The reign, the rain

Hay-On-Wye is sleepy, mossy, thatched, and perfect for splashing through on a chilly day. There are over thirty second-hand bookshops in the tiny village, one of which is inside a Norman castle. We, like hundreds of other from around the world, were drawn there by the Hay Festival. The festival spans over ten days and hosts hundreds of speakers who may be promoting a new book, debating a popular topic, or just lecturing on a cause dear to them. Stephen Fry is a yearly guest!

We had to get up around six in the stupid morning to get to our first event on time. We did catch our train, but it was raining and the train got stopped, so we had to journey by bus, a journey dripping with endless transfers and confused drivers.

So there we were, slowly rolling our way across the Heart of England (I just re-read that, and I've misrepresented the tone of our trip's first leg. We were having so much fun. We drove the rest of the bus crazy trying to harmonize "Ain True Love" from Cold Mountain, which has a really difficult harmony part. And our picnic was really yummy). The countryside is so green right now, it's unbelievable. I have tinted sunglasses, and usually they make my surroundings more colorful, but here? Nope. Can't outdo old Mama Earth in her glory.

Blah blah blah, Hay-On-Wye. So we're there now, we make it in time, we love it, it's full of FULL of full of old books. I bought some of you all really awesome presents there*! The festival was about a ten minute walk outside the village (did you guys know about the many distinctions between towns, villages, and cities? Because everyone here does, and they're happy to correct you). The organizers had built a makeshift... hamlet? out of enormous white tents, with open-air passages in between and large garden and lawn space in the middle. Very Grecian, she said pretentiously. We saw two presentations - one was by an author called Oliver Bullough on his new book, the title of which I forget (why am I not just googling it? Seriously, it's so easy... aaaaaaaah, fine, for YOU guys muttermuttermutter IT IS AS FOLLOWS: Just Send Me Word, A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag) and the other was a debate between a scientist and a journalist on the role science should be playing in informing the public about global warming/climate change; also, what terminology should be used when discussing it.

The Gulag one was really touching. I'm not ashamed to tattle on Vicky and say that she got a little misty (WHO ME NEVER I AM MADE OF IRON). The book archives the correspondence of Svetlana and Lev, two physicists who met at Moscow University and were growing into friends UNTIL! Lev was accused of being a spy and imprisoned in the Gulag! Listen, guys, calm down. He tracked down Svetlana through sneaky letters to his aunt inquiring about her and they finally started writing directly to one another, continuing to do so for the sixteen years of his imprisonment. The letters are definitely love letters, but since they're both scientists, the way they express it is really quirky and practical. Svetlana was incredible. She kept sending him really elaborate packages, but instead of the typical early romance chocolates and books or whatever, she sent underwear and wool socks. And eventually, herself. She befriended a Soviet officer and visited Lev five times before his release. How does it end? You'll have to read for yourself! Svetlana sounded like Abby (cousin Abby to you DeKalbians); fiercely loyal, very resourceful, smart as hell, full of love.

The debate was aaaaaaah! I don't know who I sided with! Vick loved the really passionate journalist, who was like, "PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW" but British so "PEEP'W HAHV UH ROIT T'NEHW" but the scientist just kept re-iterating that it's unfair to make scientists milk more out of the data than is there, because the job of science is simply to present available information and not to emotionalize it. He made the more valid arguments, but he got screwed in terms of presentation - the journalist was a much better public speaker, more attractive, and seated in the center of the three people onstage, so even his lighting was better. The scientist? Reeeeally monotonous voice. Really, they were sort of debating different things. VERY eloquently. With LOTS of rhetoric.

Dinner at pub, train, guys do cocaine in train bathroom, walk home in pouring rain at midnight, sleep! Wake up! TODAY! The Jubilee!!!! Everyone's been going BONKERS about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, celebrating her 60-year reign. Preparation has been happening since I arrived three weeks ago. Vick says that since the country's in a recession, the government and media are trying to give them something to get excited about with this and the Olympics. Anyway, maybe you heard about it, but they had this massive flotilla organized with something like a thousand boats flanking the Queen's, and music and fireworks, but it absolutely poured today. Warwick was planning an outdoor barbeque in the Town Centre, which they had to cancel. The proceedings as we saw them on TV were sweetly pathetic. Everyone was miserable, clearly. It's so fitting - part of the hype for the Jubilee has been in the form of red and blue posters saying, "Keep Calm and Carry On," (parodied on t-shirts and mugs with cheeky variations like "Keep Calm and Party On" and "Sod Calm And Get Angry") and that's exactly what everyone did, from crowd to Queen. They just stood there, patiently, in the rain, until the whole thing was over and they could go home.

Not sure what next weekend will bring! Send me news from home, my loves. I'm a little homesick this week.

*Awesomeness of presents is subjective

A Molly's Saturday in Wales

We've had a nice full week of rehearsals. The sweet bartenders and waitstaff at the Rose & Crown think we're a dance team - we haven't corrected them. Though I do wonder what they make of our medieval chants and whale noises...

I have a library card now, and a 16-year-old admirer who works at the local Party Tree/Dollar Store hybrid. He woos me with cashier-related feats of wonder. There's a big magnet on the desk; he puts his palm on it and then places a quarter on the back of his hand, and he can make the quarter flip over by flexing his fist. He also pretends not to be irritated by my infantile counting of change. WHY DO THEY HAVE SO MANY COINS??? WHAT'S WRONG WITH FOUR? It's like it's intentionally confusing.

We went to Gifford's Circus with Vick's mom's friend. It's a travelling circus that trains during the winter months and tours over the spring and summer. The ringleader majored in English Lit at Oxford, so the performances usually have a theme like War and Peace or Canterbury Tales. The one we saw was Victorian, based on a monthly publication called "The Saturday Book," which sounds like a variety magazine? Maybe a little risque? We saw a matinee and the last performance in Chelternham before the Gifford's Caravan moved on, so things were a little lackluster. It was still a great show and we had a lot of fun. I like seeing non-scripted theater. After spending four years so intensely scrutinizing acting and being scrutinized, it's often hard to enjoy movies or traditional stage plays because instead of seeing the overarching plot, I'm paying attention to the actors' tiniest moments. But the circus! No acting to be seen. Just a lot of very strange people being themselves and doing incredible things with their bodies.

Tomorrow, we're leaving at six thirty to go to a literary festival in Hay-On-Wye, Wales. The town is supposedly just jam-packed with books. AND STEPHEN FRY. Eyes will be peeled.

Love y'all.

Oxford

OXFORD!!!

Sooooo ooooooold. There were literally men in the cape things that you expect Oxford professors to wear. Some sort of graduation ceremony was going on, and may I say, if you want your audience to take you seriously without strenuous effort on their part, do NOT accessorize with a powdered wig. It's quite counter-productive.

We found an amahaaaaazing exhibit. I haven't googled it yet, but try searching something like "Oxford Story Museum" or "Alice Day." It was so magical! Local artists and poets had converted an old warehouse into a children's/fairy-tale lover's art installation. Each room had a different theme.

My favorites:

The Room of Secrets, which featured locked boxes and keys with little tag lines on them, such as, "Long story short, I wouldn't recommend waking up on the pavement in just your boxers," and other cringe-worthy insinuations; when you matched the key to the box, the rest of the story was inside. They were real-life stories donated by real-life citizens. I added one to the post box, but you'll never know which!

The Room of Lost Objects - aaaaah, I would have stayed there all day if it weren't the size of a generous closet. There were little nails and screws and shiny bits-and-bobs all over. They were made into sculptures, hidden in secret compartments in very tiny boxes, AH! Everywhere. And in the middle of the room was a big safe with lots of small manila envelopes inside - visitors take one and then e-mail a story about it back to the museum.

It was just awesome. OH and there was the SNEEZE factory! Ah. God. Sometimes I want to borrow a kid so that it's socially acceptable for me to stay in places like that longer. But it was a little adult, too. It wasn't totally for kids.

Anyway, we also saw The Ashmolean, which is, like, Britain's oldest art museum or oldest... bah. I don't remember. Oldest something. It was great and chock-full, but we only had 30 minutes. Poor Vicky had to spend it being hit on by the most socially awkward man... very full ginger beard, kind of popped up out of the woodwork. She was looking at a violin and he goes, "Do you play?" "Nope." "Have you ever... built an instrument before?" "N... no, I haven't." "I have! A fender stratocaster! (launches into story)"

I abandoned her to that and ran around to find the Pre-Raphaelites, a movement I am quite proud to know by name! Thank you, Art History 102. I really like Dante Rossetti, because he paints strong women that I feel related to. I mean that literally, not poetically. The room I was looking for was a "smallest chamber, tallest tower" situation, so I got there, out of breath and sweaty, just in time to locate and photograph one of my favorite paintings of his ("Persephone") before the steward shooed me back out. I rebelliously found my exit through a bunch of other exhibits, claiming I was lost whenever approached. I reeeeeally want to go back and spend the day there. They have a medieval exhibit with swords and crowns from maybe 900 a.d.! WHAAAAAT!?

And then. Fatefully. We wanted to see a show - the only one playing was Anne Frank. Anne Frank, right? Can't screw that up too much, right? Wrong. It was spectacularly bad. When Hitler's forces (or rather, Hitler's force, in the singular) raided the annex in the end, Vick and I were crying with laughter. See, the Nazi, the lone, very effeminate Nazi had been sitting onstage for the entirety of the show with a bright light shining on him, not moving and ruining all dramatic, low-lit moments. Finally, after all that build-up, he just walked into the attic and started shouting "Ssssssschnell! Sssschnell!" in lispy, surprisingly tenor German and poking people in the head with his gun. The Franks and Van Damms, who weren't bad actors in their own right, sort of obligingly shouted a bit and tripped over themselves, but their heart wasn't in it. 

Because of the atrocity we'd just seen, Vicky and I ran to the nearest pub for a post-show chat-up. And that's how we missed the last train out of Oxford.

But the hostel was nice! We stayed up until about three watching "Oliver!" with three very drunk men, one of whom was Russian, ("Hahahaha!!! They are sell him, like animal!") and then retired to our chamber. I passed out immediately, but Vicky said she had trouble sleeping because "one of the girls'" kept snoring and farting. In my defence, we had had a lot of beer and Lebanese food.

Tomorrow we go to Chiltenham to see Gifford's Circus, then back for an evening rehearsal. More. To. Come.

Eddie was right about the peacocks.

Vicky and I have rehearsed all this week and we're having stupid amounts of fun coming up with material.

There are little peacocks all over! Just chilling on roofs, mewling loudly. They really do mewl. It's the noise a kitten/monkey hybrid would make.

We popped into St. Mary's Cathedral a few days ago. I am continually stumbling across dates from 1320 a.d., 1240, 1150. Ancient. I share every inch of ground I stand on with thousands of years worth of spit, blood, sweat, gum. And the churches have big graveyards in the front lawns - ivy-covered above-ground caskets with crumbly feet, just free to be touched or graffiti-ed. I guess it would be impossible to protect all the history here. And the vandals are probably bored of it.

We'll go to Oxford tomorrow.

Stratford? Stratford was sweet, if a little underwhelming. We saw King John at the RSC for a mere five quid and hope to see a lot more there for the same price. This summer, along with the Olympics, England is host to the World Shakespeare Festival. All of Shakespeare's works will be produced, mostly by international companies (to my fellow Russophiles - Vahktangov's Measure For Measure is their ambassador. TAKE THAT, REIKEN!) at various hotspots; Stratford's RSC is one, The Globe in London is another, Brighton... I really want to see Japan's Coriolanus, but I don't know if we'll get to. There's also a really cool-looking piece called "The Rest Is Silence" playing in Brighton - an adaptation of Hamlet stretched out across a warehouse. But what I'm truly keeping my eyes peeled for is an amateur production of Grease. I will drop everything for that. A lusty Danny Zuko played by Wesley Frothingham of Snitterton would be the highlight of my summer.

