It’s Gonna Be A Thing

Tuesday felt significantly lighter. We were nowhere near being done, but we had four projects out of the way (Movement, Historical Dance, Stage Combat and Dramatic Lit). But with Tuesday came the dreaded final assessment, in which each students sits down for ten minutes in front of the entire faculty as they go through one by one and tell you what they think of you. It sounds like a joke, but it’s not. We had our last Physical Theatre class in the morning, and I met my clown. She’s eager to please and somewhat proud of herself; likes doing things right and not very good at running around in circles. I wish I had more time to play around with her, but we didn’t. We also had another Tailor of Gloucester rehearsal with Richard, in which we all became very uncomfortable (as is to be expected) due to Hugh being incompetent. Richard has very little patience with him, which makes the rest of us very tense and uneasy. So that was fun… Then, half of us had lunch with Richard and Sabina to talk about the experience of LDA and living in London, etc. It was really nice to just be able to talk freely about it, what we liked and what we didn’t like, and dealing with Hugh and Hay.

After that was over, a little more Tailor and then Geoff and I had a big long break before our assessments which were later in the evening. We decided to just pick a random stop in a random direction on the tube and go there and hang out for a little while. We decided on Sloane Square (which we had forgotten was one of the most expensive places in London), and wandered around. We saw a sign for a free exhibit in some modern art museum, Saatchi, I think it was called, and said, “Hey, it’s free!” and went in.

Here’s the thing about modern art… I can’t say that it’s not “art”, because by my own definition, “art” is “art” before of the intention behind it. If someone takes a picture of a sewer and means it to be art, then what makes it less art than someone taking a picture of a lion besides the fact that I don’t like the picture of the sewer and I do like the picture of the lion? So there’s is modern art which I like, and modern art which I think is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Some of the exhibits were cool. There was one big very white bright room that had thirteen prosthetic very lifelike old men (who looked pretty dead) going around the room aimlessly in wheelchairs, bumping into each other, with nothing but questionable sensors guiding them around. Now… I don’t necessarily like this, but it had an interesting feeling associated with it, and I could appreciate the effort and skill and thought that went into it. On the other hand, there was one “piece” that was a piece of burlap and some tap nailed to the wall. Now, again, I can’t say that this isn’t art, but I think I’m safe in saying that it’s BAD art. The coolest thing in the whole place was a spiral staircase that was made the shape of a circle, so it never ended. It was very Escher. Here, again, I could appreciate the execution of it, even though it didn’t mean anything to me except that it was cool to look at. After that, we headed to a little café and had a very simple and delicious afternoon tea. It was really nice, and made me realise how much I’m going to miss being able to be spontaneous about travel when I leave London.

Then we headed back to school for our assessments before we had a final Tailor rehearsal. When we get to school, everyone is in the computer lounge looking shell-shocked. People’s eyes are red and puffy, some are still crying, and others just keep saying “It was overwhelming, I don’t even know what to do.” As is to be expected, I started to panic. I paced and Geoff managed very well to keep me sane before I went in. I was worried about crying before I even went in, but I managed to keep it together. As a matter of fact, I was somewhat underwhelmed. I think everyone’s reactions were causing me to expect something … overwhelming, and it was just exactly what I thought it was going to be. All the teachers said what my strengths were, what I still needed to work on after I left, and it was all reasonable, logical and sensible. Not at all any kind of surprise. Not everyone’s assessments were very positive, however, so that evenings rehearsal was pretty gloomy. I can say that I was not sad to go home at nine that night.

Wednesday brought with it the prospect of our last acting class, something I was half dreading and half looking forward to. We had Tailor in the morning and then a music rehearsal in the evening (all still as painful as ever) with acting in the middle. In my acting class, we were performing our scenes for Richard. We had one run through (in which I had Tierney graciously tape my and Geoff’s last rehearsal before we showed it to Richard) and then Richard came in and we “performed” them for him. Everyone’s went so well. The difference between our first runs and those seconds ones for Richard was astonishing, and he seemed quite pleased with them as well. Obviously, my and Geoff’s rocked the world’s ass (you’ll be able to see us in the film adaptation of Stoppard’s Arcadia as soon as they get the contracts all written out). But I was sad to see the scene go. I owe Arcadia a lot, and Thomasina fit me very well.

That night, after our heroes, Geoff, Vanessa and Haley, told Hugh off for behaving as though he was constantly drugged and making life more difficult for everyone in his Tailor group, Geoff, Ann, Tierney and I went to the Greyhound Pub with Gordon, our stage combat teacher. He bought us all drinks and then we bought him one and we had our own makeshift quiz night. It was super fun, and Ann and I tied - but then she won. We ended up hanging out for three hours, and had a great time before bidding Gordon goodbye and heading home.

