Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph




Love and hugs

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Dear reader, today is a special day - that's right, a post not about my mum, but about my dad, because it's his birthday today *blows hooter, waves tiny flag*

Well actually, the post isn't about him either, because today was actually an interesting day. As days up here go, that is. We had a party! Not a birthday party though, a painting party!

As my dad is a minister, that leaves him with responsibilities for things like looking after church premises. You would think he'd be quite busy chasing that flock around, but apparently not so much. So today, my mum, dad and myself went to the church at Melness, on the other side of the kyle. It has a gorgeous view!



Along with some of the other church folk, we did some work on the window frames. We scraped off old paint, we dug out rotting wood, we sealed up some draughty gaps, and we put on some shiny new white high gloss top coat. There were a myriad of problems of course - more rot than expected, more peeling paint than expected, no undercoat, bigger draughty gaps than expected etc etc, so the job is only partially done, however the size of the thing (there are 19 windows in the church, and we're working inside and out) and the size of the working party (six) we did about as much as might be expected of us anyway.



I learned how to use silicone sealant, and as such did all the windows. Actually, I lie I only did 13, but that's still quite a lot. I quite enjoyed it. Pretty sure I deserve an NVQ now (national vocational qualification). Jussayin. We had two tea breaks, with cake, and cake with our lunch. I ate a lot of cake. Apparently because I am still a "young thing" I am expected to eat vast quantities of cake. This is why the youth of today are fat, dear reader. We need to start a revolution! No more force-feeding cake. That said, I did what was expected of me without hint of complaint. What? Don't look at me like that, it was good cake!

After we'd cleared up all the mess we made, mum, dad and I headed over to Bettyhill, because there's a chip shop there (it's the closest one, and it's 13 miles away! Talk about the middle of nowhere). Om nom nom nom.



Then we went for a walk along Farr beach, which is actually not very far from anything, it's right behind the chip shop/tourist information centre (yes, they are the same place, officially). It wasn't sunset, but the sun was starting to get low in the sky, in a very photogenic manner. And there was a lost photogenic welly boot lying in the wash of the tide. It was so romantic... (!) check out my ace photo.



Ever wanted to hire a welly boot photographer? I'm thinking of starting a business - boot photography, well-shod AND well-shot. No? I shall continue.

We saw other things on the beach too, like this dead dogfish. Did you know, a dogfish is like a shark's little cousin? They both have five gills and the same kind of skin. Dad moved it. That's right, you heard me. On his birthday this year my dad wrestled a shark... Honest...



It was very pretty generally, so I took lots of pictures - you can see a selection of these below. If you're my facebook friend you can see them all there. If you're not, then that's a shame. I don't think my photography is good enough to deserve a flickr account. Not that other people let that stop them.



Anyways, that's all for today, its WAY past my bedtime, and daughters of the manse must get up for church on Sunday mornings. Therefore dear reader (I have discovered from my blog stats that there are actually other people than my mum out there, so you've been promoted from imaginary, in case you were wondering) I must bid thee adieu and farewell, and on the morrow you shall hear from me again.

Did you know, the more tired I am the more I don't shut up... who knew!

Love and hugs

The Hybrid Medieval Space Bonnet

Hello dear (imaginary) reader. My stay up north is getting no more interesting. Today I did the ironing, read Harry Potter, and went to the post office and the spar. My dad fixed my laptop power supply, and then my belt broke. I watch some funny stuff on telly. Not really worth a blog post.

SO instead, I'm going to kick off telling you what I did this summer.

The FIRST thing I did this summer was to graduate from university!


(Look, there's my mum!)

The graduation ceremony at University of Edinburgh has some interesting traditions. We graduate in the McEwan Hall, which is a grand, circular building with classically-inspired paintings inside, and gorgeous architecture outside. The ceremony of actual graduation involves walking along the platform and getting "doffed" on the head with this hat - the Geneva bonnet.



Now this hat was made, apparently, out of an old pair of John Knox's breeches, which is nice... The Dean was also telling us how a former student called up one day and asked if he could take the hat into space! Unfortunately, the hat is somewhat sacred to the ceremony, so instead he took up a university emblem patch which was then sewn into the hat onto its return. You can read about that here.



After four years of solid hard work, it was nice to finally get a bit of time off to have a drink with my friends (!) We had a really great day, and I'm so proud of all my friends who graduated along with me.

Love and hugs

Edinburgh Festival

Tongue is gorgeous today dear (imaginary) readers. Beautiful weather. And yet still I didn't go out. I sat in the house in joggers and did very little all day. Mum and I made pasta salad. And I did some work towards a research proposal. Don't ask me who I'm going to propose it to, I haven't figured that out yet.

