Brighton Centre

I had a concert yesterday, It was very painful.  Parts of it were good (e.g. The ESAM academy voices choir) and other bits weren't quite as good: over a thousand primary school children shouting (literally) about shopping, there were a few good bits of tune sung when they weren't yelling "shop".  I'm not religious but that trivialised the nativity story something chronic!

I'm off to get some more milk, meanwhile here's a website, keep the feminism going...

Sx

Quick Update...

The Gizmo has been added,

It's on the right, just enter your email and It'll send  you an email when I blog,

Handy eh?

Sx

Picture

My mum, being the only person that seems to read this blog, has pointed out its lack of movement lately. For that I apologise: Sorry mum. I was experimenting with mum's digital camera a few days ago, or possibly yesterday and took a few photos.

I rather like the one shown, I played around with it a lil on the mac after, I quite like the difference between my expression and the war poster in the background. Mum was looking for these everywhere and eventually got (as you could tell) one. I think it complements the sign on the back of the door rather well, which tells us that at any given time "No more than three people are allowed in this privy". Damn, party's off then maybe there's a chance we can get round it...

No... It's by order of the manager. My house has a manager? Does yours?

I found a handy little gizmo a lil while ago, It lets you know when I've updated so you don't have to keep checking, I'll put it in a few days....

Play safe,

Sx

English Essay

I got tired and bored whilst writing an essay for english... it reminds me of the time I redid my GCSE science coursework, called it the ultimate enzyme experiment and outlined how I was going to teach enzymes to jump through flaming hoops in order to get food.

I even put the bit it about how they couldn't eat as they'd got denatured in the flames... Anyway... here's the last paragraph:

"Angelo is the character whom, without which, there would not be a play. If the Duke had appointed a mild mannered janitor (Hong-Kong Phooey) or indeed Escalus (not a super-hero masquerading as a dog in a police station) then it is reasonable to imagine that the play would have been a lot more straight forward, though I’m not entirely sure if it could possibly get any more boring. Anyway as I was saying (or writing, I guess, this is an essay after all) it is impossible to speculate what may have happened (if-history) as it would have been an entirely different play. Angelo therefore has to make a large impact on the audience and I feel that he achieves this, certainly by his second meeting with Isabelle in which he horrifies the audience by his hypocritical standards. I do not believe that Shakespeare (or “Shagstaff”, as he once, allegedly, spelt his name) was trying to make a statement about the corruption that comes with power. Nor that he was trying to get pity for him. I prefer to believe that Shakespeare was creating a character who could be simply used as a dramatic device to provide both comedy and tragedy by forcing the other characters into compromising positions¹."

Toodles,
Sx

---

1.no, not like that.

Aaron's Birthday

There is a reason why the title is proclaiming my brothers birthday, and not remembrance day as I guess people would expect. He's twenty-two now btw. I don't understand concepts like remembrance day and valentines day. Sure, it's good to remember, or to show someone that you love them, but shouldn't we be doing it all year round? Why a special day?

I am not sure where I read it but the quote "The best way to forget something is to commemorate it". I agree with this entirely, people spend two minutes a year being silent, why?! The majority of them are trying to avoid giggling at each other or avoiding each others eyes. After this "we've done our part" and can get back to our daiy lives. Phwoar, that WAS a fun couple of minutes wasn't it!

on the plus side my cat Willow, who didn't bat an eyelid at fireworks hated the local marching band. Cat got taste.

S

Holland

Apologies for not writing sooner, I've been in Holland, as the title may suggest. Here's the first pasrt of my recollections, it's only been two days and I'm pretty sure some of it's in the wrong order... Friday and Saturday to follow! Sx

"Wednesday:
Got up and said goodbye to mum, who went to work. Set of to college with my travel bag and went to philosophy. Then set off to find some friends and say goodbye before I left. After dragging myself from college I tried dropping in on my dear friend Jacob who had had a History Aptitude Test that morning but he wasn’t in so I set off toward the train station. Where I met up with the other members of the Glyndebourne Youth Opera Group 4 and selected musicians from the South Downs Youth Orchestra (sorry for all the long names!) and from there we travelled to London, Gatwick to be precise. It being the 31st, of course, Halloween costumes were being worn… I think the most amusing was Rosa’s: an orange poncho with the words “Safe Sex” written on it. Not sure why though…

We said goodbye to our luggage and made our way to the plane, the high spirits seemed to annoy the attendants… The journey itself was short and fairly enjoyable and Claire was waiting at the other end, ready to take us to the hostel for dinner and a quick practiced before bed lying awake and telling jokes.

Thursday
The boys managed to prove many old myths wrong by not only getting up before the girls. Score. After breakfast we trundled off for our first glimpse of Delta College. Which wasn’t all that shabby! We went through it once ate lunch then threw ourselves into the first performance. Got to admit that I was temporarily distracted (during my solo :O ) when a bloke sporting an “I hate Opera” badge on his hat walked past me… Singing with a grin. After the performance we got to know the Delta students a little better. I taught (a boy whose nickname was) Amsterdam how to body-drum. We also sang an awful lot of songs together. A shame it wasn’t repeated. L

We had a lil bit off free time that evening and went to find a chemist. It was interesting trying o define “tickly cough” to a Dutch chemist. How typically English… This was the day that we discovered that it was Ben’s birthday, a plan was conceived in the depths of a (non brown) pub when I took one of the YO festival posters off a wall… later to be turned into a Birthday card.

In the evening we set off to watch a performance by another YO! Group called Alive and Kicking, it was rather enjoyable and one of their number was rechristened as “crazy biro man” the tea they were serving was also very nice. J After that I sat, rather surreptitiously, on a wall and listened to an accordion class. ;) "

Sx

Medicine...

The whole Blogging thing is not getting off to a great star I have to admit, and I'm having a bit of fun with webshots but hopefully that should soon be ok as well. Well for the past few days I've been in Lewes with Glyndebourne Youth Opera getting ready for the tour to Utrecht (in Holland). This is supposedly my punishment for being such a nuisance on tour with them when I was part of the orchestra.

I was thinking a couple of days ago about people getting ill... I don't want to sound like a stereotypical old man reminiscing about the good old days but people never used to get this ill did they? I mean I've never had a day off school because I was sick, (I just checked with my mum and she confirmed it) I'm proud of my immune system. And my metabolism.

However the traditional family cure for anything is Lucozade. Lots and lots of Lucozade.
and mars bars.

And my mum swears that Whisky Macs get rid of colds.

I want to test that one....

Sx

Settling in

I fully admit that this blog is not looking too great at the minute, I'm not new to blogging so don't really have an excuse. But all the time that college essays are calling blogging has to take a bit of a back seat. The move to blogger from The space between nothing and nowhere was to create a new environment and try to encourage me to blog more.

whilst flicking though my Plato, as I am want to do, I found a rather good quote. Socrates has just outlined his philosopher ruler theory and:

"Glaucon's reply to this was to exclaim, 'My dear Socrates, if you make pronouncements of that sort, you can't be surprised if a large number of decent people take their coats off, pick up the nearest weapon, and come after you in their shirt sleeves to do something terrible to you. If you can't find an argument to hold them off and escape, you'll learn to your cost what it is to be laughed at.' "

I just thought this was wonderful. Gang warfare in Plato, Socrates evidently doesn't know what's good for him. ;)

Sx

The new blog...

well this is it.

End of blog.

(it was only a test anyway. Watch this space!)

This is me btw: