Plays, Publishing and Ponies

I should have mentioned in the last post that I got to speak French throughout our travels in both Geneva and Lyon. It was great actually, realizing that I actually could carry on a conversation/order dinner/buy a train ticket in another language.

Anyway, after all the fun it was back to work. Monday and Tuesday of the following week (and every Monday from here on out) I had class from 3-6. I had two very nice mornings where I got lots of things done including getting my hair cut. Our class is really great. There are only 9 of us in the class, and each class we discuss a different part of post-war British theatre, focusing each time on a different play. It's odd because we don't actually read the text of the play before or after we discuss it. It's just context and an excerpt, but I guess in the limited time we have it works well. As another part of the class we also attend a play performace each week -- six plays in all. Our assignment is to write a theatre review of 400-500 words before the following Monday's class. This is actually much harder than you would think. The first week we saw The History Boys, which was quite good, and this week we saw I Like Mine with a Kiss, which I haven't quite decided about.

On Wednesday of that week I also started my job at Black Spring Press. I spent about an hour familiarizing myself with the company and the titles they have published over the years. There's quite a variety: compilations of lyrics, novels, poetry collections, reprints of books that were popular in the 50s and have since been our of print. For the rest of that day I read submissions, most of which were OK but not all that great. Somehow at the end of the day I was exhausted, but I'm not really sure how, seeing as how I didn't do anything but read.

The company is super-small; it's just Robert (the owner) and Gretchen (I'm not sure what her title is) and five interns who all work on different days. Dexter Haven, I think the official name of the company, provides publishing services to other publishers, so Gretchen spends most of her time editing and designing books for a publisher called I.B. Tauris. Since that first day I've had a variety of tasks, including reading more submissions, writing rejection letters (ew), research for marketing purposes, comparative reading (a fancy name for making sure the print and computer versions of a text match up), and most recently inputting editorial corrections on the computer. Most of this past week was spent doing corrections on a new book, published by Revolver Books. All day Friday I was editing the text notes section, which has to be one of the most tedious jobs I've ever done. But I understand why it's important, and when I left both Robert and Gretchen told me how good of a job I had been doing and how glad they were for my help this week.

Last weekend I went to Wales for the program-organized horseback riding weekend. There were ten girls who made the trip, and I was the only non-BU student there, but we had a really good time. We were staying at the Parc-le-Breos on the Gower Penninsula, and our rooms were in a restored farm house or game lodge of some sort (see top photo). The main lady in charge was named Olive, and she was sweet enough to lay out leftovers for us when we got in after midnight on Friday. On Saturday morning we had a great traditional selection for breakfast, and then it was pony time. We were each assigned a horse and taught how to brush it and get on and off and start and stop. For the rest of the day we rode our ponies through the woods, stopping at the Heritage Center for a lunch break. My horse was named Bottom -- I don't know why -- and we didn't have any problems together except that he insisted on rolling in the mud during the break, making me very dirty by the time we got home. He was really a very good horse. That evening after dinner we actually all enjoyed having nothing to do, and we went to bed very early and very relaxed. Sunday morning after breakfast we walked down to the beach at Threecliffs Bay through this gorgeous valley. The water was absolutely freezing, but we had a good time, and the views were amazing. We had a long four-hour train ride home, but the scenery was nice until it got dark, and I was exhausted when I got home.

This week was fairly busy too. On Monday I meet Christopher MacLehose, who has been well-known in the publishing industry for many years and with whome my journalism professor put me in contact. We had a very nice chat about publishing and the changes in the industry. Tuesday after work Amanda and I went to see "6 Yards to Democracy" at the Birds-Eye-View Film Festival. It was a film about poor women in India, and it was actually quite interesting. Wednesday night was theatre night for class, and on Thursday I met Amanda and her friend for a book talk at the Women's Library near my office. It was supposed to be a talk about this feminist's new book, but it wasn't all that great after all. However, we made up for it by going to Bar Music Hall, literally right underneath my office, and ordering burgers for dinner. I got the bacon cheeseburger, and it was the best burger I've had in a really really long time. Last night I spent sitting in the flat, relazing and watching Red Nose Day, this enormous fundraiser for Comic Relief. Basically there was several hours of comedy programming on BBC, and when I went to bed they had raised more than 35 million pounds. Today I slept until noon and then went out to Holland Park (see above photo) to get some fresh air. There were kids and families and dogs running all over the place, and all the daffodils were blooming, and it was great.

And I think that brings us up to date. It's supposed to snow some on Monday, but hopefully it won't freeze all the flowers. Other than that it's getting really nice here, and I'm really enjoying my job and the opportunity to get out of Kensington every day. Nothing terribly exciting for the next week or two, but I'll let you know what's up. Enjoy. Cheers.