uppercase F

Hyde Park in the Summer June 15, 2008

I apologize for not posting as much. I promise I’ll start doing more exciting things worthy of postage. Above you can see Peaches enjoying a much deserved ice cream in Hyde Park. Today I met some friends in the park where we lazed around and didn’t do much of anything. Fortunately, the weather has been lovely the last few days. I better be careful tomorrow in case people are still vomiting on the tube from heat exhaustion. There were lots of cute puppies running around in the grass and I screamed with joy when I saw each one of them. In the evening me and Kathleen went to go see a play called Hannah and Martin. Not knowing the story, I really had no idea what to expect. Turns out it’s about Nazis. It was actually very good, though extremely heavy. I definitely didn’t leave lighthearted and fancy-free. The acting was really well done, and it was most definitely a worthwhile experience.

I’ve been out a few times this week to various parts of London, including an area down south called Clapham. Kathleen and I went to a bar called the Clapham Grand, which is a renovated theater. It was fantastic because it has the original stage and gallery seating (though you can’t get up there- I imagine there would be many ill-conceived attempts at drunken fun otherwise). Other than that, I’ve mostly just been wandering around eating fish and chips. Mmmmmm.

My Heaven June 11, 2008

Much has happened in the last few days. I spent the beginning of the week looking through old journals, and I realized that all of the women in them remind me of the mom from Mary Poppins. The journals are from around the same time as the movie is supposed to take place, and they are all wearing buttons and marching. I like to think this means that Mary Poppins actually does exist.

On Tuesday I had a very difficult time getting to work, because two- that’s right, TWO- of my trains were stopped because of sick passengers. Apparently, this is code for vomiting passengers. When it gets hot outside people just start throwing up everywhere on the tube. People here react to sun the way Texans react to snow. Either way, I ended up having to walk the last part of my journey, which took forever.

After work I went to the British Library to take a peek around. It’s flipping magnificent. What you see above is an entire wall made out of books. It’s actually a tower of books that’s many stories tall. This, my friends, is where I will be going when I die. In their exhibit space they have lots of cool things, like the Magna Carta, Shakespeare’s first folio, and journals from many famous authors like Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, and the Bronte sisters. I had a religious experience, though, as they had a handwritten poem by Sylvia Plath. I was thisclose to something the woman touched. It’s almost like beams of light shone down on it and choir music played.

Today after work I paid a visit to the V&A museum since it’s right next door to the Natural History Museum. I went into The Supremes exhibit, but was pretty disappointed. It was costume heavy, and dresses like that always look better on screen. I did learn that they are teeny tiny women though. Then I went to the Blood on Paper exhibit, which was an exhibit of artists books. It brought up lots of questions, like what actually defines a book? And if the emphasis is placed on the book as a physical object, as it is in this exhibit, how can that be conveyed without actual physical contact by the visitors? All in all, it was interesting, but it was lacking because I couldn’t put my paws on the books.

After that I went to a play with Kathleen called The Harder They Come. Don’t ask me what it was about, because I have no idea. They had such heavy Jamaican accents throughout the whole thing I couldn’t understand what was going on. Everyone else seemed to like it though, because they got a standing O at the end of it. Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate culture without subtitles.

(Oh, and in the pictures below you will see a bottle of cider that holds 3 LITERS! I put my foot next to it to give you some perspective on how big that is)

Some More London Observations June 9, 2008

1- When people say the first floor they really mean the second floor, and when people say the ground floor they really mean the first floor.

2- English people don’t really like Scottish people very much. They like Scottish people who sound American even less.

3- The train you want to get on will not be running this weekend.

4- Don’t make direct eye contact with anyone on the night bus. Everyone is crazy.

5- I really like British soaps- especially Hollyoaks- and need to figure out how to watch them when I come home.

6- In Camden everyone is in a band, or is dating someone who’s in a band. Camden’s a lot like Austin.

7- East London is really creepy.

8- Tea breaks are freaking awesome and should be implemented immediately at all American institutions.

9- I like receiving directions at work like “take a right at the giant sloth, and then a left at the creepy crawlies”.

10- Everyone my age lives with 10 other people in one house.

(Side note: At work today at the Women’s Library a woman told me I’m “a very lucky young lady to have a husband who’ll let me leave for 3 months”. Irony?)

Shakespeare in the Park June 8, 2008

My camera battery died a glorious death today, so unfortunately you won’t be able to see my wonderful pictures of Peaches enjoying a picnic in the park. Me, Kathleen, and Peaches all went to see a performance of Shakespeare in the Park today, where Globe Theater actors put on The Winter’s Tale. It felt very English. I brought with me delicious picnic food, including pasta, fruit pastilles, pie, and a bottle of pink fizzy wine that cost me $4. Which I drank out of the bottle because I didn’t bring a cup. I brought the class back to Shakespeare. The performance was wonderful, and it was nice to see a Shakespeare play that I’d never heard of. This allowed me to be genuinely interested in what was going to happen next. And Peaches was involved in the play! When one of the actors jumped off the stage in fright during a scene, he grabbed Peaches as a means to protect himself. So there you go. Even bears get their 15 minutes of fame.

