London

So as I sat waiting for my sister's 'mystery' Christmas present which Del will now be delivering for the 3rd time I thought 'oooh I should blog about London!'

Now, I've been down to London twice since I've been back. The first time for my PGCE interview. I stayed for 2 nights, did a bit of shopping, had the PGCE interview (which incidentally went very well – I found out I got in 6 days later), and a meeting with the Philosophy of Education MA coordinator. It was nice to see where I'll be studying, and indeed to catch up with Ed but other than a quick trip to Covent Garden I didn't do much of touristy value. I'm sure when I'm studying there from May I'll do more of that!

Yesterday I went to London with a group of 6th formers on a school trip (as opposed to on a social visit...which would've been weird). Due to the intricacies of the train timetable I had to arrive at Coventry station at 9.30 despite not needing to leave till 10:30 (I'll throw this rant in here – there is now only ONE direct train a day to Leeds from Leamington Spa – fuckers). The rail companies, being the paragons of efficiency that they are, neglected to send the train tickets to school prior to the day...and correspondingly failed to get them to the station, so the head of 6th was required to force them to give us a paper group ticket and pay for underground passes when we got there...I noticed about half way through the day that I was running on a 'child' ticket and started to avoid the barriers with official looking people anywhere near them! I think it was a 'child group' pass...but you know.

After an hour shopping on Oxford Street (really not a lot to take photos of round there except Marble Arch and Selfridges' (or should that be Selfridges's [and do I need a question mark for that rhetorical question?]) windows. Having failed to take any pictures of the latter, I'll atone for that by posting these links:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kujunu/3056057484/ (I like this one)
http://londonist.com/2005/11/londonist_revie_1.php (This article ignores the Santa windows!!)

From there the groups went their separate ways: A Wembley tour; ice skating; and – my group, of 3 students - to Her Majesty's Theatre for Phantom of the Opera. The performance was pretty good. I liked some of the stage stuff, for example the boat crossing the lake looked like it was going over water (with all the smoke and the swaying light on the bow) and so on. There really is only one memorable song in it though...and then a couple of other dramatic singing moments...but not the greatest musically. I heard someone outside saying she'd thought the dancers were really good...but there was hardly any dance in it and certainly none of it was interesting at all so I find this hard to understand. So after a fairly long day I got home about 9 to grab a beer a pizza and a lot of sleep :D.

Next: Christmas (family); New Year (friends); New job (work); Feb Holiday (friend...maybe); Easter Holiday (planning stage!); Masters (In London); 2 months off; PGCE; rest of life. Yup.