Ozone Coffee and V&A Museum of Childhood

Today I want to share a lovely day Alex and I spent meandering around east London a while back. The day started as every day should: with a hearty brunch at Ozone Coffee Roasters, a very cool little joint just off Old Street that I would definitely choose as my regular if I lived on Silicon Roundabout.

We went for the usual suspects - a flat white for him, a wonderfully smooth chai latte for me. 

As usual, I ordered with eyes bigger than my stomach and was presented with cassoulet baked eggs with beans, confit duck, Toulouse sausage, pork belly and gremolata - and toasted sourdough. It was delicious, but as you can imagine, incredibly heavy; I barely scratched the surface.

Alex went for pork belly eggs benedict on winter bubble 'n' squeak cakes with hollandaise, with a side of avocado. It was a mistake for him to let me have a forkful: serious food envy waves emanated across the table from that moment on.

All fuelled up and ready for a bit of culture, we walked across town to Bethnal Green to rediscover the toys that shaped our lives at....

Though the V&A Museum of Childhood may be linked in name with the Victoria & Albert Museum, it's an entirely different beast. The V&A is all marble floors and chandeliers, gilded objets d'art, housed in a jawdropping mid-19th century building in swanky South Kensington that boasts its own courtyard and modern fountain. The Museum of Childhood, meanwhile, is dedicated to toys - objects that have been pawed and loved by countless generations of children, crowded into cabinets in a slightly hodge-podge manner and identifiable by paper labels printed out on Word. It's pretty obvious that it doesn't have the funding of its sister (parent?) museum. Yet the place has a certain charm, and the building, an airy 19th-century hangar, is really lovely.

The museum's mission statement is "To enable everyone, especially the young, to explore and enjoy the designed world, in particular objects made for and made by children". Although the last time I visited was probably over a decade and a half ago, I still have good memories of its exhibits - so on a personal level, I think the museum succeeds in this respect!

Alex had to endure my yelps of excitement as I ran around the museum, occasionally spotting toys I'd played with as a child. I was always very jealous of friends who had robot dogs or cats - does anyone else remember the Poo-chi?

The Museum has an amazing collection of dolls' houses. The second one down was designed in the Arts & Crafts style in the late 19th century and later bought and carefully decorated by Queen Mary. The houses all brought back memories of visiting a quaint little shop dedicated to dolls' house furniture and bits and bobs in Camden to furnish the Georgian dolls' house Bri got for Christmas one year.

There's a few slightly creepy objects in the Museum - as well as a fascinating insight into Victorian psyche, in which children were treated like little adults. And interestingly, to this day, we continue to sometimes give small children toys that prepare them for adult life - like plastic stoves, little replica hoovers, tea sets, dolls' houses to furnish, toy microscopes and so on.

I remembered this little guy from the early days of my childhood, trailing along behind my little sister. 

Playtime at an end, it was time to pay attention to our bellies (yes, again). And what better childhood treat to indulge in than doughnuts? Alex and I stopped off at Dum Dum outside Shoreditch High Street to grab a couple of these bad boys for the train ride home. Baked rather than fried, they didn't feel too naughty - just the ticket.

I hope you enjoyed this post - it's always nice to get back in touch with one's inner child and remember how important it is to relax and allow yourself to have a little fun in your life. I know I'm pretty tempted to pick up my old GameBoy Colour now and reacquaint myself with my Pokémon dream team, I don't know about you...

And lastly, I just wanted to say thank you all for bearing with me over the past few weeks - it's been a heartbreaking time and those of you who follow me on Instagram may know that this is down to the fact that I lost my granny at the end of May. I'm sure I'll be back to blogging on a more regular basis soon but hopefully you'll understand if it continues to be a bit quiet around here.

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Catch-Up Time

Wow...it's been three months since my last catch-up post! Since then, spring has come and is now on its way out, replaced by capricious conditions that fluctuate between sweaty high summer and the chill of late autumn. My months have been similarly affected by whimsy, characterised by a marked lack of time but strangely, more socialising than I've done since graduation. I've really been loving building on old friendships as well as seeing new ones flourish. Spring feels like it has brought with it a new beginning - and a fresh sense of resolve. 

Over the past three months, I've been...

...welcoming in spring all over London, and revelling in the blossoms of April and May. Cliché, yes, but it's been genuinely exciting for me this time because I haven't managed to fully enjoy spring for about six years! It's always signalled exams to me, and the need to shut myself up in the nearest library to revise - so this year has felt liberating.

...finally trying out The Breakfast Club in Shoreditch for the first time. It was a mixed experience - I was a bit mopey about the fact that my chorizo hash browns didn't actually feature the crispy triangular hash browns that I love so much (seriously - I've had a borderline obsession with them since childhood) but rather fried potatoes. On the other hand, this spicy eggs benedict was basically created for Alex and he polished it off at the speed of light.