Zoot Suit Riot June 7, 2008

It’s been a few days since I updated this blog. Since starting my jobs I’ve been exhausted most of the time (I got pretty lazy over the last few weeks). My job at the Natural History Museum has been fantastic. I have been handling some really awesome material, including notes and illustrations from the Challenger expedition, and books from the Charles Darwin collection. If you want to see exactly what it is that I’ve been doing there the last few days, you can go to my work blog A Librarian in London.

Last night I went out with my friend Tova to a bar in Soho called The Black Gardenia. It was an awesome little place that was made to feel like a Speakeasy. It was down in a basement, and most of the patrons were dressed in twenties flavored outfits. They had a band with a standing bass and saxophone, as well as a dancer in some kind of weird bikini thing. It was super cool, and I felt very much at home amongst the Austin-looking rockabilly folks.

Today I went out to dinner with Kathleen and to see a play in Leicester Square called Haunted. It was pretty good, and made me jump a few times. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scary play before, so it was unusual to be frightened by something that was right in front of me. Well, something besides the scary man on the bus with a saw and hammer in his bag (that actually happened to me tonight).

After the play we went to go eat Mexican food. Hoorah! We ate at a place that had supposedly received good reviews (that I can’t remember the name of now), and it was certainly a valiant effort. The chips were still tostada like in form, not greasy and as thin as they should have been. And nothing was spicy. But all in all it definitely hit the spot.

Work, Part II June 4, 2008

I began my work at the Natural History Museum today. I started out with a grand tour, which took all morning because the place is ginormous. Everyone is incredibly nice at the museum, and I was made to feel very welcome. After my tour I got to watch a lecture by one of the resident scientists called “Plants that suck!”, which was about parasitic plants. Super interesting. I had no idea mistletoe was a parasite, did you?

I met Kathleen for a picnic lunch and we ate on a gorgeous lawn in the front of the museum that almost begs to be eaten on. It was a really nice day today too (which was a nice change from yesterday), so it was a really pleasant lunch. Kathleen came in to the museum with me and we walked around the dinosaur exhibit, and then she took this dorky picture of me outside the library I’m working in. Now you can see where I’m working!

Work! June 3, 2008

Sorry I don’t have any pictures this time. I hate blogs without pictures. I tend to find them dull and tedious to read (with the exception of Jonathan’s, of course- I have to throw that in there). But I felt that whipping my camera out at work might be slightly inappropriate. The last two days I started my first full week of work, and began the preservation and archiving work at the Women’s Library. It was flipping amazing. On Monday I did preservation work. At first I cleaned some French books that were about STDs. Gratefully they were in French, so I couldn’t get too grossed out. Then I got to go through some recent donations to the library. This was awesome because they were suffrage magazines from during World War I, and belonged to a woman named Jill Craigie who was a filmmaker and wife of the labor party MP Michael Foot. My job was to go through these journals and find annotations that the two had made to the articles. The articles were interesting- covering topics like the forced feeding of women political prisoners and birth control- but my favorite part was seeing the ads. They had ads for corsets, food, and hair supplies, which would be considered pretty ironic nowadays if included in a feminist magazine.

Today I worked on an archiving project, which was incredibly nerve racking because I’ve never done any archiving or taken any classes on the subject. I was handed two boxes of stuff and told to get to business. So I spent all day going through the personal papers of a communist feminist named Nan Berger. She was an extremely interesting lady, and published a lot of material all around the world. It was interesting to see all the pseudonyms she had to go under to protect herself from the anti-communist forces. It felt a little creepy though, going through her personal correspondence. Especially when I got to the ‘death’ folder, and read the obituaries collected by her daughter. It’s weird having someone’s entire life- from birth to death- painted for you in a day.

I start my job at the Natural History museum tomorrow, so hopefully everything will continue on being super.

Betwixt! June 1, 2008

Today was another play watching day. Kathleen got us tickets for a musical called “Betwixt!” which was playing at a small theater in Islington called the King’s Head Theater. Apparently this theater has had many plays and actors go on to the West End and Broadway, so I had a feeling it would be good. I absolutely loved it! It’s probably the best one I’ve seen so far. It’s a comedy musical fairytale thing, and had a really good score. The characters were fantastic, the singing was good, and the story was funny and entertaining. There’s really no better word to describe it than adorable. I think it should definitely move on to bigger and better things, so if you get a chance to see it you should. Two thumbs up! Five Stars! Ten of ten, and all that business! My friends are awesome for hooking me up with such wonderful things.

(There are no pictures from today because I got threatened yesterday at Afrika! Afrika! with a 5000 pound fine if I took anymore pictures of the performance. This has made me weary of taking pictures at future events. See how I risk life and limb to document my experiences?!)