Mein fluffig ist schlaffig

The first night of many

Proving that infants can enjoy infancy as much as adults can enjoy adultery, and that consistency is the final refuge of the unimaginitive, this week I may have sort of… well, thrown education to the winds. Such is the rebel am I. Dighton has arrived and with him comes hyperactivity, alcohol, and some a whole lotta afro. Enjoying frenzic festivities that boring people would only refer to as immature, we’ve hiked mountains, travelled across country and gotten characteristically lost whilst on a peddle boat somewhere between Konstanz and Switzerland.

As ever, spending time with a friend from home whilst in your new territory (I own Heidelberg now, by the way) throws an oddly expository nature to your home town. Suddenly I am demonstrating, selling and advertising this quaint, beautiful little city. I may have also taken him to Mannheim, just to show how good Heidelberg is by comparison. The arrival of Chris has coincided with the departure of some more, so big hug the lovely Jesse who lovingly left us her semester ticket so that we may keep it secret, keep it safe. Hopefully you are back in America and alive.

Sometimes precautions can seem the product of ridiculous paranoia, but every now and again there comes that achilles heel of a sentence that proves why protective glass over the nuclear button is indeed necessary. A slipped finger which caused me to say goodbye to more than I wanted. So remember, think before you speak, google before you post, and perhaps it is possible to make a comeback, even if you haven’t been anywhere. For now, however, it is to Konigstuhl, which hopefully won’t be mistaken for a toilet.

Rowdy, randy, retired.

Chris of Dightonland will be arriving in Heidelberg in only a couple of days. So, true to form, Heidelberg has decided it’s going to piss down with the rain water from above. There I was, counting those chickens and mocking the UK’s mid-July hailstorms, when lo and behold, Heidelberg decides to have a weather tantrum. Sorry guys, it’s all my fault.

“As You Like It” is in full force, last night being the first performance I walked away actually genuinely happy. The last few times have felt like “Laurence putting on a performance” rather than being the actual character itself, which for a character spewing nothing but expository speeches, isn’t the easiest thing I grant you, but fuck it, last night was beyond ace. Made complete when I was approached by the Director and Secretary of a theatre group from the UK. Having seen my performance in “Love Bites”, the secretary had encouraged the director to attend “As You Like It”, and they approached me afterward asking if I’d like to be involved in an acting project next year. Celebrating the 400th anniversary of the wedding between a British King and Heidelberg Princess, an Anglo-Germanic production is being put in place to tour from the UK to Germany, utilising talent from Heidelberg Uni and UEA, the latter of which just happens to be the uni I wish to apply to for a Masters. So yes, mega yay to that, I look forward to seeing this project unfold as the months progress.

So, I’m writing a novel set across one year. Non-linear, it was going to be told in weeks. Week 1, 2, 4, 8, 6, 10, etc. with revelations being made from the returning weeks. However, it’s getting hard to maintain the momentum of week after week, having to end each chapter naturally, skip a few days and maintain the mood. Whilst I like the episodic-part-of-a-larger-arc style, I feel the pace is slowing. So am considering restructuring it into days; Oct15th, Oct16th, Oct20th, Nov12th, Oct19th, etc. which each of these days being a page or so. Very James Patterson, bite size chunks. The question to ask is, would this be too particular and specific to be followed for what is meant to be an easily digestible story? I don’t exactly want to give my readers a literary stomachache…

A Foxy Education

It would appear that being a sexual deviant gets you further in life than previously believed, and I didn’t even need to bust out my flowery bra. To celebrate the end of the first performance batch (we have Monday and Tuesday off from performances, a fact I had not been aware of until last night!), we did the sensible thing and drank until the early hours of the morning, serenaded by the silver-tongued lyrics of Jessie J, Snoop Dogg and scary Korean Pop courtesy of Marina.

It was then that a young man would suddenly appear. Tuxedo’d and utterly gazebo’d, the boy we would later come to know as “Fabian” was a frat boy fox of a particularly esteemed and supposedly fascist fraternity house. Unable to get rid of him, Oliver to decided that were he and I to flirt with the boy, we could scare his insular little mind into running away. Many “sweethearts” and arm-strokings later, it would appear drunk Fabian was quite resilient to a pair of creepers. So much so that he invited us two back to his frat house. So, beer in hand, and to the sound of tumultuous applause from our fellow cast members and spectators, Oliver and I departed the theatre to walk with the staggering Fabian to his Frat House.

