Londoner

You would think that I had trekked to outer space with the amount of silence on the interwebs that I delivered since my last blog. And there abouts, I had. [highlight]Edit:[/highlight] I first started writing this blog a week back, but was then tunnelled back into the hectic schedule that is university life.

I moved into university in London over two weeks four weeks ago now, and it feels like an age. The first few days were a non-stop mess of madness, where everybody operated a Pirate’s Code policy, “He who falls behind shall be left behind.“. So the quest was to never sleep, walk everywhere, find everything, talk to everyone, cook, clean, unpack, shop… we’ll just stop there. And on top of that, if you weren’t already a Londoner, your job was to learn to jaywalk, learn the tube systems and explore the entire city. That was the fun bit, though.

In freshers week, I took advantage of having no lectures and walked around the city. And I tell you, it is something else! I haven’t even seen half of the places I could visit, but some of the views and buildings were astonishing. It was like I was running on something alien that week, because I was on my feet all day every day, but wasn’t in the slightest bit tired. A rare form of red bull that seeps into your blood stream from the atmosphere through the skin, maybe. I think this likely.

It was, of course, short lived as some week or so later and I had been through spates of severe tiredness and freshers flu, suffered the banes of 5 out of 5 day 9AM lectures when the previous 3 months had been spent sleeping the morning away. And excessive contact hours comes with the territory for Physics. So I was [highlight]pretty dead[/highlight], and now am attempting to train myself into waking up early and to, in fact, do any work at all. Reality kicks in. I’d rather go back to the walk around London all day to be honest, but Maths must be done… apparently.

Today is National Poetry Day! Well, it was when I wrote this. So I quoted a Mr Shane Koyczan, who is one of my favourite poets. He’s a spoken word poet who often goes on tour to perform, but his performances and his words are incredible. I may have mentioned him before, but I will say it again because he is honestly scarily true and plain spoken and sad and uplifting all at the same time. Link to his poem, Blueprint, here.

I have had the pleasure of seeing three plays since I got here, including an amateur production of Henry V (by Shakespeare, of course) and a professional production at the National, Ballyturk… twice. I have big love for amateur theatre simply for the experience of sitting in a room with relatively few other people in close proximity to the drama that unfolds. It’s much more interactive and intimate than anything you’ll ever experience and it’s the pinnacle of what theatre should be like in an ideal scenario. The actors bounce off you as an audience and you feel every inch of emotion delivered by the actors as a result- it’s a circle of magic. Henry V was fantastic to experience- the famous [highlight]”Once more unto the breach…”[/highlight] was in your face powerful. However, I can’t much fault the professional productions either. The quality of the acting is beyond me! Ballyturk was an Irish play about life, youth, death and imagination- it was the deep stuff that absolutely always gets me! Enda Walsh wrote the play; he just happens to be my favourite playwright, and three actors took to the stage; Cillian Murphy (who just happens to be one of my favourite actors), Mikel Murfi and Stephen Rae and delivered a 90 minute performance which moved and astounded me and made me leave the theatre in a somewhat trance, whilst in the back of my mind I wanted to walk back in and see it all over again. And hence, I went a second time. It was just too good.

Then I will shout out one of my favourite TV programs that came back on two weeks ago now, Peaky Blinders, which if you haven’t seen, then you need to! Watch series 1 first though, because I get the feeling it’s one of those programs where the first series can’t be beaten. It’s about gangsters in Birmingham, but in particular the first series, it’s about more than that- it’s very human and very clever. (Cillian Murphy is in it too!) (Oh, and Tom Hardy in the new series!) (And Helen McCrory- huge love for Helen!)

Finally, one more arts and culture paragraph for you to feast your thoughts on! We’re currently in the midst of the London Film Festival, so I’ve attended multiple events. I got my stalk on to Leicester Square for the red carpet of the Imitation Game premiere- and was able to stare at Benedict Cumberbatch (!!!), Keira Knightley, Andy Serkis, Mark Strong, Charles Danse, etc. It was super cool! And last weekend, I attended a workshop with the VFX guy from Inception and the batman films (so awesome!), the prosthetics guy from Dr Who and a cinematographer who worked on Black Mirror, Dr Who, etc. It was seriously amazing to talk film careers with those guys. So thanks BAFTA Education for that one! Woop! So much to talk about! Ok ok one more thing! I went to the screening of The Goob in Hackney (I’d never been there before so it was interesting)- I was impressed by the cinematography of the film, but thought it tried too hard to be a poetic indie film for it to actually be one- if that makes some kind of twisted sense.

Right, excuse the long post! It’s just been a while, so there was lots to include. I hope all your lives are going very well. Anyone who has moved into uni, I hope you’re enjoying it. Anyone continuing on with their walks of life, likewise! Sorry if it’s some time before the next post, but I will be back! [highlight]Ciao![/highlight]