Dilemma, Anaesthesia Heritage Centre, Grant Museum, Cheer Fit

[slemslempike]

On Sunday I went to see a non-broadcast pilot of Dilemma, a Radio 4 panel show hosted by Sue Perkins. The premise is that the guests are presented with various moral dilemmas to answer. The guests for this were Robin Ince, Emma Kennedy, Shappi Khorsandi and Ben Goldacre (who seemed to have deliberately styled himself on Milton Jones, to the extent that I thought that's who it was when he came out).

The show was pretty good - Emma Kennedy was incredibly annoying, and they had to ditch one of the rounds (when the panellists brought up their personal real-life dilemmas) because she kept getting off the topic and swearing. Also telling that anecdote about John Travolta and the look-alike - Sue Perkins: "What part of that did you think we could use?" Also came across as a bit dim, and not in an amusing way. Robin Ince was pretty good, though, and Shappi Khorsandi ("you've just bought the house of your dreams, and then they come along and put up a plaque saying "Nick Griffin lived here, do you move?" "oh, I rather think not!") was lovely. She refused to not see her son for ten years after he turned eighteen because those would be the peak years for her being able to perve on his friends. Ben Goldacre was much the same as he always is.

On Tuesday morning I went off to the Anaesthesia Heritage Centre in Portland Place. It's in the basement of the Association of Anaesthestists of Great Britain and Ireland, and the gate was closed to the stairs when I went, so I had to go in the very grand entrance where a woman was taking people's coats (not mine). The curator wasn't there yet, so I got to wait in their very swish sitting room for a bit, and look at the cabinet of spinal things. This is probably a good place to say that I really, really do not recommend this museum for people who are at all squeamish about needles.

There were early masks for administering inhaled ether, including one that could fold flat to carry around in a top hat. They looked a bit grim. There were drawers full of tubes and needles and syringes and connectors, and bits about the development of it all. I liked a set of index cards with holes punched around the edges. The holes corresponded to different observations of patients, and could be opened at the top to just be a slot. Then they could be easily sorted by lining them up, putting a knitting needle through the holes and removing the ones that were whole.

One of the 1940s aneasthetists was also interested in life jackets, and there was a silent film showing demonstrations where they had anaesthetised a man in clothes, put him in a life jacket (with breathing apparatus) and filmed him bobbing around, mostly face down, in the sea. Occasionally a man in a comical swimming costume came and dragged him out.

In the afternoon I met tiniago in Waterstones. I had been reading one of the Malory Towers sequels while I waited for her, so we spent some time exclaiming indignantly over the Blyton sequels in the children's section. They've RENUMBERED the St Clare's books to pretend that the new books are part of the actual series! IMAGINE. Though I shall be going to the library in order to read them, I mean how awesome does this cover look?

Afterwards we went to the Grant Museum of Zoology in UCL. This has bounced right up to the top of my favourite museums. It is all one room, stuffed with display cabinets filled with specimens. As soon as you come in, there's a walrus penis bone on the left. There are jars of whale foetuses, and a shelf of brains, and loads of skeletons of various things. There were creepy things, like a jar full of baby moles in formaldehyde, and then some dinosaur bits, and a mammoth tusk, and an anaconda skeleton, and a snake version of a uterus/fallopian tube with sacs inside where you could see tiny tiny snake foetuses inside. There were skulls from elephants, hippopotami, various simian beasts and just brilliantly unidentifiable things in bottles. I got slightly confused when looking at a bat and thought that things could be categorised as either monkeys or birds.Some of the specimens had labels on saying who they'd been adopted by. When I have money I shall become a friend and adopt something wonderful. Apparently one of the volunteers adopted a hagfish and makes all his friends come in and see it.

We went to look at Jeremy Bentham in his case, and find out who exactly he was. Egotistical, though with some good points, apparently. And he invented the words "international" and "codification", and something else that I can't remember. I like his book title Nonsense on Stilts. Then the UCL print room was open with a small show of photos and older drawings about the old model of art training, drawing a life model in a studio with you all sitting round. There was a box with little magnifying glasses for you to borrow and look at the detail of the more busy drawings, so we did that and mostly I tried to magnify the genitals of the models in the pictures.

In the evening I went to Cheer Fit class with cellador. This was BRILLIANT, once we had navigated past the grumpily unhelpful man at the desk. I was a bit nervous to start with because the other people seemed like they might be proper cheerleady types in their clothes, but they were nice and friendly (by which I mean they laughed at my occasional sallies) and every time I went to get a mat or pompoms someone would hand you something. I learnt an Important Lesson about judging people that day.

The class leader is a professional cheerleader and she was lovely, chirpy and bouncy and helpful without being too draconian (except at the end). We started out doing some cheerish warmups to Chesney Hawkes (the actual CD had been forgotten so we'd borrowed from body blasters or something), then we learnt a whole routine! WITH POMPOMS. This was to B*witched's "C'est la Vie", only there wasn't a CD with it on, so we did it to the accompaniment of someone's phone.

Carrie and I were the only new people in the class, so we learnt the routine from scratch, and while we weren't perfect, we were pretty good! It starts off with waving to the crowd, some sort of skippy things, waving your arms around, pivoting, shaking side to side and continues through arm movements. It was a lot of fun. Without the pompoms it would have been just quite dull movements, but with them it became pure brilliance. I was pleased that I had kept up with the class, because I don't think that I'm very fit, but it didn't seem to be too bad. Until the end, that is, when we had to lie down and do crunches and pulse, and then balance on our forearms and generally hurt ourselves.

There was a young man there from a student paper to take photos and do an article, and Carrie and I were a bit dubious about it, as we didn't really think we needed an audience for our debut/potential debacle. But I was very impressed, because he joined in with the whole class, and gamely shook his pompoms and learned the routine. OH I nearly forgot, the teacher had brought along legwarmers for people to wear, so I got to wear bright pink fluffy things on my legs and look awesome. If I end up in London I am totally taking up Cheer Fit.

Comments

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

OMG this is something I had completely forgotten! My mother once had a job as a punch card operator; I think it would have been in the early sixties. One summer I earned myself some pocket money by inputting data. I must have been very young, good job nobody knew. I've even found a picture of the thing. Good grief.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Gosh! Did you enjoy the job, or was it rather dull?

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

ISTR it was rather tedious and took concentration but I did it at home and made some money so I didn't complain. I feel like a dinosaur. I truly had completely forgotten about it until I read your post!

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Oh good grief! I remember my father using those cards. The only punching machine I ever used, though, was an electric one, with a keyboard. I'd gone into work with my father, for some reason, and he sat me at the machine to keep me occupied. I loved it.