So instead of trying to eek out a post from my boring day, I thought today I'd post for you about a much more exciting day that I had at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before I came up north.

In the afternoon, I went with my best friend, her mum and brother, and my other best friend (yes I'm 22 years old and I still have best friends) to see a show called Potted Potter which was on at the Pleasance.

Really enjoyed the show - it was very funny, and very Harry Potter, so unless you are a big fan of Hazza P, or you are a child, then it might not be to your taste. But to Potter fans I recommend it most highly, I'm sure you'll enjoy the incredible dragon, the epic story telling, and your very own game of Quidditch!

After the show we went for something to eat at the Tron - don't get a baked potato - and then we went off in search of some free comedy. There is quite a lot of free comedy around the High Street/Cowgate area, and if you just wander around people tend to give you flyers for things that are starting soon and send you in the right direction. After umming and erring and trying to chose between a few things, we ended up at 2Facedbook 2 by a guy called Jools Constant at Sin Club and Lounge.


This was really good too. A bottle of beer was £2.50, not too bad, and the guy was pretty funny. He ripped me to shreds for being a posh girl because I knew what a duck island is. If you don't know, google it.

After that we went back to the Tron to meet some of our other friends and by chance got offered free tickets to see another show. The basement bar in the Tron turns into a venue during the festival called Just The Tonic at the Tron for various comedy shows. We got tickets to see Get Happy in Edinburgh and the hosts called it a "working mens club" and had us playing darts, downing pints, and watching burlesque dancers. There was some weird stuff too but it was all pretty funny. The last act of the night was this bizarre comedian, something like Mr Bean but not quite. I got his flyer but I left it in Edinburgh - very sad :( he was really funny and I feel he deserves mention!

After that show we hung around in the basement and we saw this other show, called Set List which has apparently moved to the Caves, probably because it was awesome and they wanted more space.


This was funny too. There was a line up of different comedians, and each of them got a set list of topics which they had never seen before, including some audience suggestions, and they had to do a five minute set based around this material. Some of them were really really funny, including one lady who wasn't even doing a fringe show this year she just wanted to perform for a laugh. I really wish I had a note of everyone's names! If I was an entertainment blogger I'd be far more professional than this. Never mind.

After that we went to the Hive and I met this guy:


who is in this show: The Joker.

I haven't seen the show but may be going when I get back home. He was really nice anyway, and when I saw him on the telly he was quite funny so I hope I do get to see it!

Any of my dear (imaginary) readers seen anything in the fringe this year? Or anything you've heard of that's decent and not too expensive?

Rain and Wild Raspberries

My mother tells me I need to update my blog more often. She's probably right. I'm pretty sure she's the only person who reads it anyway...

So for the next couple of weeks I'm going to update every single day! Mostly with pictures of her.

But what's that dear (imaginary) reader? You thought my mum lives far away and that's why she actually reads your blog, so how are you going to have pictures of her? Well, dear (imaginary) reader, I'm on holiday. Staying in my dear (non-imaginary) mother's spare room.

It's very nice. I like it here. In fact, the bed and the duvet are so comfortable that I stayed between them for the whole morning. It was great.

This afternoon the weather was like this:

It was raining. So I stayed in mostly, doing this:

I went to the post office to get birthday cards for my older brother and my dad, but I didn't take a picture of that.

This evening mum took me to her Zumba class. Except they don't call it a Zumba class, they called it Dance Yourself Fit. It was run by a lovely lady called Magda, from North Coast Leisure, Bettyhill, and there were about 25 people there of all ages. Here's a picture from Facebook of the class a few weeks ago:

We walked up the wee path past the river and saw it rushing down - its been raining here for weeks - and we saw some wild raspberries.

And here's me, outside the centre, after class. Apparently I have a forehead the size of Jupiter. I'm glad I was able to share that with you :)

This evening, we watched a really gross programme about ants, and now we're watching another one about code in nature. It's annoying. You know what else is annoying? My laptop power cable has finally given up the ghost. So who knows if I'm going to manage to post every day or not. My dad might fix it, or else I'll be stealing a turn on my mum's computer. And if she gets annoyed of me talking about her on the internet she might not let me.

Dear (non-imaginary) mum, please let me keep updating my blog. For the benefit of all my dear (imaginary) readers.

Love and kisses

Pirouette en dedans and en dehors

You'll have noticed by now that regularly posting on my blog is not my strong point. Largely this is because I am not really interesting enough to tell the internet things about my life. Everyone else is more interesting than me it seems, and someone else has always already said what I was going to say, but more eloquently.

But despite that fact, I shall keep my blog, and every now and again, write the odd post (and I mean odd), just to catch you out.

Today's is because we learnt something brand new in ballet yesterday, which I wasn't expecting to happen since I'm retaking the beginner level course.