...continuing my career quest. Now that we're in May it's nearly crunch time for applications, and I have to admit that the stress is getting to me. Currently trying to keep my head up and do my best to learn as much about the profession as I can before the deadlines.

...baking chocolate chip cookies with Inez, which turned out to actually be quite yummy despite a host of near-disasters, like having no scales to measure our ingredients with (!) 

...returning to Honest Burgers, my favourite burger joint, to try out their Brindisa special - filled with succulent chorizo and soft manchego. Seriously so yummy!

...exploring sections of the V&A previously unknown to me, like the amazingly extensive ironwork gallery. I'll be back here at the end of this month to see Savage Beauty. I've been trying to avoid all the reviews from fellow bloggers since I want to view the exhibition with fresh eyes, but suffice to say - I am so excited to see it!

...trying out afternoon tea at the Magazine, housed in the amazing structure designed by Zaha Hadid that's connected to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. Everything about this place screams beauty, from the sinuous curves of the architecture to the painstakingly crafted bites, but unfortunately the general atmosphere didn't wow me. Perhaps this was because the selection is supposed to be based on 'wellness' (and I'm a glutton who'd prefer an array of creamy cakes), and perhaps because the service, like the interior of the building, seemed a little cold and detached. 

...finally meeting up with the lovely and intimidatingly bright Lisa. We went to see Isao Takahata's last Ghibli offering, Princess Kaguya, which was unsettlingly gorgeous and heartbreaking (no spoilers, but certain elements of the plot caused us to bawl our eyes out...) Post-movie, we went for a suitably Japanese dinner at Ippudo, drowning our sorrows in generous bowls of ramen and cocktails. My Midori-based drink complete with mountain plum was so good! And how cool is that bar base of instant ramen?

...basically asking for a hangover by attending a fun tequila tasting and masterclass, courtesy of Herradura at LAB! I used to attend cocktail masterclasses at the Cambridge Union back in the day, but my mixology skills are seriously rusty so I didn't even dare attempt to help with the cocktail-making! Perhaps next time I'll be braver...

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The Horniman Museum

All you naughty children sniggering over the Horniman Museum's name at the back there, quieten down now. It's a seriously awesome museum, and one of my favourite spots in London. Best of all, general admission is completely free. I decided to visit on my own a couple of weeks ago, fleeing up the hill to escape pelting, icy rain. I'm no stranger to the HM, but this didn't matter to me at all. I think there's something so special about wandering around a museum alone, unimpeded by other people's opinions or walking paces. Yup - it was time to get my inner museology geek on.

The Horniman is a bit of a crazy place - in a good way. There's several galleries featuring anthropological exhibits - there was an exhibition about Romanian dress and identity when I visited, as well as a room holding pretty much every musical instrument you can think of. But my favourite is a cabinet of curiosities-style gallery in the basement. It's dark and atmospheric, rarely populated by other visitors, and absolutely full to the rafters of random artefacts from all over the world - reminiscent of Cambridge's Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. There's everything in here from sculptures of avenging Hindu deities to Alpine masks, fishing hooks and torture chairs.

But the real reason to visit the HM is for its amazing natural history gallery. Rivalling the Natural History Museum in the amount of taxidermied and model specimens it possesses, it's definitely a lot quainter and less crowded than the NHM, making it a joy to wander from cabinet to cabinet in peace.

I loved the handwritten caption on the Callides Grandes, top left. It really conjures up the time and place where it was found. I can just imagine how happy Mr. Horniman would have been when he chanced upon it innocently crawling along the leaf of a tea plant on a trip to Kobe at the end of the 19th century.

I remembered this little guy from my last visit - probably because his cheeky grin and tufty spikes remind me of Alex! 

Seeing the skeletons of other primates always strikes a chord with me - we really are so closely related.

The most famous animal in here is the majestic walrus, who's lived here for over a century - give or take the odd tour or renovation. He's absolutely gigantic because the taxidermist overstuffed him, not knowing that walruses are meant to be wrinkly...

This gametes chart took me straight back to GCSE Biology.

The Horniman also has an amazing collection of birds from all over the world. My favourite sections include an incredible sequence of pigeons at various stages of flight and, best of all, the exotic birds collection.

The tiny sunbird.

A kingfisher (Malaysia represent!) 

The long-tailed, brightly-coloured quetzal from Central America.

I thought the iridescent plumage on the golden-headed trogon was especially fascinating, and very beautiful.

From the top...

...and from the bottom. 

After the needle-like rain had eased off I took a stroll around the museum grounds.

At the top of the hill there's the most amazing view stretching all the way to the City.

I sat on the crest of the hill admiring the view from the bandstand for a while and trying not to get blown off my bench by the relentlessly buffeting winds. 

The Horniman is absolutely worth the trek down to the southern reaches of Forest Hill! You'll definitely learn a thing or two in the amazing museum, and on a warmer day it's a perfect place to have a picnic. If you spent your childhood delving into Horrible Science and thought that the NHM was heaven on earth, this'll make a perfect day trip for you.

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