Out of Unintended Retirement: Aqua Regia

Well. Dear me. I had no intention of abandoning my blog for so long.

To make a long story short: I had a lovely late summer in Montreal and returned to London in mid-September. I live in Holloway now, in a big house on Axminster Road (just recently I recalled that the name Axminster refers to a particular type of carpet; this train of thought of course led to musings on Vivienne Westwood's famous Axminster Carpet Dress. If only I could have it. And the matching carpet shoes). I cranked out almost thirty applications over the course of a month to various museums, galleries, and other cultural venues. Several institutions contacted me but then hightailed it when they collected more information on the nature of my UK Visa. I made ONE silly, offhand application to a bespoke jewellery shop on Fleet Street (mainly because I was entranced by the idea of working in the City). And so, I was hired by Jupp Fine Jewellery. Many anguished internal monologues on the course of my career followed. Now, however, I'm quite glad to be working at Jupp - I'm learning quite a bit about the custom jewellery trade and am surrounded by pretty, shiny things on a daily basis.

In the course of consulting a book on gemstones for my new employment, I came across a fascinating tidbit of information about something called Aqua regia (Latin for 'Royal Water'). This term refers to a particularly corrosive liquid (not, in fact, royal urine) composed of a mixture of concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids. Aqua regia is one of the very few substances that can dissolve both gold and platinum, two members of the group of so-called untarnishable and indestructible 'noble metals.' In the course of all of this I also learned about tantalum, another noble metal. Tantalizing tantalum, yum.

Now, I thought this was pretty cool (the aqua regia bit). So when I got home I told Wil all about it, gesturing excitedly. His immediate reaction was to roll his eyes and moan, 'Oh God, this isn't some other superhero thing, is it?' And I protested that it wasn't - even as I realized that yes, it would be a pretty cool superpower. You know, instead of being Absolute Zero and causing the apocalypse, Aqua Regia could be this really awesome being that can undermine and destroy even the stablest and strongest of elements. And then I remembered my blog. And I knew what I had to do.