Gone to the polls/BILLY BRAGG/WELLCOME COLLECTION

OK, I started writing about the upcoming election.
There were personal anecdotes, some relevant links to news articles and witty observations about Tony Abbott.

However, while 'researching' (because I only deliver to you quality, and if you make it through the babble you may note that sometimes there is some good stuff in there, too) I came across something much more exciting!

Earlier this year Billy Bragg was involved in the production and performance of a play called Pressure Drop. I am bummed I missed it because I think Billy Bragg is one of the most spot-on people on the planet, and if I were English I would definitely have moved to Barking just so I could hang around the streets Billy hung around. From watching the short interview with the director Mick Gordon and Billy Bragg on Billy's website I gather it was about self identity and what it means to be British. Political, social, historical, all things deep and meaningful.
That is cool.
But I missed it, so not so cool.

However, the play was held at the Wellcome Collection in London.
That IS cool!
Before I left the UK I tripped down to London for a few days (as you know, faithful reader, from previous blog entries). I was hours from my train ride back up to Glasgae and it was raining and I was carrying my laptop and back pack and it was all very uncomfortable so I spent as long as I could inside museums where they look after your bags in cloak rooms and don't charge you like they did at my horrorhostel. I picked up a brochure somewhere for the Wellcome Collection's free and new exhibition 'Skin'. So I made the Wellcome Collection my last stop before the station and had a look around. Skin was less about tattooed bodies, as the image on the front of the brochure lead me to believe, and more about skin. Funny that. Diseases, functions, scarring and tattoos, microphotography, implements for 'doing things' to skin, wax castings of skin bits used hundreds of years ago as medical aids. It was a bit unnerving to see some of the pieces in the exhibit but also very cool to have all those things there at once. Since it wasn't train time and I still wasn't ready to carry my things around I wandered upstairs to the permanent exhibition Medicine Man. The collection was formed from the private stash of Mr. Wellcome's bizzare shite. It was fantastic! He had collected all sorts of odd artefacts connected loosely with medicine. Glass cabinets 10s of metres long filled with different style forceps, rows of chemists' porcelain containers, Napoleon's shaving set, Darwin's walking stick, Florence Nightingale's moccasins, Chinese sex toys... Totally odd and randomly wonderful!

So that is that. I just wanted to alert you to the fact the Wellcome Collection is rad- it is a gallery, a performance space, there's a library if you need to brush up on your medical knowledge (studying surgical procedures from the 1750s? No worries!) and a very nice cafe and rad little shop. I went there because it was free and I needed to leave my bags somewhere safe. And I ended up really enjoying it. It wasn't on the list of London Galleries I picked up from tourist info. The Wellcome Collection is somewhere between Euston and King's Cross stations.
You should go there and enjoy it too.
And say Hi to Billy Bragg when you next see him...