Week 11: Not enough hours in the day

I'm HOME!

This week has been rather confusing. I've been a bit of a passenger, really, because my timetable has pretty much ruled everything. I've not been able to do much of what I want. At least that's what it feels like, now. On Thursday I had a performance, the marking for which I'm still confused about, so I've been in rehearsals every day. I must say, it was a very enjoyable piece. This one was directed by a third year student to merge the third year module of Directing and the first year module of Theatre Practice. The tutors stepped back completely and let the third years rule over it all so that was pretty interesting. I was lucky to have such an awesome third year to work with because I heard a few horror stories about some groups who weren't necessarily comfortable. It all worked out, though, so it definitely isn't something to dread. I absolutely adore everyone who was in my group and had apprehensions about how well I'd get on with everyone so by the end I was really happy that there were no issues. We all picked up a few hilarious stories about living in houses infested with mice, too. My director was a legend!

On Friday I had to do the dreaded Theatre Crafts exam. It does count for 50% of that module but the impression I got was that they use the results as more of an indication for how well each person might do in the second year equivalents. In second year, you have to choose between the four theatre crafts that you are introduced to in first year: costume, stage management, lighting and sound. If you don't like any of them, there's the ancillary choice which you set up with another subject. I was torn between carrying on Christian Theology (ancillary) and lighting and sound. I found lighting really interesting and sound was just Vici all over: gadgets and the theatre put together. In the end, I chose lighting as my first choice and sound as my second. Lighting does include quite a bit of physics. I do remember quite a lot of it at GCSE level, though, and I didn't do too badly then (though it was my worst subject) so I'm hoping for good times if I get to do that. The second year classes get emailed to us in May.

I finally did something mildly interesting! I went to Cadbury World. Well, my boyfriend took me there. There are certain things you must do if you go to certain places. If you go to Birmingham, you have to go to Cadbury World. The tickets were £10.50 for students (NUS is accepted but the website also says equivalents are also good... they didn't check our ID) and the walk round the whole place took us about an hour and a half. Maybe slightly longer. You can make it, pretty much, as long as you want because there isn't anyone there to guide you. There are certain sections where you have to queue but that's fine. It's quite an interesting visit. And there's free chocolate. Lots of it. On entry I got a curly wurly and a bag of buttons. Half way through I got a bar of dairy milk. At the end I got a cup of melted chocolate. Needless to say I felt a little full and sick afterwards. On the walk up, we could smell the chocolate in the air. It did make me feel a bit like a child, which is always good. I definitely recommend a visit!

When I go home, I must remember not to bring so much stuff. I did it again. I filled a suitcase. And a bag full of books. And a shoulder bag. And my laptop bag. Deciding to get the train at peak times wasn't necessarily one of my best ideas, either. I got a taxi from Tennis Courts to Uni train station (could've taken it to New Street... didn't think of that) and managed to get a train that was almost leaving. That meant I was early into New Street. I thought I'd be coy and get on an earlier train to Sheffield but I didn't get a seat the whole way there. The train happened to be a replacement which was one carriage shorter than its pre-decessor and had a first class carriage which effectively made it two carriages shorter. So, a train that was two carriages shorter than it was meant to be, which was late and which carried at least twice as many people as it was meant to in the first place. That's a bit of a busy train. Because I wanted to surprise my Mum with my early arrival home, I timed the train to Doncaster from Sheffield so I'd get to my house at about 7pm. That meant waiting in Sheffield for 40 minutes. 30 minutes of that had to be staring at a train I could've taken had I not been bothered about timings. Why oh why do I like to make things slightly more complicated? Eventually I got home and my plan worked perfectly. Phoning my Mum, not mentioning where I was, then ringing the doorbell mid-conversation confused and surprised her in all the right ways. Sorted.

Now I'm home, I've enjoyed a few lay-ins and have promised myself a few times already that I'll stop procrastinating and will actually get down to business with my essays. I have 7500 words to write again. A 3000 word essay for Dramatic Medium about the emergence of the independent director. A 2500 word essay for PTPC (Performance: Theory, Practice and Critique) about the ethics artist appropriation and multi-culturalism. And a 2000 word essay on working with Stanislavsky's rehearsal techniques. Don't ask me how I'm going to do them whilst at home where I'm most slack.

Having fun at Cadbury World

Yes, we were really there.

It's EASTER!

Week 10: Seemingly Packed

I've been almost non-stop this week. Or, at least, I think I have. Last week's post was written on Monday so I've already revealed what happened that day. I'll start with Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I managed to go over-budget again by buying almost £40 worth of food. To be fair, I hadn't been food shopping in a while so I figured that I'd take that excuse to stock up. I did buy a lot of things I wasn't going to eat straight away, such as tins of chopped tomatoes (essential for student living), tomato soup (also essential) and kidney beans (as before). I was, however, being money conscious. I went round with the calculator on my phone and tried to keep track. It appears I missed one or two things because I was about £3 off but it didn't matter anyway. I had to call a taxi to cart all the stuff back to TC because it was simply too heavy to carry healthily. The taxi driver then alluded to me being a princess simply because of my name (my surname is Royle). Lovely. He got to keep the change.

