My post for monthlydiaryday
Twelfth, plural, this time, as I missed a couple.
Ironically, I missed the last two twelfths of the month because I had too much on, rather than too little. Sunday did at least balance it out.
The weekend before (12th Dec was a Monday, if you recall that far back) I was in a play, and very, very busy. The Monday was the first day after it finished, but also a very important day for a family member. Dave and I rose, breakfasted and made it to Warwick Parkway in time to catch a train just after nine, and arrived at Marylebone Station, London around 10.30. Only idiots or those with no choice drive to central London, as the cost of parking and the Congestion Charge together add up to more than two off-peak train fares. We hopped on the Bakerloo Line and got to Waterloo, and thence to the Royal Festival Hall just in time to meet our daughter, R, and her fiancé by the huge bust of Nelson Mandela.
We went into the Hall, an early Brutalist design (the Festival in question is the Festival of Britain of 1951), and acquired our tickets. This was the date and location for the big graduation event of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and it was R's MA graduation. We then fed her and the boyfriend and had photos taken after she had donned the official robes. Then we had to clamber all over the building to find the right entrance - bits of the hall can only be accessed by taking multiple lifts and crossing bridges between sections.)
The graduation ceremony was much as they all are, but at the same time honorary Fellowships and doctorates were presented; one of the former was given to Martin Freeman, and alumnus of Central. (Yes, John Watson, Bilbo, the murderer in Fargo S1. Him) He was introduced by Jason Watkins, a RADA graduate (there's a long-standing rivalry), who was very entertaining indeed. (He was the villain policeman vampire in two series of Being HumanUK, and is currently beautifully villainous in Taboo.) So there was that.
All the speeches tried to touch on politics without being too gloomy, but Brexit and Trump have hit creative communities hard across the world, so optimism was in shorter supply than clarion calls to action, and determination to stress how vital the arts are. It's a tough year to graduate from drama school. (For Americans, Central is on a par with RADA, LAMDA, Juilliard and so on.)
Obligatory graduation pics. The terrace has quite a decent view. The costumes are used by final year students in their graduation shows, where they hope to attract agents.
We took the young couple out for a meal after that, through torrential rain, to Wahaca, a Mexican chain, which provided delicious food at a not unreasonable price - for Central London, where all prices are unreasonable. Then we took the Tube and train back to our car, and back home. A satisfying day.
A month later I had fine intentions to write up my day, but it turned out to be another busy one.
I had an essay due in at noon, so I'd stayed up till stupid o'clock the night before. I only had to finish the formatting of the bibliography, proofread and submit. Rebooting my laptop wasn't part of the plan. Nor was the massive download of extra fixes from MS. Nor, very much certainly, was submitting at nine minutes past noon instead of eleven. And, yes, it's my own fault for cutting it so fine. I really should know better. So that was an automatic deduction of five marks - half a grade.
Then I headed in to Stratford for the first of this term's 'seminars' - talks given by academics with Q&A sessions. It was on the topic of Justice Shallow, who is in two plays, but in one is from Gloucestershire while in the other Falstaff detours to visit him in, apparently, Lincolnshire. A very engaging talk pieced together the probable composition process which led to such a plot hole. Yes, we know how to make our own fun!
There's always tea and biscuits after these talks, and a chance to catch up with other students, after which I read a very large chunk of an essay on and the text of Sir Thomas More for a seminar the next morning. Then I collected a certain envelope from the pigeon holes (letter rack really) and went into the town to mooch around. It was bloody cold, so the mooch did not last long before I found a branch of Café Rouge in Sheep Street, and went in for a bowl of very tasty risotto and a decent glass of red wine. Then on down the hill to Waterside and into the theatre.
The envelope in question had held a precious free ticket to see The Tempest, the all-singing, all-dancing, all-bells-and-whistles Greg Doran production in collaboration with Intel. As in IntelInside. Lots of really snazzy visual effects, but, more importantly to me, a superb central performance by Simon Russell Beale as Prospero. Miranda was, I felt, miscast - and she spoke almost throughout with an annoying vibrato, but Beale was superb. The effects dominated the production in many ways, but it was a solid, thoughtful presentation of a powerful play about power, governance and self-governance. Caliban was very good, Ariel too, despite having to bear the weight of most of the special effects, and the masque scenes were beautiful and powerful. We went the night after the "Live" cinema broadcast, which is worth catching if you get a chance on 'encore'.
