Archives: Digital Events

‘liquid Alchemy’: A Virtual Cocktail Workshop

Welcome all curious cocktailers and inquisitive imbibers…

Directors of The Last Tuesday Society’s cocktail bar invite you to join them behind the bar for a virtual cocktail making workshop. Each week a new base spirit will be highlighted, which will then be used to create two classic cocktail recipes. The cocktail making part of the event will be led by Rhys Everett, director of The Last Tuesday Society’s Cocktail Bar and head distiller at Devil’s Botany London Distillery. A simple ingredients list will be sent with your ticket to prepare before the event.

The event will explore:

– Introduction to the basic principles of bartending

– Learn the formulas to two classic cocktail styles, including recipes and instructions on how to make them at home

– Discover fun facts on the spirit category that is being highlighted each week

‘Stomach-warming, idea-changing, liquid alchemy’ — Ernest Hemingway

Schedule:

12th February — Workshop on Bourbon Cocktails

26th February — Workshop on Rum Cocktails

12th March — Workshop on Absinthe Cocktails

9th April — Workshop on Gin Cocktails

 

Event is suitable for 18+ only.

M.r. James Fireside Ghost Stories With Robert Lloyd Parry, Live On Zoom

“If any of my stories succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained…”

Montague Rhodes James (1862 – 1936) more than succeeded in this modest ambition. Over a century after their first publication, his Ghost Stories of an Antiquary remain the most admired supernatural tales in the English language. James first performed them to friends at Christmas in King’s College, Cambridge in the year up to WW1. Since 2005 Robert Lloyd Parry has sought to bring this tradition back to life.

In Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book, a young antiquary discovers the devil in the details of an old book in a medieval town in the French Pyrenees. The story lasts about 40 mins. Afterwards, if you are good, this will be followed up by a reading of a bonus shorter work by M R James.

Storyteller: Robert Lloyd Parry has travelled widely in the UK and USA with his candlelit M R James performances, which have been covered by The New Yorker, The Fortean Times, The Spectator, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Morning Star. In 2014 he appeared as the author in Mark Gatiss’s BBC2 Documentary ‘M R James: Ghost Writer.’ For more details see www.nunkie.co.uk

The History Of Taxidermy By Dr. Pat Morris, Live On Zoom

This talk will review the history and development of taxidermy as a part of our social and natural history. It will search Europe to find the oldest existing stuffed animals, comment on the use of arsenic and review styles and methods used by the multitude of businesses, small and large, that operated in the 19th and early 20th century. It considers the customers, ranging from huntsmen to bird collectors and householders. A brief comparison is made with developments in American taxidermy. Bad taxidermy is contrasted with how professional taxidermists now strive to attain perfection in this field of artistic endeavour. Lots of different stories, to show that taxidermy has multiple dimensions. People shouldn’t hurry past the next time they see a stuffed animal, but stop and think “Hmm, that’s interesting…”

Licentious Worlds – Sexual Culture In Global Empires – Julie Peakman

Licentious Worlds is a history of sexual attitudes and behaviour through five hundred years of empire-building around the world. In a graphic and sometimes unsettling account, Julie Peakman examines colonization and the imperial experience putting women back in the picture, showing their role in the building of empires, but also how marginalized men and women were almost invariably exploited.

Women acted as negotiators, brothel-keepers, traders and peacekeepers, but they were also oppressed, forced into marriages and raped. The book describes daily life in Turkish harems, Mughal zenanas and Japanese geisha houses, as well as in royal palaces, private households and on board ships. The stories are drawn from many sources – from captains’ logs, missionary reports and cannibals’ memoirs to travellers’ letters, traders’ accounts and reports on prostitution. From debauched clerics and hog-sodomizing Pilgrims to sexually fluid cannibals and homosexual samurai, Licentious Worlds takes history where it has never been before.

 

Dr. Julie Peakman is a historian in eighteenth-century culture and an expert in the history of sexuality, erotica and pornography. She is Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Honorary Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a frequent contributor to journals, magazines and television documentaries for BBC, Channel 4 and the Biography Channel. Her books include Licentious Worlds. Sex & Exploitation in Global Empires; Amatory Pleasures, Exploration in Eighteenth-Century Sexual Culture (2016); The Pleasure’s All Mine. A History of Perverse Sex (2013); Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (2004) and Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England (2003). She has also edited 6 Volumes of A Cultural History of Sexuality (2011); Sexual Perversions 1670-1890 (2009); and 8 Volumes of Whores Biographies, 1700-1825 (2006-7). She is also biographer of Peg Plunkett, Memoirs of a Whore (2014) and Emma Hamilton (2005)

The Origins & Rituals Of Absinthe: A Virtual Lecture & Tasting

Join Directors Allison Crawbuck & Rhys Everett for a virtual lecture as they explore the origins & rituals of absinthe.

