So, what have I been doing? Well, I've been plodding on with Shakespeare - and plodding is the apt word! I now have so much admiration for anyone who works full-time and manages to study for a degree. I'm only working part-time but I'm finding it a struggle to juggle work, study, my lovely daughter, and my new found freedom a) as a single woman and b) as a new car owner. Every time I try to study my little car winks at me and pleads with me to take her out. I can't refuse. She's so cute!

I should clarify here - it's not that I don't rate Shakespeare. I do rate him very highly. It's the construction of this course that's killing me. Ten plays and a shedload of sonnets in 9 months is quite a hefty load. And with that load, it feels like we're barely able to scratch at the surface of each before having to move on to the next.

Moan, whinge, gripe - I'm sure you get my general feeling of fed-upness.

I always imagined that the last course would seem like the longest but the time is flying and I still don't really feel as though I'm fully getting to grips with these plays. Fortunately, the next assignment asks that I discuss the dramatic impact of Hamlet's soliloquys. Now, this is where I'm more comfortable. Give me a passage and ask me to analyse the heck out of the language and I'm in heaven. Let's hope that my enthusiasm rises a bit after this next assignment - and hope the previous one doesn't come back too soon.

In the meantime, I've been busily checking out my local universities (Nottingham) to see what MAs they have on offer. You can be sure that anything having 'Shakespeare' in the title will not be receiving my undivided attention!!! If I've learned anything, it's that I'm strictly a twentieth century gal.

So, today it is time to blog nicely about my daughter.

I've home schooled her since she was 12. Not formal, sit-down-at-the-table lessons but perhaps more of a montessori approach. She learned about things as and when she displayed an interest in them. She is not sitting GSCEs because we would have had to pay for her as an outside candidate and the money just wasn't there. I did have my doubts - but the schools in our area were so terrible, I genuinely thought she'd be better off at home.

To cut a long story shorter, she is now 16. She has had every opportunity to grow independently and she has made a pretty good job of growing. She's bright, beautiful, witty, and very smart (of course, I'm her mother and might be ever so slightly biased though).

In recent months. she decided she would like to go to college and study for A levels. 'Oh, bugger', thought I. This could be tricky with no GCSEs. However, being the eternal optimist, I contacted the college, took daughter along for the open evening, shoved her in to speak for herself, and, the upshot of all of this is, she has been offered a place to study A levels in Literature, History and Sociology based on no more than her being able to display that she is mature and articulate enough to cope with the demands.

'Let's go to Eyam'.

Seems like a good idea. It's not too far from where we live and is, of course, riddled with history - if you have a hankering to hang out where people died of The Plague, that is.

Trouble is, we picked the most awful day of the week to do it. We must have managed all of an hour of walking before the rain came.

Not to be put off, we decided to take the scenic route home. However, scenic turned out to be epic!! I have now seen Mam Tor from every angle - including the top! We went from gazing up at the top of the hills and saying, 'Is that snow up there', to looking down on it and saying, 'aye, that would be snow'.

We stopped off at Chatsworth on the way home so my daughter and I could play at being Elizabeth Bennett breathlessly hoping to catch a glimpse of Mr Darcy at Pemberley. I think my mother has the photograph of us clinging to each other on the top of the bridge with an inside-out umbrella!!!

However, it might have been a long trip, and a roundabout one, but it was still a great day out and I now know that if I ever get The Plague, all I have to do is pluck a pigeon's butt, sit it on the buboe and I'll live.

The things you learn.

It's not even a biography. It's a novel woven around Shakespeare and the lost play - or one of the lost plays. It has murder, mayhem, dark alleys and a tall, dark handsome hero who has been sent to protect the poor young heroine from peril and disaster. What more could you want? I suspect I may be slipping into my PJs early this evening and reading by candlelight. This is better than a thousand 'thee', 'thou' and 'forsooths' per page!!

It can't really be called skiving if the book is has 'Shakespeare'  in the title, right?

