Friday, 25 June 2010

Shakespearience!

Two weekends ago, I set off for Stratford Upon Avon at a ridiculous time in the morning with my two good friends Caragh Finnan and Amber Maltby, to have a Shakespearience. We were quite excited, despite the time. It was rather like a school trip in that we had a our lunches packed the night before, stayed up and talked about the following day with anticipation of what we would see on our trip, and then went to sleep with the realisation that we were waking up in no less than 5 hours.

As we were on the bus, we discussed our levels of excitement and the fact that we were the youngest people on the bus, whilst being surrounded by lots of pensioners. I was thinking at the time that it must have seemed a little weird to the other people on the bus, that we were interested in Shakesp
eare despite our age. We did not come with the general loathing of this influential writer that you will find in most students our age.

In just 4 short hours we had gone from the splendid scenery of Wales to the beauty of the town that bore Shakespeare. I must explain that we were going with the intention of looking at the Birthplace of Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway's Cottage and Shakespeare's grave. We managed two of those things without much difficulty, and we'd have done the other and seen more of the town if we hadn't have been so constricted on time. We knew that we had to be back on the bus by 5 and so decided we would go for another Shakespearience another day, but with our own time schedule, independent of a party.

I found the prettiest place to be the cottage of Anne Hatha
way, which, for a cottage was really quite large. It seemed to me to be somewhere you would want to live if you had small children, because there were the woods out in the back and such a vast amount of garden, when you take into account the fact that it is a cottage and not a house. However, I will admit that being on the first floor of this cottage was rather scary because you could see the ground floor through the wooden slats on the floor. This is not something that I would enjoy every day! For the time that it was built though, I suppose it would have been just the norm. I personally prefer my floors to be of some substance so that you don't feel you will fall through if you take a wrong step!

Now, when they say that you are not allowed to touch anything in the room, you should listen! Deciding to lean on the bedpost of Shakespeare's second favourite bed is not a good idea when it's not very stable. You could almost fall through onto the bed, and if the floor's are that unstable, there's no telling where you will end up!

It's rather weird going to visit such places where writer's used to live and work, and it makes me wonder if this will happen in the future as regards such author's like J K Rowling and other influential people. I also wonder whether Shakespeare will continue to be such a role model for writing in the future, when a lot more time has passed.



Thursday, 3 June 2010

Picture Perfect...

So, after a bit of Googling this morning, I have finally found out how to add pictures to my blog. I suppose it was rather self evident really, but sometimes you don't realise until you ask!

So I wanted to upload my favourite picture that I took whilst out on my bike ride yesterday. I'm not normally so thrilled with my photographs but this one particularly pleased me when I put it onto the computer, because of the lighting. When I took the photo I could hardly see because of the sun, so I'd have expected the photo not to turn out quite as well as I had hoped. But it did, so I thought that it deserved a place online.

Monday, 31 May 2010

Boredom Central

So exams are over and there's nothing else to do in Bangor, however much the sun may be shining and the grass may be green. We've longed for summer since Christmas, and we thought that the freedom would be good, but no, we're now struck with some sort of boredom that cannot be replaced by anything else. Wales is amazing, it's true, but there's not a lot to do here unless you have a car. I'm even getting bored of writing this. This is the type of boredom where you get bored of watching a film. You're bored of doing nothing. This is only a week into the holidays! Maybe I should upload some videos and sort my new Youtube account out. At least it's something to do.

Sunday, 23 May 2010

Procrastination

Whilst having decided that I am going to waste some time on the revision front, I have come across a few things preventing me from procrastinating to the best of my ability. The first being that the choice of fonts on Blogspot is not very big, so I am stuck with Verdana as opposed to the font I would normally choose, being Comic Sans. The second problem is that I'm rather tired after having cycled to the gym and then swum 40 lengths in the pool, just to come back again. Revising on a normal day, is no fun. But revising on a Sunday, when you're tired and your town decides to be sunny, seems just a little unjust to me!
I would much rather go to sleep for a little while and spend the rest of the day watching things on the Internet, things which I need to be caught up on in order to maintain my student life. But no, I must revise. For none other than a German exam. An exam for a subject I know that I am dropping since I no longer like nor understand it. Which leaves me wondering why I am actually sitting the exam tomorrow. And why I feel the need to revise for it more than any other exam.
The third and final thing is that I've come to realise that I am actually only procrastinating in this fashion so that I have something to show for having a blog! So that I may get used to writing in this way before I have to write daily over the summer in order to keep my friends up to date with all my movements and vice versa.
Now that my eyes are closing, I must at least attempt to do some work after a cup of tea. Such a beautiful way of life that a cup of tea is :)