Guests are invited to channel the notorious spirit of the Belle Époque. The event will begin with a virtual absinthe tasting and a look into how the mysterious spirit has been prepared for centuries. After everyone’s senses are well lubricated, the duo will explore tales of the absinthe’s tantalising past, from its origins as a cure-all elixir to a delightful aperitif, before eventually enduring a near century-long ban.

General admission includes a ticket to the virtual lecture. Guests are encouraged to have a glass of absinthe in hand during the event to bring the tales of this exquisite elixir to life.

Tasting sets of Devil’s Botany London Absinthe are available via: www.devilsbotany.com/shop.

Discount codes will be sent with your e-ticket for absinthe tasting sets or full 500ml bottles of Devil’s Botany London Absinthe.

Email [email protected] if you have any questions regarding this event.

Event is suitable for 18+ only.

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About the Hosts

Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett have always shared a passion for unearthing curious tales and rendering them in liquid form. The duo are co-owners of The Last Tuesday Society’s cocktail bar in East London, transforming Hackney’s best-kept secret into the city’s favourite absinthe and cocktail haunt. In 2019, it was voted the Best Bar in London at the 7th annual Design My Night Awards by a public vote of over 180,000 Londoners, and in 2020, their absinthe menu was shortlisted for Imbibe’s Specialist List of the Year.

In December 2020, Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett launched London’s first Absinthe distillery: Devil’s Botany located in the city’s east end. They are also authors of Spirits of the Otherworld: A Grimoire of Occult Cocktails & Drinking Rituals, published by Prestel/RandomHouse (Sep 2021 | ISBN 9783791387147).

Mark Cocker Master Class On Nature Writing On Zoom

This is a four-hour seminar, split over two days in one week, to explore the techniques of nature writing. It builds on a previous, similar nature-writing course (on 2nd & 8th April), but each 2-part session is entirely free-standing and independent. In these current sessions we will pay special attention to another of the essential parts of all good writing.

Nature is full of stories but how do you choose what to focus upon? How do you order the material to make it engaging, understandable and full of impact. The sessions will look very carefully at fixing your subject and setting the scene. It will look at how the writer creates a relationship with their reader and with their subject matter. Finally it will consider how you choose words to create the deepest emotional connection between those two parts.

This may be an exercise on nature writing, but it has relevance across the genres. All writers draw upon the landscape and the wider environment to create an atmosphere, to illuminate character and to move the narrative along. The class may be online but the aim will be being indoors as much of the outdoors as possible.

Instructor: Mark Cocker is a multi-award winning author and naturalist, whose 12 books include Crow Country, Our Place and Claxton. Over the last four decades he has also published more than 1000 essays on nature in national and international newspapers especially the Guardian.

Sigil Workshop With Chaos Magician David Lee – By Zoom

Learn how to make and use powerful sigils, in this two-part workshop with chaos magician Dave Lee. Starting with Austin Spare’s introduction of free-form sigilization, we’ll explore a variety of approaches to making sigils – including bindrunes, collage, graphic mashups, automated sigil generators and the idea of the artwork as hypersigil.

We’ll also cover the audial equivalent – mantras, and talk about how to get the best phrasing of your intentions. We’ll take a peek at the theory behind such magic and you’ll learn a few simple but powerful techniques for entering appropriate extraordinary states of consciousness.

Dave Lee is a magician, breathwork coach and writer. He has spent over four decades exploring consciousness and changing realities, using techniques that include meditation, magick, psychedelics and energy work. He is a leading light in the Chaos Magic organization the Illuminates Of Thanateros and a Master of Rune-Lore in the Rune-Gild.

His books include the ground-breaking Life-Force: Sensed Energy in Breathwork, Psychedelia and Chaos Magic.

A Beginner Zoom Course In Conjuring With Oliver Garwood

This Course Will Run over Four Wednesday evenings – the 14th, 21st, and 28th of April and 5th of May from 7:30-9pm. Ticket price is for the full course

Join professional magician, Oliver Garwood, for a beginner’s course in the conjuring arts. Learn the secrets of prestidigitation and legerdemain. No need to buy expensive magic props, everything you need is probably already in a draw at home! Over four 90-minute sessions Oliver will teach you sleight of hand and presentation along with a bit of magical history and probably a story or two, or three. Effects taught will include card tricks, coin vanishing and penetration, rubber band magic and the famous cups & balls trick! If you have ever wanted to be able to amaze and amuse your friends then this is the course for you, or even if you don’t want to do that want to know how the tricks are done then this is still the course for you.