Thursday morning, we said goodbye to Tim Pinn, the tube guy. He told us to say goodbye to him then because he was off for the next four days, and we chatted a bit and he said he read my blog (which is awesome) and then we went off to school. It’s weird to think I may never see him again…

Our personal schedules still applied on Thursday, and this is when I got really sad, because I was beginning to realise all that I was leaving behind. In Alexander, Dee showed me a picture I had drawn of myself at the beginning of the semester, and then one I had done the week before, and the difference was astonishing. I’ve become a different person here, and I didn’t even realise it. But looking back at who I was before I came, it’s ridiculous.

We had a long lunch because our voice teacher was ill, so Geoff and I went to a Caffe Nero on High Street, and then after Sienna’s and my last class, we headed to Leicester Square because none other than the Avatar world premier was happening right there that night. Stars were supposed to start arriving at 5:30 and the show was supposed to start at 7:10, and of course we had Tailor at 7. We got really good spots right on the edge of the blue carpet and managed to stay until we saw at least Sigourney Weaver, and we could hear people shouting “Cameron!” and “Zoe!” but we had to leave before we could see anyone else.

By this time in Tailor, Stephanie and I were saying about 70% of Hugh’s lines. We had a quick and mildly painful rehearsal then home. Tomorrow was the big day.

And then it came. Friday. Our last day of classes. The penultimate full day in London. We had Tailor rehearsals all day, and by the end of rehearsals, Stephanie and I were saying 90% of Hugh’s lines. It’s better that way. We were all being surprisingly efficient and ahead of schedule, and the showing at 330 went smoothly. People really seemed to enjoy it. We had a small little gathering with everyone at the end, and Geoff did some stupid magic tricks (I say stupid in that they were very very good) and then I needed to get out of the building. It was too much. I said goodbye to the teachers and goodbye to Susan, Sienna’s aunt who came to see the showing, and headed home. London, trying hard to make it easier for me to leave, was having some tube difficulties, so it took a while, but I got home.

Saturday tried very hard not to be a sad day. I packed - very slowly… We went to the Great Ormond Street Hospital because J.M. Barrie donated the rights of Peter Pan to that children’s hospital and they have several tributes including a Peter Pan Cafe, where we were hoping to have lunch. But it was closed. We did get to see the very nice statue of Peter and Tink just outside, however, and ended up having lunch at a very nice pub thing that was delicious and cheap. We stopped by Covent Garden because we were two stops away, but man was it crowded and cold. I hadn’t dressed for being outside, so we didn’t stay, but walked to Charing Cross and took the tube home. Sienna hung out for a while while I packed and then we headed to school with Geoff to print some papers and drop some things off there.

That night, we all got together (sans Sienna who was with John, her British boy) and tried eating the food we had leftover from our stay in London. It was really nice to hang out with everyone one last time and say goodbye. Sinead got a tattoo that looks really good and people cried and all that nonsense. Tierney took a really nice polaroid of us which I can’t wait to see on facebook. And then, unfortunately, our last day in London… came to a close.

I had such a wonderful time. I became the person that I will continue to grow into for the rest of my life, and have given myself tools without which I never could have succeeded. I made friends who I will never forget and hopefully never lose, who have changed me and who I hope I have changed as well. My experiences (all of them, good or bad) were priceless and I wouldn’t change an instant of what I had in London for anything.

To all of you who I met in London, thank you for everything. I can’t believe that four months ago I didn’t know any of you, and now the prospect of going back to that life seems unbearable.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

Saturday morning, the sun was shining, so we decided to finally make that visit to Kew Gardens. It was pretty far. So far, in fact, that we had to pay extra to get there on the tube. Not to mention, the garden wasn’t that cheap, either. But it was really cool. The gardens currently have 1/8th of the species of plant in the world, and their goal is to have 25% by 2020. We started off going through an old Victorian greenhouse, then headed over to something called the Treetop Walkway. Because it’s already so cold and wintery here, the trees are bare, so it was pretty boring. But we could see pretty far out over the garden which was neat. I won’t go through and say all the little details of the places we saw, but some highlights include an intimate moment with a male peacock, the UK’s largest compost heap, the world’s oldest potted plant, some carnivorous plants and pretty plants and cacti and a few animals (fish and lizards and frogs and turtles). Wow, so detailed. So interesting. I know.

It got pretty cold pretty fast and pretty early. Because the sun sets so early, the temperature drops really fast between one and two. So after some snacks and souvenir shopping, we began the long trek home. A brief interval at the flats, and then Sienna and I were off again to meet Susan and Tony (her aunt and betrothed) for dinner before we went to go see Peter Pan! The same production that had been in Kensington Gardens at the beginning of our stay in London had been revived for the Christmas season and is playing at the O2 arena, basically a giant concert venue. I had never been there, but it’s famous for its size, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew that it was round and white, from pictures, and along the Thames from maps, but that’s about it.

We had dinner at a nice pizza place where Sienna and I once again demonstrated our uncanny skill for ordering two dishes and cutting them in half to create the perfect meal for both of us. Then, we followed the signs to Neverland within the O2, which is basically a giant tent. All along the sides of it are shops and games and rides, and then on the inside I imagine is the main concert hall area. It fits tens of thousands of people, I don’t know the exact number. Just outside, however, was the much more quaint tent for Peter Pan.

