectator, while the writing acting as a sort of scrapbook, grips his attention and allows the painting to set the exact location and spread the action over a series of moments.
_________________________
The next logical step would seem to be a painting trying to convey movement by any means possible. A painting done quickly is fresh, infintely more interesting and is capable of movement. Actions are fast, angular, sharp, vicious or can be lazy, sensuous and slow yet both create mood and help the –"

I wish I could find out what his conclusions were — if he made any. There was a nice portrait of the friend who spent the day working with him:

There's a great overview of the exhibition, with more pictures, at Creative Review.

The first place I visited was Centre Point, the iconic office block above Tottenham Court Road station that was built in the 1960s and scandalously left empty for many years because the property developer refused to rent it to anyone who wouldn't take the whole building. 
 
Centre Point has always been one of those buildings I was curious to see inside, and I never took advantage of the times friends have worked there, so it was good to finally get a chance to nose around inside and to admire the view from the top floor. 

To be honest, the interior wasn't all that exciting (it is a corporate office building, after all), but I did like the pattern on the floor. 

And the view from the 33rd floor is pretty spectacular.

Being so high up provides ample opportunity to spot things you'd never usually see, like grass roofs or construction sites usually hidden behind hoardings. I spotted a ghost sign on Oxford Street that is usually obscured by a combination of building angles and wood hoardings. (It's for W Heslop, about whom I have yet to find any information.) 

The bar looks nice too, but to drink there you have to be a member — applying for membership doesn't come cheap and apparently you have to be vetted by other members before you're accepted. They can keep their boys' club, but I'll still be envious of the views.   
 

The second venue I visited was the Royal Astronomical Society, where we were given an extensive of the building. A very extensive tour: it took two hours, because our guide stopped beside every single portrait and artefact, and proceeded to give us a long-winded explanation as to how it had ended up at the RAS. 

To be honest, I was too knackered to pay much attention, especially as being stuck in a tiny office room with 25 other people isn't my idea of fun, so I missed much of what he was saying, so I spent a large chunk of it sat on the stairs admiring the engraved window.

We did get to see a piece of Isaac Newton's tree, though, and some pretty amazing pre-Galilean books, and a nice lunar globe. 

Two hours is a long time for a tour of a small building, though, even if the tour is peppered with interesting anecdotal tidbits, so I'm not sure that I'd recommend the Royal Astronomical Society at next year's Open House. I'd definitely recommend Centre Point, though.

See more photos from Centre Point and the RAS here. 

Last week I went to a preview of a great exhibition of Hypercomics, which has filled Battersea Park's Pump House Gallery with magical mystery and multi-directional narrative. There are strange deer-like creatures dancing on windows, blood-red masks, choose-your-own-adventure comic strips, and a comical-medical library of London, full of fake books with titles like Interesting Awning Eyelids of the Ritz Hotel And Like Edifices or Cough Cough Cough: Bus Tales.

Each floor of the gallery features a different artist working to tell stories in a completely different way, starting with Warren Pleece's animation on the ground floor, and moving upstairs via Daniel Merlin Goodbrey's multi-directional comic strips, and Dave McKeans multi-media installation, up to Adam Dant's work on the top floor. It's a great demonstration of the many different ways words and imagery can combine to tell a story.

There are also a series of outsize comics panels down in the shelter by the lake, featuring various takes by several artists, on the mythical Battersea Park Free Festival, which may or may not have actually taken place in 1974.

Here are some more photos from the night. First up here's Ed Hillyer, Warren Pleece, Woodrow Phoenix and Etienne Gilfillan on the top floor, looking over Dave McKean's installation. Ed and I ended up having a rather disgusting conversation about gallstones, which was spurred on by some of the titles of the books in Adam Dant's Doctor London installation, including discussing whether or not the removal of a gallstone was what killed Samuel Pepys. (Actually, Pepys had kidney stones, but we got them mixed up, although the conversation so disgusted us that neither of us wanted to pursue it.)

Here's Dave McKean. I was taking this picture for the juxtaposition of the two bottles when I realised he was standing behind his sculpture. (This narrative was a bit of a fiddle to follow!)

Here's Sarah McIntyre looking through one of the windows.

The windows have pictures on them which line up with the trees outside if you stand in the right place.

I'm going to have to go back and give all the stories the time and attention they deserve. Fortunately, I already have plans to go back this Sunday, because it's the day of the summer Comiket, and the list of exhibitors looks fantastic. See you there?

A few days ago, I went to The Complete History of Food, presented by Bompas & Parr. Despite the fact that the title was a bit of a misnomer (there was nothing "complete" about their history, and, given that it was sponsored by a cognac company, it didn't really feel much like a history of food), it was an entertaining and unusual night out with two of my best pals, Nikki and Billy. (Apologies in advance for the poor quality of my photos, but the light was very dim in there, and I only had my phone.)

We started in a dark wood-panelled room, which had the ambience of a gentlemen's club after hours, or perhaps the room where the body was discovered in some Agatha Christie murder mystery. (It was clearly a library, although the bookcases were mostly empty.)

There, a chatty young man gave an introduction on what we could expect to see later. He claimed that he was "The Doctor" (although I didn't spot any bowties or extra-long scarves), and that he would prescribe our first cocktail based on the medieval elements of Humours.

Our "prescriptions" were indicated by coloured stickers stuck on our lanyards and, after a rather cheesy recorded introduction, we were sent off down a darkened staircase to find the next room. At the bottom of the stairs we went through a doorway, only to find ourselves having to jump onto stepping-stones through a flooded basement. "Be careful, there are eels in the water, and they're feeling a bit frisky tonight!" warned our guide for this part, but we made it through the room without incident, and boarded the wooden ship at the other end.

As you might imagine, walking across a flooded room filled with eels to drink in a wooden ship moored in a cellar should be a singular experience, and it certainly was. The ship was very dark, mostly lit by candles, with the sound of waves washing up against the hull. There was a jar of leeches on the bar, and for one brief moment I worried that they might be some bizarre ingredient in our cocktails, but fortunately that was not to be.

The three of us had been given different prescriptions, which gave us an opportunity to try three of the four cocktails on offer. I'd been diagnosed with an excess of phlegm (not far off as it happens; my sinuses are always stuffed up) and my prescription was supposed to boost my yellow bile (lovely). My "Choleric" cocktail was a fruity mix of cognac with rose-water, although I must admit I didn't detect much of the rose flavour as it was overwhelmed by the huge amount of ice in my drink (hmmm… since when did they have ice cubes in medieval London?) and the slightly salty flavour of the rather boring amuse-bouche that came with it — a piece of toast with artichoke and red cabbage. Although it was tasty, it looked and felt more like a party nibble and didn't feel like it had been particularly chosen well to accompany the drink. I was also a bit disappointed with the extremely haphazard way the drink was poured, as the woman standing next to me got twice as much as I or the other chap did (maybe the bartender fancied her).

Having joined the three of us in the middle of a conversation about beards, The Doctor had suggested that Billy was a "chin-stroking melancholic" and should have something to boost his blood. To that end, he was prescribed the "Sanguine" cocktail, a spiced mead, which was nice but sweet, and came accompanied by a teeny portion of fig covered in beetroot sauce.

Ironically, given the fact that Nikki is pregnant and can't drink alcohol, she was prescribed the tastiest cocktail. She told the doctor that she was far too knowledgable about the state of her yellow bile at the moment, so he prescribed a "Phlegmatic" cocktail, which fortunately wasn't made with phlegm, nor did it encourage it. In fact, it was a bloody marvellous combination; a cognac and apricot martini paired with porcini and truffle popcorn. The popcorn was extremely moreish (even though none of us are fans of porcini), and the flavours really complemented each other, with the buttery richness of the truffle lightly cutting the sweetness of the apricot. I was a bit jealous that she'd got a better prescription than me, but soon stopped complaining when she handed me most of the martini to finish after she'd taken one teensy sip (there are benefits of going to cocktail-themed night with a pregnant woman).

I was getting quite relaxed in the dim candlelight, chatting to people I could hardly see as the sound of waves came and went, but we had to move up to the next room, so up we went. Literally. First we piled into a teeny box of a lift, then using the lift as a time machine (which was certainly no TARDIS) we left the medieval spice boat and went up to the roof for a twenty-first century "deconstructed" champagne cocktail and a meaty Rocher, overlooking the London skyline. Although the views across London were great, and the herb-garden covering the bar was pretty, aromatic and practical, in hindsight I wish there'd been something a lot more futuristic at this point. But that's just wishful thinking, because at the time I was too busy admiring the view, discussing herbs with the charming French bartender and gasping in amazement at fizzy grapes to complain about anything.

Unfortunately, besides the fact that it looked exactly like a Ferrero Rocher, I don't remember much about how the Rocher D'or tasted. Obviously it tasted of meat, which was less of a shock than I expected, given how it looked, but I think the problem was that I was so bloody hungry I was actually too hungry to pay enough attention to the flavours. And there were only the teensiest blink-and-you'll-miss-'em singular specks of gold flake on each one, which barely justified their poncey name (not a problem, really, but everyone else's review seems to misleadingly imply that they were smothered in gold, which they weren't).

The cocktail, on the other hand, was a definite talking point. It was a classic champagne cocktail, but made with chardonnay instead of champagne, and with grapes as a garnish. Somehow, as the grapes soaked up the alcohol, the cocktail became paler and flatter, and the grapes got fizzy! Amazing. (Definitely one to try at home, although I suspect there's some secret trick they didn't share with us.)

