Weekend Conversation Starters

[Messy Nessy Chic]   This time last year… I wrote to you from a hospital bed. I had given birth to a little boy and girl the night before. It was the first day of the rest of my life. As a hopeless nostalgic, if you ask me, probably the best part about parenthood (ironically) has been the chance to relive childhood all over again with them. So just this once, to celebrate my little ones on their first birthday (and a year of motherhood), I thought I’d do a “Bring Your Kids to Work Day” of sorts, and sprinkle this weekend’s conversation starters with some of the first places and stories I might like to share with them one day. A year on, so many things have changed, and yet, this bi-weekly exchange between us has remained a constant. I just want to thank you for being the reason that I still continue to explore, learn and grow. Stay curious, [Nessy]   [The Twisted Tale of the Real Mickey MouseÂ](  [mickey]( Once upon a time, in 1927, Walt Disney created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal. This bunny had a round white face, a button nose, and floppy black ears. After Disney sold a series of shorts to Universal, he returned in 1928 to offer his services to create more cartoons featuring Oswald. However, he not…  [Continue Reading](   [Where they make the Machines from Jules Verne’s Dreams](  [Where they make the Machines from Jules Verne’s Dreams]( Behind the walls of an old shipyard’s warehouse in Nantes, a French troupe of artisans has been welding and hammering and carving away at something unprecedented for twenty years, building a strange mechanical universe you thought only existed in the pages of a Jules Verne novel, or in the sketchbooks of Leonard Da Vinci...  [Continue Reading](   [The Little Paris Beekeeping School](  [The Little Paris Beekeeping School]( Paris as you know, is like a jewel box, hiding endless little gems; another of which I’m going to share with you today, nestled in the iconic Jardin du Luxembourg. Begin by finding the south west entrance to the gardens on Rue d’Assas, near Hemingway’s old stomping grounds...  [Continue Reading](   [Inside Central Park’s 140 Year-old Marionette Theatre](  [Inside Central Park’s 140 Year-old Marionette Theatre]( I spent some time as Peter Pan’s shadow” is the kind of sentence that’d only make sense here, at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park. This 143-year-old wooden chalet was plucked from Swedish soil, and rebuilt smack in the heart of Manhattan in 1877...  [Continue Reading](   [Oh, Just a Miniature Mermaid’s Dollhouse](  [Oh, Just a Miniature Mermaid’s Dollhouse]( This is one of those slightly random finds that I was about to throw in with my Monday series of 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today, but then I looked closer (rubbed my eyes in disbelief a little), and realised it definitely needed its very own post. That, and the fact that it’s a Miniature. Mermaid. Dollhouse...  [Continue Reading](   [Today I Stumbled upon a Secret Kingdom of Lost Toys](  [Today I Stumbled upon a Secret Kingdom of Lost Toys]( What is it that makes someone start a collection which alters the course of their entire life? For Mel Birnkrant, it was an iron Mickey bank he saw at the Paris flea market in 1958. His hotel room rent was $30 a month and the toy was $10. It was in that moment, at the iconic Marché aux Puces, that Mel was first bitten by the collecting bug. It would take him many more years to understand how that toy had such power over him...  [Continue Reading](   [Oh, to Have Ridden England’s Forgotten Post Bus](  [Oh, to Have Ridden England’s Forgotten Post Bus]( I never knew the post bus existed. I grew up in England’s capital, but never in my 25 years of living there did I ever see or hear of these delightful red buses that both delivered mail and served as the only public transport in some of the UK’s most remote areas. Then again, until the other day, neither I had ever met anyone who had ever hitched a ride with the postman and lived to tell the tale...  [Continue Reading](   [If the Flintstones Vacationed in France: A Guide to the Cave Villages](  [If the Flintstones Vacationed in France: A Guide to the Cave Villages]( If a French chateau is a little out of your vacation budget, why not consider a cave house? Unforgettably unique and even more historic, the “troglodyte” homes of France; those ancient rocks dwellings dotted along quiet country roads of the Loire, or deep in the basin of Dordogne; were built 100 millions years ago by our planet’s first humans. This is the Flintstones à la française...  [Continue Reading](   [The Real-life Film Actors Who Inspired Iconic Disney Cartoon Characters](  [The Real-life Film Actors Who Inspired Iconic Disney Cartoon Characters]( It’s hard to imagine our favorite Disney films any other way, but some of the most popular animated characters of our childhoods started out as real as you and I. These rare images of live-action scenes spliced with Disney animations, reveal how the creative studio used real people to reference or even directly trace their characters and achieve a more realistic look for animation...  [Continue Reading](   [My Secret Paris Toy Shop](  [My Secret Paris Toy Shop]( Strolling through the 11th arrondissement, wandering in and out of boutiques on the Rue de Charonne, I noticed an open cobblestone passageway calling my name. I crossed the street to take a closer peek down the scruffy dark corridor leading to something a little bit special...  [Continue Reading](   [The Hotel of Childhood Memories: An Old Italian Schoolhouse turned Charming B&B](  [The Hotel of Childhood Memories: An Old Italian Schoolhouse turned Charming B&B]( Perhaps the last thing you want to do on holiday is “go back to school”, but I can assure you, this little schoolhouse nestled in the picturesque province of Vicenza, a 90 minute drive from Venice, is nothing like the school days you remember. No grumpy Maths teachers, no caféteria slop for lunch and certainly no homework is involved in a stay at La Scuola Lusiana Guesthouse...  [Continue Reading](   [Where Has This Amazing Comic Book Art Been All My Life?](  [Where Has This Amazing Comic Book Art Been All My Life?]( I won’t pretend to be a comic book connoisseur. My brother and I collected Tintin books for our father to read to us before bedtime and well, that’s about as far as it went for my foray into the graphic arts world. But now I’m wondering, if I had spent a little more time at the comic book store as a kid, and found a copy of François Schuiten’s Obscure Cities, would it have shaped me differently? That’s how much I’m digging his work...  [Continue Reading](   [Is this the Real-Life Tintin?](  [Is this the Real-Life Tintin?]( Do you know many fifteen year olds who would circumnavigate the globe in 44 days, dressed as dapperly as a the Prince of Wales? Probably not, because, well … kids these days. In 1928, to mark the centennial of the author Jules Verne, the Danish newspaper Politiken held a competition challenging teenage boys to travel the globe unaccompanied in under 46 days. The competition’s winner would receive financial assistance but have to make use of all forms of transport except aviation...  [Continue Reading](   [Petition to Teach Kids about the Mad Adventures of Nellie Bly in History Class](  [Petition to Teach Kids about the Mad Adventures of Nellie Bly in History Class]( When Nellie Bly got bored of writing about fashion and gardening, she went undercover as a patient in a mental asylum and faked insanity to expose the institutional abuse. When she read Jules Verne’s book Around the world in 80 Days, she attempted the fictional journey herself, and did it in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes, setting a world record as the first person to do so...  [Continue Reading](   [Drop Everything, and Let’s Run Away with Ernst Kreidolf’s Flower Fairies](  [Drop Everything, and Let’s Run Away with Ernst Kreidolf’s Flower Fairies]( Some stories deserve to be told in a whisper. Tales of hidden flower kingdoms on the edge of a river bank, where caterpillars dance with apple blossoms and fairies fly on butterfly wings. Such are the tales woven by 19th century children’s book pioneer Ernst Kreidolf, whose meticulous watercolours fleshed out the richest fantasy worlds for children of all ages...  [Continue Reading](   [Into the Woods with Green Thumbed Activist, Indy Srinath](  [Into the Woods with Green Thumbed Activist, Indy Srinath]( Almost a decade ago, Indy Srinath made herself a pretty ambitious promise. “It was like having a sudden awakening,” she tells Messy Nessy Chic about her decision to learn the name of every single plant she discovered, “where you feel like you’ve been living with a crowd of people who serve you your entire life, but never made the effort to learn any of their names.” She hasn’t stopped learning since. Today, Srinath has blossomed into a true Renaissance woman of all things environmental...  [Continue Reading](   [The Boy Robot of 1774](  [The Boy Robot of 1774]( It’s hard to imagine that before the United States of America even became a country, a Swiss watchmaker had already created a machine with the capabilities of a modern programmable computer– in the form of a small boy. The 70cm-tall automaton known as “The Writer”, is an extraordinary but often forgotten anomaly of its age. So impossibly ahead of its time, even the creator, Pierre Jaquet-Droz...  [Continue Reading](   [The Tik Tok Generation Needs a Movie about The Abernathy Kids](  [The Tik Tok Generation Needs a Movie about The Abernathy Kids]( In 1910, two boys, Louis and Temple Abernathy decided to cross America by horseback without adult supervision, from Oklahoma to Manhattan. They were just 10 and 6 years old. To get back home, they bought a car and drove it while their horses returned by train. This true but forgotten little adventure story struck me as the kind of inspiration our Tik-Toking teens of today are in desperate need of. Heck, it’s probably the kind of inspiration we’re all in desperate need of...  [Continue Reading](   [A Brief Compendium of Preserved Pieces of Cake](  [xwillis_0002_WeddingP20cakeP20display.jpgqitoklneFwoOC.pagespeed.ic_.OBNPapM9Gn]( Ever since humanity invented cake, we’ve been trying to have it and eat it, too. And while we haven’t yet figured out how to do both, we have been saving slices of this most celebratory of desserts for several millenia now. The Egyptians gave us the world’s oldest known cake–and also the world’s oldest Tupperware…  [Continue Reading](   [13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. DCXXXIV)](  [IMG_9548]( 1. An occult artist whose mysterious work was discovered in a remote cabin after his death  [Continue Reading](  Interested in Becoming a MessyNessy Keyholder? 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