The adventures of Miss Despina

Hello all!

It’s been a mad few weeks. However, I’ll be arriving in Italy on Wednesday and am endevouring to begin blogging again when I get there. This is going to be an exciting summer and I think, like in Prague, I will probably benefit from the wonderful support of blogging and other bloggers.

In brief - Don Pasquale was a roaring success, I got a first class honours in my degree, and things between M and myself are all gooooood!

Talk to you soon - love Despina xx 

6, 683 words done!

S, I love you forever and ever until I die for formatting my project for me.

It’s an absolute pile of wank.

But at least it’s finished.

Jubilations all around!  

Oh dear.

• 6,000 words due in for Friday

• 2,000 words done

• (54 days left until I go to Italy!)

• 37 hours left until hand-in

• 25 litres of coffee drunk

• (Two fantastic opera rehearsals - ssshh!)

• One exam left

• One tired Despina

• One Thursday spent tied to computer chair

• No blogging or msn-ing.

A friend and I broke into a church today. Or rather, they hadn’t changed the code for the sacristy door since he used to go there. We entered furtively, and slipped unnoticed into a secluded room, where we closed the door, hurriedly moved some furniture, ripped off our coats and proceeded to make a lot of noise… He had just happened to have a copy of Schumann Frauenlieben und Leben in his bag, the church just happened to have a piano, and I just needed to sing. What did you think I meant?

I’ll see you on the other side.

Pray for me! 

I’m so happy that yesterday my final project deadline has been extended by two whole weeks!

I celebrated all day long. Well, I went to uni and did hours of research, then celebrated.

Firstly by buying two pairs of shoes - one for my friend *Despina*’s wedding in Prague in August, one for stomping around Italy. Then I met a friend and we went to church and prayed a rosary together. It was the first time I’d ever done it, and I really enjoyed it.

Afterwards I noticed that I was being stared at as we walked through the park, and put it down either to his delicious Ted Baker suit, or the huge sunglasses I was wearing (alas, not Ted Baker). He told me it was because I’m gorgeous, which is probably not true, but made me feel good at least! We met up with a fantastic friend of his, a girl very much after my own heart, and several gin and tonics later, I had my first visit to a boys’ school, where my friend is house master.

Then somehow ended up going out and having white wine and moules, yet again! In Café Rouge this time - they were ok but not as good as the Italian ones we’d had the previous time. And then a long conversation about everything, and then three desserts and then more conversation, and a trip to a cocktail bar where the beautiful people are reputed to go, but I don’t find these so-called beautiful people very beautiful. (There’s nothing beautiful about starting drunken arguments about football management and saying the word "fuck" at the top of your voice, whilst drinking imported lager and wearing nasty designer wear.)

And then I got home, which is not something I remember very clearly, except for the point where I was sitting in the taxi aah-ing along to the Tristan prelude and receiving some strange looks for it.

Today I am celebrating by not doing uni stuff. I am learning to make carrot cake. It’s going well so far.

And then moules and Bellinis planned with S for next weekend when I see him - keep him in your prayers because he’s really not so well at the moment. I am so excited about seeing him, it’s really very inappropriate.

Then tomorrow I’m off out for "drinks" - read drinks, expensive food somewhere beautiful and possible carnage - with someone rather sweet. (I can’t come to a decision about what I want from him at the moment, but he knows this, and it’s nice to have him around. And he makes me laugh until I find myself in tears, which is always good!)

I suppose I really should stop being quite so gluttonous. It can’t be good for me. But I love my fabulous lifestyle, and there are other vices than gluttony of which I need to rid myself with more urgency.

What are your favourite vices? Please tell me about them, or simply indulge in one for me!

Thursday:

• A 3 a.m. coursework special after some rather intense conversation with S and a big cry. Finally, finally…
• Handing in of coursework.
• Brief trip to college.
• A complimentary ticket to en excellent gig, where a good friend was playing in the support band.
• Drinking tea til the wee small hours with one of Scotland’s best new folk bands. (I love the way people from the isle of Uist say my name!)

Friday:

• A visit to the naughtiest, loveliest deli in Manchester, where I impressed myself by speaking some Polish.
• Portraiture class.
• Rehearsal with my repetiteur who has decided he is in love with me and is making it difficult for me to work with him. Especially when he keeps going on and on about my life and wasting my time. This is bearable when he’s doing me a favour, not so bearable when I’m paying him. But he’s a great repetiteur and no-one else I know does it half as well.
• Orgasmic risotto. Nothing nicer than spending an hour in the kitchen and creating something truly beautiful. But someone is getting comfortable…
• Self-indulgence.

• Waking up with a hangover.
• Rushing to a modelling job.
• Someone who’d been drawing me for three hours attempting to get my number - not nice! Definitely knocking that job on the head soon.
• Purchase of many beautiful LPs, including Palestrina Stabat Mater etc, and two Deutsche Grammophon opera box sets - Don Giovanni and Figaro! Wish I had an LP player…
• Coffee and cake.
• Religious debate.
• Randomly bumping into friends around the university.
• The bellini hour.
• Three bellinis and many secrets later, decadent Italian food.
• The train ride home where I saw sights no respectable citizen should ever have to see.

Sunday:

• A peaceful start to the day
• Peace shattered: thanks dad.
• A charade for guests.
• Revision.
• A realisation. A big, scary realisation.

Monday:

• More arguing - what could be more selfish?
• Being used for emotional dumpage one hour before my exam (because he thinks it’s preferable to meeting up and talking properly. Thanks for that.)
• An exam that I know I passed, perhaps it wasn’t a spectacular success but I know I’ve passed it.
• An encounter with a beautiful lady.
• A rehearsal for Don Pasquale - one of the most celebrated Wagner tenors of the last few decades singing "You do something to me" - to me. Surreal…
• A trip to HMV for a copy of Sondheim’s Company. Fantastic recording with the delectable Adrian Lester.
• The cinema to see this. Awful. Just awful. I can only guess at how bad the second hour was! My friend and I got through by eating a lot of Ben and Jerry’s, belly-laughing very loudly, and running away for a Nando’s when it all got too much. Do not go and see this film.
• Fabulous conversations about just everything.
• A promise of a night of Poulenc opera soon! Excited!

Now I have to go and continue the increasingly farcical end of my uni career. Take care and let me know what you’ve been up to.