Aside from the occasional day-trip, Vick and I have been very anti-social. We don't know anyone our age here and we're both a little shy when it comes to making friends. We've also built ourselves a pretty tight schedule, so we've only gone out for a pint a few times. FOR A PINT. It's so novel! PUDDING. PINT. BISCUIT.
Oh, yeah. So I bought a box of "Wheat Bisks," using my serious Brit Slang knowledge to deduce that I was about to enjoy some whole wheat cookies. Upon opening, I found in my hands two sleeves of something that looked like the horse treats I used to feed Sally, our old pony.
"Psh," said I, "clearly a 'bisk' is distinct from a 'biscuit.' Using my powers of reason, I shall conclude that this is, in fact, a very thick cracker."
I plopped some honey on it and set about munching. It was very thick.
Several days later, Vicky asked me why I never put milk on my wheat-a-bix. It's cereal. Like, you put it in a bowl and pour milk on it and it disintegrates. But at least it wasn't embarrassing.

Erm, let's seeeeeee... still on the list of things to see are Warwick Castle, which looks incredible from the outside (that's where all the damn peacocks are coming from), a Victorian mansion Vicky's been on about ("on about." listen to me. soooo fetch.), as many sites featuring historical re-enactors as possible because we're both the nerdiest, and STONEHENGE!!!!! For the summer solstice with Vicky's mom's hippie best friend! Can't wait. Apparently, when Vicky went last year it was just a bunch of stoned 14-year-olds, so my exciting Earth Mother naked dance scenario will have to wait for another occasion, BUT it's one of the few times of the year when tourists can get close enough to touch the stones. Eeeee! Aliens!!!

Whelp, it's 1 a.m. here, and for this little lady, that means bunkbed time. Love you all, miss ya. I've taken pictures! Maybe I'll post?

Mgootnait, fyemily yend fryends. 

Flapjacks. Not just pancakes anymore.

So the past few days have been spent grinding out details. One of our biggest concerns has been rehearsal venue - we'd booked a place that was too pricey in the hopes of finding something better when we arrived.

First on the list was the local Quaker chapter, where we met with the manager, a man named Eddie that I think Ricky Gervais wrote. He took us through the lovely building, which he kept insulting and describing stiffly as "the new one" until finally dropping the detail that it had been rebuilt in 1645 after "the old one" burnt down in the Warwick fire of 1644. Brand spankin'.

Then he showed us the gardens, which were everything Pride and Prejudice promised.

An Excerpt from The Garden Scene:

(loud cawing is heard in the distance)

Vicky: Was that a peacock???

Eddie: Ah yes, they fly in from the castle. Nasty birds, they are. Et all the flowers. But me dog scares them off.

(Vicky and Molly, ignoring this, both praise the garden's beauty)

Eddie: Yeh, it's nice an all. 'Course, underneath it is the Quaker cemetery (dumbfounded silence from V&M). Oh, they don't let us bury anyone here any more. Just the odd ash sprinkle on the lawns. (M quickly steps back onto sidewalk) See that bump there? 

And we DID see the bump. In the end, Eddie gave us a list of other venues, even suggesting renting pub space, which he seemed to find distasteful. We shook our heads at the thought of rehearsing in such company, declined his offer of coffee, and left vowing to visit every pub in town. 

This next bit... I'm a little nervous to write it in case I jinx us. Long story short, we went to The Rose and Crown, a nearby pub, and unless we both completely misunderstood, have secured a lovely rehearsal space for the price of a drink every hour we use it. We spent a good fifteen minutes coordinating our schedule with the very assuring and confident R&C employee, so we both feel pretty solid about its legitimacy. I'll let you know what the best Warwickshire cider is. I'll hopefully be trying them all, one at a time, every morning at nine.

Shiiiire.... Bagginnnnnnns!

