I've Been to London to Visit the Queen!

Well, actually I went to visit my friend. Lloyd and I have been friends since we met at sixth-form college in Exeter, but he's at UCL studying medicine and I'm at Oxford studying history so we don't see each other as often as we used to. This summer especially, since I was overseas for a lot of it, I only saw him once before I went down to visit him in London. I caught a fairly early train on the Friday and he wasn't actually in London at the time, so I went to the British Museum, because it's great and a nice way to spend an afternoon.

I saw the Assyrian palace statues, the Roman mosaics, and took photos of the building outside the museum. I also saw the Japan collection, which was fascinating - it was laid out in such a way that you got taken on a sweeping tour of Japanese history, interspersed with art and ceramics from contemporary Japanese artisans who promote traditional styles and techniques in Japan. I really loved it!

Then it was off to Lloyd's place - he lives in Camden - and after an enormous falafel wrap for dinner, it was time for the party he was hosting to mark the beginning of the year. Most people there were UCL medics whom I didn't know, but it was a fun night regardless, and we went out clubbing which was a good night.

The next day, Lloyd took me to the Natural History Museum, which was, since it was the weekend, horribly crowded and not much fun, but we walked there and it was a really nice walk through Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea via Hyde Park.

Unfortunately (or maybe not!), once Lloyd realised how flattering my camera was, we got caught up in a huge posing session throughout Hyde Park.

Lloyd!

His direction for this was, "Act like Queen Victoria!"

On our way back, we saw a strange structure near the Serpentine, and went over to investigate. It turned out to be some Fortnum & Mason promotion thing - you could take tea inside it - although originally I thought it was some sort of interactive art instalation.

It of course was a great opportunity for more photos.

I also drank tea and took photos of sunsets:

In the evening we went to another party, which I didn't enjoy so much because it was a stand-around-and-chat sort of party and I knew very few people there. But it was still an enjoyable experience. I have to say, though, the highlight of my visit was going to the Globe! I've never been, but Sunday evening we got £5 standing tickets for Richard II, which is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays!

Lloyd with Nicole, his uni friend who also came to see the play.

I look far less excited than I actually was here!

This post is ridiculously long so I won't go into too much detail about the play, but it was a good production and very enjoyable. I worried about my capacity for standing for nearly 3 hours straight, but in the end it wasn't bad at all! As I got more swept into the play I didn't notice so much how aching my feet were, and being so close to the stage made for a more immediate, almost interactive experience.

Then, on the last morning, before I caught my train home, we went to Camden Market.

We tried on hipster sunglasses, heh heh. And we also found a shop chock-full of Turkish lanterns, which are beautiful and if I had the money I would buy tons.

 So beautiful, so unobtainable...

And then it was time for me to catch the 2 o'clock train home. But this weekend away made me realise that I should really go to London more often. I have friends there, there's tons going on, and it's only a 90-minute coach ride from Oxford for a £15 period return. I'll try to do that more this year, despite it being my final year (argh!!!!).

Review | What We Do in the Shadows

It's always a risk watching a comedy film based on the trailer. However much you might laugh at the trailer, it's very possible that those clips were the only good parts of the film and the rest of it is an unfunny slog. So even though I was able to buy the DVD of this film for £4, which isn't much lost if it turned out to suck, I still had a feeling of trepidation when I sat down to watch it yesterday. What if it just wasn't that funny?

Fortunately, that wasn't the case. What We Do in the Shadows is hilarious. It's from the creators behind Flight of the Concords, and is a mockumentary detailing the daily lives of four vampires who share a house in Wellington, New Zealand. There's the 800+-year-old Vladislav, who looks disturbingly similar to Gary Oldman's Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's film and possesses a truly medieval torture chamber and attitude; the Romantic-with-a-capital-R Viago, who has beautiful sideburns and very tight trousers; the "bad boy" of the group, Deacon, who looks more like a rock star than any of the others and fled to New Zealand because post-WWII it was bad news if you were a Nazi vampire; and Petyr, who is 8000 years old and practically mummified.

Let me introduce you to my crew.

