Emma's Excellent Adventure

Apologies for not posting any news in the last couple of weeks. However, I now have much news for you all...

On the 19th October I set off for a weekend in Cardiff. Yes, I had spent a week "negotiating" the beaurocracy that is British Rail in order to get a "Young Person's Railcard". I was eligable for this discount card because I am a full-time student. (I can hear you all saying "But she's NOT young!") With much toing and froing between the uni and Central Station (and I'm getting fit) I was finally equipped with card and tickets. I was into the 4th hour of the journey when I received a text from Jo, my host in Penarth, near Cardiff: "would I like to accompany him to The Police concert on in Cardiff that night?"

WOULD I????

When we arrived at Millenium Stadium, we climbed, and climbed, and climbed to our seats in the VERY back row. We could still see the stage, but it was a long way down.

While we were waiting for the band, a guy approached us saying that he was from the tour, and offering to exchange our tickets for some on the pitch. We accepted and climbed back down all the stairs.

We were shown to our new seats - IN THE FRONT ROW!!!!!!!! Yes, Sting IS very fit; yes, I could see their fingering on guitar and bass; yes, it was exceptionally loud. But it was amazing. I'm not sure what was more exciting: to be seeing The Police; or to be at the Cardiff concert.

It was a great night, and I knew most of the songs. (And they STILL let me have the young persons railcard!)

Sue's birthday party (the reason for the trip to Wales) was lovely and it was great to spend time in an actual house with friends. And yes, I read 2 text books on the trains.

Carmen and Robert Westall

What a great weekend!

On Friday night, after another frustrating day (due to poor communication - not mine), I decided to treat myself to a night out. I was able to get half price tickets to Matthew Bourne's The Car Men. WOW! Bizet's opera score has been re-orchestrated for this dramatic retelling of the story of Carmen through dance. The dancing was fantastic, and the production was really interesting. A very good night.

Today, I went with Chris and John (who I met through mutual Austalian friends) on a literary walk. (Didn't you all spend your Sunday in such fashion?!) Chris is doing her PhD in childrens' literature at Newcastle Uni. One of her classmates had organised a group walking tour around North Shields and Tynemouth, where the author Robert Westall had grown up. (He wrote "The Machine Gunners among many other books.) Many of the landmarks of the area are mentioned in his books. The picture above is from a little bridge looking out to the mouth of the Tyne. North Shields is on the left of the photo and South Shields is on the right. Interestingly, there is no bridge connecting the two towns.

It was a wonderful day, walking on the beach, seeing the area in greater detail, making new friends, having fish and chips on the beach and afternoon tea at the house of the organisers, visiting the flea market and book fair...but now I am definitely ready for bed!

my house and singing too

This is a picture of me outside my house. To get to uni I walk 10 minutes to my right. Toon is another 10 minutes past that. All quite close, which I think is really important as it becomes colder. At the moment it's kind of National cold i.e. cold llama weather!

I started classes this week (at last!). I'm doing 5 subjects: Performance Practice - examining the theory of performance eg historical context and roles of performers; a dissertation of 12 000 - 16 000 words on a musical topic of my choice; Creative Project, which will be a one hour concert featuring me; and Research Methods in both Performance and Dissertation. I think I can link it all together and make it all related.

I've got a fantastic lecturer for the Performance subjects. He's very stimulating and a great facilitator. There are only 7 people in each of those classes, which is good.

The Creative Project is largely self-directed. Although I'm supposed to have lessons with Catriona. Unfortunately, I'm experiencing technical difficulties there; I can't just organise lessons directly with Catriona, I have to go through a 3rd person who hasn't responded to my emails. This sort beaurocratic problem seems to be fairly common over here.

I've received permission to do the Fiddle Band (brilliant again this week) and a folk singing group with Sandra Kerr (who is absolutely fantastic!!!!) although not for credit. It seems that performance doesn't feature quite as highly as I expected in this Performance course! I had to make a pest of myself to get into these classes. I was offered a further opportunity which I can't take up due to timetabling conflicts (and I don't really have that many classes).

Oh well, the things I am doing are really good, and I expect I'll be busy enough.

It sounds like the Sharon Shannon concert was a great night. There's a festival of Irish music on here for the next week or so. I'll let you know what I get to.

Food Fiddles and Dream

It's turning out to be another busy week. On Tuesday evening I had dinner with Mike (from Tassie) and Sue, Phil and Lachlan (from Canberra) who were all in Newcastle for the night. It was great to catch up with them all. We found a nice little cafe down at Quayside.
Wednesday we all went for lunch to John, Caroline and Malcolm's house (more Aussie musos). They live in a little village just outside Newcastle.
Wednesday afternoon I had a couple of classes. The best was Fiddle Band, run by Catriona MacDonald. Oh yeah, this was good! It was like being at a fiddle school, except it's going to be on every week for a whole year, instead of for a whole week once a year!!! VERY, VERY EXCITING!
Today Maeva (my Canadian flatmate friend) and I went to the Theatre Royal to see A Midsummer Night's Dream. We got tickets in the 2nd balcony with a very good view for £5.50 (very good price). It was a matinee and we were with all the school groups, but...The production was really interesting. It was a multi-lingual, Indian production. The set design was great; there was a dirt floor with a water feature at the front, depressed boxes for 2 musicians to the side and a rickety wooden frame/ structure at the back which the actors climbed a lot. Acrobatic type rope work was also beautifully featured. I enjoyed the production. The theatre was quite lovely too; very old and ornate. I did get vaguely concerned about the use of fire at the end of the production, and there only being 2 fire services for the whole of Newcastle...

Cloudstreet

The highlight of this week was playing with Cloudstreet on Sunday night at the South Shields Folk Club. It was great to be playing acouple of tunes with Nicole and John. And the North Terrace Fan Club came along to cheer me on; thanks guys! (They also bought Cloudstreet cds.) Then today Nicole and I had lunch at a great cafe in town (Cafe Royal) and checked out The Sage (concert hall). It was lovely to spend time talking and exploring.
This week I've also signed up for my classes. I'll be doing a concert in August, a dissertation and a couple of compulsory subjects. I've already found the library and taken out 10 books. I need to be enthusiastic at this point because we've been told that international students go into "disintergration". Nicole reckons this will happen in December and will be entirely due to the weather! Apparently we'll enter the "reintergration" phase in time to go home...
I've found out where the sessions are around town. Unfortunately, everbody here just "knows" where stuff happens, because no-one could give me specific addresses. I'll have it nutted out soon.
Still working on the photos. Apparently my new phone doesn't exist, so I can't locate the download for Vista and the disk that came with my phone only covers XP! And I'm such a techohead.