The view was pretty good, too.

Then we all trooped downstairs again to find ourselves in yet another darkened room, this time with a vintage lampshade barely glowing and a vintage television flickering with vintage adverts. Ostensibly this was a celebration of the mass-production of the 1950s, and we were handed sheets of card and told to enjoy our TV dinners.

Our TV dinners were in fact scratch'n'sniff meals, although to be honest they smelled a bit disgusting. There was some debate between Billy and myself, as I was convinced that the roast chicken in fact smelled of coronation chicken (something that Cook Sister seems to agree on), and the peas smelled of mint toothpaste. Overall, it wasn't very appetising, and even now, days later, the artificial smell still lingers on the cards (which we took home as souvenirs), only now it smells even more disgusting! Fun idea, but not quite a success.

By this point we were wondering where our actual real dinner was and if we would ever get to eat it, but it was time to move onto the next room, down another set of stairs. There was nothing to eat or drink in the next room, the only thing to do was bounce. Or get bounced. Inside the room was a giant inflatable stomach that filled the four walls rather alarmingly, but a brief bounce around was quite good fun. (For anyone concerned about it, the pregnant woman sensibly eschewed this part.)

Then we followed a trail of mushrooms down a corridor, past a couple of rooms with hand-written "no entry" signs pasted up on the doors. One door was open, and the room was filled with junk and equipment. It was a peek behind the scenes, but it slightly spoiled the magic, as did the signs written in biro. The mushrooms reminded me a bit of mushroom tunnels, and looked almost as though Fairyland had gone through some kind of urban development.

At the end of the corridor, and down some stairs filled with flickering images projected onto the walls, we finally came to the dining room for our main course, which was good as by this time Nikki and I were ravenous (although we nearly wandered into the bar by mistake, as it was the first door we saw when we got to the bottom of the stairs). In the dining room we were greeted by a female maitre d' in a pretty dress. Unfortunately, given that this was the room for the grand Victorian banquet, although it was a pretty dress, it wasn't a very Victorian one (more like a noughties version of a sixties version of the twenties). I'd been feeling a bit sad that the staff hadn't been in period costume where possible because I think it would have enhanced the historical aspects of the theme and helped us immerse ourselves in each period to better effect. Probably nobody else noticed or cared, but this was one of those moments where my disappointment was reinforced.

Because the dining room was full, we had to wait a few moments before they could seat us for our own moment of recreating the famous new year banquet inside a Crystal Palace Iguanadon in 1853.

Waiting meant that we actually got to have our dinner seated inside the replica of the Iguanadon at Crystal Palace, rather than at one of the many tables at the edges of the room. Admittedly, in reality it was slightly awkward as I was over-conscious of not wishing to disturb the two women already seated at the other end, and the decor of the table cloth and place setting made me think of some stuffy municipal dinner, rather than anything as fantastical as eating dinner inside a dinosaur. Again, that was probably just me — and might have had something to do with the fact that I only had the back wall to look at, rather than out over the small balcony into the main room, like the other two.

Unfortunately by this time I was so hungry that once again I didn't really pay enough attention to what we were eating, a confit of duck with puy lentils with a black champagne sauce, although — tasty as it was (which was very) — I can't say I really tasted much champagne in it, nor could I work out how they'd made it black. To be honest, the room was so dimly-lit there wasn't much way of telling what colour anything was anyway. The duck was nicely cooked, falling-off-the-bone tender, and the puy lentils were perfect. Sadly, the bread rolls they provided were a disappointment; the fact that our waiter arrived carrying a huge tray piled high with them only reinforced my mental notion that they'd been bought in bulk from a supermarket, which undermined the feeling of "decadence" that the chefs claimed to be aiming for in this room (at least, according to the programme).

The cocktail at this juncture was a bit disappointing too; a summer punch made with cognac, green tea, apple juice and elderflower. Much like my first cocktail, it seemed to have far more ice than necessary (if you must insist on ice, then one or two cubes is much better than five or six, especially in short glasses), and its light fruitiness didn't complement the meal as well as a glass of wine or something with more body would have done (I also would have liked the option of a glass of water at this point, and I'm sure Nikki would have as well!). However, it was quite refreshing as a digestif at the end of the course, and would probably work very well on a hot summer's day eating cucumber sandwiches and strawberries-and-cream. Of course, it wasn't really a digestif because it wasn't really the end of the meal, and there was one more course to go: the Renaissance Dessert.

I was quite surprised on entering the dessert room to discover that there was first an anteroom showcasing the gingerbread Gherkin from the Parliamentary Waffle House (which I sadly didn't get to visit, because I always passed when I had a full stomach). As impressive as it sounds on paper, it was — again — too dark in the room to really see it properly, and it was hardly the reason we were here. In fact, other than as an excuse to show off what they can do, I have no idea why it was even there: it's not like any of us got to taste it, and it wasn't even appropriate to the Renaissance Period anyway.

