October update

Once again, I need to apologise for the lack of blog posts recently.  As well as planning our own wedding we've been to two other weddings this month, both with hen dos on other weekends, and on the weekends that I haven't been at weddings and at hen nights, I've been in Cambridge for one of them and I ran a half marathon on the other - another task ticked off!

Nevertheless I haven't been doing nothing towards my list, I've been steadily progressing in the background.  Here's a quick update:

We visited Dickens' House museum a couple of months back.  I intended to blog about it at the time but sadly didn't have time.  It was fun.  A bit of a mishmash and not quite sure whether it wanted to be Dickens' House or a museum and the exhibition about the musical Oliver! felt like a bit of a tack on.  I enjoyed the visit though, as I always enjoy getting a peak into the houses of a bygone age.

I also visited Sir John Soane's museum for the candlelit opening at the start of August with my friend Claire.  I frankly found the museum a little bit overwhelming but also pretty amazing.  It's basically one man's museum of things that he found interesting, and this covers a remarkable range of things! Too many, really, to get your head round.  The really cool bit is the paintings room, which I wouldn't have known about had Claire not been there before.  This room is a real treasure trove, not because of the paintings (I don't know enough about them to appreciate them really) but because of the ingenious way Soane found to store them all - the walls all flip out on hinges and have another layer of paintings behind them.  The whole house is full of ingenious cubby holes and cool things to look at like this.  If my memory serves me correctly there's little or no interpretation which makes taking everything in doubly hard.  It was great going with Claire though as she is self-confessedly bubbling with enthusiasm for 'stuff' and her enthusiasm and interest is contagious.  I think I'd like to find out a bit more about Soane and about certain items on display and then go back sometime.  If you want an insight into a really interesting man who collected interesting stuff though, it's well worth a visit!

As for the previously mentioned half marathon, I spent a good part of the last few months training for it - another reason for being so busy.  I completed the race in 2 hours, 34 minutes and 41 seconds on 10 October 2010.  I'm a little disappointed with the time but I had promised myself to only think about completing since this was by furthest I have ever run and no mean feat.  I actually found the race much harder than I expected but I was quite proud of myself for still managing a sprint finish! The photo shows me looking anxious beforehand but you can also see a photo of me running here.  My next running challenge is to run the London marathon next year but I'm getting slightly worried as I can't seem to get a charity place.  They seem to be filling up fast. If the worst comes to the worst I'll try and get a place in the Brighton marathon which is a week before.

As for growing my hair to my elbows, I always knew that was probably a bit ambitious but I think it might be slightly longer than last time I photographed it.  I've bought three piano pieces which I've started learning.  The first is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the second, Debussy's Golliwog's Cakewalk and the third, rather ambitiously and probably foolishly now I've listenedd to what it's supposed to sound like is Chopin's Minute Waltz.  I started practicing them the other day and was transported back to a world that I'd forgotten how much I missed - growing up music was a big part of who I was and I'm sorry I've let it slip! 

I've started but am making slow progress on Anna Korenina, one of my five classic novels. I'm making quite good progress with saving £500 of my own money and hope to be able to save more so that I can pay for my own wedding dress.  Which also means that progress is being made on another point on my list - to have an item of clothing tailormade to fit me.  My wedding dress is now on order! Obviously I can't say anything about it but I REALLY love it!

We've ticked the 'staying in a posh hotel' one as well - we stayed at the George in Rye for my other half's 30th.  It was really lovely and I'd recommend it to anyone. Lovely room, 4-poster bed, lovely big bathroom and really gorgeous, gorgeous food. Some photos of our room are below

    

 

And lastly, we've just watched Goodnight Mr Chips. I really liked it, really nice Sunday afternoon watching.  It's the story of a school teacher in a boys school. He started in 1870 and stayed there right through until the First World War and afterwards.  At first he was a very rigid and not very popular school master but on a holiday one summer he met and fell in love with his future wife (I cried!) and she changed him and helped him become a better and more popular  teacher.  He eventually realised his dream to become headmaster when, at an advanced age and post-retirement, we was the only person able to when everyone else went off to fight.  He ended up teaching several generations from the same families.  I've just read a review that calls it sentimental and a tearjerker, which I suppose it is.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, and enjoyed the reminder of a tradition which was still part of my childhood but which I think may well die in a few years' time - afternoon tea! And I mean proper afternoon tea, with bread and honey, by a roaring fire.