A good half of my journey to work this morning was spent in the company of some half-witted consumptive who insisted on carrying on his conversation at me despite hacking and coughing germs at the end of every phrase.
By the time the bus reached the half-way point between my home and my place of work, it was about half past nine and time for the invasion of the pensioners. I duly began to gather my handbag to stand up and offer my seat to one of the poor dears when a particularly fierce looking harridan confronted me to demand that I stand. Ignoring her rudeness, I smiled and stood - and so did she. Right on my instep. OUCH!! You might already have guessed that she didn't apologise but took the opportunity to glare disdainfully. Serves me right, I suppose, for putting my foot under hers!!!

I managed to find the switchy-on button with no undue stress, and the in-the-ear thingys seemed fairly self-explanatory. However, it all went pear shaped when I tried to shovel anything listenable onto it.

Fortunately - I have a sixteen year old in the house who is always only too happy to extract gadgets from me and show me how to use them. Seems kids do have a purpose after all!

So, that's me bang into the twenty-first century. Woohoo!!!!

So what did I do with this new technology? I spent the weekend with Stephen Fry whispering to me. I have to confess to having a soft spot for Mr Fry - or to be more accurate, to Mr Fry's voice. Did you ever hear anyone with more natural rhythm and musicality in their speech? Never has ironing been such an enjoyable task.

So, let's recap - that's two deaths, and earthquake, and a disaster in the love department. I wonder what else this year can throw at me?

Talking of disasters, my aforementioned trip to the theatre to see King Lear left me feeling a little flat. I know that when you go to see an amateur group perform, you gets what you pays for. However, since this was a Shakespeare Company (albeit amateur) and they only put on a couple of plays per year, a bit more effort would have been nice! It's a little difficult to feel the tragic loss of Lear's power and mind if he isn't shown as having much of either in the beginning! Add that to the fact that the performances were a hotch-potch of antiquated melodrmatic styles mixed with far more modern, understated performances, and the whole thing didn't really add up to a night to remember. Shame I forgot to take the rotten fruit with me!!!

My first assignment - analysis of language and performance issues on an extract from AMidsummer Night's Dream - has gone, for better or worse. Worse, I suspect, but at least the beast has been conquered. 2000 words always seems like such a lot - until you realise how much you need to cram in!

Trouble is, I have to use my weekend to write reviews and an assignment. Time has been made shorter by the fact that my wonderful partner has agreed to whisk me off to Stratford for the day on Sunday. It's a place I've never visited so any recommendations as to what to see or do will be most welcome.

This course (Shakespeare) is turning out to be far more interesting than I had imagined. It sets out to forget that Shakespeare comes to us in the 21st century with the reputation of being the 'best' playwright ever. Instead, it takes the view of Shakespeare as the Elizabethan popular writer; the writer of plays for the common man; the political writer etc etc. That being the case, the course materials contain a plethora of contemporaneous accounts of the plays in performance that make for fascinating reading. What have I learned so far? That even after the advent of night theatre, which was a far more courtly affair, Shakespeare chose to continue writing for day theatre in which the audience would include the 'stinkards' in the courtyard area. In short, he chose to be a 'popular' writer. What would his contemporaries think of his elevated position in the opinions of the twenty-first century literary intelligentsia, I wonder??

In addition to the course materials, I bought a copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream on DVD to help me to think about performance choices, that being an integral part of this course. Spoilt for choice, I eventually chose - purely for research purposes - the version in which Rupert Everett plays a very slinky Oberon while wearing very few clothes. He It was an absolute treat and very watchable. For those less enamoured of Everett's naked torso, I should say that this version plays heavily on the comedy and perhaps, as a result, overlooks some of the darker moments that add a stark contrast, but it still works well and offers plenty of laughs.
(I'm hoping that by referring to my partner as 'wonderful' with reference to the Stratford trip, he will forgive my less than veiled references to Rupert Everett'a bare chest. Back me up here or I'm in trouble!!!)

So, the first week of my new course is done and it's looking interesting. As long as it stays that way, time will fly.

