Digest #8: Boo to you, Bus 184!, or: Christ, it's Valentine's Day already?

So, I should probably apologize for not updating sooner (then again I'm not actually sure that anyone reads this, anymore at least). I've tried, no lie, but nevertheless I have generally given up. I have a ton of pictures again, but I'll get to that in a moment. I'll try to briefly update on what I've been up to. The main events have notably been: Two concerts at Saint Martin in the Fields and another concert/church service at King's College of Cambridge University. So, yes, all in churches. Many plays sprinkled over the past couple of weeks. Anyway, I feel as though something else happened... hmmm.... Oh, Katie and I went to one of Esteban's football matches and that was pretty awesome.

Anyway, Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Normally, I wouldn't write about it (or at least not here), but there is a point I promise and the point has to do with England. Probably one of my biggest qualms with England (or anywhere else really) is all of the damn public displays of affection. I can only imagine that once Valentine's Day strikes in 30 minutes time, that the PDA in London will almost be unbearable: Hand holding, making out on the Tube, feeding one another across a table in front of a window that may as well be projected on a giant screen at the damn World Cup game, and other Valentine's day cliche's that I can't think of right now... In a word: Gross. Though a noise along the lines of 'GARAHHHHAAGGG' would be perhaps a more articulate way of expressing my irritation. Aren't the English supposed to occupy a super inhibited space bordering on Victorian prudishness? Apparently not. Now, I do not say this as some sort of embittered singleton or as an uptight American prude. This is not an attack on the poor day that happens to be February 14th, because I plan on having a nice, cliche free day tomorrow. Perhaps it will be a day spent in silent prayer... God save the Queen, for real. Anyway, enough with that.

As I said, I have been to three concerts in the past couple of weeks as well as the plays. I'll start with the plays first because I can just plow through those. I'm having a hard time picking a favorite play thus far. Two of the best plays I've seen have been in the time since I last updated until now, those being Frost/Nixon and Rock & Roll. Frost/Nixon featured Martin Sheen (from The Queen) as David Frost. I really enjoyed this play. The latter of the two plays I mentioned, Rock & Roll has a bit of an interesting story attached to it. Well, perhaps not super interesting, but memorable never the less. To begin with and perhaps to just jump to the point, Pierce Brosnan (yes, 007) was in the audience not too far behind us. The first question that you could ask is: Are you sure? and my response to that would be absolutely. The other question that I had to ask was, how did we get better seats than James Bond (or, that one guy from Mrs. Doubtfire depending on your film preferences)? Though one of the more alarming events of the evening was when one of the characters, Max, became upset and broke a plate with his cane. I mus admit, that while this is not all that shocking, what was shocking was getting hit in the face with one of the shards. I still have the shard, mostly because the night was so surreal. Also, how often do you get hit in the face with a broken piece of china? Not often. Anyway, I also saw Amy's View last night which I'm as equally fond of as I was Therese Raquin; that is to say not much.

Anyway! Concerts! I have so far been to two concerts at Saint Martin in the Fields (which is directly across from Trafalgar Square): Mozart's Requiem and a piano recital that was billed as being an event for Valentine's Day. The former I went to and had difficulty not singing along to as we had just performed it last semester, even if the arrangement was different than the one we performed. It was a good performance, the sopranos and the altos were much stronger than the basses and the tenors. I agree with Tom though that our performance was a richer one as our choir was probably at least three times the size of the choir we saw perform. The second concert, the Valentine's day one, I just got back from probably an hour ago. It was an excellent piano recital that featured pretty much every composer I like. It was actually billed as Moonlight Sonata or something silly like that, and people actually did leave after the pianist, Irina Botan, performed Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. In my opinion, I would file that as under the category of 'pretty lame'. Especially because the strongest pieces she performed were immediately after that were those by Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. The concert itself was enjoyable, though barring the girl to my right who wouldn't stop coughing and the French couple to my left who acted as though they'd rather be skinning cats and making babies cry than be at that concert.

The Evensong performance/church service at Cambridge though was probably my favorite. First because the King's College choir was amazing. Second because Cambridge is beautiful. I have pictures, and so I'll just post those as I can't think of what else to say. Well, excluding the fact that the first actual train I've traveled on was out of King's Cross and yes, I did go to Platform 9 3/4... well, at least the sign indicating to where it would be.