So I'm getting there with my list.  There are still a few really major challenges/things that I need to do but I think I can still manage it. Let me know if you want to join me in any of my activities!

Supporting me in the Royal Parks half marathon

I've now got my race pack for the Royal Parks Half Marathon next Sunday and it includes a route map and some estimated times that runners might be at each point.

I'm still anticipating that this race might be quite a challenge so it would be great if anybody felt like coming along to cheer me!

You can find the route map on the Race website.

Here is a list of when I expect to roughly be at each point (very hard to predict)  on Sunday 10 October:

Mile 1 - Constitution Hill in Green Park - between 9.50 - 10.05
Mile 2 - By the Houses of Parliament - between 10.00 and 10.17
Mile 3 - at the top of Waterloo Bridge - between 10.10 and 10.29
Mile 4 - the other side of the road to mile 3, near Emankment tube station, around Victoria Embankment gardens - between 10.20 and 10.41
Mile 5 - On the Mall - around 10.35-10.53
Mile 6 - near the Hyde Park corner entrance to Hyde Park on Serpentine Road - between 10.50 and 11.05
Mile 7 - towards the top of West Carriage drive in Hyde Park - between about 11 and 11.17
Mile 8 - you'll have to look at hte map for this, it's in the middle of the park - between 11.15 and 11.29
Mile 9 - kind of parallel with the bottom of park lane but in Hyde Park - between 11.25 and 11.41
Mile 10 - North Carriage drive, not terribly far from Lancaster Gate station - between 11.40 and 11.55
Mile 11 - Look at the map again, it looks like it's sort of a bit in front of Kensington Palace - 11.50-12.05
Mile 12 - Look at the map! - between 11.55 and 12.17
The finish line!!! - at the bottom of Hyde Park, near Knightsbridge tube, where the start was! - between 12.10 and 12.29

Please bear in mind that this might be completely inaccurate.  It's kind of based on something a bit more optimistic than the times that they predict the slowest runners will run in - 12 minute miles.  I'm currently training at about 11.5 minute miles but hope to be maybe slightly faster on the day (bear with me, I'm VERY slow!)  I guess they're probably anticipating that people towards the back will take a long time to get through the start line as well.  The timings above assume I might take up to 10 minutes to cross the start line and hopefully it won't be that long so perhaps arrive a little earlier (the race starts at 9.30).

For the enterprising amongst you, hopefully you will be able to see me at several points and therefore will have some idea of how I'm doing.  Having said that, I'd really appreciate it even if you only came to one point just to give me a brief wave!  It will make all the difference I'm sure!

Thanks everyone and wish me luck!

Item number 31!

For those of you that haven't heard, I've added a 31st thing to do before I'm 30 to my list - get married! Thankfully a couple of items can be adapted around it, including the one about going on an expensive holiday (honeymoon) and getting a dress tailored to fit me (wedding dress).  It is likely to happen in Spring next year though, but I'm determined that it won't get in the way of all of the other things that I'm planning to do before next June.  It'll just make that bit busier!

Update on progress and sponsorship plea

First and foremost – an apology. I’ve been very slow to blog recently. But this hasn’t meant that I’m not continuing to tick off my list. Waiting in the wings (in my head) are blog posts about Sir John Soane’s museum, and about Dickens house. In addition, I’ve recently made a start on reading Anna Korenina and there are a few other activities that will count towards my list that are starting to be put in motion in one way or another.

Mostly though, I’ve been doing quite a lot of running. My half marathon is a month away (10 October) and my training is going well. These last couple of weeks have been very busy so I haven’t run much but on bank holiday morning I had a lovely early morning run all along the river from Richmond to just past Putney – 9 miles. That’s the furthest I’ve ever run and I struggled with boredom along the way so I felt pretty proud of myself when I finished (and pretty tired and achy afterwards!)

I ran nearly 6 miles before work on Thursday but won’t be able to do a long run now until next weekend when I plan to run 11 miles, the longest distance I’m supposed to do on my training. After that I’ll start to taper and just do shorter runs to keep up my fitness before the big day.  Before the 9 miles I'd been gradually working up with a slightly longer run every weekend and at least one short run and two outdoor workouts during the week.  Even recently when I haven't managed todo long runs so much, I've still been doing my 2 workouts and a short run during the week.