I've spent the past week familiarising myself with A Midsummer Night's Dream. My head is now filled with fairies, men with asses heads, and love juice. No change there then

It should be an interesting course with ten plays:

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Richard II
Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra
Hamlet
Measure for Measure
Twelfth Night
King Lear
The Tempest
Cymbeline

And a goodly few of the sonnets to wrestle with.
If all that is not enough, it seems the critical bits of the course will give me an introduction to 'Queer Theory'. What's 'Queer Theory'? I hear you cry. As soon as I find out, I'll let you know - but I'll bet it does what it says on the tin!

I am required to pay a lot of attention to preformance issues during this course, so if you have any opinions on productions that you have seen, I be interested to read them.

Even more exciting than the course materials finally arriving (some six weeks late) I am able to attend the face-to-face tutorials this year and have already made contact with another student willing to car share. Although the OU do their best to accommodate busy lifestyles, it never replaces the good old face-to-face contact with real people!! My first tutorial is this Saturday so, assuming I get back to regular blogging, I'll let you know how that goes.

Meanwhile, I have some reading to do....

That done, I then received a call from the home where my elderly uncle has been since he lapsed into dementia. They wanted me to sign a 'do not resuscitate' order. Now, I know I'm not the first to have to do this and I'm sure I won't be the last - but the it's the first time I've ever had to do it and I certainly hope it's the last. I know now how Good Queen Bess felt when she signed Mary's death warrant: it's not pleasant but it has to be done. My 'nervous stomach' took quite a beating over that and I am now intricately acquainted with every curve and flower on my toilet wallpaper - which is, I'm sure, far more than you needed to know so we'll leave that there!!

All in all, not a good start to the New year.

However,

Things seem to be settling now and I'm ready to get on with the coming year and all it has to throw at me. Next week sees the start of my next, and last course for my Literature degree. Yippee!! It has felt like a long haul but I'm nearly there. Ten months and counting

Task one: write ECA for course on Islam.
This course is not inspiring me at all. I just have an ECA left to write, due to be posted on Tuesday, so yet again I am wilfing on the internet rather than just getting on with it.

Task two: finish reading a book for review.
I'm currently reading I Live Under a Black Sun by Edith Sitwell. It feels like quite a responsibility to be reviewing a book that has previously been critiqued by the likes of Evelyn Waugh. More so when I fail to be moved by this book at all. It was, apparently, her only novel. I think there's a reason for that. It had, apparently, been out of print for some while. Again, I think there's a reason for that. Okay, it does hold some interest as it was originally published in the thirties in the midst of the modernist works of the time. There is clearly some effort on Sitwell's part to present a world of contrasts, a muddle of times and places, but if there hadn't been better books by better writers, perhaps this one wouldn't have fallen out of print. Just a feeling??????

Task three: read A Midsummer Night's Dream very quickly since my Shakespeare course starts in about three weeks and I haven't read any of the set plays yet. I did get round to watching DVDs of Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear over the Christmas holiday but that's as far as my preparation has gone so far.

So, what have I been doing instead? Reading Khaled Husseini's The Kite Runner which turned out to be a fabulous book. Not only does it provide an insight into the familial structure of the Afghan culture, but it also gives an insight into the tribal differences that are to tragically affect the two young boys as they grow from children to adults. No time to scrawl a full review at the moment (for reasons, see above task list) but let it be said that this book is well worthy of being added to your 'must read' list. As soon as I finished reading that one, I managed to get hold of a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns, Husseini's second novel. Thats man is going to have to stop writing for a while or the above task list is going to be under sever threat!!!

Okay, back to the most important task - more coffee

So, what did Santa bring you? I got books. No big surprises there then, especially since I had to order them myself. My partner and I have clearly been together long enough for the complete lack of romance and surprise to set in.
'What do you want for Christmas?' says he.
'Well,' says I wistfully, 'I have found a couple of critical theory books I'd really like but they're quite expensive.'
'That's no problem,' says my gallant man. 'You order them on your card and I'll give you the cash'.
Hmmm.

Now, before I sound too ungrateful, it could have been worse. He could have gone shopping by himself and made his own choices. Need I say more??