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Springtime at Bretton

Monday, April 30, 2007
Today was my last day with Phil for a couple of weeks, so after attending THE LAST Cultures Of Performance lecture and seminar of the year (woooo!!), I met up with Phil and we had a walk round Bretton for a couple of hours. It was a lovely day, so we took some nice pictures:

Me in "Faerie Mode" with my daisy chain garland there.

Me and Phil under a blossom tree.

After a nice sunny day, I returned home (to an empty room) to find that, after rehearsing outside for the afternoon, I am now slightly sunburnt. So, yay for me and my pinky cheeks. At least the rehearsal went well!






Mags' last resort

Sunday, April 29, 2007
I think you realise that you are living in absolute squalor when your housekeeper finally, after several months of tolerance, refuses to clean up your kitchen.




Actually, looking at the state of the kitchen, it's not as bad as it has been before... but then again, we did take the picture in the evening, and "they" had quite obviously cleaned out two of the sinks before we had the chance to take the photos.
In other annoying kitchen news, my chicken kievs have been stolen out of my freezer, but the sign in the fridge seems to be working and I haven't had anything taken from there recently. We also managed to locate one plate and two knives on an expedition around the kitchen the other day, so I guess it's not all bad...






A last resort

Wednesday, April 25, 2007
After finding items missing from my fridge for the last three days now, we decided to take a stand...


Can I point out the Marks and Spencer brand stuff on the shelf below mine? Why can't they take the posh stuff that's WORTH stealing? :( Why do they have to disappear my cheap ASDA but absolutely necessary stuff instead?


The £10 a week thing isn't a lie - I'm trying to cut down on the money I'm using out of my loan so that I can afford to pay the summer rent on my house for next year with this term's loan money.

On a lighter note - Happy Birthday Phil!
I'll put some pictures up from today another time.






I hate Fridays

Friday, April 20, 2007
I hate Fridays because it's one of the days in the week where I lack motivation to do anything. I don't have to be on campus, I don't have any looming deadlines, and because we don't have class on a Friday, most people are still in bed after a late night last night, so there isn't much to do here either. My nearest source of entertainment is ASDA and someone's stolen my fork. Oh, and I miss Phil.
However, I was finally able to check my post this morning, and look what Phil sent me:


[Enter shameless showing off of lovely boyfriend here].
Anyway, getting a couple of letters, a postcard and a "care package" from home made me feel a bit better, so I decided to begin the post that I've been threatening to start for ages: "You Know You're in Wakey When...". I will be adding to it when I experience the appropriate material.

So.... You Know You're in Wakey When...

1) You're standing at a bus stop and you overhear a conversation between a man and a woman who are discussing a friend who recently died from "that dreadul Motorola disease".

2) You're waiting to cross a road at one of those little crossing island things when you see a poor kiddie (female, I must add) being forced by a persistant mother to wee towards oncoming traffic.

3) You're walking past the cathedral and are suddenly hit by the irony that it is the meeting place of Wakefieldian Goths and Emos.

4) You're in a shop and are told by the sales assistant that your slightly Norfolk/Norwich accent is "very posh".

5) A group of chavs kindly wave down a bus for you when they see that you're running for it.

6) The bus driver can't remember where he's going, takes a wrong turn and then proceeds to reverse back onto the road via a blind corner and into oncoming traffic.

To be continued...






deepening dislike of PHd student

Wednesday, April 18, 2007
As promised, here is my mark and the feedback for my POP2 practical assessement that I didn before Easter. As you can probably tell from the entry title, it hasn't exactly increased his popularity.

Conceptual Development: B
Creativity: B
Content: B
Skills and Techniques: B/C
Investigation/Research: B

Group Comment: This piece had a good sense of dramatic style and the ideas behind the performance were fairly well developed. It would, however, have benefitted from closer scrutiny of what constitues "sex in society" and sexuality more generally - there were many areas of sexuality that were ignored completely and others which were simply washed over. The form of the piece was set up well and was both effective and enjoyable, although certain scenes were far from fully realised and many needed to me more carefully executed. One element that needed particular attention were the transitions between scenes; while the setting up of a "host" for the show helped smooth the way between scenes, there was still an element of chunkiness and hestiation. Overall, the piece worked well and tackled some difficult material in diverse and interesting ways but was not fully realised and lacked depth in performance.