So as you can see, I’ve been working pretty hard at it. If you’re feeling generous, I’d really appreciate your support in this endeavour, either by coming along to support me on the day, or by sponsoring me at www.justgiving.com/Rhiannon-Looseley. The money I raise will go to the Bone Cancer Research Trust.

I'm about halfway to my target as I type this, but I hope to reach it quite soon. Although it would be great to exceed it, if yu want to sponsor me after I've exceeded and wouldn't be able to do so twice in a year (which would be fair enough!) then please save your sponsorship as I hope to run the London marathon for the same charity next year and I think I'll need to raise considerably more then so will definitely need all the support I can get.

Thanks everyone!

The Lavender Hill Mob

Another of the classic films that I'd identified on my list of five to watch before I'm 30 was the Lavender Hill Mob.  This was partly because I know Lavender Hill in Clapham Junction well, but also because my Grandma tells me that she and my Grandad watched it at the cinema, presumably when it first came out in 1951.

Once again, I enjoyed escaping into a world which feels more harmless than today's.  Where crime and criminals feel less threatening and more lighthearted.  This film felt rather like a cross between Oceans 11 and The Italian Job.  I suppose the first of these films shows that it's still possible today to make a film where petty (or not so petty) crime is still treated in a comedic way and the audience side with the criminals since they are railing against the domination of the rich/the establishment.   'Ordinary man makes good and achieves his dreams' type thing.  Too often, however, as I've said before, I find more modern cinema disturbing and too violent at times and prefer this escapist kind of earlier film.

The film is a funny, slightly ridiculous story of a man who's worked very hard and with great integrity and honesty for 19 years in a factory that produces the gold bullion for banks.  His is a tedious job but he performs it well, with great attention to detail, and takes pride in ensuring that the bullion is made efficiently and transported safely to the bank. 

When he hatches a plan, therefore, to break this model of honesty, and achieve his dream of making millions and moving to South America, no-one suspects him.  The film chronicles the clever scheme that he hatches, and the scrapes that he and his fellow honest-man-turned-rather-naive-criminal run into. It's not a great work of art but it's funny.  It's a diverting and amusing way to spend a couple of hours and I'm glad that I watched it.

The Great Gatsby

I also finished The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald recently, the first of my five classic novels that I intend to read as part of this list.  Rather like with Breakfast at Tiffany's, I wasn't bowled over, but I quite enjoyed reading it.  I was left feeling slightly that I might rather have missed the point, and it's possible that I have since sadly my only reading time is often standing up on my morning or evening commute and this doesn't always lend itself to the best levels of concentration!

The Great Gatsby is told in the first person from the perspective of a man named Nick Carraway, a young man who has recently moved to the suburbs of New York after the First World War at the start of his career selling bonds.  It is an intriguing insight into a way of life that I didn't know much about and I enjoyed being drawn into a world which was partly modern, and partly still harked back to an almost costume-drama-style world where (rich) women draped themselves elegantly over Chaises Longues, were prone to fainting and took great care over their appearance.

Nick lives next to a man named Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man, whose name was on everyone's lips in the summer that Nick describes for holding the most amazing parties where everyone who was anyone went, even if they did not know the host.  The story revolves both around Nick's unravelling the mystery behind Gatsby, and the story of some friends of his, their marriage, and the life they lead, and the way these two aspects eventually interweave.

After a slow start, I felt fairly engaged by the novel and found myself wanting to know what happened.  My overriding impression now that I've finished it, however, is one of distaste for the world that Nick was discovering.  One where rich people attend glamorous parties, live in lavish houses, but seem dissatisfied with their lives, have extra-marital affairs, occasionally make their money in less-than-above-board ways and ultimately don't care about one another.

Feeling that I may have missed something, or perhaps just lacking confidence in my own interpretation, I turned to the web to see what other people had to say.  My first port of call, as an introduction: the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page about the book describes it as 'a critique of the American Dream.' It continues 'Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamor of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and the lack of morality that went with it, a kind of decadence.'  I read the novel with no preconceived ideas and no knowledge about the author or what the book was about.  It seems, from a brief skim of Wikipedia and an American homework website (apparently the book is frequently studied by school students in America) that my reading of the book was largely in keeping with the themes that others have identified, and that Scott Fitzgerald intended his readers to dislike and question the morals of this post-war prosperous world of plenty in America in the 1920s.