There had been a necklace that I had been hesitating about the first time I went, and since Susan and Tony graciously bought my ticket for the show, I decided to splurge and I bought it. It’s the Kiss Exchange necklace, and has a thimble and an acorn and it’s very nice and delicate. Don’t worry, I also treated Susan and Tony to ice cream at intermission as a thank you. It was really interesting seeing the show again after the whole program, because the first time was before I had learned any of this stuff. There were a lot more kids at this performance, which was unfortunate, because it was late and not necessarily a kids show. The part where Tinker Bell dies was significantly different in that instead of murmurs throughout the theatre of “I believe in faeries”, it was little kids yelling and whooping all around the theatre of some variation of the same phrase.

It was also cool to see some different actors as Mrs Darling, Tink, Tiger Lily and Smee and some different fights. According to Gordon, who I talked to about it today, said that he already knew about all the changes because he knows the fight director for it, and gave me the inside scoop! Ooo… But what that experience mostly did for me was make me realise that theatre has become a completely different experience for me. I notice things that I was ignorant to before, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for the actors. They have a lot more work to do. But I love that play, and I’m really happy I got to see it again. It was a perfect bookend.

Oh god. I can’t believe I’m at that end of the bookends…

Sunday was also an exciting day (I’m certainly leaving London with a bang). Ignoring the fact that I had stuff to memorize, a paper to write, dances to go over, a movement project to choreograph and rehearse… you get the idea… I went to Oxford St to the HMV (a media store) down there to see if I could catch a glimpse of Tom Felton, Evanna Lynch, Matthew Lewis and Jessie Cave who were signing copies of the Half-Blood Prince Blu-Ray DVD. (In case you don’t know who they are, and I’ll forgive you if you don’t, they play Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood, Neville Longbottom and Lavender Brown respectively in the Harry Potter movies.) So it was very confusing when we got there, and it turns out that the Blu-Ray DVD was not only cheaper than I was anticipating, and while it was Region 2 (which means that it’s not compatible with American DVD players) it included the Blu-Ray with all the special features (of which there are many), the regular DVD and a digital copy. So… I bought a copy. Possibly the stupidest purchase of my life. But that meant that I got to wait in line to meet all of them and have them sign it.

Long story short, I did. I wrote some of my paper while in line, but totally got to meet all four of them. It was totally awesome. My conversations with each of them went something like this:

Aylia - Hi!
Evanna - Hello! (You have to imagine it in her high airy voice.)
Aylia - Can I just say, you were the perfect choice for this character; just wonderful casting.
Evanna - Oh, thank you. (Insert a look here asking how to spell my name.)
Aylia - A-Y-L-I-A.
Evanna - (As she’s signing.) I like your look. I tried to get them to do something more mature like that with Luna, but they didn’t want to.
Aylia - Oh, that’s too bad.
Evanna - Yeah, I wanted them to give me dreadlocks.
Aylia - That would have been so cool! (I’m getting pushed away.) Thank you!
Evanna - Thank you.

Tom - Hi, how are you? (He’s clearly used to this. And insanely hot and blonde.)
Aylia - I’m good, how are you?
Tom - I’m alright… How do you spell your name?
Aylia - A-Y-L-I-A. (This is a recurring theme. I had to spell it a little more than once.)
Tom - That’s a very nice name.
Aylia - Thanks, it’s from Star Trek.
Tom - Oh, cool.
Aylia - How is filming for Deathly Hallows going?
Tom - Alright, alright. Almost done.
Aylia - (Getting pushed away.) Thank you!
Tom - Thank you.

Aylia - Hi!
Jessie - Hi, how do you spell your name?
Aylia - A-Y-L-I-A. (I lied a little bit here:) I saw you in Arcadia and you were a perfect Thomasina!
Jessie - Oh thank you! When did you see it?
Aylia - Oh gosh… (Fake trying to remember.)
Jessie - Was it early or late?
Aylia - Early.
Jessie - Oh…
Aylia - I mean, early for me because I only got here in late August.
Jessie - Oh, because it got much better.
Aylia - Oh, cool! (Getting pushed away. Now standing in front of Matt as I bid Jessie goodbye.)

Aylia - Hello!
Matt - Hey, how’s it going? (He knows how to spell my name because it’s written three times on my DVD.)
Aylia - Really good, how are you?
Matt - Good, yeah. It’s really hot in here.
Aylia - I know! My gosh!
Matt - Thank you so much for coming down.
Aylia - Thank you! Stay strong for the rest of the day!
Matt - Hahaha, thanks!

So that was pretty epic. All of them either wrote “x”s or some form of “love” or both. That was really exciting. Then I spent the rest of the night doing homework, and would you believe it? I got everything done!

Monday… our last Monday… Oh gosh. Vanessa and Clare were my partners for my Movement project, and we came in very early this morning to work on our project in the space with the music, which we hadn’t been able to do before. Then we did the projects and most of them went very well. I was reasonably pleased with ours, except that in comparison to Geoff’s and Sienna’s it was rubbish. As was to be expected. They’ll be online in a week. Oh gosh. Because I’ll have unlimited bandwidth in a week. Oh gosh.