Oh wait, I forgot one - Nick. If that doesn't sound much like a vampire name, it's because rather than being a pre-20th Century European bloodsucker, he's an ordinary twentysomething Kiwi bloke who's accidentally turned into a vampire by an encounter with Petyr. He takes it upon himself to introduce his new vampire friends to the wonders of modern life - including eBay, Skype, and karate. They take to them enthusiastically, on the whole, even though Deacon becomes jealous of Nick because he's stealing his spotlight and his fashion sense.

These vampires walk the line between old-fashioned blood-drinking creatures of the night and more modern, deconstructed portrayals. There's been some interesting, creative portrayals of vampires in TV and film over the last few years - Being Human, Let the Right One In, Only Lovers Left Alive, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Byzantium - and while the vampires of What We Do in the Shadows don't bring anything particularly new to the table, they're also tons of fun. A lot of the scenes in the trailer become even funnier in context, and there are plenty of side-splitting moments that didn't make it into the trailer. There is, I think, a time and a place for serious meditations on vampires as a symbol of death and immortality; sometimes you just want a fun fantasy about melodramatic immortal creatures who worry about what to wear to the Unholy Masquerade, and bemoan the fact that they can't eat fish and chips without spewing blood.

While vampires are the focus of the film, there's also a local werewolf gang which plays a small but substantial role in the plot. Mostly they're your typical werewolves, although their leader has some puritanical opinions regarding swearing which he imposes on the rest of the group - they have to be reminded a few times that they're "werewolves, not swearwolves".

The trailer is fairly accurate with regards to the tone and feel of the film, so I recommend you watch it:

If it seems to your taste, I promise the actual film is even better!

The Blessed Days of America

This summer I spent six weeks in America, which was both everything and nothing like I expected.

Like all the other foreigners I knew in DC, the city I spent five weeks in trying to live, work, and not sink into the swamp it's built on, I was enormously starstruck by being able to experience all the American brands I heard about in the flesh. Walmart, Taco Bell, Dunkin Donuts, Target, Twinkies, Barnes & Noble, all the rest I can't remember. I didn't really understand the full power of Walmart until I was standing in the one store in the whole of DC (Walmart is, as I understand it, more of a suburban thing) slack-jawed and wide-eyed because of the sheer volume and diversity of products. At the same store you can buy a bicycle, the week's groceries, a phone, cleaning supplies, a DSLR camera... Americans like to merge several speciality stores into one, because they believe in minimising the amount of places you have to go for everything. I wonder how long it will be before one store contains everything available in the country.

"The food is so good in America!" Lies, lies, lies. I had only two meals there that I will remember and cherish as very nice food - one was Ethiopian food at a restaurant four blocks from my house, and one was Mexican food in Columbia Heights. I don't think Americans ever learnt the art of portion control, because one day me and a friend went to a Thai restaurant for lunch and having ordered fried rice I received a mountainous pile of rice over which I could barely see my friend. When I think of all the food I ordered and wasn't able to finish, there's a lot of it. I don't know where it all goes. I hope they don't waste it but I suspect they do.

Americans are open and friendly in a superficial sort of way, and they really love telling you their life story. I once spent a mildly terrifying five minutes in the toilets of a Carrefour on the outskirts of Paris where people had written their life stories on the walls, but in America people aren't so anonymous or shy. They'll strike up a conversation with you anywhere. Shop assistants ask you how you're doing and I never worked out if they wanted an answer. I find a lot of my fellow Brits too repressed but I never quite stopped being a little freaked out by how Americans pounce on you. One woman told me to have a blessed day and I don't even think she was joking.

In DC, I noticed a lot of people reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is nowhere near as popular here, and I think that's probably because it's about America. One of the British people I was working with was reading it, and said the parts about being a foreigner in America are totally accurate. I also read a book about a Soviet-era detective who ends up in New York in a convoluted plot, and I definitely wasn't a stranger to the terror and awe he felt landing in America, the glorious home of rampant capitalism (the epitome of which, by the way, is Times Square. Wow).

America is way too big. It took us five hours by bus to get from DC to New York City and another five hours to get from NYC to Boston. My little island country began to feel smaller and smaller, and when I looked at a map to plot out our epic journey from the District of Columbia to Massachussetts it was only a tiny part of the East Coast. There is so much more out there.

