I go to the Natural History Museum a lot. From the age of about 18 I’ve been interested in zoology and have spent a lot of my free time learning about evolution and reading scientific tomes about animals. London has some excellent museums for learning about animals and the Natural History Museum is by far the biggest.
One of my favourite things about the Natural History Museum is their diverse program of events. Like all big museums there is a “Lates” event once a month and the usual half term activities for kids, but the Natural History museum also has lectures, conference days and amazing evenings such as the Dino Snores (literally my dream event) and the Night Safari series which is a unique opportunity to learn from scientists working in the field. I highly recommend their Spirit Collection tours as well which run every day. For an interested amateur like me it’s an incredible place to be able to go and learn!
Some of my favourite exhibits are the prehistoric animals (such as the wooly rhinoceros!) and the geology wing – you have to pass through the giant revolving world to access it. I also absolutely love the large mammals hall (although it’s depressing to think about the majority of those animals being endangered) and obviously I’m a big fan of dodos, the national bird of Mauritius (my homeland). The whole museum itself is covered in carvings of animals and plants so even if you’re wandering between halls there’s something to see. It’s just a brilliant place to spend a day!
Happy birthday to me! I absolutely love birthdays! Parties, presents, being the centre of attention and getting older; I love it all. My Mum made me some gluten-free granola and some vegan peanut butter snaps which was the best start to the day and also got me such a gorgeous card. My Dad paid for my car to get serviced which was my main present but also loaned me his amazing Canon camera for the day for all these photos! On my actual birthday I met some of my best friends and we spent the day at the Natural History Museum before going to the pub. I wrote a song about dugongs last year hence all the photos with the dugongs!
I also went out the week before with all my friends and was honoured that the lovely Jess from Jessthetics could come too! It was such a fun (and particularly bleary) night and it felt like Jess had been part of our gang for ages. I felt very loved by the amount of birthday gestures I received this year; flowers (in the photos!) and cake from the charity shop, more flowers and cake from my theatre group, cake and wine from work, homemade vegan birthday cake from Jess, cuddly wolves, polkadot dresses, posh glittery things, LUSH goodies and headdresses from my friends and an animal safari t-shirt (!!!!!!) (amongst other things) from James.
It sounds cheesy but the nice thing about growing older is having people to grow older with! I don’t have much family or many friends from childhood so it’s fairly recently I’ve been able to appreciate how wonderful it is having close friends who you’ve known through multiple stages of your life. Pete (the tall ginger one) for example has been at every single birthday I’ve had since we met and we’ve gone from being two awkward teens to being two successful musicians running creative businesses (although still awkward every now and then!). I’m very grateful to grow up surrounded by inspiring and brilliant people every day and so lucky to call them my friends. :)
TAPE PARADE 