Hold the snide.

I feel this blog has got a little sneery lately, so here's something I saw in Edinburgh that I really liked. It made me both smile and admire everyone involved - the person who wrote it, and the people who did what they did when they read it. Click for a bigger version, if it's too small to read. 

King of the Swingers.

Here is the sign to a museum I visited:

I find it hard to imagine anyone who could resist following that sign. Perhaps you, too, would like to encounter Raja the Tusker? Very well. 

There he is. And not looking too bad, is he, considering he died in 1989? Say what you like about Sri Lankan taxidermists, but they don't shirk a challenge. Raja, it turns out, was not only a tusker, but also a Royal Elephant - and indeed a replacement Royal Elephant has not yet been found, twenty one years later. 'And how does one become a Royal Elephant?' I hear you cry, perhaps wondering if your own elephant might be a candidate for the job. Well, apparently (though I haven't managed to find anything confirming this on the internet) the qualifications are: fully developed tusks, a certain size and height, and the ability, when standing at rest, to touch the ground with all your toes; your trunk; your tail, and one other thing. 

Good grief, Raja. Well done. 

Renowned as a LOVELY and TEA-thirsty SUPER GUY, during his reign of NICENESS he CUDDLED thousands.

Right, in the spirit of 'first day of the school year', over the next week or so I'm going to put up some things I saw over the summer but didn't have the time or internettiness to put here at the time. Starting with this, the most suspicious-looking imaginable attempt at 'correcting' a brass plaque:

'Peace Loving'. Yes. That's what he was. He certainly was one Peace Loving guy, that King Pandu. It's always said that. No, don't look under the rectangle. There's no need. It just says 'Peace Loving' again. But in, er, the wrong... font.

Forever Friends

Talking of London Zoo, this is the life-size statue that stands right in the centre of it, between the flamingo lake and the tiger enclosure.

Yep. Striking, isn't it? In case you can't read the plaque, it records that the sculpture was presented to the zoo by J. B. Wolff in 1906.

I see. So, in 1906, J. B. Wolff commissioned an enormous sculpture representing man and beast locked in their age-old conflict; the lion straining to rend the man apart with tooth and claw; the man armed with a primitive knife, desperately trying to disembowel the lion - implacable enemies locked in a fight for survival only one of them can win.

And then he gave it to a zoo.

You know what I think? I think J.B. Wolff simultaneously gave the zoo a large amount of money, on condition that they prominently display this statue in perpetuity. I think J.B.Wolff hated the zoo. You're a funny guy, J.B. Wolff.