long and rambly update thing, with pictures!
Monday, 13 July 2009 14:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
I went to London at the weekend. I should go more often; the train is both quicker and cheaper than I thought, and I now have an oyster card. Anyway. The point of going to London was to meet up with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carawj and silly_cleo, and also cosmic_llin and some other people whose lj names I don't know. It was great fun: we went to see a brilliant production of A Doll's House. It was a lot funnier than I remember it being, though that may be a consequence of seeing it live as opposed to reading it - Toby Stephens in particular was hilarious. All the cast were great, especially Gillian Anderson, and I appreciated the bit where Kristine suddenly turned out to be awesome. The only slight quibble I had was with the decision to anglicize the names of the characters. I've read the play (and even studied it, lo these many years ago) but don't know it that well, so I was occasionally distracted by thoughts like "is Nora's surname really Vaughan? I don't remember it being Vaughan, but then I don't remember it being anything else, either. Doesn't sound particularly Norwegian, though. Hmmm." But it was only a little thing, and the rest of the production was smashing.
After the play I got the train to Brighton forghostpaw's flat-warming. I eventually found it, despite the best efforts of Google Maps (they'd only labelled about a tenth of the streets with their names, and they had also failed to mark the pier, sigh) - it's a lovely flat and the party was excellent. The sun was shining the next morning as I walked to the station, so I took some pictures of Brighton, a few of which are under the cut:
This looks like the sort of landmark you would put on a map, right?
Pretty fountain.
The Royal Pavilion, which was marked on the map. One point for Google!
The train journey home was rather marred by some idiots in my carriage who were on a stag do and felt the need to spend their entire journey shouting, swearing, singing and throwing around racist epithets. Argh. I wish I'd been brave enough to go and confront them, but I am a shy, tiny woman and I'd already had enough comments just walking past them to get to my seat, so I just sat there and fumed. Luckily they weren't there for the whole trip.
On the train I read (and later finished) The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, which I thought was better than Excession but still contained a frustrating bit of genderfail: one of the alien races, a particularly wise, powerful and ancient one, was described as being usually male, though able to turn female to give birth. So maleness is the norm, femaleness the deviation, women only exist to give birth and just to make it worse, turning female is seen as an onerous duty. Great. Thanks. I also finished The Lies of Locke Lamora last week, which I thoroughly enjoyed - thanks for the rec,vilakins!
Not really related to any of the above, but I am having vague thoughts about making some sort of Whoniverse picspam community. Because picspams are fun and it might be nice to have a central place to post them - I know I'm always a bit leery about linking them on communities, especially if they don't have a specific focus. Is this idea a) sensible or b) ridiculous?
carawj and silly_cleo, and also cosmic_llin and some other people whose lj names I don't know. It was great fun: we went to see a brilliant production of A Doll's House. It was a lot funnier than I remember it being, though that may be a consequence of seeing it live as opposed to reading it - Toby Stephens in particular was hilarious. All the cast were great, especially Gillian Anderson, and I appreciated the bit where Kristine suddenly turned out to be awesome. The only slight quibble I had was with the decision to anglicize the names of the characters. I've read the play (and even studied it, lo these many years ago) but don't know it that well, so I was occasionally distracted by thoughts like "is Nora's surname really Vaughan? I don't remember it being Vaughan, but then I don't remember it being anything else, either. Doesn't sound particularly Norwegian, though. Hmmm." But it was only a little thing, and the rest of the production was smashing.After the play I got the train to Brighton for
ghostpaw's flat-warming. I eventually found it, despite the best efforts of Google Maps (they'd only labelled about a tenth of the streets with their names, and they had also failed to mark the pier, sigh) - it's a lovely flat and the party was excellent. The sun was shining the next morning as I walked to the station, so I took some pictures of Brighton, a few of which are under the cut:This looks like the sort of landmark you would put on a map, right?
Pretty fountain.
The Royal Pavilion, which was marked on the map. One point for Google!
The train journey home was rather marred by some idiots in my carriage who were on a stag do and felt the need to spend their entire journey shouting, swearing, singing and throwing around racist epithets. Argh. I wish I'd been brave enough to go and confront them, but I am a shy, tiny woman and I'd already had enough comments just walking past them to get to my seat, so I just sat there and fumed. Luckily they weren't there for the whole trip.
On the train I read (and later finished) The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, which I thought was better than Excession but still contained a frustrating bit of genderfail: one of the alien races, a particularly wise, powerful and ancient one, was described as being usually male, though able to turn female to give birth. So maleness is the norm, femaleness the deviation, women only exist to give birth and just to make it worse, turning female is seen as an onerous duty. Great. Thanks. I also finished The Lies of Locke Lamora last week, which I thoroughly enjoyed - thanks for the rec,
vilakins!Not really related to any of the above, but I am having vague thoughts about making some sort of Whoniverse picspam community. Because picspams are fun and it might be nice to have a central place to post them - I know I'm always a bit leery about linking them on communities, especially if they don't have a specific focus. Is this idea a) sensible or b) ridiculous?