Things That Don't Work

I've promised you a gloomy post, and here it is.  I need to get it done today because I think I'm about to have a really fun Thanksgivingy end of the week and weekend.  I'd better be gloomy while I can.  Watch this to get yourself in the right state of mind:

Now that you're appropriately forlorn, I give you: Things That Don't Work.

Me.  I don't work.  I don't work at all.  I am bruised and pulled and generally broken.  Yesterday I walked to a riding school to be assessed for dressage lessons.  They presented me with a 17.1hh-ish dark bay Warmblood gelding named Harbor (although they probably spell it Harbour because they're weird like that).  He was a good old schoolmaster.  He was very pleasant, and he expressed to me that if it was all the same what he'd really like to do was walk along the rail with the full weight of his head and neck resting on the bit.  It took a lot of muscle power to inspire him, but he was obliging as long as he was convinced that I was putting forth more effort than he was.  We got some good work done, and I really liked the instructor.

Oops, I've gotten cheerful by accident.  I'll try again:  With the exception of a single ride in October, it had been two months since I'd been on a horse, and all evening yesterday I could feel my back and legs slowly tightening, like a vice gradually clenching down on something.  I woke up this morning, sat up on the mattress, and it hit me like a brick wall.  OW.  Every muscle in my arms, legs, shoulders, hips, and especially lower back hates me and would like me to know it.  I feel about 90 years old.  So...when do I get to ride again?

Next on the list of things that don't work is the shower.  On my first morning here, I stumbled into the shower room, which would be nearly big enough for one person to stand in if the door didn't open in, and turned on the shower.  It was icy.  As in, hurts-to-hold-your-hand-under-it cold.  I waited for a good ten minutes, and nothing changed.  So, slimy from a two-day journey from the US, sore from my first night on the world's worst mattress and a pillow that a flight attendant would blush to give to someone, and mired in a haze of jet lag, I stood outside the minuscule shower and stuck my head under the frigid water to wash my hair.  I decided at that moment that I hated this country--a position which I have since substantially revised.

Immediately after my "shower," I called maintenance, and to their credit the guy came in just a few hours.  He tested the shower, and--it was fine.  So then we went through the routine of him explaining to me how a shower works.  I couldn't quite communicate to him that, yes, I do understand the concept.  It was really cold this morning.  I don't know why it's not now.  But I do actually understand how to use a shower.  Ah well.  The water is hot now.  You still can't actually adjust the temperature, but the one it's settled on permanently is acceptable.  The only remaining issue with the shower is its size.  Upon stepping into the shower, the temptation to say "Beam me up, Scotty!" is almost irresistible.  Like the small space in the shower room outside the shower, there is nearly room for one person.  The water pressure is, I would say, enthusiastic.  True, it's better than too-low water pressure.  But when you turn the water on and the pressure is so high that the shower head pivots up and slams itself against the wall with the water rocketing sideways into the opposite wall, well above your head, a shower then becomes more of a challenge.

We have a thief on our hall.  Two weeks after I got here, things started disappearing from the kitchen, including my plate and fork, someone else's knife, and someone else's chopsticks.  Despite days of passive-aggressive post-its all over the kitchen door, my plate and knife haven't reappeared.  The really awkward thing is that we're pretty sure we've figured out who it is, but we don't quite know how to broach the subject.  I mean, what do you do?  Knock on the door and say "Hey there flatmate!  How's the coursework going?  By the way, you stole my plate and I want it back now."  That's just a level of uncomfortable that I had hoped to be done with at 24.  On the very unlikely chance that our thief reads this blog, however, I'll just write a quick note:

Dear Thief,
Give me my dang plate and fork back.
Love,
Anna.

Lastly, I shall tell you about my skylight and how it doesn't work.  Everyone who comes in here admires my skylight--if only they knew.  It is the bane of my existence.  Complaint 1) The shade on the skylight is both made of paper and torn.  Ergo, when the sun comes up, my skylight says to me, "GOOD MORNING ANNA IT'S DAY WAKE UP!" and it gets really very bright in here.  Complaint 2) My skylight is broken.  It won't actually close all the way.  I came back from London early in the term one Saturday to find literally dozens and dozens of bees crawling around in my bed and coming in through the cracked skylight.  It was the first cool day of fall, and they were coming in  and dying in my bed.  The best part was that there is no one around this place on the weekends except resident students, so I had to wait all day Saturday, all night, all day Sunday, and again all night before maintenance got my message of distress.  So I invested in some duct tape and spent that lovely weekend picking bees out of my bed and laundry and carpet and...everything.  Maintenance came on Monday morning to "fix" the skylight, but I still think the duct tape is the only real barrier between me and nature.

That's probably enough gloominess to counteract all the cheery things I've been writing, don't you think?  The next time my happiness gets out of hand, I'll tell you about the radiator and my closet door.  But for now I think this is sufficient.

Vive la Flo-Flo!