Individual Comment: Lizzy, your performance was committed and energetic with a clear understanding of the material, your place within the piece and displayed good versatility. There were times when you were in danger of over acting, pusing the style out of sync with the rest of the piece but overall a competant and enjoyable performance.

Overall mark: 64%

Ok, so it's a 2:1 - not bad, you say. However, what a nasty piece of feedback. So, just because I don't like our jumped-up-PHd-student of a tutor, I will now go on to pick to pieces his feedback. Don't you just love bitterness?

1) "there were many areas of sexuality that were ignored completely and others which were simply washed over" - that's because you only gave us 20-30 minutes.. and you can't do everything!

2) "certain scenes were far from fully realised and many needed to me more carefully executed" - this is because we were underrehearsed, since you only gave us 4 days to devise and rehearse our piece, and you told us it didn't have to be polished :( And, "needed to ME"? *tuts*

3) "One element that needed particular attention were the transitions between scenes" - if you had been listening, you would have noticed that what we were presenting were a series of experiments, something you set us to do. Therefore, no scenes, and no need to make smooth "polished" transitions.

4) "there was still an element of chunkiness" - tee hee, chunkiness.

5) "was not fully realised and lacked depth in performance" - again, lack of rehearsal time. You can't achieve that much in 4 days.

6) "There were times when you were in danger of over acting" - Moi? No, with all seriousness, some characters were meant to be exaggerated, and others weren't... nevertheless, highly insulting.

7) "a competant" - gee, thanks.

You get the idea. Anyway, at least he had SOME good things to say about me - I've spoken to other people in my group and their feedback comments are a lot harsher. And, it looks like I got the highest mark out of my group, so I guess I can't complain too much. Well, I can always try :D

Anyway, now to the Cultures of Performance essay feedback - slightly nicer.

Coverage: B
Analysis: A/B
Presentation: B

Comments: A very good essay with a measured and compelling style of presentation. You handle the ideas maturely and with confidence - including the nice reference to Husserl when things had the potential to go astray. A good piece!

Overall mark: 67%

Now, considering I got such nice comments from him and got a 67, and such.. bleh ones from Mr PHd and got a 64, and then considering that there were only 3 marks between the two, something seems slightly fishy. Either Mr PHd is overmarking, or Calvin is undermarking. Hmmm.
Either way, they're both 2:1s, so it's not so bad I suppose.






Easter in pictures

Monday, April 16, 2007
Well, after a lounging about the house for 4 weeks with a notable absence of calls from the agency I signed with, i'm back at uni, where the real work is. Since I was far to busy to come and update everyone while I was at home, I thought i'd brief you all using the medium of pictures.. and some additional words. So...

A few days into my holiday, my Mum and Dad went to Spain to have a bit of a break, leaving me and Phil in charge for the rest of the week. We were highly effective carers, providing "the children of the house" with evenings of entertainment (plugging a Gamecube and a Dance Mat into the TV downstairs), haute cuisine (baked potatoes, TASTY potatoes, pictured below) and general fun-ness that only students can provide. Unfortunately for me, I had a stinking cold all week and felt absolutely terrible, but this DID give me the excuse to sit in front of the TV for most of the day watching the Figure Skating World Championships - yays :D

My rather tasty potatoes - whoever said students eat rubbish?