After that was done, we had Historical Dance. That also went very well. All of the things we thought we would mess up, we pulled together. I don’t know how we did it, but after a semester of have the group not really paying attention, it went so well. Then lunch… and then Dramatic Lit. Turned in our papers, but not really interesting other than that except that it was our last one. Finally, end of the day creeping towards us, Stage Combat. We rehearsed a bit then had our showing for that. Those videos actually are online now, and also went well. Michael came to see them, and it was nice to see him. It was short lived, but fun.

And now the day is drawing to a close. I find myself memorizing and trying to make the days last as long as possible.

We had decided to celebrate Thanksgiving on Sunday, and we had originally planned to go to Kew Gardens in the morning before dinner, but it was raining pretty hard, and since going so far would be quite a trek and expensive, we decided to put it off till a day when we would be happier to go. So instead, we went to Tesco to do some Thanksgiving shopping - really only picking up a few last minute things. (Did you know that it’s damn near impossible to find a pre made pie crust in this country?! Home of the people who thought putting meat in a pie was a good idea?)

After a few feeble attempts at work, we got down to business with making Thanksgiving dinner. In principle, everyone was bringing something. We had made a sign up sheet earlier; I was making my signature leek pie, with added potatoes (for those keeping tabs it is now a potato leek pie) and Sienna made an array of bread and garlic treats. My pie was coming along very nicely, and I was admittedly nervous about it, because I had never made one like it before, and I was really talking it up, and when the time came for everyone to meet downstairs to eat, I was making anyone who would listen smell it. (Yes, it smelled very good!)

As more and more people arrived, I got more and more excited. We had homemade mashed potatoes, my potato leek pie, garlic bread, roasted garlic, homemade garlic butter, vegetarian stuffing, non-vegetarian stuffing, two different kinds of mac and cheese, sweet potato and marshmallow casserole (with beef marshmallows so I couldn’t have any), two cranberry sauces, a delicious carrot and broccoli thing, and of course KFC. (I didn’t have any of that either.) We had lots of wine and some adult hot chocolate (which means enhanced with vodka) and then for dessert, we had pumpkin cranberry cookies, pumpkin pies, homemade oreo and ice cream cake, chocolate cookies, homemade whipped cream… and I think that’s it. Practically everything vegetarian, I ate two servings of, though there were a few items that ran out before I could get seconds.

I can say with confidence that I had literally never eaten so much in my life. It was embarrassing, and I was in quite a lot of pain afterwards. I employed the oh-so-famous rule of eating as fast as possible so your stomach doesn’t know you’re full until it’s too late. And then even after my stomach managed to relay the message, I still had some pumpkin pie. Everything was so good, and my pie was a huge success! Geoff started teaching me how to juggle after I had recovered a little, and everyone hit the hay pretty early, too exhausted from eating to do anything.

Monday was a heavier day than normal; needless to say I ate very little. Classes were fine and not particularly eventful. It was long, though. Because after our usual and very long schedule, we had a masterclass with a guest artist from the Royal Ballet named David Drew. I think you can look him up online, apparently he’s a big deal. I wasn’t very interested, because I’m not really into dance and we hadn’t seen him in anything, but it was fine.

Tuesday, since we finished work with Shakespeare, after our Physical Theatre class, we started working on our end of the term project with Richard. We’re doing some kind of adaptation of the Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. It would have been fine, but Richard shows a lot of not-unobvious favouritism towards the the boys in our group, which made me feel a bit expendable, but it’s too early to judge, I suppose. We had a brief masterclass with the guy who gave us our tour of the National Gallery, and he gave us a rundown on an exhibit we were going to go see at the Tate Britain that afternoon. It was mildly interesting, but we really had to fight to stay with him. Then we headed to the museum to see the exhibit, Turner and the Masters, which was basically a comparison of works of Turner’s with his contemporaries and predecessors. It was cool, but would have been more interesting if the guy had been there as we looked at the paintings rather than before we looked at them. The best part of that outing was that when we met Michael, he was wearing a black sweater vest and said it was in honour of our last cultural outing.

Oh god. Too close to the end.

That evening we were going to see the ballet. This guy named Carlos Acosta? Apparently he’s a crazy famous male dancer, and instead of a narrative thing, it was more of a recital, so there was a total of about four pieces that he danced with various partners. Again, I’m not much of a dance enthusiast, but I could appreciate the ridiculous skill and power it takes to do what they were all doing. Really makes me feel inadequate when I see things like that.