As I'd promised to meet Oli at the Guild, I had to rush to put all my things away and make 'portable food' so I could avoid the grump monster that attacks me when I get hungry. It was absolutely gorgeous so sitting outside Joe's Bar sipping a glass of water and my 30 second burger (frikadillen in a burger bun/roll with pickle) was a breeze. We then moved down to Student Development in the basement to make posters for our first society event which, later, we had to alter due to circumstances I'll reveal in a bit. At ten to four we headed up to the Thomson Training Suite for the Cultural societies mini-forum.

Mini-forums are organised for societies with similar aims (there's a media mini-forum, a departmental one, an indoor activities one, etc.). The VP SAD (Vice President of Student Activities and Development) chairs the meeting and any issues are put to her (at the moment it is Emma Packham). This time round, the candidates running for Emma's job were there and presented their pitch to us. When the elections come round again, it's really important that everyone votes because the Guild is a democracy and needs the input of the students. It is run for students, after all. After the candidates had their half an hour, they left and Emma introduced the Referendum. This is only relevant to this year, I think, so I won't really say much. I can't even say if I agree or not. If you want to find more about the Referendum, there's more on the Guild website and on Facebook groups. Eventually the focus turned to the groups. We went round the table in turn reporting on the year's successes and difficulties (note: not failures). It was interesting to hear what events people were putting on and to hear that societies which have been running for a long time are still struggling with getting funding due to their small amount of members. The list of societies is, again, on the Guild website under 'Get Involved'.

As I said earlier, we had problems with our first event. We had planned to meet at Joe's Bar at 8.30pm because it's an easily accessible place but when we went down to Joe's to talk to the staff about it, they said they were hosting a Sports Night on the same day so would have to charge our members £4 for entry and would have to shift our time to 9pm. We didn't want to do that so we changed our venue to Bar One, on the Vale, and the manager was happy for us to put some posters up advertising the event. We can't say for sure how the posters have helped or hindered the promotion of the event but we have had a small increase in group members on Facebook. There's also a poster up in the TeCRA office thanks to the enthusiasm of one of the RAs who claims to be a proud Northerner.

Thursday was a bit of a low, blank day for me. I had rehearsals at 10am which meant waking up at 7am (I always leave the flat an hour before I need to be up at the Selly Oak campus and wake up two hours before I need to leave). That wasn't altogether pleasant. I think I need some sort of schedule back in my life. I may well go ahead and make one, considering I have about 7500 words to write over Easter and an exam to prepare for and the gym to go to. After 19th May, though, I'll be a free woman! That's the beauty of University: it's intense but the finishing date is earlier than your previous.

Yesterday was quite refreshing, actually, in that the morning was quite slack. I had to be in Selly Oak for 2pm so I didn't have to set my alarm, which is always good. I amused myself with the Friday Night Comedy podcast on the walk up to George Cadbury Hall which made me about twenty minutes early. That's also always good. The reason I was up there was the cueing exercise that we have to do every four weeks (minus the costume run) of Theatre Crafts. This time round it was sound. We had to go up into the sound box and were taught how to use the cueing programme then, essentially, made sound happen at the right time. Techie times!

A heart shaped slice of leek I found in my salad. How sweet.

Week 9: When will Easter arrive?

Oh boy, I've had a long day. Rehearsal with a third year, options for 2nd year meeting, student development enquiry, lecture, library, back to TC with hardly anything to eat and plenty of things to do.

There's more news on forming a Student Group (society). This week we were called in to have an informal meeting with Steve in the Student Development office to go over the basics and to give the details of all our committee members (the minimum is three... and we have three). We received a torrent of information, most of which couldn't really soak into my head at first, but SD have what they call is a 'pick and mix' which is basically just a rack full of leaflets on most frequently asked topics. I won't go into too much detail because it's something you only need to know if you fancy founding a student group or going for a committee post. We're in the process of organising our first social, which requires filling out a Risk Assessment form and doing lots of promoting.

We failed the flat inspection. Twice. After the second time, one of my flatmates was inspired to make the place spotless. I came back after a whole day out and I was absolutely amazed. Even the bin lid was clean. Upon the second fail, there was the same note with the warning of another inspection coming within 2-3 days but unfortunately they appear to have gone against this and have sent us a letter telling us to go and see the Housing People before next Friday. This is particularly frustrating and was not what I wanted to see after waking up at 8am this morning and finishing the 'out-of-flat schedule' at 6pm with inevitable grumpiness due to growing hunger. So that'll be fun.

I've had such a dull weekend, I pretty much have nothing much else to report. Oh, the quiz was awful this week. Absolutely shocking. I may write in to complain, it was that bad. This is a shocker because I adore the quiz. It wasn't the usual guy doing the presenting, though, so that did change things. And I was in a bad mood anyway.

At some point this week I will be going to Lickey Hills so I will report back on that in next week's post.

Love to your mothers.

Week 8: How to make Birmingham feel like a holiday

I have just experienced one of the best weekends of my life. Ever. And I needed it.

This whole week I've been stressing about getting my essay plan done for one of my modules. I'd gotten some books out but not found time to actually get it done due to things that kept popping up. And a boyfriend with man flu (which has now been passed on to me - thanks). On Thursday I finally started and completed that. It took me much less time than I expected because I got really interested in the topic. I even actually read a few of the extracts I was meant to be bigging up. The essay plan basically consists of 'I will write...' and 'I will use this extract because it... It is useful because...'. Considering I had only scanned or read the blurb of most of my extracts, this was a little difficult. That said, I had read a few of them already because a few were taken from the actual course reader.

On Friday, to support the third years, I went to see a final year production. As I've explained in a previous post, productions in the Drama department are completely student run during production week. First years do the box office and the quick changes as well as preparing the costume by sewing on and unstitching and cutting and doing the lower jobs on the set such as painting and shifting things around. Second years look after the first years and mark them, as well as getting stuck in with assistant stage management and some sound and lighting jobs. The third years pretty much run the show backstage and, of course, are the acting company. It was £5 to see the show. This particular one was a celebration of the MA in Playwrighting at Birmingham. It was called 20/20 and was a compilation of 20 short plays. It was split into two halves, as standard. The first half was owned by one acting company who performed ten plays. There was an interval then another acting company performed another ten plays. The whole evening lasted about four hours, so it was a very long performance night compared to the other productions but it was worth it to see the range of plays used, all of which were written by graduates of the MA course and had never been performed before.

Saturday was a packed day. I walked to the centre in the morning and did about half an hour of browsing New Street and the Bullring then went over to Millenium Point to the IMAX. As Tim Burton's particularly fabulous creation (Alice in Wonderland) was released on Friday, I'd booked tickets for the first showing on Saturday. Millenium Point houses both the IMAX and Think Tank, the science museum I've yet to visit. Whilst the ticket prices are inflated in relation to a student ticket from Cineworld or the Odeon, I do recommend a visit to the IMAX to anyone who hasn't been before. They were the first to bring 3D screens and the quality beats Odeon's try by quite a bit. It definitely beats The Deep 3D screen in Hull. That was just naff. The film itself was pretty awesome, by the way. That's a given, though.

After Alice, Oliver and I wandered down to the Hyatt where we checked in. We questioned our motives for staying there for the night: "We're students, what are we doing?". We stayed in a King Room, which is one of the lower end rooms (but still ridiculously nice), which set us back £109. Going halves, we paid £54.50 each. To me, that isn't too bad. I remember paying something like that (£50, not £100) to stay in Pimlico in London when I went to see Chicago last June and that was just for a tiny B&B. Our room at the Hyatt was rather large in comparison.

Birmingham is a massive city so places to dine are not hard to find at all. We chose Wetherspoons simply out of familiarity and student budgeting. If we had a bit more spare cash we could've gone to Strada, which is a posh-ish but still well priced restaurant (I wrote about it in a previous post). And then onto the NIA! A few months ago, Oli bought two tickets to see the Stereophonics in Birmingham. I'd been looking forward to, and counting down to, that night ever since. Ah, it was good. As Kelly said, the NIA is a "big ol shed." The Hip Parade were the support. I'd class them as 'a good student band'. I could imagine going to see them at a student event and being impressed. I'm not quite sure the NIA was the right size for them. The Phonics were, as I expected, incredible. They played a really, really good set and didn't include any gimmicks or add-ons. It was just them, the audience, some flashy lights and awesome music. That's exactly what I wanted and expected. That, by the way, was about £70 for two tickets including booking and postage. Walking back from the NIA to the Hyatt felt like a cool summer evening in Spain or France. Somewhere mildly exotic. The joke of "Shall we go to the beach tomorrow?" could have been a genuine question.

After really milking out night at the Hyatt by going to sleep at silly o'clock in the morning and checking out as late as possible, we ventured out into Birmingham for breakfast. Adding breakfast onto our bill would've taken about another £30 from Oli's wallet. No, thank you. Instead, we opted for a midday Greggs pasty. That'll do! The sun was shining beautifully and as we sat in Victoria Square looking out at the fountain and gallery/museum we felt, again, like we were on holiday somewhere abroad. Good times indeed.

Unfortunately, my concern for Oli's health during his ordeal with the dreaded 'man flu' meant that I, too, was getting the sniffles. I'm now nursing a very red nose and going through tissues very quickly. I also got a bit addicted to grapes as I was watching QI on the iPlayer. Now I'm off to sip chicken soup with noodles whilst watching The Bubble. Maybe I'll attempt to read the play I need to start and finish for Wednesday. Sniff sniff.

Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics.

The Stereophonics at the NIA in Birmingham.

Our King Room at the Hyatt.