We did pirouettes en dehors. Usually we do them en dedans, which is FAR easier. You would never believe it. It's difficult to explain the difference to the uninitiated. I know this, because I had to read a whole bunch of things myself before I really understood.

To do a pirouette en dedans, you are spinning away from the working leg. This means if you are standing on your right foot (on your toes of course), with your left leg raised in passe (left toes just under right knee), then you should be turning to the right, with your right elbow leading, in a clockwise direction. En dedans means "inwards". Your left knee, the raised one, is coming inwards, towards your body, in order to turn. When you do a pirouette en dehors, it is different. If are turning to the right, you stand on your left foot with your right leg in passe, so that your right knee is leading - you are trying to push your leg outwards and away from you in order to turn. En dehors means "outwards" hence the different names for the pirouettes. Another difference is that en dedans, the working foot starts behind and winds up in front, while en dehors, it starts in front and ends up behind.

We've been doing our en dedans pirouettes from a lunge-type stance in fourth, so that you have the momentum of your left leg coming forward to passe as well as your left arm coming from second to first to help you go round. This means that although you might not turn very elegantly, and you might over balance part way round, you nearly always have the momentum to go a full turn. However, en dehors, you start in fifth, so the only momentum you have is the arm coming from second to first. The first couple of times I barely managed a quarter turn. It was horrible. I just didn't get it. Pirouettes en dehors are all in the mind guys. You need to use every muscle on the left side of your body to turn. Its just that you don't get to move any of them very far. It's strange. But yes, the fact that I worked this out, means I managed a rightwards pirouetted en dehors! And then I did another one! They were by no means brilliant examples, but I went all the way round and put my foot down behind and didn't fall. Then I tried a third one and came down of demi pointe a bit funny and hurt my ankle and scared it away. Turning leftwards was never better than a quarter turn at the moment, which is hugely frustrating. But its like a whole bunch of things, you have to learn it separately for the left side and the right side. Hopefully I'll get there. We'll see how it goes :)

Swan Lake

Found this online today.

It's the whole of Swan Lake in one YouTube video :D so if you have a spare 2 hours 15 minutes where you don't need your eyes for something else, feast them on this!

We have Svetlana Zakharova as our Odette/Odile, and Roberto Bolle as our Siegfried, and the rest of the Teatro alla Scala, an Italian company based in Milan. I really enjoyed it but was slightly disappointed that they used the happy ending, rather than the traditional tragic one. But the dancing is still beautiful so I'll let them away with it!

Love and kisses

The Red Shoes

This evening I watched, courtesy of BBC iPlayer, a film about ballet called The Red Shoes. Starring Marius Goring, Anton Walbrook, and the stunning Moira Shearer, and produced in 1948, this film was quite different to nearly anything I've seen before. It got off to a bit of a slow start, I have to say, without much ballet, and the little that was there didn't seem very good (in my inexperienced eyes), and I nearly turned it off.I'm glad I didn't though, because it was a really great film, and included an abridged, film-rather-than-stage version of the title ballet, which I really enjoyed. The films and tv programmes I have watched about ballet never seem to show you much of the ballet that they're featuring, and so I really enjoyed getting the whole picture of what the ballet was about, which made it much easier to see the parallels with the main storyline of the film.

Speaking of the story line, the film focuses on a ballet company, whose artistic director is man named Boris Lermontov. His abrupt, angry, controlling manner make him an impossible character to like, and his moustache is awful, but it suits the role so I'll let him away with it.

In the initial scenes, we are in the theatre watching a ballet put on by this company, with both Vicky Page, and Julian Cramer. Lermontov meets Vicky that evening at a party, and refuses to watch her dancing, but hires her to his company anyway. Cramer writes to Lermontov the next day and explains that he wrote the music for the ballet we've just watched, but it was stolen from him by his professor, who gave it to Lermontov. Cramer is given a job as an orchestra coach.

Both of the young characters are initially well treated by Lermontov, in his own way. Vicky is made a principle dancer, and Cramer composes a new ballet for her to dance, and it is over this that they fall in love. This makes Lermontov very angry, when he eventually finds out, as he is besotted by Vicky, and plans to make her famous. Its hard to blame him, she's talented, classy, and extremely gorgeous.

So Lermontov fires Cramer, and Vicky is upset and leaves the company, goes with him and they get married. But she stops dancing, because her husband is focussing on his career. Its very romantic, but this is a girl who has said that dancing is her life, and that she dances because she must. She apparently goes to class every day, and always keeps up her form - you can tell she still wants to dance, and its heart breaking for her that she cannot.