Wednesday morning, instead of meeting at school for Theatre History in the morning, we met Richard at the Royal Academy of Arts where there was an Anish Kapoor exhibit. This is also probably researchable, and I recommend it. Anish Kapoor is some artist man who … well, it’s hard to explain. The exhibit was overwhelming, though. The amount of materials that were used for it was a bit sickening at times, and while I enjoyed most of the pieces aesthetically, I did not like the reasons behind them. There was a giant canon that fired off twenty pound cylinders of wax every twenty minutes, and we saw that go off twice. That was epic, but the reasoning behind the “piece” was kind of barbaric. There was also a great moving … obelisk of wax that was just colossal that moved through three or four rooms and took ninety minutes to get from one end to another. It was so big, I can spend time talking about how big it is and you would believe me, but you wouldn’t understand until you saw it. There were some other things, too, but hard to describe and do justice to.

Then we headed to school for more work on the Tailor project then acting. Acting went fantastically well. Alison, our teacher, just loves my and Geoff’s scene. She’s openly saving it for last for our showing next week for Richard, and didn’t really have much feedback to give us. She said, “I don’t want to mess with it.” We then had very short private meetings with Tony of Theatre History. He just wanted to give us our papers back and talk to us about them. We all knew before that grades here were very different; then C actually is average, and that B is good, and that no one every gets As. Well, say hello to the girl who got an A- on her paper! (Just in case it wasn’t clear, no one got a higher grade than that… Mmm)

Thursday after our regularly scheduled classes, Sienna and I went to Brick Lane, which according to Sienna’s aunt has better Indian food than Bangladesh. It was pretty far, and we were accosted by lots of Indian Restaurant Owners offering us 25% off our food and the first drink free. The place we settled on was cute. I only stayed to taste the curry and then left Sienna and Susan to themselves and rushed back to meet Geoff to go see Les Mis. I was so hyper-excited I’m surprised he put up with me. We got great seats in the front row of the first balcony (paid not a small amount), and I was surprised by how big the actors were when they came onstage; because we were close, not because they were fat.

Of my two favourite characters, Eponine was fantastic and she made me cry during “A Heart Full of Love” of all things, and Javert left a lot to be desired. He had a good voice, but was pretty boring. Valjean on the other hand was phenomenal. Having never had seen the show before, I wasn’t familiar with the story. I only knew the soundtrack. I think the overall deal with that show is that the music is epic, but the fact that it’s based off of a dense book makes it basically impossible to reasonably fit all that story in, especially when everything is in song. And even though it does not take Phantom off its peg as best musical, I’m incredibly happy I saw it, and there were indeed moments that I got chills.

Friday was long. We had Speech (like we normally do), but we finished with Shakespeare a week ago, so the rest of our day was filled with Tailor. Richard is being helped in the direction of it by this actress named Sheila, and I like her a lot. It’s slow going, but it’s no Mr Polly if anyone remembers all that as well as I unfortunately do. Anyway, turning in very early for a heavy-duty weekend. It’s my last weekend here without worrying about packing… Jesus that’s depressing.

Happy Chris and Monique’s Wedding Day! I’m so sad I couldn’t be there to celebrate with everyone, but I know it was a magical day. I instead tried very hard to preoccupy myself with busyness to not think about how much it stinks that I can’t be there with everyone.

Now, to preface, a few clarifying points. First, the scene that Geoff and I are doing together is from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. I haven’t read a lot of Stoppard, but he’s considered the most respected living playwright. I really dislike one of his plays because I think they seem too higher-than-thou, but Arcadia is a wonderful play. It was playing in London at the beginning of term, but I didn’t get a chance to see it. In any case, it takes place between alternating time periods in which we follow the story of characters in 1809-1813, and people from the modern era (modern for when it was written) try to piece their lives together. It’s much more complicated than that, but wiki has a lot of useful information on there. In any case, I’m playing Thomasina and I love her a lot. She’s easy for me to connect with and the scenes we’re doing are both wonderful. Second, I do know about Freud. Not extensively, but enough to know that I don’t like his ideas. I think that by his own analysis, he has vagina envy. I believe strongly that he was a sexist pig searching for meaning in meaningless areas of life, and keen to blow things out of proportion, trying to justify inconsequential information to fit his own preconceived judgments.

Today, Sienna and I got up early-esque to go to Burrow Market. Tim Pinn, a TFL (Transport for London) employee - he works at Warwick Avenue and always cheers us up - recommended it to us for our veggies. We needed leeks for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, so we followed his advice and made the trek to Tower Hill to visit this market. Turns out, it’s actually pretty famous? Anyway, it was big. It very much had the feeling of being set up for the long run - an impression we got both from the fact that it was on our maps, and that the stalls were so big, just one of them would more than fill our flat. They had a lot of stalls with dead animals in them which was upsetting (saw a dead mallard hanging by its feet as well as some mammals I didn’t look too closely at, and giant fish heads next to a squid), as well as kangaroo burgers and duck eggs, but there were lots of yummy vegetarian things. It’s weird to think of how many different kinds of food there are in the world… I got some tofu which I made for dinner, and it was the best tofu I’ve ever had, hands down. I also got leeks for tomorrow and Sienna got some garlic. Then, since we were just down the river from the National Theatre, we walked down. There was a book that I wanted to get from their bookstore that I didn’t think I would find anywhere else, and the National is far for a trip all on its own for a book. But man, it was cold. As I was paying for the book, which thankfully they had in stock, it took about three times as long as it should have because my fingers were so stiff.