The two of us constantly making up different things about each other, Oliver and I were able to create quite the little fiction around Fabian as he showed us different fencing techniques, and giant dining halls containing more history than the entire American colony. There is only so many history lessons about a table one can listen to, so Oliver and I used advanced mathematics to bore Fabian to sleep so we could escape. Scuttling out the door, Fabian wished us a good night, though the sun was at the horizon’s peak, and promised to “come see that play thing you’re making”.

An odd adventure in general, it was surprisingly educational, mostly in regard to how glad I am fraternities don’t exist in England. The misogynistic, power hungry institution of bias had reduced the young, and genuinely good-hearted Fabian to a “Fox”, as in; a bitch. He would drink on the orders of his superiors, finish their drinks if told to whilst being made to fetch, grab and bow on command. What’s character-building to some, is in fact a year of shame and under-foot treading in hope of some prosperity later in life should you then meet someone capable of easing you into a job. Still, you get your own maid, so I guess that’s something.

Moarnings

Note to self, in Heidelberg, do not actively go up to the people collecting bottles for pfand. They are like dogs and will then proceed to follow you throughout the rest of the day. And throwing an invisible ball in the opposite direction will only distract them three times.

Throughout the course of this week, I have rewritten an entire hausarbeit, to what standard or quality, I can only imagine. I have seen the yankee celebration of their own independence, an event that defies all logical understanding, most specifically in the most heterosexual of rainbow pinatas, drunken twister and cock block tattoos. And I’ve started treading the Shakespearean boards. Two weeks ago, my Erasmus life was very different. You rarely tend to remember the nights you spend indoors doing nothing, and with that mindset, my own bed may have only been slept in about 3 times this fortnight. It’s about the nights out, and the memories you think you can remember.

Adventures are like one night stands, they’re only good when you don’t know when they’re coming. Change is grand, assuming nothing is left behind and this is the month of change. A final drink goodbye with Matt has solidified a future of Cardiff visits, a loss of evenings under the guise of theatre and an alteration of mindset has proven just how intricately one can be altered through Erasmus’ fidgeting fingers.

I also got called an “unbritish posh twat” by an ex-patriot Brit, who didn’t know what the Rolling Stones were. Fokkin glass ’em.

A bite of affection.

So there we are. We have truly bitten, chewed and spat out our production of Ry Herman’s “Love Bites”, and I have the whip marks to show for it. From its modest beginnings as a small, mostly non-student cast, Love Bites grew to become one of the most talked-about shows of the semester. From the dead cat’s disappointingly tame funeral, to the love lost dominatrix obsessive, and all the way down to a vampire love story that annihilates any notion Twilight may be acceptable as a piece of “literature”. We danced on stage, drank the night away and had a cast celebration in one of the most epic storms Heidelberg has had to offer. No sooner had I joined the cast in the morning to sadly clear out the stage, was it then time to return an hour later, and set up the stage for the upcoming production of As You Like It, coming to an anachronistic theatre forest near you! I can’t say I was quite ready to say byezibye to our darling Vampires and Riding Crops, but the Bard needs his time.

It’s been one helluva week. I guess there’s something in being chained up in your boxers and taking 4am walks in the castle gardens to demonstrate the delightful liberality of the term “art”, and more importantly, to prove that any distance between you and what you care for is purely what you make of it. Knowing one’s failings is in itself a success and to continue with them in your stead will, I guess, just prepare you for whatever else this world has behind its back, ready to throw in your face, with or without the exact velocity of a cream pie.

It’s also been a rather wet week. And not necessarily of the juicy nether-regions inclination either. As mentioned before, there was a ginormous storm, with your characteristic rain, wind and lightning (oh my!) and I, may, possibly, have left my window open, as is characteristic of stuffy accommodation in the heat of summer. And I may, possibly, potentially, might have left my laptop lying under the window. Which, having not been home for three days straight, I returned to on Monday morning to pick up and see a jet of water pour out from the sides, in which pouring stream were the remnants of 2 years of writing, photos, essays, notes and of course, anything that that I, due to a lack of internet access these past few months, had failed to back up. Lists are being made and essays are being rewritten, as are plans to sell what I can in the hopes of covering this slight weather induced and absent-minded incident from ending my year in Heidelberg with academic and financial bankruptcy. I heard the Medical School wanted volunteers.

Back to the Empirical Logic, part II

So the first performance went well. I’m doing my best to not be affected by the fact that when I appeared in my boxers, the audience burst into laughter. Hopefully that means I was fulfilling the fleshy duties of my role.

With some early practise for my new role at Surrey as Marketing and Outreach Officer, marketing of the production is going well, with 3x the amount of interest in the past couple of days alone. This comes in perfectly for the sudden requirement to begin on a brand new set of hausarbeiten, ripe and ready for the new holiday. Now would be a good time to have some actual idea what the fuck to write about. Received a letter from Surrey this week, asking us to detail our final deadlines and end of placements as we’re now reaching the end. A feeling beyond the words of even my pretentious vocabulary. September, Heidelberg felt like an indefinite lifetime, this was my home for a year. Now, Heidelberg feels temporary, short term, with the end of it rushing up to meet me. Neither of which feelings did I have a bloody clue how to handle.

Anyhow, proving once again that people have a habit of literally accepting anything they’re told and are even capable of forming an opinion based on no evidence whatsoever, Facebook today was blasted with a series of photos detailing how it was the day of the future that Marty McFly arrived at, in Back to the Future 2, a world filled with hover boards, flying cars, alternate fuel and motion controlled video games. The photos showed self-congratulatory chastising of the ignorant futuristic predictions, idly sidestepping their own incorrect information with beautifully elegant irony. Forgetting this folly, and moving past a slight loss in humanity that even on facebook with all the net at your disposal, people are still so willing to jump on an unsupported bandwagon, given the fact that Back to the Future predicted video phone calls over inter-connected computer systems, people uploading all their profiles with likes and dislikes onto this system for ease of access, money being transferred from account to account at the push of a button, recycled produce as energy fuel, holographic walls and video screens capable of containing many windows at once all displaying video systems, not to mention ID chips and retina recognition, I’m half expecting hover boards to be on the market soon. Especially given hover flight has been achieved just without ease of motion. I wonder if had these predictions not been made under Zemeckis, would some of them have happened in real life? Much like how Spiderman invented the concept of the GPS tracking device, go Spidey! We still love you, even if the Avenges don’t.

Mind you, criticising those not looking for empirical evidence does leave a funny taste in my mouth, given I’m supposedly a Christian.

Love Nibbles Nipples

So here I am, sat on the sofa backstage, first night is ready, audience will be filing in soon, tomatoes at the ready, their salivating mouths awaiting our clumsy performances and forgotten lines. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was sat in the anglistik common room just chillin’ like a muthaluvva, when I watched an audition take place in front of me. So why not just jump in and audition, for the lols?

Since then, I’ve lived those three months back in England, completely forgetting about the script I’d been emailed until I returned for a fantastic semester at Heidelberg, where I found that I was going to be on stage within 2 months, wearing my boxers and feeling the impatient bite of a temperamental whip. What better way to ease one’s sexual frustration?

Curtain up is soon and I am already in costume, just hidden under the rest of my actual clothes. One of the few actual times for me that getting dressed entails the complete opposite. Hopefully the audience will appreciate the pinkness of my nipples.

I’ll let you ride my Speyer

One of the many Doms of Speyer

So, decided to have a night in, just because. No harm in it. Facebook chat a few people, relax and sort out committee stuff. Wake up and there’s a chunk of my heel missing and blood on the bed… Maybe I should stick to going out. At least with alcohol I only end up with bruises.

So, with my phone thankfully returned due to the heroic Denis who battled hell and heathen to collect it from the Keller, I am free to roam again. And roam we did, as ol’ Northern Matt and I excursioned ourselves to the little town of Speyer. A town that allegedly appears in the Doomsday book, what better place to go on a Friday afternoon?  Like a smaller version of Heidelberg, with less hills (Yes, Heidelberg is my main point of reference for ALL of Germany), and far more Bavarians, Speyer proved to be a beautiful pocket of Allemagne. Was supposed to be going travelling today but a night of insomnia left me better starved for sleep. Probably best for my wallet. Though after this post is done, it’s onwards to the Neckar for sunshine, giggles and barbecues by the river to celebrate the coming of age of Mr Neil and Sir Graham. Titles are not hierarchy.

