Great Expectations for a week in London

Being this present week too fatigued to conclude my Wednesday post, the Wednesday post is occurring on Saturday at the same time as the Saturday post. I hope none of my readers are confused by two objects occupying the same space.

I have recently finished Great Expectations (as you can see from my bookshelf to the right). Having read Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, and knowing the story otherwise through popular culture and possibly some television drama, in many places I knew what was to happen before it did. Even so I enjoyed it, and have since found myself writing in a somewhat Dickensian style.

This may perhaps be suitable for blog posts and suchlike, but I came across difficulties Thursday evening when trying to write from the perspective of a twenty-first century teenage girl. Unless she had been immersed from birth in a commune full of Dickens devotees, she would not describe things in the same mild manner as Dickens, and she would not talk to her friends and equals in a similar way.

Fortunately, I have learned to notice when I am lapsing into the voice of another author. Voice is a tricky thing, and I imagine it to be much like acting – you must think your way into the character or the story, and beware lapses into various divers mindsets (on a side note, I approve of the addition of an ‘e’ to that word. I was liable to imagine persons in wetsuits and breathing apparatus whenever it was used).

There were divers reasons for my fatigue this week. I ordered a large number of photographs on Monday, which were collected on Tuesday and put to good use on my wall that same evening. What had started as (I believed) an hour’s work became three and a half hours’ work, but I am exceptionally pleased with the result. Illustrations of my masterpiece in divers stages of completion may be found below.

Note the swirling Koru pattern :D

 

So, in short, I did not receive an optimum amount of sleep on Tuesday night. On Wednesday night I learnt that one must never doubt the tendency of the English to queue – I had planned to attend the Proms, and arrived early with Great Expectations, but did not see a queue in the obvious place. People were instead lounging in divers spots around the square, and it took your humble host a full fifteen minutes to realise that this apparently random assortment of people, when viewed from a different angle, formed a long, long line that disappeared down the steps, around the corner, and all the way down the street.

I joined the end of this queue with somewhat deflated hopes, which rose steadily higher as I neared the doors and then fell catastrophically when the Prom was declared sold out forty people ahead of me. Hundreds of people were turned away, so I joined the dejected mass of people in their amble to the Underground station. We passed the Science Museum on the way. This venerable institution was holding a late night, so I drowned my sorrow in a lecture on astronomic mathematics and the age of the universe. Arriving home later than I should, although earlier than previously expected, I went straight to bed.

Thursday has already been mentioned in connexion with character voice, and Friday involved an exhausted homeward journey and a nap. It now being Saturday, I am much refreshed and looking forward to a good English supper of minted lamb, baked potato, carrots and green beans.