The next week wasn't particularly eventful. I spent most of my time with my Mum at home (who had become ill over the holiday in Spain, and, consequently, couldn't go to work because she felt so bad and had lost her voice), helping her out with a bit of work for the new drama group she's in (Wymondham Musical Theatre Company). This started out as designing the logo for the group, since Tor was supposed to do it but didn't have enough time, but then I volunteered to out some music into Sibelius to create a backing track for some songs, and THEN I decided it would be a good idea to try and replicate Arabian Nights (from Aladdin), since the easy piano version I was given sounded a bit naff. I didn't realise what I had started. At this point in time, the NEW AND IMPROVED version of Arabian Nights is.. well... work in progress. Still. But I'm getting there - Phil installed a new version of Sibelius on my computer here so I can finish it off... I just need the impetus to get it done!

The next week of the holiday was the beginning of the Easter holidays for the schools, so we had Tor and Alexander at home. Again, the beginning of the week was pretty uneventful, but I did spend lots of time with Phil (which was nice). On the Thursday, we decided to do something with our holiday time and the nice weather, and decided to go to Cambridge. We decided to make our trip a half day thing (since we were only ready to go at about 1:00), and spent the day browsing the shops and market, and looking at some of the colleges. We went looking for an icecream truck that Phil and I discovered on out trip to Cambridge in the summer, and luckily, we found it! (The picture below is shortly after the consumption of the icecreams)

I like this picture - hehe :D

Later, we found a mini garden thingy, which we thought was a perfect place for posing for photos. Phil got bored, and found something else to do.

Phil in a tree!

We had a bit more of a wander around, and then made our way home.
The next day (Good Friday), Phil went for his 21st birthday outing (yes, nearly a year late, but it's better late than never!) to Wroxham Barns. Phil's sister Amy and her fiance Tony, Phil's brother Stuart and his girlfriend Rachel, Phil's mum and dad and me (and Phil, obviously), all went for a walk round the Junior Farm and fed the animals.

Phil feeding a sheep/ram/thing

Always a fan of cuddling, I readied myself in the Cuddle Barn for either a chick or a guinea pig. I got a chick. Now, my chick started off pretty docile, and was happy to perch on my wrist and be stroked. But then it decided to poo everywhere and then got a bit flighty and tried to escape, jumping off my lap and making a run for it across the floor. The chick was captured and safely returned to it's coop.

Cute chick? You decide.

We had a relaxed picnic on the grass, watching the many small peoples running around us, and then had a look round some of the shops before returning home - after a quick trip to Roys for some shoes for Tim.

The next day, I found myself in Wroxham again, this time with my family, in search of a dayboat to take out on the Broads. Unfortunately, we didn't find one in Wroxham, but we did find one somewhere else - the name of the place I forget. Anyway, we were out for 4 hours on the water, looking for wildlife (we saw a kingfisher, some swans, lots of ducks, some geese and some coots), eating tasty food from a farm shop we went to, and generally being scared by Alexander's boat driving.

Me and Tor on the boat

Some rather friendly swans

A nice picture of a windmill we saw

Our actual Easter Sunday and Monday were relatively girly, since my Dad and Alexander went to the motocross in Ling on the Sunday, and Brands Hatch to see the British Superbikes on the Monday. So, on the Sunday, we had a lazy morning around the house, a leisurely afternoon walk around the visiting French Market, a quick trip to the DVD rental shop, and then a girly late afternoon watching a girly film. (And then we watched Snakes on a Plane in the evening - :P)

On the Monday, we decided to go to Thrigby Wildlife Park. We saw monkeys, leopards, lots of birds...

...otters...

...tigers (and my mum)...

...crocodiles, aligators, snakes, tortoises, red panda (only saw one) and porcupines.
Then we went into a Chinese Garden where Tor chased lots of geese.

Tor looking more docile.

Me and Tor in the garden - a nice picture taken by Phil.

In the evening, we went out to Wagamamas, where Tor demonstrated that we should have left her in Thrigby:


So, that's pretty much everything. I went out to the pub with Phil and George a couple of times, and met up with some friends, but now i'm back here again :(
Today, I found out my mark for my Cultures of Performance essay - 67% - but I didn't get any feedback because my essay went walkies.. but apparently I can get it from the office now, so I'll go fetch that tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get my mark for POP2 tomorrow then too!