Week One – Card Magic

Types of cards – poker/bridge

Holding and shuffling

Injog/ False Shuffles (card controls)/ Breaks/ Double Lift/ False cut

Simple routine – card between jokers

Forcing – slip force, cross cut (time delay)

Reveals and making a routine (narrative) – ‘moment of magic’

Ambitious card – injog card add, false shuffle, double lift, card in centre final reveal.

Alternatives to cards – business cards, slices of cheese?

Week Two – Impromptu Magic

Betcha’s – fun games to win drinks! 3 glasses, impossible knot

Hunters knot – false knot then routine.

Coin vanish – French drop, retention vanish

Palming coins – classic, finger, Ramsay Subtlety

Pen vanish

Pen & Coin routine

Jumping Rubber Band

Week Three – Parlour Magic

Cups & Balls – history, performance, discussion on cups and ball choices

Paddle Move – knife and dry wipe marker

Grandma’s Necklace – shoe laces and handkerchief

Week Four – Balls and Mentalism

Tissue Paper ball vanish, multiply, ten step routine.

One Ahead Mind Reading Routine

Coin Stack Prediction – multiple out

Equipment Required

Pack of Cards

3 cups

Tin foil

Coins – I will advise on the preceding week what coins and sizes etc.

Handkerchief

Pen and notebook

Rubber band

Knife (not sharp!) – butter knife if possible

Shoelaces (pair of, long as possible)

Cotton thread

Tissues

Viktor Wynd met Oliver a few years ago when he took some lessons and found them wonderful. Oliver Garwood has been a professional entertainer for over 20 years. From managing entertainment in hotels and holiday centres across the UK and abroad he has performed for thousands of enthralled audiences, Oliver was also resident magician at a dedicated magic museum. Oliver has been a keen magician since the age of 8 when received a Paul Daniel’s Magic Set for Christmas, his work in various areas of entertainment has helped hone this skill which he is sharing with you in this beginner’s course in conjuring.

Mark Cocker Master Class On Nature Writing

This is a four-hour seminar, split over two days in one week, to explore some of the techniques of nature writing. We will pay careful attention to language, and also to the power and importance of your initial observations. It is this preliminary work that often determines whether the words you choose will be original, fresh and suggestive.

The other key goal will be to explore how writers select their central theme, create mood and map out the psychological setting and the physical context quickly and in the fewest words. Economy of language is essential, since it is about distilling the essence of a place or season and using a part to evoke the whole scene.

This may be an exercise on nature writing, but it has deep relevance across the genres. All writers draw upon the landscape and the wider environment to create an atmosphere ad to set the scene. The class may be online but we will get as close to the living world as we possibly can.

Instructor: Mark Cocker is a multi-award winning author and naturalist, whose 12 books include Crow Country, Our Place and Claxton. Over the last four decades he has also published more than 1000 essays on nature in national and international newspapers especially the Guardian.

In The Realm Of The Dark Rabbit: A Comic Lecture By David Bramwell

“A nude horse is a rude horse” ran the US campaign slogan for The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals in 1959. The group even picketed the White House, demanding that the Kennedys cover their horse’s private parts with trousers. For its founder, Alan Abel, the society was one of innumerable high-profile pranks at the expense of the media. A few years later he even convinced the media that his 83 year-old grandmother, Yetta Bronstein, was running for president, with policies that included ‘compulsory national bingo and mink coats for all’.

Abel was a classic trickster, the archetypal peddler of mischief whose cunning, deceit and mischief can be found in every culture across the globe.

Whether it’s Sascha Baron Cohen as Ali G, Bugs Bunny, Pussy Riot, Bart Simpson or even – arguably – Donald Trump, tricksters take the role of rule-breakers, subversives and catalysts for change. From email fraudsters to the antics of Banksy, they can confound and delight in equal measure. They are the gremlins in the works. What drives some people to con, deceive and pull pranks and hoaxes, often at considerable risk?

In this funny and fascinating talk, Dr Bramwell unveils the strange and mercurial world of the trickster, from archetypes of Wile E Coyote to real-life examples such as as Chris Morris, Bonsai Kittens and Boatie McBoatface.

But while tricksters change culture, is culture changing our relationship with the trickster? In our digital age has the trickster risen to become a new driving force in politics, culture and social networking? There are even new religions with trickster gods as their figureheads and using meme magic to spread political chaos. Are we living in a ‘golden age’ of trickery or a time in which unprecedented levels of deceit and cunning leave many of us wishing we could put the rabbit back into the hat?

Speaker: David Bramwell is a British writer, musician, performer and broadcaster. For BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, he has made programmes on diverse subjects, including Ivor Cutler, clapping, time travel, and the murmurations of starlings. He is the founder and host of Brighton’s legendary spoken word night, the Catalyst Club.

These are extraordinary times and the plague has hit some harder than others, tickets are by donation – if you possibly can £10 is much appreciated, but £2 is also much appreciated. Thank you for your support.