Eugh exams

Well, after thirteen years of not being examined, except by doctors, it's started again. It was only a Mock exam for Literature, but still. Ouch in my head and ouch in my fingers.

We knew that there would be questions on Jane Eyre and Othello and also something on the character of Blanche DuBois and an unseen poem. I had decided in advance that I would avoid the classics so was pleased by the choice of unseen poem...

...Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Sorry, I had to go and Do Stuff for a while there... ...See, this is why it's bad being interrupted in mid-blog. You completely lose your flow. Anyway, I then had to go to a church to sing with the choir for the purpose of recording tracks for our new CD. Of course, the equipment wasn't behaving so Helen stressed a few months off her life before running back to the Music Department to get alternatives. Eventually we got going and apparently it went as well as was expected. Hurrah. Next recording date is in April... Ollie recently started working on a piece for strung quartet and choir, inspired by the Russian deity Poludnitsa. He wrote the second movement to start with, just for the strings, and then rearranged it for string orchestra. On Wednesday afternoon he was having it played (and recorded, I think) in a competition, along with three other pieces, by a string orchestra, voted on by the orchestra and judged by some... judges? Not long after this, the votes came back - the judges had placed him second of four and the players had voted his piece the best! They'll now be taking it on tour with them! Fab. You can hear the string quartet version of the piece on MySpace, on a page I had to set up for the purpose. I was shocked by how thoroughly disorganised MySpace is, when it comes to doing things with music.

Andrew's comedy life

Andrew likes to do things for kicks that most people would baulk at the very thought of. And so he spends endless hours scouring the interweb for people who are similarly twisted. These are the people your mother warned you about, although most of them are so timid outside the dungeon that they'd never dream of doing these things without written permission...

So today Andrew found some local 19year old (apparently!) on t'internet, who announced that he would pop up to Andrew's "office" imminently. This threw the poor chap into a tizzy because he doesn't really Do Coffee with people, especially not people he's scouted for dirty sticky fisty encounters. Black Medicine is where he spends most of his free time, and people he's Meeting usually provide a venue, whether it be hotel room, dungeon or suitable stainproofed boudoir.

This tied in with reports of a be-mohawked homosexual sighted in BM by Ollie. When I arrived Andrew was, for some reason, concerned that the mohawkee might be the 19year old. Of course when this person happened to turn up it transpired that he is a friend of Martha's and NOT 19.

It was mightily amusing.

This was, of course, at the point where I had skipped out of Maths early to do my Japanese homework. I had done all I could in the classroom so I felt fully justified, and it marks the exciting event of me actually doing my Japanese homework for the first time! Not that it takes more than about 2 minutes...

In other, surreal, news I got my Jane Eyre essy back and it had been a roaring success! God only knows how - I was convinced that I had entirely failed to answer the question. In the end the only criticisms were that I hadn't noted page numbers and had been occasionaly distracted by plot. Unnecessarily. I love the fact that plot takes a back seat in these situations - no sorry, I HATE that. Plot is what I want in a novel and if it's captivating enough then character development and writing style can F*** Off if need be.

This is why I avoid Literature whenever possible. Streetcar is SO much better, even five pages in. And Jean Brodie is amusing! I will, if I can, be disowning Brontë and Shakespeare henceforth.

UPDATE: When opening Flickr I discovered this greeting: I'm pretty much speechless. Is Lolcat now a recognised language!?

So... sleepy...

I had a stupid day:

• Wake up c 1045.
• Dash to work.
• Check calendar. shit I've got a class at 1200.
• Dash to School, pausing to pick up some music from Ollie on the way.
• Get to class.
• Check timetable oops I should be here tomorrow. BYEEE.
• Wander around with Ollie until class at 1300.
• Go to class.
• Nobody about oops this class is tomorrow as well how stupid am I being?
• Go to library.
• Wander around music section. Absentmindedly text Ollie to tell him how stupid I am.
• Meet Ollie in library.
• Leave Ollie so I can go to class 1400.
• Hm. Nobody about I wonder why oh it's 1430-1645, not 1400-1600.
• Give up on ever having a brain.
• Go to work for a while.
• Choir! Envoi and En Une Seule Fleur are both quite challenging.
• Walk Ollie and Helen home, then walk back on my tod (avoiding site of recent local stabbing), chatting to Mother.

