Our Boys: A Review

On Monday night I went with five of my friends to see Jonathan Lewis' play; Our Boys. Admitedly, we decided to go, not because it woud be educational and interesting, but because it starred Matthew Lewis, Arthur Darvil and Laurence Fox (and it only cost £12).

After one of us getting lost, with four minutes until the play started, I ran to find her outside the theatre where The Lion King was showing and we ran to the Duchess Theatre with under a minute to spare before the curtain flew up. Phew.

Not really knowing what to expect (we had been debating whether it would be set after WWI or WWII, however it was neither), we found the play was set in 1984, based around patients killing time whilst convalescing after injuries gained in the line of duty; Fauklands/Hyde Park bombings/other. After the first half we were all talking about how brilliant the acting was, especaially the interactions between all six actors, and that it was just "SO GOOD". Since the play was set in the 80s, the music played within the performance, and in the interval, was pretty cool. LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL I'LL BE GONE WHEN THE MORNING COMES/OLIVER'S ARMY IS HERE TO STAAAAY, being two of my favourites. The set; of a ward in a military hospital, was authentic and convincing, as were the props. Talking of props, the way Matt, Arthur and Lewis Reeves manouvered their wheelchairs was expertly done. Top draw, as my Dad The Northener would say.

Our Boys is a thoughtful, interesting and real play, full of feeling, banter, emotion (at one point I was covering my eyes out of fear) and a fair amount of laughs (including a Russian Roulette parody with fizzing beer cans). So I recommend it- booking until Saturday 15 December! (http://www.ourboystheplay.com/)

 

(And, added bonus, the actors at the stage door are lovely, as they take time to talk to people and sign things.)

Bethan

Walking

Today I finished school earlier than planned, and had nothing to do until 11ish, so I just took up and walked around my local town. I walked up and down a fair amount of roads, thinking about 'stuff' a.k.a The Future, and smiling at passers by.

I usually try to smile at people as I walk past them, sometimes they walk past with their heads down but mostly people just awkwardly look away and/or give a half-smile back. Today I had several nice encounters with strangers which brightened my day. The guy cleaning the toilets in Tesco ("Women's loos are always worse to clean than men's." um. ew.), the guy collecting rubbish outside the Library (I walked past him at least 3 times, each time he grinned) and the woman pushing a pram, smiled and asked me if there was a Baraclays nearby (I had no idea).

It was just nice to walk around town for a bit and not really care about where I was going.

Bethan

10Q

In 2010 I signed up to this website: http://doyou10q.com/ (I heard of it through Tom Felton's twitter page, according to 2010-me)

It gives you 10 questions to answer about yourself/your life/the past year/the future which will get stored away for a year until next September when your answers will be emialed back to you and you can see what you thought back then. It's really interesting.

For example, in 2010 I was asked "Describe one thing you'd like to achieve by this time next year." I wrote that I'd like good GCSE grades and if I decided to, I'd like to be comfortable in running my school's Christian Union. I had completely forgotton writing this and reading it two years on (after running the CU for a year) it was really encouraging to realise that my prayer had been answered, I love leading CU. For another question, about the future, I had put "TALK TO MORE PEOPLE AT GENERATOR, REALLY BETHAN I HOPE YOU HAVE" (Generator being my church youth group). This made me laugh because a) it was in capital letters, directly from past-me to present-me and b) I did talk to more people, or maybe they talked to me because I can be terribly shy/quiet, and some of those people are ma frands now aw yeah.

So I will be doing 10Q again this year. Maybe some of you would like to do it too.

Bethan