Pains

In My Bum

It was only for half an hour, but it still did damage I had not expected. Allow me to clarify:

We had our first riding lesson, and it was great! Granted, all we did was walk and a tiny bit of trot, as the majority of the class had not ridden before, but it was still great to be up on a horse again after all these years. In this first lesson, most had someone walking next to their horses, but the goal is for everyone to be able to sit on a horse and feel confident. 

We were divided in three groups of five, as that is the amount of horses the stables has available for us. Hence why we also get half an hour. These six weeks will only cover the very basics, but still. Every Thursday morning for now, we get in the East15 minibus, drive to the stables, and get up on horses.

Easter

With A Sister 

Monday, 14th of April, 23:50, after nearly two years of not seeing each other, we were reunited.

Oh how soppy that sounds, but it’s the truth. I got in my mum’s car, drove to Gardermoen, and picked up Gwen. For the next four days we basically chilled out in Norway before getting on a Ryanair flight together, the 19^th of April. 

 Of course, fate would have it that the 18^th I woke with a really bad cold, but ah, such is life.

Easter Sunday was a day of relaxation, as most shops were closed anyway, and the weather wasn’t exactly sublime (another of-course). Monday however came with a clear sky and wonderful sunlight. It called for a walk to Lidl and a trip out on the Southend

Pier, the longest pier of… Europe? Can’t remember.

Tuesday 22^nd I was back in school and Gwen became my personal chef, making me pancakes for dinner. 

Thursday she in the end went home, having to catch the bus as agonizingly early as 6 in the morning. After ten great days we were once again to be parted (cue tears and violin music). Wednesday we celebrated our brief reunion with dinner and a few drinks at Spoons (a pub).  

London

Delights 

The first sight that met him when he peered in through the window was the most horrific thing he would ever see in his life:

Her face was turned toward him, but there was no life. Her nose had been cut off, as well as her eyelids and eyebrows. The skin of her cheeks and chin had been shaven clean off, and her throat cut so deeply only a few strands connected her head to the rest of her body. Her breasts had been removed with circle incisions, one put beside her head and the other by one of her feet. 

Her abdomen had been cut and splayed open from her genitals to her breastbone. All the intestine had been taken out and dumped on the table next to the bead. The skin on the inside of her thighs had been cut off, the femur bone visible in one place.

Barely human anymore, she resembled something one may find on a butcher’s workbench. 

That was the description of the murdered Mary Jane Kelly, given by the guide at the end of our tour. Mary Jane was the last murder assumed and credited to have been Jack the Rippers last, and by far most gruesome, murder.

***

We got on the half-ten train from Southend to London to see the third year combat and physical theatre’s show cases. A showing created solely for the purpose of showing off the students in the third year, where agents come to look for possible new stars. 

When this was over, we all went to a pub to celebrate a show case well done (and heavens were the third year combats’ show case done well!). But while some went home after a while, and others stayed to get smashed and subsequently terribly hung-over the next day, me and four others did something else.  

The last two weeks before Easter we have priority in devised. While with the Shakespeare priority, where we get a taste of making a show with a director, devised is to give us a try at creating a show entirely on our own from the bottom up. Our theme is The Themes, but apart from this we make everything. My class has been divided in three groups for this, and in my group we have decided to focus on the Jack the Ripper murders. And so, since we were in London, we thought hey, why not? and went on a Jack the Ripper tour. It cost ten pounds a ticket, began at 7.30, lasted over two hours (that we were not prepared for) and we weren’t back in Southend until close to 23.30. It was a bittersweet experience. Fun (the guide was amazing), but exhausting (walking around London’s streets at night for over two hours…) 

And that is what happened Thursday, the 27^th of February.