And now I'm near unconscious.

Watashi wa bit busy desu

School and work take their toll on my time. In brief, then... Ollie and I had a lovely meal on Sunday c/o John and Susan. Orange and ginger baked salmon, whole new potatoes and some flash-fried courgettes, sugarsnap peas and pak choi. Mmmmmmmm. Read the beginning of Jane Eyre. OUCH that's a mean story. Othello is really boring. Especially the Branagh/Fishborne version. Miss Jean Brodie is fun though. I spent a couple of hours yesterday forcing Stephen to make some simple sense of Japanese at me. Which left us both a bit frazzled, but I feel slightly more ready to learn some now. I've been answering the question how are you with snotty. Which is, I expect , due largely to the damp, cold weather getting in my face. I'm also suffering a teeny bit from soggy feet, as the shoes I wear most often have worn out just enough to let some damp in under extreme wet conditions. And the nice new shoes I bought really aren't WET shoes. Let's see if anything exciting happens tonight.

(Cough cough) Ohayō!

I'm so ridiculously hooked on Ugly Betty. I don't quite understand why, the first five episodes or so were kinda dull and slow but suddenly I can't stop! This may be Clever Writing at work. Yesterday I started to develop a tickle in the back of my throat. By the time we'd had our New Year Choir Meeting (don't even ask. Because I will not rehash that.) it was becoming a Tickly Cough. This morning I woke up and cried out in pain. Silently. Swollen oh YES and rather painful too. Since I had school this afternoon I called in sick to work for the morning, to allow me to shop for drugs. Cafe Nero - Latte mmmmmm Chemist. Glucose tablets and Pholcodeine Linctus YUM. Off to school. OOPS I mis-entered my timetable into Google Calendar and there's no Study Skills this week. So off to IALS to register for Japanese Beginners course and then to Black Medicine for a quick coffee before Maths! So far, I don't see what the fuss is about. Why do people dread STATISTICS so? Perhaps it's because they have to do it, whereas I'm keeping the basic Maths course on because I quite enjoy it... BTW, why do you think Barr make "Ginger Beer Flavoured Soft Drink" (I'm sure it used to be just Ginger Beer they made, but anyway...) and then add Saccharin and Aspartame? It's not like it's the Diet option or anything! I noticed this because I was thinking it tasted a bit odd. Turns out, IT DOES taste a bit odd! Aaaanyway. Went to work for about an hour, mostly to keep warm but it had the added bonus of getting sympathy because I was ill but at work. By the time I had my jacket off people were asking me questions about Word etc. as if I hadn't just arrived. People, eh? Then off to Japanese. Much could be said about learning Japanese in a beginners' class which needs to be suitable for all comers. The building used to have some exciting mural(s) over the stairs. I remember it vaguely from doing some Italian there when I was about 10, but there has been a lot of restructuring in the intervening years and I couldn't see ANY interesting wall decorations. sadface.

Ha!

Gym? Forget it! If I had strayed too far from the path I would surely have been lost in a wilderness of RAIN and WIND. I got as far as su before falling asleep at work. Braved the apocalyptic precipitation and went to Ollie's to hide. Of course, he wasn't there, he was having dinner made for him by D.

Nigella - I mean D, with profiteroles.

So I sat and distracted Helen for a while, dropped popcorn into Aaron's port (well, MY port which he's been sipping away at) and eventually He Returned about 2315. About time for me to leave, really! Today saw the return to Learning. Two and a half hours every Wednesday for 16 weeks studying Literature. This could be my nightmare.

Oh god it never ends

Today the last of the internet X-mas gifts arrived. About time. Classes start back on Wednesday. Then Thursday. And the beginner's Japanese course I'm supposed to be doing starts Thursday later, which fits in nicely. Now I just need to get enrolled and afford it. I managed to source three of the five texts for English Lit on Amazon for under twelve quid, which is nice. Othello, Miss Jean Brodie and a whole bunch of W H Auden will be winging their ways to me imminently. Now I just need Jane Eyre and Streetcar. Oh, and also find any and all film/TV adaptations of aforementioned Classics. Especially the Simpsons episode :) The new Goldfrapp album, Seventh Tree, seems to be a bit of a return to Felt Mountain form. I'm glad. Supernature was fun, but my favourite is still their debut.