From there, we trekked off to Harrods. Man, I thought last time it was crowded because of the parade, but no. It’s just always like that. It was overwhelming and not necessarily pleasant, but we did learn that Harrods sells helicopters. Woah. We had some lunch, then headed towards 221b Baker Street to visit the Sherlock Holmes museum, but at he last minute we decided that we would rather just visit the gift shop, because we thought it a bit too expensive.

In short, it was a good day. We were out from 930 in the morning till about 4 in the afternoon, and I spent the rest of the day doing nothing. Felt good.

Monday was a jump start back into life at LDA. The most eventful thing that happened - but it was quite eventful - was that I did a handstand! A full handstand, and I held it! How amazing is that? I was standing… upside down! On my hands! That really energized me for the rest of the day. And of course stage combat was epic, because now we’re choreographing an actual scene with lots of fighting in it, and as Benvolio I get to break apart a bunch of fights and do some hand to hand. I’m going to try to get someone to tape it, because not only would I like to see it, but I think the rest of the world needs an opportunity to see how kickass I am. Look how accomplishments have kept me modest! (So many exclamation marks, there are just so many things to exclaim!)

I was adequately terrified going into Shakespeare on Tuesday because of how thoroughly he tore us apart the week before, but it was relatively painless. We weren’t good, in fact we were still bad, but we had improved, and Michael could tell. It’s just that one rotten apple in our team that’s bringing us all down. Acting is a team sport, and people don’t really realise this. If one person in the team isn’t putting the work in, we can’t win. Anyway, our showing for that is on Friday, so maybe by then he’ll even have learned his lines. Physical Theatre held up its “favourite class-dom” by being awesome, then we had Rupert Evans come for our Masterclass. He had been in Life As A Dream and was absolutely gorgeous. In fact, we were supposed to have talked to him last week, but we needed to reschedule for one reason or another. He was so sweet, and really cute. Not particularly interesting or uninteresting, basically average. I still prefer Sam West over him, which is a bummer because Sam West is older… Anyway, then we went with Michael to the Freud Museum.

Now, I dislike Freud to begin with, but this was creepy. This was the house that he lived in for one year when he moved to London before he died, and that his daughter, Anna, lived in after. She apparently pioneered child psychotherapy. The guy who worked there was really … hmm. Michael called him “spooky”, but I don’t know how to describe him, really. For one thing, he was clearly obsessed with Freud, but nothing made him much of an expert on the subject and it was as if he was expecting us to treat him as a scholar, and thought we were all … budding psychotherapists or I don’t know what. It was only a fun experience in that while they were showing us some nonsense videos about god knows what, Geoff and I couldn’t stop laughing - because the videos were so ridiculous! We talked with Michael a bit after, before heading back.

That night, Sienna’s boy invited me and Geoff and her to go see a gig that some friends of his were playing. It was at a bar somewhere, we took the bus, it was super close. The bar was fairly empty, so I didn’t really know what to expect. We hung out for a while waiting for them to play, and when they went on, The Beat Presidents, they’re called, they were so good. I could not believe how good they were; I mean, legit awesome band. These were the kinds of songs that you would hear on the radio. You want to know why you don’t? Because the band doesn’t get around to recording anything! They keep winning all these competitions, and they won studio time like a year ago, and still haven’t used it! Anyway, John, Sienna’s boy, I think recorded a few of their songs, which you can listen to online. Myspace them. Incredible.

Wednesday was fun. We had another Masterclass after Theatre History, this time with a guy named Frank Barry, who I believe is a pretty big deal. He was in Lawrence Olivier’s troupe once upon a time, and he gave us a lecture/performance on Shakespeare. It was pretty cool, but it had been built up, so admittedly it wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be. In Acting, the scenes that I’m doing with Geoff are so good! And the best part is that everyone else in the class loves it as much (I think) as we do, especially Alison (our teacher). For the showing in two weeks, she’s keeping our scenes for last because they’re clearly the best.

That evening, Sienna’s aunt came over and we made dinner again for her and hung out. It was really nice, she’s lots of fun, and we’re going to go see Peter Pan again when it comes to the O2 in December.

