Jake's Journal

By jakethreadgould

An overdue visit to a place I?d never been before

Considering how much I absolutely love natural history museums, I can't believe the first time I visited the one St Andrews was in my final year.

It is maybe because it is so thoroughly tucked away: off a street, off a quad, in a warren of laboratories. Fiona had tipped me off about it, yet in my endeavour to find it I first had to get lost in the network of corridors. It was only after 5 minutes of confident walking (no-one questions a confident walker) that a guy in a white lab coat asked me what I was doing, having noticed that I definitely didn't have the mental capacity to be dawdling around the Neuroscience labs.

The museum was lined with badly stuffed animals, grimacing through their tightly stretched faces with an eerie happiness. No doubt they were pleased to be bludgeoned to a pulp and re-animated by the kind colonial chaps in hats.

Nonetheless, I always like the atmosphere in these curated morgues. I spent many a weekend in the Natural History Museum in Edinburgh drawing the elephants in the main hall as a child. There is no pressure of time when you are studying in suspended animation.

With my creativity slowly evaporating in this over-familiar town, what better opportunity for a photo than the artist sketching the anteater.

Find her stuff here !

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