That Was The Summer That Was

Saturday, the 16th of October, 2004 - 10:24pm

Current Song ~ Dream Away ~ George Harrison.

Well, by gum. Overlooking the update a little while ago, it's been quite a while (again), hasn't it?
And I note in the meantime that the default break has changed from paragraph to linebreak. If my entries appear as one insanely huge block when first uploaded, assume that I haven't quite grasped this fact and will be hard at work identifying those errant BR's in order to place Paragraph tags in their rightful places.

...But I digress from things that are interesting.

Since mid-to-late-July, much has occured. This would include such things as the writing and posting of a number of OU assignments (see below, assuming I remember), the sight-reading of lengthy works by Haydn (spiffy fun) and Mozart (cool, but hard on the throat - really, Wolfgang old chap, were all those F#s entirely necessary?), a beautiful obsession with Red Dwarf, and a truly alarming number of rounds of 'Snake II' on my mobile phone.
I like to think that it's a testament to my skills as a procrastinator - or as people will insist on having, a sad indication of my dedication to coursework - that my Snake high score lept from eighty-something to over nine hundred during the week that my essay on Carl Linnaeus became steadily more overdue...

Luckily for both myself and my poor innocent tutors, my days of assignment-posting are over until February 2005.
In all, I wrote sixteen of the things, none of which are terribly likely to see the light of day again. At the beginning of the course, I dutifully read and mulled over The Arts Good Study Guide's sterling advice on essay-writing, from first draft to final polish. Then, in the noble tradition of students everywhere, I cheerfully ignored most of it.
The only sections that were ever read over were the introduction and the conclusion. The writing in between, well, it could have been anything.

However, while the results only crawled their way up to a Pass 1 mark twice, I cling to the belief that my essays had their moments. These would include:

* Arguing that nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition because they were terribly disorganised.
* Comparing the role of phlogiston in scientific theory to that of God.
* Referencing the obscure and underrated Bowie song Cygnet Committee.
* Having a brief but glorious moment of enlightenment in which I managed to write a good discussion of three hundred words (or thereabouts) on an architectural subject that I didn't understand beforehand and am fairly sure I don't understand now.

Ah, good times. Nestled among times of frustration, apathy, and sleep deprivation, but such is the nature of student life.

The Summer being a time of rest for choirs of a non-churchy variety (us religiously affiliated types are of course expected to truck on, holiday season or no holiday season), there hasn't been much in the way of major musical events to report back on.
I did, however, make it to the Proms to see a concert comprising of Takemitsu's Twill by Twilight, Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B Minor, Ravel's Sheherazade, and Respighi's The Pines of Rome.

Having very foolishly braved the underground in August (which is of a somewhat tropical nature) and then gone straight to the balmy Royal Albert Hall without first tracking down a bottle of something cold and wet, I spent the entire first half thinking 'water... waaaater...', and was almost the first person to arrive at the bar during the interval. However, having been revived by an impressively well-chilled bottle of orange juice, I was able to properly enjoy the second half, and most particularly The Pines of Rome, which I hadn't ever heard before.
Spiffy, piece, that one.

That's everything I can think of to mention at this present moment - which, given the number of times I've been distracted during the writing of this, is probably just as well.
(The date and time listed are the date and time right now - the entry was started directly after the last one, but while the labelling that I've opted for is quite out of step with that of every other entry, it seems a tad less confusing, and looks less like I completed the writing at a reasonable speed but took a bizarrely long time to upload)

I shall be back soon (yes, really!) - until then, au revoir!

Lily

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