Thursday after classes, we mostly just focused on Shakespeare because the showing was the next day. So we came home, ate, procrastinated, worked Shakespeare, repeat. So you can imagine we were all a bit anxious when Friday came around. I did not think that our showing was going to be good, especially in comparison to the Taming of the Shrew group, after hearing everything that people were saying about their show. In any case, we ran through it four times today, Friday, including the showing, and Richard… didn’t hate them. He did mention that Shrew was better, and this was due partly to the fact that Hugh - who was in Comedy - didn’t know his lines, and even though he was forced to do the showing with book in hand, he STILL DIDN’T KNOW HIS LINES! Not that I’m blaming the outcome of our show on him, but it certainly didn’t help. I was pretty proud of myself at one moment because I messed up my monologue by jumping over lines then going back and fixing them, but not even Michael noticed. During notes at the end, Richard commented on how difficult Luciana is to play, so it was nice to have him acknowledge it. In any case, it felt good for it to be done, and now we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

We left early early Thursday morning to catch an 8 o’clock train from King’s Cross. (And the fact that that’s where the Hogwarts Express takes off is only partly the reason why we left from there.) The train ride was really long, and we didn’t really know how to deal with English trains at that point, so we were sitting in one group of two and one group of one (Sienna of course being the selfless martyr - she’s my wife!). We sat on the right side of the train as per Richard’ request - then slept for most of it. We did see an absolutely immense cathedral, and about 374 million sheep and the ocean - unexpected. We finally arrive in Edinburgh Waverly station about five hours later and … here it comes … it’s raining! We book it to our hostel, which was incredibly close to the train station, so that was nice, but they wouldn’t let us check in until two (and it was only about one) so we went to the pub across the street (the Three Sisters Pub). The bartender, disappointingly enough, was not only not Scottish (he was Irish) but he was trying so hard to be chill, that he ended up just coming across as an asshole.

Our hostel was very nice. We had our own room (six beds) connected to a flat with two bathrooms and a kitchen. After settling down a bit, we walked to the National Museum of Scotland and walked around there for a bit. It was pretty cool, but we really wished we had had Michael there with us to tell us about everything. We all got bored with reading the things and just ended up in the Discovery game thing that museums have until they closed and kicked us out. So we went across the street to the Elephant House, which was the café where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter - I know: AAAAHHH! I did. And I had the best sandwich I have ever had in my life. It was a brie, apple and redcurrant jelly sandwich on ciabata bread, and it was delicious. Not to mention that this café mixes all my favourite things about life: Harry Potter and elephants.

After that, we headed back to the hostel for a nap before our evening ghost tour. Sienna was determined to go on one, and I wasn’t going to protest to it. It seemed like fun, and we had Geoff to protect us. After our nap, we head out to the Royal Mile (about a block north of us) to meet our ghost tour guide. At first as we saw him walking towards us in his cloak, I was thinking “Oh man, this lame guy either hates his life and the fact that he has to wear that for his job, or he’s a total loser.” But the moment the first sound came out of his mouth, the three of us were in love. His name was Jared, and his voice was like what the water at the bottom of a deep, old river would sound like if it could speak: magical. We followed him around, and he was a very good story teller, and I didn’t get a bit spooked every once in a while, but as was to be expected, I didn’t see any ghosts. You want to know why? Because they’re not real.

Friday morning was absolutely beautiful. We had initially planned on going to Edinburgh Castle that morning, and then hike up to Arthur’s Seat, a dormant volcano that we had been told to visit, on Saturday, but the weather was too good to ignore the opportunity. So we walked our way over, a nice little walk, and then made our way up the slipper slope to the top of Arthur’s Seat. That was definitely my favourite part of the trip. We could see what felt like all of Scotland from the top of that hill, and the wind was so violent, Geoff thought he was going to get blown off! But the feeling of freedom that came with standing on the top of that mountain and looking out over everything and how beautiful and peaceful it all looked was amazing. If December 2012 rolls around and it looks like the world is ending, that’s where I’m going to get the best view.

On the way down, midsentence (and the sentence was, in case you were wondering, “We totally rocked that”), Sienna slipped in the mud and fell. I felt bad for laughing, but Geoff and I couldn’t stop ourselves from exploding into laughter. Even as I write this now, days later, I’m still laughing out loud at the memory. Not five minutes later, Geoff slips, and - AS HE’S SLIPPING, he hasn’t even hit the ground yet - he curses. Man, I can’t tell you how hard I laughed. Really hard. There was an old little 14th or something century cathedral that had been built near the base of the hill that we played around, and then we went to go observe some massive swans in a small lake at the bottom before heading back. We also tried tackling the castle that afternoon, but they closed relatively soon and we didn’t want to feel rushed, so we hung around the outside marveling at the beauty of it, and meandered down a bit of the Royal Mile. We shopped a wee bit, and because our hostel was so close to the Balmoral Hotel (the place where J.K. Rowling finished the last Harry Potter), we stopped in there to ask if we could visit her room and see the bust she signed. Alas, someone was in the room. Eff that. Oh well, so we headed back to the hostel and had a vacation night in with playing and sleeping. We were still lucky at this point in having the entire room to ourselves.

Saturday morning was still relatively nice. We headed towards the castle, which was so Hogwarts. Just everything about Edinburgh screamed “I’m like this part of Harry Potter!” It’s not a wonder Jo lives and writes there. The castle was really cool, but again, I wish we had had Michael. It was starting to get pretty cold, so we stopped in a café on the castle grounds and ate a little there and had some tea, and then after finishing our rounds, I did some good Christmas shopping in the gift shop there. And, believe it or not, there was a canon fire at one (like there is every day) and we missed it! I don’t know how that happened… Anyway, we went back to the museum straight after that because it was on the way to the hostel, and we didn’t get to finish discovering things in the Discovery room. So we finished discovering things, then I dragged everyone back to the Elephant House so I could have another epic sandwich and relish in the J.K. Rowlingness elephantness of it all.

