Trooping The Colour: Chinooks, Wes Anderson & Goth Pizza

 

I started off my airshow season on a beautiful summer's day in London for the annual Trooping The Colour flypast. Unlike most years I had company with my lovely and long-suffering friend Hilary joining me to celebrate our passions for Chinooks & day drinking!

On the train

Arriving into London

After being distracted by the cute stationary shop in Victoria Station we headed down to The Mall to watch the flypast.

And to take the most epic selfie ever with the Chinooks!

Clearly the coolest people on The Mall

Hilary patiently endured the next 10 minutes of my autistic info-dumping of the aircraft that were flying over us. 

The aforementioned Chinooks

Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight Dakota

Phenom & Texans

 

Voyager & Typhoons

Globemaster

A400M

Rivet Joint

Poseidon

Typhoons

Red Arrows & F35s

I like how the F35s are framed by the Red's smoke

After a pit stop at the Eros statue to eat our Tesco salad bowls (lunch of kings) we went across to the Design Museum for their Wes Anderson exhibition. We're both fans of his quirky but charming films and it was really cool to see props, costumes & his drawings. 

Costumes from The Royal Tenenbaums

Costumes from Moonrise Kingdom

Stop motion puppets from Fantastic Mr Fox

My favourite Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel

We had a walk through the lovely Holland Park before heading to Camden.

There's a vampire-themed pizza restaurant in Camden called Lost Souls Pizza that I've been dying to try (pun fully intended) for ages now and it didn't disappoint!

It's decorated with loads of cool horror-movie posters and artwork. 

Clearly my room needs this

I fit into the aesthetic very well 

The pizzas were even black!

An accidental sub-theme of the day was my managing to match all my drinks to my eye-makeup

Our next stop was the decor polar-opposite of Lost Souls Mr Fogg's Botanical Tavern. There are loads of different Mr Fogg's locations across London (Vana and I went to the 'Antique Emporium last year) and it's my goal to visit all of them. 

So pretty

Not quite so pretty 😅

It was another decor 180 when we went down to the next door Hidden Society cocktail bar which had cosy 'old library' vibes.

I feel low-lighting is far fairer on everyone around me

They had a crazy cocktail menu inspired by works of art which lead to Hilary having a tomato soup flavoured cocktail inspired by Andy Warhol's soup can paintings. 

As the day drew to a close it was time to head home and leave London to it's beautiful sunset. 

Thank you so much to Hilary for putting up with me for a whole day!

Now we're into the airshow season I have 2 in a row with Headcorn this weekend and Duxford's Summer Airshow next weekend. Naturally there will be aviation related spam, sorry content to follow.

Love Jen

XxxX

A Strange & Unusual Day Out In London

 

My year of Jen-themed exhibitions has continued! Hot on the heels of last month's trip to the Emo exhibition (blog here) Vana and I went up to London to visit the Design Museum's World Of Tim Burton exhibition. 

A traditional train selfie

Being autistic at Gatwick (since you asked it's a 737 Max 8)

Battersea Power Station

When we arrived at Victoria we went to a Japanese Pancake cafe that Vana had found on Instagram.

It was super busy but luckily we'd booked. 

Vana always takes me to the pinkest places ......

After I managed to get us lost twice on the tube we finally got to the Design Museum.

The exhibition was absolutely fantastic and was like walking into my dream Halloween. I'd forgotten how many projects that Tim Burton was involved in, it ranged from his early sketches right up until recent work like Wednesday. I love so many of his films - Nightmare Before Christmas, Alice In Wonderland, the Beetlejuice films and his aesthetic in general ( I even have a Tim Burton inspired striped wall in my room - flashback to my decorating blog).

Corpse Bride models

Frankenweenie Pet Cemetery

Mars Attacks 😂

My favourite items were the Nightmare Before Christmas models -

Initial Alice In Wonderland sketches

Alice's dress she wore to fight the Jabberwocky

Edward Scissorhands sketches and hands -

Posing with costumes from Wednesday

This corridor was so fun to walk along -

Obviously I used my Beetlejuice bag

After we finished at the exhibition we went off for an explore; starting off in a soggy Chinatown -

After a visit to the Japan Centre we stopped off at Watkins Books which sells lots of witchy books and tarot cards. I've been wanting to visit for ages and wasn't disappointed. 

Their carpet is so cool (Thoth the Egyptian god of knowledge)

I resisted the urge to add this to my deck collection ....

The basement is huge with so many interesting looking books which I feel warrants a further visit when I'm back in London next month. Whilst we were in Covent Garden we came across the London branch of Artbox (the company that run our beloved Hello Kitty cafe in Brighton). 

So cute

We wanted to visit a couple of the bars that Hilary took me to when we were in London last month so we hopped on the tube, giving me the chance to act all of my (almost) 38 years ......

We started off in The Mayor Of Scaredy Cat Town and I manged to order a candyfloss cocktail!

Vana's looked a lot more sensible!

We carried on to the London Cocktail Club where I managed to end up with another accidental sweetie cocktail when, much to my surprise, the barman handed me my drink which included custard creams 😂

That rounded off an absolutely fantastic day in London, thank you to Vana for coming with me. I'm back up in London next month to see Delilah Bon which will probably include a sneaky trip to Treadwells along with my planned return to Watkins. 

Love Jen

XxxX