Meeting the green fairie

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Behind a black door in London hides a subversive collection of beasts, freaks, decay,  self-indulgence, and outright falsehoods.

And no - we're not talking about the door at no 10 Downing street, behind which you can still find Boris Johnson for a few more weeks!


This particular door we just happened to pass,  walking down a quite common East London street not far from our apartment.

A plaque on the door warns clients that the building is in fact "Not a Brothel, No Prostitutes Live at this Address." 

The title above the door is 'Last Tuesday society'  and   - as we pass by on precisely a Tuesday afternoon - we dare to walk in.

Inside the 'Tuesday Society', you find a gloomy bar where they serve absinth in all its forms, and behind the bar a hidden spiral staircase which leads down to the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities.

What a collection!

The skeleton of a two-headed kitten, the skull of a unicorn, mummified fairies, shrunken heads from the Amazon, and even some used condoms picked up backstage after a Rolling Stones concert!



Thousands of strange artifacts are jammed haphazardly together inside fantastical cabinets of rarities, which are placed, row after row, in a dimly lit cellar.


We walked around - not getting any wiser to who the  eponymous Viktor Wynd is or was, but impressed by the sheer tenacity behind the amassing of these many artifacts from all over the world

After the horror show in the basement, we walked back upstairs and ordered an absinth from the bartender.


It was made to perfection!

First, the absinthe was poured into the glass.

Then a sugar cube was placed in the absinthe spoon,  which was balanced on the rim of the glass. 

Water was poured, drop by drop, over the sugar cube, and into the glass, turning the absinthe milky.


We had a sip, and talked about how some of the artifacts placed in the basement below might have been pure fabrications.

 Mermaids and skulls of unicorns probably don't belong to this world  (perhaps not even the Stones condoms?)

- but what about the fabled Green Fairy,  la fée verte, supposedly coming out of a bottle of 70% absinth?



We took another sip and then one more!

She definitely exists! This we agreed upon, as the Tuesday afternoon turned into evening at the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities.









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