By the time I got home it was late, and R had arrived - she was staying overnight in order to pick up her engagement ring from the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter the next day, when we also went to visit R and the lovely Rhiannon. The day after that herself_nyc visited, which was a hugely enjoyable day including a lighting-fast tour of Some Bits of Warwickshire - and hence writing up the 12th slipped my mind.
And so to this month, and it's already two days late.
I've been struggling with a recurrence of depression - it's always worst at this time of year, when it's always so grey and dank, so I didn't do a great deal. We got up late, partly because we usually read the Sunday papers in bed, and I then pottered about doing boring chores of the dishwasher/washing machine/wiping down surfaces variety. There were a few flakes of snow in the air, not enough to be interesting. Dave went off on a Mission to IKEA, but I hate the place, so left him to it.
There was an email which I misread in a way that made me feel useless and inadequate. Then I settled to do the su_herald, as at that time we planned to go to see my mother the next day. I'd spent much of Thursday and Friday sorting out insurance for her house, currently unoccupied, and the terms of the new policy required a visit to sort out the central heating.
There was not a huge number of links to post, but this was the first time I did this task on my new laptop (a very pretty little Asus 13" machine which arrived on Thursday.) The template refused to open in the usual file, or did so with garbage instead of words. I had to go online to find a program it would work in, and it turned out it did not format the material properly. When I tried to post I kept getting error messages telling me that it was detected as spam, because it had the string (spaces added by me) h t tp : // in it. So it was gone two by the time I went to bed. Tears may have been shed. I couldn't get to sleep for over an hour, which is why we postponed the trip to Wales till tomorrow.
Not a good day. Yet I can see how fortunate I am, despite the damned black dog. Today we visited F in Hertfordshire and took her and Rhiannon out to lunch. She eats about a third of what she is given currently, as she has reached the "isn't it fun to throw stuff on the floor" stage. Fortunately the café in the park is set up for families and a kind waitress insisted on sweeping up when we attempted to collect the debris.
So, to finish with a recent photo, because I haven't posted any of her for a while.
Ironically, I missed the last two twelfths of the month because I had too much on, rather than too little. Sunday did at least balance it out.
The weekend before (12th Dec was a Monday, if you recall that far back) I was in a play, and very, very busy. The Monday was the first day after it finished, but also a very important day for a family member. Dave and I rose, breakfasted and made it to Warwick Parkway in time to catch a train just after nine, and arrived at Marylebone Station, London around 10.30. Only idiots or those with no choice drive to central London, as the cost of parking and the Congestion Charge together add up to more than two off-peak train fares. We hopped on the Bakerloo Line and got to Waterloo, and thence to the Royal Festival Hall just in time to meet our daughter, R, and her fiancé by the huge bust of Nelson Mandela.
We went into the Hall, an early Brutalist design (the Festival in question is the Festival of Britain of 1951), and acquired our tickets. This was the date and location for the big graduation event of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and it was R's MA graduation. We then fed her and the boyfriend and had photos taken after she had donned the official robes. Then we had to clamber all over the building to find the right entrance - bits of the hall can only be accessed by taking multiple lifts and crossing bridges between sections.)
The graduation ceremony was much as they all are, but at the same time honorary Fellowships and doctorates were presented; one of the former was given to Martin Freeman, and alumnus of Central. (Yes, John Watson, Bilbo, the murderer in Fargo S1. Him) He was introduced by Jason Watkins, a RADA graduate (there's a long-standing rivalry), who was very entertaining indeed. (He was the villain policeman vampire in two series of Being HumanUK, and is currently beautifully villainous in Taboo.) So there was that.
All the speeches tried to touch on politics without being too gloomy, but Brexit and Trump have hit creative communities hard across the world, so optimism was in shorter supply than clarion calls to action, and determination to stress how vital the arts are. It's a tough year to graduate from drama school. (For Americans, Central is on a par with RADA, LAMDA, Juilliard and so on.)
Obligatory graduation pics. The terrace has quite a decent view. The costumes are used by final year students in their graduation shows, where they hope to attract agents.