I left you, dear family and friends, in the safety of a Heathrow cafe.

Moments later found me body-slamming a rapidly closing gate, a gate that stood between me and the London Underground. My midwestern charm was failing to dissuade the old bloke padlocking me out. I hate taking buses. 

Wendy had given me twenty pounds before I left, which was the only cash I had. Not really being familiar with buses, because I hate them, I boarded and thrust my twenty-pound note towards the driver, saying in a thin, falsely cheery voice speckled with hard r's, "One to Piccadilly Circus, please." 

His eyes met mine, and I swear, I felt a little squeeze on my throat as though he were trying to telepathically strangle me. Without looking away, he pulled out his own wallet and started counting change. 

I wasn't sure what to do, so I lingered in the cabin. A line was forming behind me. 

"Moo ow ta green, la," he said. 

I smiled pleasantly, hoping he would give me my change so I could put my big bag down. Another girl boarded, clearly as confused as I was. It turned out that we were trying to find the same hostel. 

The bus stared at both of us, her pointing at her brightly-colored map and speaking in broken English and me lurking next to the stairs as unobtrusively as an elephant in five shirts and a ukulele. We realized at about the same time that cutting our losses was the only way to deal with this. As he handed my change back and said, "Ma'am, please would you move out of the green zone, you're blocking the way," we scampered off the bus to a choir of exasperated sighs behind us. 

A middle-aged man with a greying mullet, probably named Ned or Reg, saw us trying to count our change. He descended and enthusiastically informed us that bus fare was two pounds seventy, but that we'd better not pay in paper because our stop was the first of the late run and the driver wouldn't have change yet; we'd put him in a foul mood for the rest of the night. Oops...

Ned/Reg ended up taking the same bus as us and chatted our sleep-deprived ears off about everything London and everything bus. He seemed to have the routes memorized and labored under the delusion that we wanted to know the intimate details of the N19 line, which... we didn't.

At the hostel, I tried to get some sleep, but since by body kept politely informing me that it was just about time to head home from the theater building and start making dinner, my best attempts were wasted. Instead, I left all my stuff tucked under the sheets like a very fat tourist and poked around the city until dawn. I watched the rising sun backlight Big Ben and drank a cup of coffee next to the Thames. Parliament is gorgeous. 

I made it back to the hostel via Trafalger square, slowly seeing the flaw in my romantic "spend the sunrise exploring London" scheme - namely... jet lag (dun dun duuuuun).

Getting to Warwick was a caffeine-laced hallucination. The surreal paranoia that I was still asleep in The Nook wasn't helped by a series of gag announcements broadcasting over Chiltern Station's intercom in the dryest of British voices, the most memorable of which was:

"Attention, we have a message for a Mr. Mowgly. Message reads : Ooh hoo hoo, I wanna be like yoou hoo hoo. That's a message for a Mr. Mowgly. Thank you." 

I sat next to a very sweet and cute guy on the train who's name was Ahmal ("What's your name?" "Amalia." "I'm Ahmal." "Amalia." "Ahmal." "You can just call me Molly...") and he, saint that he was, let me sleep and woke me up at my stop.

Vicky met me with her grandma and grandpa. We screamed like little girls when we saw each other and one of the conductors commented on the loveliness of our reunion. YES. IT WAS LOVELY. WE'RE LOVELY PEOPLE.

More to come! Sorry for the overload. Seeing King John at the Royal Shakespeare Company on Saturday for Vicky's birthday!!

No, guys, Marmite. WTF. The yuckiest.

-Molly

TARDIS. TARDIS. Come on, TARDIS... (Crosses fingers)

I'm in Heathrow. My flight was awesome - Midnight In Paris was the in-flight movie, my seat-mate was an adorable old man who slept with a blanket over his head like a tent, I got my food before everyone else because I checked the "vegetarian" box online...
Adele has been every other song playing since I sat down in this cafe. A cute tattooed guitarist called me "love" a few minutes ago. I'm grinning like a fool and about to hit London.
I'll see YOU fools in August.