Leeds: live it, love it

After days of being confined in our house, fooling myself that I am studying (but really devising imaginative ways to distract myself) I finally finished my last exam (ever!) and stepped out in to my city, Leeds. With my trips largely consisting of the library and tennis court, I had become unfamiliar with the city I call home. Thus, I was able to objectively observe its character as a walked (her?) streets. It was an old industrial city, that has being revamped- attracting masses of students and becoming a finance centre. They call it 'the Swan', (morphed into a flashy 'hub' from being a smoggy ugly duckling) However the otherside to the new facade is also very vivid and present. There are huge amount of illegal immigrants (along with a reactionary neo-Nazi movement; the infamous British Nationalist Party has its headquarters in Leeds), homelessness, crime...
I will write more about these thoughts later (I am catching a train in an hour, and I am still in my PJ's, haven't packed and Drew wants me to make him a lentil ambledown roast), and instead I will mention a few things I have being up to. To celebrate the end of my 'under-graduatedom' Drew and I went to to West Yorkshire Playhouse. We saw a play called 'Bus' that explored the changing face of Leeds. The playwright used the setting of the city's bus systems as 'mobile battleground', exploring the divisions caused by the explosive makeover of the city (the scars of its plastic surgery?) It was really surreal, as Drew and I commute into town on the bus upon which each scene was performed, thus went we went home we felt that we had stepped on stage. Theatre has so much scope for insightful social commentary, and forces the audience to look deeper at lives that are so easy to dismiss on a day-to-day basis. The characters of play included two 'hometowners' that where homeless, and could no longer see their place in the new Leeds; the city had left them behind, so they never leave the buses, ruling the backseats and seeing the alien world change and expand through the glass. Their lives collide with two graduates who are trying to claim the city as their own.

Here you go! This is the bendy No. 1 bus, upon which I have spent on average an hour a day for the last three years (apart from when cycled in the days before my bike got stolen, and we moved to live at the top of a hill).

After the play drew and I where on our way home when I found a tenner in the street! (the coolest thing ever!) so we went to watch jazz and get a drink (first in ages! So I only had one- I am such a light weight!), something we would never have justified under any circumstances, apart from a freak piece of luck!

Last night we went to a friends birthday bash, where we watch phantom of the opera, prompting drew and I to sing al the way home (which did not cause a scene, as it was four in the morning, and the streets of Leeds where full of wasted clubbers dressed up as scooby-doo doing much weirder things)

Ahhh! Drew's yelling at me to get my butt into gear! So bye for a week! We are going to visit my parents in Carnforth, as well as spend a couple of days in the lake District. I collected loads of ASDA grocery coupons which I exchanged for a free night in a hotel in Grasmere.

blessings xxxx

To pierce or not to pierce...

That is the question...

Last Christmas I pierced my nose, but it fell out in my sleep, and the hole healed up. I haven't got round to getting it re- done as I was to busy to decide whether I wanted it done or not.

At the time I enjoyed it as, believe it or not, unless I am talking to a big group of people, or leading something, or hanging out with close friends (when according to my precious arty farty buddies, Sarah and Lu, I am a raving chatterbox- even to the degree of competing with Drew!) I am painfully shy. The nose stud helped, as crazily enough I believed I could hide behind it, thus, feeling less exposed, I was more confident and carefree. However, looking at the pictures I look a bit like a pretentious hippy tree-hugger! I do love trees, and hippy are okay as long as they shower and don't say they are going to save the environment by sitting on their butts smoking pot in a drum circle.
I am so pooped after my (last!) exam, and getting my celebratory pineapple all over my key board, so I am leaving the decision up you dearest readers, or random cyber wanderers. (Laura your vote does not count, cause I already know what you are going to say!) Meanwhile I am going to refill my tea cup and have a quick nap before Drew and I go to the theatre. Hello summer!!!... I am emerging from my hermit/revision existence and the sun is shining for the first time in forever! Hurrah Henry!

Soggy Bears

Another rainy day... I am beginning to think I should build an ark! Drew and I have just being out to deliver a birthday present to a buddy, and walked around getting wetter and wetter (wind and rain join forces to defy even the strongest brollies). Finally we surrendered and called off the planned hike in the moors (Bronte-land). Instead we returned our soggy selves to our cozy little basement flat to drink tea and study. (This last sentence carries the risk of provoking Hannah's 'boffin' accusations. However, I regularly am the recipient of the cheeky suggestion as to 'do you colour your hair?' To this insinuation that I am blonde, thereby dumb, I usually causally mention that I beat the president of the Leeds University Chess Society at... chess.
Enough blowing upon my own trumpet... as I remain dangerously dizzy - Drew has saved my life a dozen of times whilst crossing roads (not entirely my fault - British drivers are fairly mad). So yeah, Uni has injected a dose of boffinness in me, how to listen, how to finish what I start (half finished essays do not go down to well!), how to critically assess things- not just absorbing pre-formed thought patterns. Besides! education can make mischievous plans and pranks all the more efficient and effective!
Nevertheless, I am through with theories. I am not cut out to be an academic (unlike my darling clever tiger). Nope, I am ready to do something more vocational, work with people. It is individual stories that really excites my creativity. Every life has a story of design, is a narrative of brokenness with the potential story of healing.
My favourite poet that I encountered this year is the Caribbean Derek Walcott. In his essay The Antilles: Fragments of an Epic Memory he describes how his nation can claim a beautiful history from the pain of the past through a image of restored vase:
'Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars.'
I know I am rudely mis-appropriating his images... but the symbolism in these words has comforted me so much in this spiritually difficult year. I feel like I have the white scars that display the healing and grace of Christ. He lifts me out of the soggy puddles where I fall and hangs me on the line to dry. Now I can be huggable again.