We took the young couple out for a meal after that, through torrential rain, to Wahaca, a Mexican chain, which provided delicious food at a not unreasonable price - for Central London, where all prices are unreasonable. Then we took the Tube and train back to our car, and back home. A satisfying day.
A month later I had fine intentions to write up my day, but it turned out to be another busy one.
I had an essay due in at noon, so I'd stayed up till stupid o'clock the night before. I only had to finish the formatting of the bibliography, proofread and submit. Rebooting my laptop wasn't part of the plan. Nor was the massive download of extra fixes from MS. Nor, very much certainly, was submitting at nine minutes past noon instead of eleven. And, yes, it's my own fault for cutting it so fine. I really should know better. So that was an automatic deduction of five marks - half a grade.
Then I headed in to Stratford for the first of this term's 'seminars' - talks given by academics with Q&A sessions. It was on the topic of Justice Shallow, who is in two plays, but in one is from Gloucestershire while in the other Falstaff detours to visit him in, apparently, Lincolnshire. A very engaging talk pieced together the probable composition process which led to such a plot hole. Yes, we know how to make our own fun!
There's always tea and biscuits after these talks, and a chance to catch up with other students, after which I read a very large chunk of an essay on and the text of Sir Thomas More for a seminar the next morning. Then I collected a certain envelope from the pigeon holes (letter rack really) and went into the town to mooch around. It was bloody cold, so the mooch did not last long before I found a branch of Café Rouge in Sheep Street, and went in for a bowl of very tasty risotto and a decent glass of red wine. Then on down the hill to Waterside and into the theatre.
The envelope in question had held a precious free ticket to see The Tempest, the all-singing, all-dancing, all-bells-and-whistles Greg Doran production in collaboration with Intel. As in IntelInside. Lots of really snazzy visual effects, but, more importantly to me, a superb central performance by Simon Russell Beale as Prospero. Miranda was, I felt, miscast - and she spoke almost throughout with an annoying vibrato, but Beale was superb. The effects dominated the production in many ways, but it was a solid, thoughtful presentation of a powerful play about power, governance and self-governance. Caliban was very good, Ariel too, despite having to bear the weight of most of the special effects, and the masque scenes were beautiful and powerful. We went the night after the "Live" cinema broadcast, which is worth catching if you get a chance on 'encore'.
By the time I got home it was late, and R had arrived - she was staying overnight in order to pick up her engagement ring from the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter the next day, when we also went to visit R and the lovely Rhiannon. The day after that herself_nyc visited, which was a hugely enjoyable day including a lighting-fast tour of Some Bits of Warwickshire - and hence writing up the 12th slipped my mind.
And so to this month, and it's already two days late.
I've been struggling with a recurrence of depression - it's always worst at this time of year, when it's always so grey and dank, so I didn't do a great deal. We got up late, partly because we usually read the Sunday papers in bed, and I then pottered about doing boring chores of the dishwasher/washing machine/wiping down surfaces variety. There were a few flakes of snow in the air, not enough to be interesting. Dave went off on a Mission to IKEA, but I hate the place, so left him to it.
There was an email which I misread in a way that made me feel useless and inadequate. Then I settled to do the su_herald, as at that time we planned to go to see my mother the next day. I'd spent much of Thursday and Friday sorting out insurance for her house, currently unoccupied, and the terms of the new policy required a visit to sort out the central heating.
There was not a huge number of links to post, but this was the first time I did this task on my new laptop (a very pretty little Asus 13" machine which arrived on Thursday.) The template refused to open in the usual file, or did so with garbage instead of words. I had to go online to find a program it would work in, and it turned out it did not format the material properly. When I tried to post I kept getting error messages telling me that it was detected as spam, because it had the string (spaces added by me) h t tp : // in it. So it was gone two by the time I went to bed. Tears may have been shed. I couldn't get to sleep for over an hour, which is why we postponed the trip to Wales till tomorrow.
Not a good day. Yet I can see how fortunate I am, despite the damned black dog. Today we visited F in Hertfordshire and took her and Rhiannon out to lunch. She eats about a third of what she is given currently, as she has reached the "isn't it fun to throw stuff on the floor" stage. Fortunately the café in the park is set up for families and a kind waitress insisted on sweeping up when we attempted to collect the debris.
So, to finish with a recent photo, because I haven't posted any of her for a while.