And now.. for a rest
December 10th 2007 – January 3rd 2008
This jolly period of time saw me working pretty much all the hours at Monsoon, with only 3 days off (Christmas, New Years and a random Friday) and one day’s sick leave. Unlike my time there over the summer, my ‘Temporary Sales Assistant’ status had been elevated to “one of the only two temps who can operate a till and can be trusted in the stockroom for hours on end” (thank goodness that wasn’t my general job description). So, instead of walking about on the shop floor for hours tidying already tidy racks of clothes for the 4 weeks, that only happened for about a week in total. The rest of the time, I was stationed in the fitting room, on the till, or keeping an eye on the new temps that needed coaching (from someone who had only been working there for a grand total of 6 weeks). And then, just as the sale prep period started to kick off, I found myself locked away in the stockroom for hours at a time (4 hours, a lunch hour, and another 4 hours, to be precise), entrusted with the weighty job of coding every single piece of stock in the room. What fun. Stripped of my staff discount (skint company policy, apparently) and prevented from experiencing daylight for a week, it would have been easy to become despondent but no! I had these fellas to keep me company:
Oh yes, 4 weeks later, I had created 88 bracelets and (not pictured, unfortunately) an entire costume – by hand. This makes me muchly proud since sewing machines terrify me and have kept me scared enough to not use one for 6 years. And yes, OK, the dress did look slightly like a sack, but that was kind of the intention.
Honest.
Unfortunately, I didn’t manage the 3000-word essay I’d been aiming to do (more on that monstrosity later) but at least I came away from the holidays with a good pile of cash to put towards those scary driving lessons I’m aiming for this summer.
January 7th – January 11th
I moved back up to uni on the Friday with my Mum, fish bundled up in the wastepaper bin, several jumpers and their bags. Both fish are getting on fine, seemingly happy with their change of location again. I’m still not sure whether I should get them another friend or not; Pearl spends a lot of time on her own, foraging for food (mostly algae actually :s) and Pips has started playing with his reflection again, so it’s something I’m seriously considering again.
My Mum left on Sunday morning (after very kindly refilling my fridge and freezer, helping me find a few bits in the city and taking us out to the cinema to see The Golden Compass – most enjoyable) and then the work started…
Although by the end of Sunday I’d finished all the little bracelets I was supposed to make, when we met up on Monday to rehearse for Theatre In Education, it was apparent that I was not only the only one who had completed their designated work, but the only Native American character with a costume. So we decided to take the day out to do some ‘arts and crafts’ and bought all the pieces to make everyone else’s costumes and props that they hadn’t managed to do over Christmas.
And, with much hilarity, I became the authority on how to make sack-dresses.
Or rather, it would have been hilarious if this authority hadn’t required me to stay at Elena’s every night before the performance to help with her and Katy’s costumes and to help get props together or made. I would have minded so much helping Elena out, but having to help people with props and stuff that they simply didn’t do over Christmas wasn’t really fair. This generally resulted in my days stretching from an 8:30am start to a nasty 12:00am finish. Yays.
Over the week, we rehearsed in the mysteriously named ‘The Raven’. The only thing I found mysterious about it was how it managed to exist on University property and not have any kind of proper heating installed. By Thursday, we’d cottoned on and installed our own heaters:
But, all that said, it was a really useful space and we were rarely disturbed.
Wednesday, Elena and I dyed our hair. Although I found the prospect of having black hair for a week quite scary, it was much more daunting for Elena, who couldn’t get hold of a dye that wouldn’t leave her with black hair for 28 washes. I found it rather becoming:
If you’re wondering, my hair was almost brown again after 3 washes (6-8 washes my arse), and I’m back to normal now.
By Thursday when we had most of the costumes finished (including the boys’, although we did get them to sew bits of theirs, with vay funny consequences) and most of the props were getting there, it did seem to have all paid off. On Friday, we transformed from this (actually taken the following week, but meh):
To this:
span >
And everyone involved seemed to be quite impressed. The teachers all had very nice comments about the effort we’d put in and how they’d be able to use our session to refer back to in the future, but the nicest comments came from our tutor. She said we should be proud of what we’d managed to achieve, that the attention to detail was great, and how we’d be able to tour the session we’d put together and would be able to get schools to pay good money for it (!!!!).
Key Quotes:
Child 1: “We’re going to… … … find some grass”.
Child 2: “No we’re not, we’re going to help the Medicine Woman make medicine!”
Elena: “And now we will show you the dangers of the swamp, where there are many… sucky things… that can suck you”.
Explanation: “Well I couldn’t tell them they were leeches, could I? I had to use their words!”
January 12th – January 14th
A weekend to rest? Goodness no.
Since I didn’t get my essay done over the holidays, I had to use my weekend to get it done, since I knew after Tuesday I’d be preparing for the Staging Histories presentations on Friday. So I trawled my way through 3000 words of pure torture to get it done. The aim was to be finished by the time Phil arrived on Monday night, but by that point I was so shattered I could have banged my head against the keyboard and come out with something more meaningful than what I was typing. So, it carried on over until Tuesday, when the beast was finally slain. Woo.
January 15th
Tuesday was the day of our final performance in the school, and although the pressure of the assessment didn’t hang over us like the first performance on the Friday, the afternoon performance had taught us that the younger the children got, the harder our job got, so, as Tuesday was Year 1, we were positively terrified. However, Year 1 actually proved to be the most responsive of all, and were absolutely brilliant with all the tasks we set them. Before posing for some final memento pictures:
We left the school with a few reminders of our visit:
The cave wall, signed by the Native Americans and, very inconspicuously, Doctor Who…
…the wonderfully made tepee…
… and the awesome totem pole (courtesy of Danny, aka The Doctor).
January 16th – January 18th
By Wednesday, the rehearsals for the presentation were underway. Our first meeting bade well for the rest of the process:
“So guys, how about we go round the table and show everyone what we’ve got?”
[Collective mumbles]
“OK, so no-one’s done anything yet…”
However, after a frustrating research session, and an anguishing ‘Let’s Write a Script for the Presentation and Learn It in an Evening” session, by Friday, we seemed to pull it off. We ran to exactly 30 minutes (the set time) and made one of the tutors smile. Bonus.
And the rest…
Isa’s Departure: For those who I haven’t already told, Isa has decided to drop out of her Performance Management course here and try and get onto an architecture course in Spain. Unfortunately, she decided to tell us this when Sri wasn’t in the country, and 4 days before we were due to resign our housing contract. Immediate panic over, I organised with our landlord for Sri and I to sign individually let contracts for our room, and we’re now looking for another housemate before the Fletchers find us one. Isa’s off on Wednesday, but with her Mum arriving this evening, time to organise something nice for her before she leaves is running out, so we’ll have to see what we can do!
Marks for things: I’ve put those in a separate post, so if you want to find out about how any of my written work went, scroll down a little!
Ok, well I think that’s about it for now, I’ll attempt to keep you all as updated as possible!
This entry was posted
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 6:55 pm.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Epic post Lizzy! Its good to read of the goings on with your TiE fighters. Well done on your essay, I hope I helped :) xxx
» Post a Comment