Mini Book Reviews

I read a load of books while I was in the US! I was doing an internship for most of the time, so I couldn't read 24/7, but not having a smartphone with me (it wasn't unlocked; I had to take an old, non-internet-enabled phone) helped immensely with reading a lot. Rather than checking my email and Facebook on my bus ride to work, I read on my Kindle instead - and I got through a fair amount of books! I was there for nearly six weeks, and I wanted to do some book reviews but I thought since I read quite a few in a short space of time I'd just bundle them all together and do little reviews for each one.

A Madness of Angels, Kate Griffin

The first book in the Matthew Swift series, an urban fantasy series set in London. It takes a while to understand what's going on - the opening is very much in media res and you get very little explanation; you have to figure out what's going on as you read. Still, once the initial confusion wears off, it's a great book. Written in a very breathless, slightly overwhelming style that absolutely fits the feeling of London. I also appreciate that, unlike a lot of urban fantasy, this magic is really connected to the city and the urban experience - magic users get their power from things like Oyster cards and graffiti, the last train on the Underground on the Circle Line will take you to places you can't otherwise go...

The Midnight Mayor, Kate Griffin

So I liked the series so much I read the second one! This one features the truly chilling appearance of the "death of cities", whose role should be fairly obvious, and it much more of a mystery - why have the Ravens left the Tower of London? Why is "GIVE ME BACK MY HAT" seen in graffiti all over the city in different languages? Who or what summoned the death of cities? What I like is that in the climax, when they find out who's responsible for summoning the death of cities, it's solved not with fights as in the last book, but with understanding and human kindness, and it still manages to make sense and be a satisfying ending.


A Free Man of Color, Barbara Hambly

After a while of hearing good things about the Benjamin January series, I decided to pick up the first one. It's a mystery series set in 1830s New Orleans, and the titular character is a free black man who plays the piano, trained as a surgeon, and solves murders. Hambly clearly put a hell of a lot of research into these, because New Orleans at all levels of society - French Creoles, American incomers, the free colored community, and the black population both slaves and free - is vividly laid out. There's a very strong sense of place and time here. The book does go into serious issues like racism, sexism, etc. but it's also a lot of fun and very readable. I will definitely be picking up the next one.


Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith

My mum and granddad both love the Inspector Renko series, so I got the first one (as you can see, reading the first book of a series is a theme here!). Being hugely ignorant on Soviet Russia (it's set during the 1980s) I have no idea how accurate this is, but it's an enjoyable read. The narrative voice is fun and distinctive - the descriptions of the people Renko meets are always telling! - and for someone who has the typical detective novel clichés of a failing marriage and unsympathetic bosses, I found Renko himself a very interesting character. The central mystery is actually solved about two-thirds of the way through; what was, for me, the most interesting part of the book was the last quarter, which takes places in the USA. Renko and his friend/lover/case suspect Irina end up "guests" of the FBI in NYC for reasons, and it's really interesting to see the ways they adapt - or don't - to being in America. Irina is, and has been for a while as demonstrated throughout the book, strongly anti-Soviet and sees America as the promised land. Renko isn't the USSR's biggest fan but he doesn't like America much and would prefer to go home. There's some good stuff to ponder in that section about becoming American, and how it's done.

Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano

OK, this was probably my favourite book I read on this trip. It's a nonfiction account of "the pillage of a continent", as the subtitle says, taking us from the first conquistadors landing in the Caribbean to the neocolonialism and exploitation of Latin American countries in the early 1970s (when Galeano wrote this book). What this absolutely isn't is a dispassionate account - it's partisan and makes no shame of it, and Galeano passionately argues in favour of things like nationalised industry and protectionism, and against the neoliberal free market. I agree with Galeano most of the time, so I don't really mind! It's certainly a hell of a read. Bittersweet, certainly, considering it was published just before the assassination of Salvador Allende and the subsequent string of right-wing dictatorships across the continent. But it's an interesting read today considering the current trend of left-wing governments in Latin America, described by some as a "Pink Wave".

Typhoon, Joseph Conrad

This is a fairly short Conrad story, and I don't have much to say about it. It's well-written, like most Conrad I've read, it's full of boats... The descriptions of the typhoon are a lot of fun! My copy came with a preface in which Conrad complained about the literary critics that tried to find deep meaning and analysis in his character of Captain MacWhirr, and how he didn't intend him to be symbolic of anything much. This certainly made me feel more justified in finishing it and thinking, well, I'm not sure what the point of that was.


