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livI've had a lovely week, really, with a whole range of pleasant social things. I hope this is a sort of foretaste of what my life will be like when I properly live in one place.
Lessee. Saturdayjack, cjwatson and his younger kids joined me for the Cambridge Shakespeare festival Anthony and Cleopatra. Cambridge Shakespeare do very traditional, though abridged, period costume stagings, outdoors in college gardens. So they often work as a kind of intro to Shakespeare, and they do a mix of the big famous plays with more obscure ones.
I am not very familiar with A&C at all, and I had really hoped it was going to have a lot more action and therefore interest for the children than it actually did. I don't know if it was just this production, but it seemed to be almost entirely dialogue between the two principals, with all the battles and Roman politics off-stage and summarized by heralds. I liked Cleopatra, she was well cast, olive skinned and actually tall – she really towered over Mark Anthony – and there was great chemistry between them. Also Octavius Caesar was delightfully awful, believably young and arrogant. I wasn't at all convinced by Enobarbus, though; he mumbled a lot of his lines, and I couldn't believe in his bond with Mark Anthony, so a lot of the tension in the play between Anthony's duty as a soldier and Roman patriot and his love for Cleopatra was lost, because the former just didn't have any emotional impact.
The rain held off for the play, but we got very wet cycling around afterwards looking for birthday presents. So we got kebab van supper to restore us from being tired and bedraggled, followed by a very pleasant evening of games and reading and cuddles.
Sundayjack and I hosted a barbecue, which we've been meaning to do all summer and just not got round to. We acquired a smaller grill for cooking meat, which worked well. There was a massive downpour just when we were trying to cook, but a couple of guests braved the rain so others could eat their halloumi, mushrooms and burgers indoors. We played a few rounds of Codenames and Apples to apples, and did lots of talking and socializing and generally it was great.
I was able to work from home on Monday, which was particularly fortunate because I got to meetfalena while she was briefly in Cambridge. Also her mother and incredibly cute daughter; we ate icecream and fed the ducks at Jesus Lock. Yay meeting friends from the internet.
After they'd headed back to the train, I managed to squeeze in a sort of mini-date withghoti_mhic_uait; we keep on not having any overlapping free time at all. We were a bit pushed for time but we went for a short walk and had our planned picnic in the garden, since it it was getting dark. Then Tuesday was ghoti_mhic_uait's birthday. She organized the most amazing thing, a picnic in a big park, and really quite a lot of people managed to make it for a weekday lunchtime. It was really nice to see a wider group of Ghoti's friends than I usually manage to meet.
Lessee. Saturday
jack, cjwatson and his younger kids joined me for the Cambridge Shakespeare festival Anthony and Cleopatra. Cambridge Shakespeare do very traditional, though abridged, period costume stagings, outdoors in college gardens. So they often work as a kind of intro to Shakespeare, and they do a mix of the big famous plays with more obscure ones. I am not very familiar with A&C at all, and I had really hoped it was going to have a lot more action and therefore interest for the children than it actually did. I don't know if it was just this production, but it seemed to be almost entirely dialogue between the two principals, with all the battles and Roman politics off-stage and summarized by heralds. I liked Cleopatra, she was well cast, olive skinned and actually tall – she really towered over Mark Anthony – and there was great chemistry between them. Also Octavius Caesar was delightfully awful, believably young and arrogant. I wasn't at all convinced by Enobarbus, though; he mumbled a lot of his lines, and I couldn't believe in his bond with Mark Anthony, so a lot of the tension in the play between Anthony's duty as a soldier and Roman patriot and his love for Cleopatra was lost, because the former just didn't have any emotional impact.
The rain held off for the play, but we got very wet cycling around afterwards looking for birthday presents. So we got kebab van supper to restore us from being tired and bedraggled, followed by a very pleasant evening of games and reading and cuddles.
Sunday
jack and I hosted a barbecue, which we've been meaning to do all summer and just not got round to. We acquired a smaller grill for cooking meat, which worked well. There was a massive downpour just when we were trying to cook, but a couple of guests braved the rain so others could eat their halloumi, mushrooms and burgers indoors. We played a few rounds of Codenames and Apples to apples, and did lots of talking and socializing and generally it was great. I was able to work from home on Monday, which was particularly fortunate because I got to meet
falena while she was briefly in Cambridge. Also her mother and incredibly cute daughter; we ate icecream and fed the ducks at Jesus Lock. Yay meeting friends from the internet. After they'd headed back to the train, I managed to squeeze in a sort of mini-date with
ghoti_mhic_uait; we keep on not having any overlapping free time at all. We were a bit pushed for time but we went for a short walk and had our planned picnic in the garden, since it it was getting dark. Then Tuesday was ghoti_mhic_uait's birthday. She organized the most amazing thing, a picnic in a big park, and really quite a lot of people managed to make it for a weekday lunchtime. It was really nice to see a wider group of Ghoti's friends than I usually manage to meet.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-08-03 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-08-05 07:21 am (UTC)I, of course, would like to add my voice to the chorus of 'hurrays' about meeting internet friends as I had a great time in Amsterdam doing exactly that.