Practically Alice

My blog has hit over 4,000 views. In the two years that I've been writing here I never actually reckoned anyone would read it. I don't actually know what people think when they read these really odd words from my head but *waves*. It's nice to see you here. If you ever actually want to say hey then I have a twitter on which you can contact me:  http://www.twitter.com/paperbookmarks This summer seems to be all about the big numbers; I'm tackling the legend that is Ulysses  by James Joyce. Well, I say I am tackling, I haven't actually started it yet but these are my feelings about it: [ x ] I've heard it's rather a challenge but hey ho, I'm going to try. Among the sea of Ulysses I will be dabbling in many a-book over summer; page after page tumbling into my head. I'm hoping to get back into the mode of devouring books - it's been a while. Since finishing university for the year I've been wiped and am currently in a bit ...

Today has been an odd mixture of things. A gluten free, homemade cake my my wonderful flatmates; a selection of cookery books (see a food theme here? Says a lot about me), and the most beautiful bracelet from Phil, a bottle of bubbly for later, a bottle of wine for now (well, I say now - it's empty now ). I feel happy and elated and sad. I don't want this academic year to end because it suddenly means that when I see these people next I'll be second year and then I'll be doing my dissertation proposal and then I'll be a third year and then BAM. Done. Kaboom. I hate endings. I race through books and then get sad when they're finished... but at least with them I can imagine the afterwards. For me, in real life, I have  an afterwards (hopefully... ha) with which I will have to cope and deal with and live. I will only have some control over that. This year I've (ish) come to terms with (kind of) (not much though) my back condition and how it's never go...

A year ago I sat my A level English Literature exam whereby I had to write an essay on a Shakespeare play. The play that was chosen by my teachers was Antony and Cleopatra , one of Shakespeare's more (I feel) under-appreciated tragedy's. When my friend Nicky and I decided we'd go to the Globe when I visited her, we saw  Anton and Cleo  was showing and I got very, very excited. The thing about reading a play at A level, or GCSE, or at any level of education for that matter - even if you just simply read it for pleasure - is that to some extent you don't end up getting a visual sense of the characters. When one reads the lines of Cleopatra, one doesn't exactly picture how she delivers them, only how she could. One of the main reasons I was so excited to see this production was that Nicky and I had previously had the pleasure of seeing Eve Best as the Duchess of Malfi in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi  (Old Vic, 2012) and she had a certain way in which I c...