Persuasion, Jane Austen

I'm an Austen fan, but until now I hadn't read Persuasion. A lot of Austen fans I know absolutely love it, and now I can say I definitely agree with them! The incredibly vain Sir Walter Eliot and his daughter Elizabeth, intensely focused on social standing and external beauty, are hilarious, the whole cast of characters feels very developed and real, and I adore Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth. Anne's sense that despite being twenty-nine and plain she is still worth something, the long slow realisation by both parties that they can be together... It's one of the most satisfying romances in an Austen novel, in my opinion.


Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano

Well, there goes the last of my belief that manufacturing industries in Europe tend to be more humane and with fewer human rights violations. Ayup. Gomorrah takes you through the workings of the organised crime of Naples (and the surrounding suburbs and countryside), who are called the Camorra by antimafia activists in Italy but don't call themselves that. Parts of it are almost novelistic, especially when it comes to focus on the drama of individuals and clans, but this is most certainly nonfiction - to the point that Saviano has had several threats to his life by Camorristi. In general it's more dispassionate than Open Veins of Latin America, but later in the book Saviano goes on to talk about the ramifications for ordinary Neapolitan people, and people in southern Italy in general, and the injustice that continues to be perpetuated, and the enormous degree to which institutions in southern Italy are infected by criminal groups... He himself is from Casal di Principe, a commune infamous for being the birth of the Casalesi clan, which features prominantly in the book. It ends with a furious invective to do something about the state of affairs in Naples and in Calabria, and the powerlessness he feels - as do most antimafia organisations, because it's like fighting the hydra.


Royal Wedding, Meg Cabot

...Okay, massive genre whiplash! The Princess Diaries was one of my guilty pleasures as a young teen, and when I was in Barnes & Noble in DC and saw there was a book in the series I hadn't read, I sat down and read it right there in the store. Fun in a fluffy sort of way, fairly predictable, but I never read The Princess Diaries looking for great literature or unexpected plot twists, you know? The pop culture references - BuzzFeed, Snapchat, etc - felt like they'd date the book rather quickly, and I'm trying to remember the degree to which the earlier books did that. I'm not sure they did; the characters used IM, email, commented on popular movies, and so on, but I don't remember specific websites and brands and apps being mentioned quite so much. Overall, though, still a fun little read and made me think to dig up the series and have a reread, because I really did used to enjoy them a lot.


The Prisoner of Zenda, Anthony Hope

This book was the first in the genre of Ruritanian romance, which I haven't read much of, but I love fictional countries (the Syldavia albums always ranked high in my list of favourite Tintin comics) and nineteenth-century adventures, and it was free on Project Gutenberg, so I picked it up. What I liked most about this was that it's essentially about someone whom everyone thought was incompetent having to take on a huge amount of responsibility (impersonating the King of Ruritania...!) and turning out to actually be very competent! That character, who is the narrator, is fairy likeable in a dashing rogue sort of way, whacky hijinks take place, and it's overall a fun read. I've been recommended the Graustark novels for more Ruritanian romance, which are also available on PG, so we'll see where that takes me...


The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

Not impressed with this one, to be honest. I generally like Neil Gaiman but this fell flat. The plot was stretched out and I absolutely wasn't surprised to find out it had started life as a novella, because it really didn't have enough substance for a novel. The main character was irritating, which can be a problem with a lot of Gaiman's books as he likes to write himself into them, but the main character of Ocean was infuriatingly drippy, and his friend Lettie was far more interesting. In general, I think this suffered from the problem that it had some very interesting ideas and intriguing mythology, but we saw very little of them. They were tantalisingly out of reach throughout the novel, and as it is I wish Gaiman had written a different book to the one he did.

The Tigers of Mompracem, Emilio Salgari

Okay, now this was tons of fun. Typical nineteenth century swashbuckling adventure, except it stars an exiled Malaysian prince who has sworn revenge on the European colonisers who destroyed his home, and his Portuguese sidekick who's devoted to him (I'm pretty sure they're in love, and Marianna the love interest is just a decoy). I started reading this on the day I flew back home, and I tore through it during my time in the airport and on the plane. It definitely encourages devouring all at once!

Well, there you go. Phew. I love getting back into serious reading habits!