Reading about themes and symbolism in a book I've just read rather made me miss studying literature.  I struggled with French literature during my degree because I never really 'got' the dissecting of a novel that I had enjoyed, until my final year when something clicked.  Now, with the benefit of hindsight and a more mature perspective, I'm starting to appreciate it again.  I'm hoping that reading the other four classic novels will continue to remind me of the pleasure and satisfaction that can be gained from reading 'proper' literature again.

My last point on this novel is one about language.  I had forgotten in recent years when I've mostly read fairly trashy chick-lit which is perfect for short train commutes, the way really 'good' literature can be delicious in its use of language and description.

I folded over a few pages in The Great Gatsby where the author used turns of phrases which I really liked. These are some of my favourite descriptions:

• The first description of Gatsby's smile: 'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.  It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.' (p. 54, Penguin Popular Classics, 1994)
• The description of why Carraway enjoyed New York struck a chord with me as it is also a reason I love London: 'the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.' (p. 63)
• I liked the image conjured up by this metaphor: 'His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by.' (p. 71)

So far, I'm really pleased that I've set myself these 30 challenges.  It's making me do, read and visit really interesting, enjoyable things that I don't often make time to do.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

I've been really lax with this blog recently so I consequently have four posts to catch up on now.  The first is about Breakfast at Tiffany's which we watched last weekend.

Now I know this will be seem like a travesty to many girls but I have to say I wasn't bowled over by it.  It was quite a nice, diverting film, but I wouldn't put it up there with my favourites at all.  I was surprised, for instance, that the main character, Holly Golightly, only actually had breakfast outside Tiffany's jewellery store once, at the beginning of the film, which for me rather takes away the significance of the title.

Not to give too much away to those that haven't seen it, the premise is that a young, very elegant party girl in Manhattan in the early 60s has a series of older, rich suiters who help her to pay her rent money.  At the start of the film she meets a new neighbour from the flat upstairs and the story basically evolves as they get to know each other and we find out more about Holly as he (Paul) does.  I found a few aspects of her behaviour and her story slightly uncomfortable and my feminist side baulks rather at her ambition and desire to be rich and indepedent manifests itself in the way it does, performing small favours for slimey rich older men. I suspect some would say that I have missed the point with my next point, and see Holly as very clever in her adoption of the attitude of a rather silly, unaware young girl in order to further her purpose.  I, however, found it slightly irritating that she never remembered her keys, and was, or pretended to be, completely unaware of the unsavoury world that some of her benefactors moved in.  

However, like with all older films, I did enjoy the fact that things were hinted at rather than rammed graphically down one's throat as they sometimes are in films today.  We were left guessing at whether or not she slept with these men, for instance, whereas I suspect the film's modern equivalent might be less subtle in its suggestions. Perhaps this makes me prudish, but I prefer certain things to be left to my imagination.  I like to watch films that are escapist, and the modern penchant for realism defeats the object for me as it ceases to allow me to escape from real life.  I can see that this film provides exactly that opportunity. It allows us to escape the world of today into a glamorous, well-dressed, light-hearted world of elegant black dresses.  A world where a girl was living an independent lifestyle, tied down to nobody, at a time when this wasn't as much the norm as it is today.

I've tried to write this first half of my blog before looking at other people's reviews of the films, but the first review I read reminded me of something else that I found a bit distasteful - the frankly very racist portrayal of a Japanese photographer by Mickey Rooney.

I like the point made by a BBC review of the film last updated in 2007 when it says

'"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a prime example of a film that often splits the audience from the critics. While it seems to spell magic for many, it is a movie that leaves itself open for professional vilification.' I came to the film looking for the magic that others seem to obtain from it, but perhaps I came at it, instead, from the point of view of a critic.

I think perhaps the film suffered in my eyes from the fact that I first saw it at the age of 29 when most people might associate it with a much-watched and much viewed film that they have known for years.  In the same way, had I come to a film like Grease from my adult perspective now, I might criticise the example it sets that 'good girls' have to change into 'bad girls' to get the man they want and that men don't need to change.  As it is, I first discovered it at the age of 8, love the music and have watched it so many times that I can virtually quote every line.  As such, I cannot see through my view of it as an absolute classic film that reminds me of how much I loved it as a child.  I'm perfectly prepared to see that many probably have the same feelings about Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I didn't dislike the film, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to.