On a lighter note, here is my scrumptious smoldering bloke, looking cool. The picture was taken the summer after we left Thetis Island, and moments before Drew was to get well and truly beaten by his wife-to-be, lose his cool, and throw the pieces across the Ruby's lovely garden in a pouting rage! Haha! I can say all this because Drew is cleverer at absolutely everything else!

yummy wood

My beautiful sister sent me an exam survival package from her little mountain home in Colorado. It included cinnamon flavoured toothpicks to 'chew and thoughtfully ponder on facts and figures.'

Which is exactly what I am doing now... Mulling over grandiose concepts that 'determine whether the proletariat will be a spectator or an actor in the making of history.' Ahh soon I can cathartically empty them all out onto my exam paper and do prance about in the summer daisies. Learning is good and all that, but revision makes you forget how to live. Drew is such light relief, even when the biggest cloud is raining over his mind, he can make me laugh so hard I choke on my toothpick.

I can't help eating these things! They are so incredibly tasty. Everything American has 'frills'. I hope my stomach is up to digesting woodchips.

Maybe I am hungry. I will go cook supper, and see if I can then deliberate and reflectively chew like a normal person, without munching poor Mr. Stick to death.

In-betwixt and in-between

Not here or there, not student nor graduate,
not child nor adult...

Actually the latter is not quite true, I think I am
officially 'grown up', and am quickly losing the ability to be daft and mad with the forgivable excuse of being a tot. Or maybe you are a kid until you have one? (which, incidentally, I have managed to resist for the time being- even though some people actually put bets upon me becoming preggers in our first year of marriage) But either way I feel I am occupying some in-between stage, where I do not really know what I want to do, but have to choose. Thus I can not chillax, as drew loves to call it. Choosing is also not easy, as Drew still has lots of education left, so I can not drag him wherever I want.

The 'mad dogs and Englishmen' in the picture above are demonstrating a passion of mine. A passion I feel comes from God, and will somehow push me to make some decisions of some sort.
The injustice in our global community is intrinsically linked to my spiritual understanding. I get excited when I remember how the Lord's character includes a compassion of the poor, and is an antithesis to greed, as he has the power to transform the systems that are oppressing people. I don't know if most people are 'called' to do something specific, but I reckon that in some way he enables us to manifest his character, and I guess I would like his hunger for a river of justice to be manifested through my 'choices'.

I'll catch my self before I go off into endless thoughtful musings, and get back to some revision. Procrastination is my middle name.

Drew and I have just got back from the library where I picked up a bunch of fusty old journals. But I might go out for a little stroll in the park with hubby-dear before I bury myself in them. It has being raining on and off all week, in true English fashion, so the key is to snatch to moments in-between. Yesterday I went out for my community training (I am in the TIDAL Surge team- ( see www.leedstidal.org/) and it bucketed it down the whole way there. Is there anything harder than trying to be friendly when you have wet underwear?

And on that note, ciao my dear buddies!

Blog it Baby!

Eek! my first step into blogger space!

I have put this off for some time... happily existing vicariously through the blog of my dearest drewpants. However, having finishing my dissertation and essays I have found myself having computer withdrawal symptoms. This is most peculiar, as most of you know I despise the wretched, cold machines. Nevertheless, although I am offically free from writing page after page... my fingers have been nervously twiddling all day. Even in the street. So hopefully this blog will ease me off nice and slowly...

What lies in store for all my blog readers? (if you are out there! haha, this could be an even geekier version of talking to myself) well, I have finished uni, but have one exam to go. It is on the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. It should be fairly easy as most of his work was written in a fascist prison, where not only did he write his random theories and notions in a code language (to get past the censors), but he died before he completed any of his ideas. Thus after translating this stream of consciousness into english, his 'notebooks' are so vague, you can pretty much interperate his work to say what you like, and not get marked down.

My blog is also going to be filled with many dyslexic delights. My apologies. My English/theatre studies teacher got 'hopping mad' at me, and told me to find some stratagies over the summer. I am hopefully starting my MA in Sept. It is called 'Theatre For Development', but I will write no more on this until I get my grades and know I have a place.

Between now and then I am going to get a job, go to Calgary, Milan and Malawi, chill with my drewbear, move churches, and drink lots of tea.

I think I have appeased the nervous typing condition enough, I can go snuggle up to my favourite pillow without drumming my fingers on his head.

How do you end these things? um, goodnight and God bless?