At this point, it was pretty cold and off-and-on rainy, so we went back to the hostel and played some games and watched some magic tricks, courtesy of Geoff (who for the record becomes a d-bag when he’s in his magician character), and some Australian girls arrived in our room. No big. We took a nap (we were on vacation, OK?!) and then headed out for dinner. Sienna wanted to eat at this place called Wee Windae’s or something and as we’re walking towards it, I start talking about Jared and how much we loved his voice. Not two minutes later, there he is rounding the corner! We were all too starstruck to say anything, but we squealed as soon as he had passed us.

In any case, it turns out the restaurant we had wanted to go to was über fancy, and didn’t have vegetarian haggis which Sienna was determined to try. So we headed down the street to some other super Scottish place where she got her vegetarian haggis (which was actually really good. Want to know why? Because the gross stuff in it is what makes it not-vegetarian. Take that out and it’s just good).

This is mostly to show you Arthur's Seat

Sunday morning we woke up at a reasonable time to pack everything up and catch the train. We checked out at 10 (check out time) but our train wasn’t until 11. So - since it was on the way - I drag everyone to the Balmoral (of course) to see if the people who had been staying there were still there or if I could go see the room. The girl we talked to was not nearly as nice as the one from Saturday, and said that we couldn’t go because, while it was empty, it hadn’t been cleaned. So we went to the train station, I wallowed, and then headed back to the Balmoral to make double sure that we couldn’t go in. We couldn’t. Bummer.

The train ride back was uneventful. Long again, but this time we knew how to handle the train, so we got a table and the three of us sat together. There went the ocean, the sheep, the giant cathedral, more sleeping… Being back in London, however, was like a big breath of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful time in Edinburgh, but I missed London. We celebrated being back by doing nooooooothing. What more could anyone ask for after a vacation?

“On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach!”
- Bardolph, Henry V

Putting up a whole post about this is going to make it seem cooler than it is, but my Edinburgh post is going to be so long already, that I had to. OK, the food part of the story:

When we arrived at the library, I wanted to get some food, but we were running a wee bit short on time. We had initially arrived early at the King’s Cross tube station before we needed to meet Michael at the library, so Sienna and I wanted to go get our picture taken with Platform 9 3/4. A bunch of other people came with us, and we’re just about 15 meters away from it when people start getting nervous about time, so they make us turn back. Then I decided I wanted food, but at this point, the only place I could go to get food was on the premise of the library. Sienna and I went in while everyone else - needlessly worried about time - went in to meet Michael (we still had time, mind you) but the café there didn’t have any interesting food. So Sienna and I went in. But because for our tours they were self-guided, Michael was just sending people away in groups. Sienna and I had just missed that one group, so we were standing with Michael and talking, and I guess Geoff told Michael that we had gone to get food because Michael said,

“Did you get any food?”
“No, they didn’t have anything interesting to eat.”
“Didn’t you just have lunch?”
“That was like two hours ago!”
“Do you need to eat often?”
“I just eat small portions at small intervals,” I respond, a bit defensively.
“Here, try these.”

And out of his little black backpack he pulls a tupperware with these cube granola things, and of course I protest. “No, Michael! You don’t need to give me your food, I’m fine!” But he does that thing where he doesn’t really hear what you’re saying, and he gave me one anyway, explaining what they were and where he got them, and man! It was delicious.

So, that’s the story of how Michael and I went on a lunch date. Now for a retelling of his anecdotes. Oh boy.

Now, as I’m writing these, imagine them in the voice of Michael Winter, a man who - at first glace - seems incredibly intimidating and brilliant and wise and learnéd and somewhat scary, but is secretly a giant goof ball who knows everything to know about Shakespeare. He started telling us about how he is a people watcher. The first story was how he was on the train once, and this woman gets on, and she’s a little overbundled with bags, and as she sits, one of her suitcases pops open and these doll hands and faces come out and Michael tries to give her a sympathy look - but you’re not supposed to look at people on the tube. She sees him looking at her and gives him a face like the one that accompanies the sound “gruhyrrrw!!!” as she tries to close the suitcase, but a doll head is preventing her from doing so. We’re all laughing, because Michael reenacted this face, and then he falls back with laughter at a story that he just remembered. He starts it off by saying, “Oh, this is funny!”

He was on a bus and there was a woman who is was pretty big, and when they stop at some bus stop, this guy gets off the bus and looks in the window at the fat woman and very clearly mouths the word “OBESE!” And Michael just bursts into laughter and says, “That’s the kind of thing you think, not the kind of thing you say!”

Then later, when he was sitting in his seat before the show started, we looked over at him and he mouths “OBESE!”

So there you have it: two somewhat anticlimactic stories that add up to a wonderful man.