Although, to be honest, the rest of the dessert room wasn't really very Renaissance, either, as it was being soundtracked by cheesy 1980s pop music and it was full of pink frilly curtains that wouldn't have looked out of place on an 1980s soap opera. (I wanted to compare it to Barbara Cartland's boudoir, but another blogger already beat me to it, so I won't, in case I'm accused of copycatting. You get the idea, though.) Behind all the pink frippery was a giant cake turntable, with dishes laid out on it for us to take (here's a 5 second video).

This dessert was one of the highlights of the evening: an iris jelly with candied orange, ambergris posset and one perfect raspberry. The jelly had the colour and shape of a really good creme caramel, so the light, slightly citrussy flavour came as a (pleasant) surprise. The texture of the jelly was wonderful, too, firm but yielding, and it was complemented very well by the sweet dollop of creamy sauce on the plate.

The sauce provided one of the funnier moments of the evening, as there were people already tucking into their dish when the food guide started telling us what had gone into it. "Does anyone know what ambergris is?" she asked, to a responding chorus of "yeahs" from our corner (hey, we're nerds, we admit it). The look of slight shock and horror on some peoples' faces when she explained it was regurgitated by whales was mildly amusing, because I bet those same people eat honey without ever wondering or worrying where it comes from, even though it's regurgitated by bees. Billy muttered something about how expensive ambergris is, which prompted me to ask whether it had been gathered ethically. The guide was quick to reassure me that no whales had been killed in the collection of the ambergris, but I was no closer to finding out how it was (or is) sourced (but that's what Wikipedia is for). However, it was one of the only moments of the evening where people were confronted with the idea of where their food had come from, and I liked that it got them thinking and talking. I wish there'd been a few more moments like that, really, especially from an event marketed as The Complete History of Food.

Amongst the pretty pastel-coloured frou-frou frills and sugared ornaments, there was a funny little technical gizmo which provided much amusement. This was basically a table fitted with a heart monitor. You could stick your finger in the hole and make the table vibrate, and of course there was a plate of jelly on top of the table to wobble with as much thrust as you could muster. Sadly, because I have short, stumpy fingers, I couldn't even reach the sensor properly, so I couldn't manage much in the way of thrust, but Billy did better — here's a video.

And after that, dinner was sadly at an end, so we popped into the bar to prolong it a while longer. Unfortunately, after ending on such a fun note, the bar was something of a disappointment, especially for Nikki. There was only a choice of two cocktails: a pre-mixed Parisian Rendezvous punch, or a rather boozy cognac Sidecar. It's a real shame that the Parisian Rendezvous had been pre-mixed, because without the alcohol it would have made a very refreshing drink, and even though the evening was sponsored by an alcohol company, I think it's poor service not to provide an alcohol-free option, especially as they had the drinkaware website brashly emblazoned on our lanyards.

And this brings me back to my main problem with the night: it was misnamed. As a History of Food it wasn't really a great success, no History of Food would forget to mention potatoes, or honey, or fish (although there were eels in the water, there were none in the food, and the ambergris doesn't count because whales are mammals), or rice, or bananas, or cheese (I've just realised there was no cheese! How can you have a food event without cheese?) Instead, what they gave us was a very entertaining cocktail party with some food attached. Often, it felt a bit like the spectacle was the most important part of the night — especially the scratch'n'sniff dinner, or the inflatable stomach — and that was fine, but it meant that we sacrificed sating our appetite at the expense of sating our other senses, which is not really what we were there for. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound like I didn't have a great time, because I really did enjoy myself. It's more that the down notes of the evening dragged the high parts down as well, so that the overall good feeling at the end of the dinner was somewhat spoiled by the rather lacklustre experience in the bar afterwards (and to add insult to injury, we had to pay extra for that bit, which none of the reviews mention).

I'm still glad I went, and I did enjoy myself a great deal. After all, it's not every day you can drink cocktails in the bowels of a wooden ship in a flooded cellar, or nibble gold leaf and fizzy grapes in a herb-covered roof garden, or experience a scratch'n'sniff TV dinner, or jump around inside an inflatable stomach, or walk along a corridor that's been colonised by mushrooms, or dine on duck inside a dinosaur, or eat whale vomit and iris jelly, or wobble a plate by the power of your pulse alone. And I'm very grateful I got to do all of those things, because they all add up to a wonderfully eccentric evening of fun times with two of my best friends. And frankly, experiences like that are worth a little disappointment in less important areas.

Other reviews (and much better pictures) from:
Eat Like A Girl | Gourmet Chick | Fernandez & Leluu | Londonist | Cook Sister | the Telegraph | Domestic Sluttery { Crafts' Council | London Eater | The English Can Eat | Caroline's Miscellany