You should all move to Oxford.  Seriously.  I worry this blog might get dull because every time I write I just talk about how great everything is.  I'll think up something gloomy to write about next time, but in the meantime, I give you two and a half brief tales of joy:

1. My dear Florianne came to visit me on Sunday.  For those of you who don't know her, she came from France to spend a year at Jewell while I was an undergraduate there.  We were there together for the fall semester of that year, and then I spent the spring semester in Vienna.  We kept in touch through Facebook and Skype and email, just waiting for the next opportunity to come along, whenever that might be, when we would be in the same place again.  We hadn't actually seen each other in four years.  Well, now she's moved to the UK, and we're only about an hour and a half apart!  We had a wonderful day of wandering around Oxford and catching up.  I'm so glad to have an old friend near.

1a. After Flo-Flo went home I had choir (always a good thing), and this was followed by a truly stunning performance in the Exeter College Chapel by Schola Cantorum of Oxford.  Lots of Bruckner.  Yummy.  Bravi to Sam and Bex!

2. I just got home from an especially marvelous C.S. Lewis Society meeting.  We read a series of unpublished love sonnets by Joy Davidman (Lewis's wife).  I thought they were extremely well-written, but surprisingly violent and tormented.  Also, apparently Lewis had a thing for blondes--or at least, Joy thought he did.  We went to the Eagle and Child for a bit afterwards to discuss.  I made some new friends, including an ardent Wagner fan and non-musician who professes to hating all musicians and once produced an opera based on Lewis's Perelandra.  Sort that one out.

Tomorrow will be a long day spent cloistered in my room working, but tonight was a night to feast on some of the great things Oxford has to offer.

Fin

Burn the traitor!

If anyone out there is still in doubt about how much I love choir, you live under a rock.  This week was a week of much choirness, and it was glorious, despite the constant procession of migraines that came with it.

On Monday (Halloween) we sang Evensong at Christ Church.  I recorded part of our rehearsal on my camera.  Wha-bam:

Audio quality is terrible, but my camera was both designed to take photos and buried in my purse.

After that I got together with a few friends to make pizza and watch Young Frankenstein in honor of the holiday.  Halloween = complete.

Tuesday was a long day of lectures culminating in a very fun dinner out.  On Wednesday the choir sang yet another service, this time in our home chapel for All Souls' Day.  It was a somber service, but remarkably well done by our chaplain Jonathan.  We cheered ourselves up afterwards with dinner and a performance by Out of the Blue, an Oxford men's a cappella group who recently made it to the semifinals of Britain's Got Talent.  Click here to see them on Britain's Got Talent.  One of them lives in the same college as a couple of the Wadham choir members.  They performed in a little ice cream parlor that was stuffed so full of human that the windows were completely covered with nasty human sweat fog.  We stood outside in the fresh air and listened through an opened window.

On Friday I heard the Oxford University Orchestra perform Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Mahler's Fifth Symphony.  It was an impressive performance.  That Mahler likes his brass and percussion.  I can only imagine the cacophonous performances he must have given as a toddler with the pots and pans in his mother's kitchen.

On Saturday we remembered remembered the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason, and plot.  All day long fireworks could be heard throughout the city.  I went to the party at Wolfson College in the evening.  The headmistress initiated the festivities by climbing into a bulldozer with a glass of champagne and giving a speech about horoscopes and construction in ancient Rome.  I didn't really follow it.  A mighty fireworks display over the punt harbor sent traumatized ducks fleeing for their lives, and a HUGE bonfire thoroughly dehydrated all the surrounding trees.  It wasn't a good night for nature.  But it was a great night for us, so who really cares about the ducks.  Burn the traitor!

Yesterday was truly enjoyable--I heard two services at Christ Church in the morning, then had lunch with friends, then enjoyed the brisk Autumn day with a long walk, then had a very relaxing tea, and off to choir for rehearsal and Evensong we went.  After Evensong and dinner the choir went back into the chapel for--guess what--more singing!  For the next two and a half hours or so we stood around the piano and sight read through a vast quantity of choral anthems.  We started out making some really nice music (Rachmaninoff's "Bogoroditse devo" and Bruckner's "Os justi" were lovely), but by the time the Christmas carols came out, the situation had devolved and we sounded more like geese a-laying than anything else.

It was quite the sight reading exercise.  Many of the carols and even more of the words were new to me.  When "Good King Wenceslas" was requested, there was a gleeful cry of "Ooh, can we sing all the sexist lyrics??"  What sexist lyrics? thought I.  Oh...right.  I see.

By this point I think we had more men than women singing soprano.  There's a really special modulation at the end of this one:

It took a good hour for my larynx to come back down from on high where it had gotten stuck after all that singing.  One of these days I'll get a good recording of our choir.  That day is not today.

Full album on Facebook!

This week's English as a Second Language notes
A sweater is a jumper.  A jumper is also a sweatshirt.  And a hoodie.
A vest is a tank top.  A tank top is a vest.
A wife beater is definitely not an article of clothing.
Now: I dare you to tell me what this is called: