Kenya trip

I know, I know, I’m falling behind. But lo! I have a good, and interesting, reason! This weekend I’ve been bag-packing people’s shopping into plastic bags at my local Somerfield. Why you ask? Well…

As you may know already (or have noticed in previous posts) I’m going to Kenya. This Summer (next week in fact) I will be flying out for just over four weeks to work with a local orphanage there. For the first few weeks we’ll be spending our time between helping the kids out at the orphanage, running a Summer camp for them, and building a new wing to the local clinic. We’ll then be climbing Mt Kenya (all 17,057 feet of it) and going on safari. During our final week we’ll be taking some of the children to the coast to see the sea and teach some of them how to swim.

I signed up to this project at the beginning of the school year last year, and since November ‘09 have been set the physical, mental and emotional challenge of raising the entire £2,300 amount of the trip myself, with the help of my friends and family, with whom I could never have done without.

Through 12 bag-packing sessions (not including today and tomorrow) approximating at about 78 hours in total, including Christmas Eve, 6 cake sales, sponsored activities, selling raffle tickets etc. I am currently at the total of £2,155, raised about £80 today bag-packing, will be so tomorrow 10am-5pm, and will by then likely have reached the full amount of £2,300!

So during late July/early August, I’m afraid there will be a severe lack of postage (aka none at all) but I fully plan to update and review my travels when I get back, which will in all likelihood take up many, many posts and produce many, many photos, which I hope you will appreciate and enjoy. Kwaheri! =)

York and Durham

I’ve been neglecting my posts these past couple of days because I’ve been busy surveying Universities to apply to next year! I thought I’d use this opportunity to recommend these two phenomenal places to anyone passing by.

On Wednesday I visited York and, for the record: if you don’t like birds, York is NOT the place to go because there are birds, especially ducks, EVERYWHERE. And no, I didn’t hear anyone say ‘ey up!’ The town itself is gorgeous- a mixture of large, Victorian stone and Tudor-style buildings, giving the town such an ancient feel and almost a culmination of British historical and contemporary architecture, even the Starbucks was retro! As for the Minster, yes it’s as beautiful as it’s rumoured to be, though you do have to pay on entry, and not forgetting the river through the University. York is a place I would recommend to anyone; it’s beautiful, full of history and culture (and shops!) and is a wonderful amalgamation of high street chains and one-off boutiques, of the old and the new.

As for Durham, there are a lot of similarities between Durham and York, and yet they’re completely different. Durham’s river runs right through the town centre, making it a main feature of the town through the cobblestoned streets, rather than York’s which quietly associates itself in the town without making itself too known. The Victorian features are more stressed, and the town itself is full of buskers of all sorts- drummers, guitar players, opera singers…The University is spread throughout the town making it more of a student city than York, and although the cathedral isn’t quite as grand as the York Minster, it’s free, and ministers and nuns walk around, waiting for you to ask them questions about the cathedral, eager to help and inform. And one thing I most noticed was the friendliness of the people- we were approached on numerous occasions whilst map-tracing by people asking us if we needed any help; and that’s not something you don’t get just anywhere, but in Durham you get in abundance.

So if you’re ever in the area, I’d advocate visiting these places even if just for the day!

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

This time my post will be on a play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire‘ by Tennessee Williams. I was recommended it by my English teacher, as a possible piece of literature for coursework; focusing on love, relationships, women and marriage. And yes, The Simpson’s did do a parody of it.

I like plays: the books aren’t large, you can dip in and out of them easily, they’re never too long and if they’re considered good it’s usually because they’ve got a rich, interesting plot (unlike novels, that need not have any plot at all and still be considered works of art.)

One thing that can definitely be focused on in the play are the themes of relationships and women. The women- the innocently ignorant Stella and her delusional over-dramatic sister Blanche (alliteration unintentional)-allow us to see the effect of the Jazz Age on women. Not just the infamous ‘flappers,’ but the average, married women, and how they deal with the fast-paced society they live in. Stella through her unwavering faith and devotion towards her husband Stanley, whilst Blanche through fantasy and drama.

The way the characters interact allow illumination of the different sides to the characters, and how they act and react towards each other. With Blanche and Stella, we see how Stella has had to pander to her elder sister’s vanity for most of her life, and even as a grown woman is unable to break free of this role, and is in a similar situation with her sometimes abusive husband Stanley, unable to be anything other than subservient in the relationships in her life. In contrast, Blanche and Stanley’s relationship allows the characters’ wit to be revealed; bouncing insults and accusations to one another, and an intelligence is revealed in both of the characters when previously we assume a base simplicity of the male and a self-obsessive, vain female.

In conclusion, although ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ was a good read for me, and similarly to my last post on Hardy the characters are developed well and provide a large source of interest: I wasn’t grabbed by it. I would, however, be interested in watching the film version of the play, the main characters Blanche played by Vivien Leigh and Stanley by Marlon Brando (which can be found here) and I would say if the Jazz Age interests you both in history and literature, and especially if you enjoyed ‘The Great Gatsby,’ you should read this.

First Aid

My interesting thing for today? I completed a First Aid course!

And you know what? I found it useful. I know the likelihood of me encountering someone who needs their arm put in a sling or the recovery position are slim to none, but I still feel that it has benefited me, and although when the time comes I may not completely remember what I have learned today, I still feel having the knowledge is a useful thing.

Including the forementioned activities, we learned how to deal with a person conscious or unconscious that has had an accident, what to do if a person is choking or not breathing (the Heimlich and CPR, naturally, although it’s not technically called the Heimlich anymore), how to do CPR on an adult, child or baby etc. We also learned how to deal with burns and bleeding, someone in shock, and the necessary contents of a First Aid Box and how to bandage a wound.

Part of the course was also directed specifically towards the main purpose of the course- to prepare us for our trip to Kenya in two weeks. How to prevent mosquito bites, jiggers (nasty little buggers that dig into your feet, see here) and generally what to take: notably our own syringes in case we do need to make an emergency hospital visit.

Apart from finding the course both useful and interesting, it also looks great on a CV and if you do ever encounter such emergencies, you’ve got the knowledge there on hand just in case. I’ve always believed it’s better to be overprepared rather than underprepared; they usually don’t cost much (mine was free), you get a certificate afterwards and mine only lasted five hours, I’d definitely recommend doing one of these courses to anyone.

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

As promised, I begin as I mean to go on: with a book.

‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ certainly isn’t a book for lighthearted readers. It’s long, Hardy’s description, although vivid, and intrusive narration can become tiresome, and those of you who’ve read it will know that it’s not a happy book. In fact, those of you who’ve read any of Hardy’s novels will know that he generally avoids a ‘happy’ plot, apart from in ‘Under the Greenwood Tree.’

The reader is constantly re-evaluating the headline character, the Mayor Michael Henchard, which is, in my opinion, what makes the novel so interesting. Hardy succeeds in making Henchard more than just a 2D character, which so many authors fail in. The reader is encouraged to both dislike Henchard due to his bitter and rash actions, but Hardy continually juxtaposes this with his continual exposing of how, beneath his anger and bitterness, there is a good man. So much so that you are left not knowing how to evaluate the final chapter- a deserving end? Certainly I felt it was rather rushed and sudden, but maybe that was what Hardy was aiming for.

Overall, I find Hardy a good read, more enticing than the oestrogen-fuelled, rashly ended and thin plot of  ‘Jane Eyre,’ but I much more enjoyed Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles,’ of course both are ideal for a bit of male criticism, females brought down by the hands of men etc. and they both succeed in making their main characters more than just characters in a book. To me, the plot of the latter is much richer, and there’s so much more emotion and feeling in the novel (and it was rumoured this was so because Hardy himself fell in love with his own fictionalised character, Tess Durbeyfield) and whilst a good book, in my opinion if you’re looking for a more interesting storyline than I’d look to the other of Hardy’s famous novels.

About me

A good friend of mine decided that during his gap year he would attempt to post something interesting on a blog every day for the whole year, and that if he failed to do so on any one day, he would donate £25 to charity.

This is where I take my inspiration from. At the end of this year I plan to apply to read English at University, and would then like to go on to do some sort of reading/writing-linked career. So I thought I might as well get started now.

I most certainly won’t be donating money to charity; having no job and being in the middle of my A-Levels with little to no time to donate to pursuing interesting activities. But I will be putting my best efforts into making this blog something interesting, and even possibly enjoyable, to read.

Therefore, as often as possible, I’ll be attempting to introduce you, the reader, to something interesting. Whether it’s a book (which in all likelihood it will be), a film, a song, an artist, or even just a fact, or maybe an update on something I did during the day. I hope to address a wide range of interests, and in doing so can perhaps develop and broaden my own.

One thing I can assure (although for some this may not necessarily be a good thing) is that this blog will have a strong literary emphasis, as this is where my primary interests lie and is one of the main purposes for which I write this blog. One thing I do aspire to is, by writing this blog, to allow me to analyse my literary choices and opinions, and in doing so improve my ability to analyse and criticise literature. So enjoy or, for others, I apologise.

Maybe this blog will help me improve my journalistic abilities. Maybe it’ll broaden my knowledge and interests. Maybe it’ll allow me to analyse my interests in more detail. Maybe it won’t do any of these things. Either way, enjoy.