CulturalAlex
I have been a very cultural girl the last two days.
Beowulf
Last night I went to see David Malikoff’s one-man performance of the poem, mostly using Raffell’s (I think that’s right) translation. It was very impressive; he was exceptioanlly good at changing voices and stances to indicate different characters. I have only ever read an abridged version of the poem, and it probably wasn’t a very good translation; I think I will have to remedy the situation. He really made it come alive.
Shakespeare’s Villains
I didn’t really know what this was going to be like, but I should have paid more attention to the subtitle and got an idea: “A Masterclass in Evil”. That’s what it was; rather simply doing various soliloquys, which I was worried would be boring, he also commentated on the villains and the plays and the nature of evil and villainy themselves. Stephen Berkoff was amazing. David M was good; he was brilliant. He did Iago (mediocre); Richard III (genius); Macbeth (wannabe) and his Lady; Shylock; Hamlet; Coriolanus; and finally Oberon. I think the highlight probably was the scene between Macbeth and Lady M plotting Duncan’s death (drifting in and out of a ridiculously strong Scottish accent), although Hamlet and Gertrude in the bedchamber came a close second. I will never look the same on some of these characters again.
And in between, I saw my Nana and two of her brothers, which was a very pleasant interlude indeed.
Angel down
Oh, and one of the black and white angels died – that was sad, and unexpected… I just couldn’t find it one day, and discovered it dead under a rock.
Sigh.
Ever so long since I last posted…
So… since I last posted, a few things have happened in the aquarium world. While we were away, the plants exploded in a riot of foliage. I pruned when we came home in between the two sections of our trip, but two weeks later it was almost as ridiculous again. Pretty cool actually.
Since we’ve come home, we’ve set up the quarantine tank again – we turned everything off before we went because it got disgusting. Still not sure why that was – too much sun or what – but the algae was mad. We put the little filter from there into the main tank to get the filter pads going again. A couple of days ago I bought 20 neon tetras, to help the tank cycle. A couple have died, but the rest seem to be going well, which is good.
The other interesting thing that happened with the qt is that I put lots of the left-over bits of plants in there, and the snails – I think there were two at the start of the holidays – have gone forth and multiplied. Now, though, there are no plants left… they all died a bit… I’m not sure what’s going to happen to them.
I’m looking forward to buying more fish, too – more rasboras, and maybe some widows too, because they’re really pretty.
Randomly Yours, Alex 