With my helpful little surfstick (the credit on which I’m sure I’ll use up within a week), I’ve been able to indulge in a little bit more internet at home, which has helped me see all the beautiful faces of those acquaintances I associate myself with on a regular basis, in the form of bitrated communications online. MADSoc committee meetings sure are a hell of a lot easier when you’re able to see their faces.

… for better or worse…

Summer Heights Nigh

Regardless of when our production may be set, I think it would be suitably anachronistic to be playing with a smart phone on stage. For this reason in last night’s test performance on stage, I ducked my phone out of view somewhere backstage. And there it stayed. Hopefully I can pick it up but having no phone, this makes arranging to meet somewhat difficult. Alas poor iPhone, I knew you brief. The performance on the hand was great fun, getting to have fun on the stage was a good experience of progression as it enabled us to see what quite works and what doesn’t; the Keller stage is very weird. And yay, I only forgot one line. That’s… Ok, right?

The Euro Cup is well underway, with Germany hitting in a wicked win against holland last night. I had been rehearsing during the England game but was told in a delightful phone call from Isabel that apparently the second half was soporific to say the least. Mind you, this was a phone call made before I had left my phone in the theatre. Though that would have been skilful.

So today is the second day of the End Of Year Show back in Surrey. Hopefully they’re enjoying the Skream, Feeder and other gig nights that are going on. Not to mention the obliteratingly wonderful hog roast on PATs field which everyone should totally go to for a good porking. Beyond conception is the idea that those smelly british lot are finishing their year whilst I have another 2 months to go. That’s a point, I’ve confirmed my return; 16th August shall see my final morning under the Heidelberg sun. Or Heidelberg rain, cloud or sleet. Nothing surprises me anymore. And then it shall be driving back to Britain, to do… I’m not quite sure what.

Hmm, I should probably start making plans.

Rehearsal Reversal

If there’s on issue I really should get over in regards to my short sightedness, it’s squinting at a figure I may believe to be a friend, but upon conclusion that it is indeed a fellow amigo, making no gesture or action, leaving the friend to believe I have just glared at them and then walked off with an unnecessarily big smile on my face. (the smile is just because walking is awesome.

In view of this time of weird facial expressions and odd movement en mass, Saturday and Sunday were the heralds of our glorious rehearsal weekend. A time I knew would be coming and yet never really prepared for. Indeed, not actually buckling down to learn my lines until that morning, because Shakespeare is clearly so easy to improv. Given this, I’m almost impressed I learned the lines in such a short space of time, but then again, I really should have started learning a lot earlier and then there wouldn’t have been he muff ups that there were. Having had 3 rehearsals since my return in February, it really still is amazingly difficult adapting from the intense 3-rehearsals-week-whether-you-like-it-or-not. It shouldn’t be and yet I am the only one who views our performance being a month away as being absolutely ages.

Truth, I can’t say I was impressed with my performances this weekend over. The rest of he cast were wonderfully fantastic, in dress, thumb wrestling or banging away on a delightful ukelele. Being on the fragility of recently learned lines and no fully absorbed verse, each portrayal was frantic and overexcited, something I did deliberately just to have a laugh as I still can’t take these sessions seriously. The “fear” in which I actually take a production seriously has yet to kick in. Push the role to its extremes and the roll it back in is something I like to play around with if I get the time. Even if this did make it seems like my character had taken a does of ecstasy before hitting stage like an udder-dry lionness…

With “Love Bites” right around the corner, it looks as if I’m going to be living in the Romanische Keller for a good month or so, jumping from production to production. Hopefully the temptation to slip into iambic pentameter when talking about dead cats, or getting ready to be whipped by a dominatrix whilst fighting my surly younger brother can be resisted. Until then, get on with the lines, remember the evil people don’t jump and try not to tease a fake boob. For now however, it is to the shisha bar with the Anne to the De and whatever adventures may be waiting us on this Tuesday night.