FOR MANY of Reading s residents, the pandemic has not just stopped people from meeting up - it has caused a seismic shift to the way religious faith is expressed and felt by all members of the community. But it would be false to say it has impacted everyone equally - some communities have been able to make worship work, with the help of technology and using the limited time available to worship in unity. Some communities however, due to the nature of worship, the age of members or otherwise, have had limited successes. Changes to everyday life have seen a rise in interest in religious practice of all forms, and a desire for community among the general public.
Mother’s Day is just around the corner and if you’re tired of getting your mom the same old flowers and candy, you can make this a Mother’s Day to remember by presenting her with a unicorn skull. Or maybe she’d like a bone from a dodo bird. How about a stuffed bat with two heads, a stuffed winged kitten, or the world’s largest bean pod? All of those and many, many more strange items are up for auction right now as Viktor Wynd, the owner of Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Unnatural History, has been forced by the business downturn caused by the pandemic to sell off some of his ‘treasures’. Would Mom like a pair of Victorian knickers worn by the actual Queen Victoria herself?
Viktor Wynd is blissfully disinterested in NFTs. I m sitting in a shed in rural England working in porcelain and bronze as people have done for thousands of years, and I don t like looking at screens so..I m not actually sure what an NFT is, other than it has nothing to do with me and I don t know what I d do with one.
Wynd is, by his own definition, a pataphysicist, writer, curator, collector, dealer, dilettante, naturalist and antiquarian . Alongside organising extravagant parties such as masked balls and halloween parties under The Last Tuesday Society, Wynd has quite the strangest museum in London The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, a tiny institution on Mare Street in Hackney that is full to the gunnels with everything from McDonald s Happy Meal Toys to dodo bones, old master etchings to taxidermied two-headed kittens (not the place to go on a hangover).
The new faces of absinthe
As London gets its first absinthe distillery, Millie Milliken arms herself with an absinthe spoon and discovers the elixirs that are giving the spirit a new lease of life, and why the category might just surprise you.
Among my taxidermy collection are a mouse with a Jacobean collar (Blackadder), a Victorian menagerie of hummingbirds (The Jackson Five) and a sleeping mouse (Cheese). None of them, however, come close to the specimens that inhabit absinthe parlour, The Last Tuesday Society, in Hackney. One of my last visits to the curio-stuffed absinthe bar saw me take a perch next to a stuffed lion called Leonora (see header) sitting upright and wearing a red top hat. Directors Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett sure know how to do whimsy.
Visit London s first ever absinthe distillery
The Devil’s Botany Distillery is the brainchild of two devoted “absintheurs” – owners of The Last Tuesday Society, the Hackney bar famous for its taxidermy collection and absinthe-based cocktails including “The Naughty Nun” and “Magik & Medicine”.
“Devil’s Botany London Absinthe honours the traditions mastered by the historic absinthe distillers of Switzerland’s Val-de-Travers while introducing a new style of absinthe that is quintessentially British,” says co-founder Allison Crawbuck, originally from Brooklyn. “It is the long-lost cousin to gin and we make it with botanicals gathered from the Hackney marshes and around Walthamstow.”
Head distiller Rhys Everett says: “The distinctively bitter almost chocolatey notes of grand wormwood are sweetened by the warm spice of green anise and the very present fennel, creating a strong yet wonderfully balanced holy trinity at its base. Grounded by