Lermontov meets Vicky again later, almost by chance, and brings all this up, and begs her to dance again, promising he will make her an amazing dancer and a massive star. Cramer is in London, at the premier of his opera, but he leaves to come and find Vicky, and is gutted to find her in a dressing room, minutes away from the opening scene of the Red Shoes. She says she loves him, he says she loves dancing more. She realises he's right. Cramer leaves, Lermontov does a victory dance. Then she realises she was wrong, and jumps off a cliff into the path of a train. Funnily enough she is not instantly killed but survives long enough to tell her beloved to take off her red shoes.

The three leads were all very well done - each character made sense, and their interactions were not predictable but they were believable (apart from the train thing, and the one moment where Vicky gets up in the middle of the night and her slippers have high heels - or maybe that was just a fashion thing...) I love films from this era as everyone is so elegant and charming, and I adore the way everyone talks to each other.

The ballet in this film is very different to modern ballet. They do all the same steps and things, but here it seems less extreme, and tortuous. Here, all the ballet dancers look like they are having fun. In other ballets and ballet films that I have seen, which were more modern, it always seemed like a chore. The dancers spend every second minute telling you its all worth it because they love dancing, but usually I'm not sure I believe them. In this, however, Vicky really does seem to love what she does, and in the end, its not the pressure of dancing that causes her problem. No one ever tells her she's not doing well enough or that she's easily replaceable. The problems in this film stem from the relationships among her and Craster and Lermontov. All in all, I would have to say that anyone who wants to watch a film about ballet, to be encouraged to do it, then they should watch this, and not Black Swan. It might be older, but there's more dancing in this, Moira Shearer is a professional dancer, the story line is nicer, and the leading lady is a red-head.

All Work and No Play... But Not Any More!!

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am delighted to announce that I have now FINISHED my final honours dissertation! Apart from a few issues with formatting, and the fact that I have to get it print and bound.

I feel I have completed the boss level of my university education. Well sort of. I still have seven exams to do in April/May.

But nevertheless the completion of the project means I will have more time to do all of the things that I have not been doing over the last few weeks, especially in relation to the summer, and some of my other responsibilities.

I will be cooking more, working more and maybe going to some more ballet classes. And I'm considering jumping on the bandwagon like the rest of my blogosphere and doing the 30 Day Song Challenge. Having spent so much time studying recently means I've been listening to quite a lot of music - it stops me from feeling so lonely - and sharing tastes in music with folk as well. So there are a few bands I've come across lately which aren't all up there in the charts that deserve a shout out!

I absolutely ADORE Spotify - I honestly don't know what I'd do without it. I hate paying for music downloads and don't want to download them for free, partly because its illegal but also because my laptop is dying enough already and doesn't need the clutter. Spotify lets me listen to anything I like, whenever, and if I don't like something, I just won't add it to any of my playlists - it won't be clogging up my hard drive for the rest of eternity. If you don't already have it, go to their website and have a look. It's like having the worlds biggest CD library. AND you don't have to hunt through it for that disc you put back in the wrong box!

But now I'm off for a few hours sleep before tomorrow's final edits, printing and binding.

Hugs and kisses

Real Ballet!

Class today was verrry exciting! We did a few new things today, rond de jambes at the barre, and grande battements, and we did a new centre sequence with lots of port de bras and something called a chasse. I didn't quite catch all the French, but I'm sure when we do it again I'll remember!

Anyway, the exciting part was that instead of the usual things we've been working on in centre - sequences with pirouettes, soutenous and waltzing, and corner-to-corner things with temps levees and grand jetes, we learned real ballet! I know right! :D

We started learning the Spanish Dance from Coppelia, which is just a very short part, of course, and not too complex.

Here's a video I found on youtube of Lisa Pavane dancing the role of Swanhilda in Coppelia with the Australian Ballet. This particular clip begins with the Spanish dance, which is convenient because I don't have 8 minutes to spend watching the whole thing as well as writing a blog post for you! The proper choreography part that we learned begins at 0:14 and finishes at 0:44, although the whole dance is a bit longer than that. We did the arms a little different, and only one chaines (the turns in the second bit eg 0:32) instead of two, but its the same stuff. I'm really excited to be able to show you what I'm learning, although I don't imagine ever being at this sort of standard!!

The story of Coppelia is interesting - wikipedia can explain better than I can with such a rushed post! Have a look at it here. At the point of the Spanish dance, Swanhilda has gone into an inventor's workshop and pretended to be his mechanical doll, called Coppelia (after the inventor who's name is Doctor Coppelius) come to life (bit of imagination required of course). The Spanish dance, and the Scottish dance which follows (and is also in the clip) are just showing off really - no story, but very entertaining.

Anyway, that's all for now. Massive deadlines looming so very little time to write. My writing will improve when I have more time to draft posts! Sorry about it for now :(

Hugs and kisses