Cardboard-y

We watched a film first thing, sponsored by Barclays Bank and called First Day at University. This made me feel optimistic and really quite good for no particular reason, a feeling that wore off throughout English with Giles. We looked at more Eliot poems, and Giles makes it looks so easy the way he analyses them. Fifth lesson (History) was “private study,” and so we all had four free periods until half-two which we spent in the library working or reading. Everything pretty uneventful other than Claire and Deborah teasing Duncan, fondling him, stroking him and chasing him about, which went on for ages. A weird mood, everyone acting silly, playing little games and tricks on each other. Julie Carbtree told me I've changed since the beginning of the sixth year and have become “uncouth and randy” (!).

At half-past six I set off to see Arthur Miller's All My Sons at Easterby Playhouse with loads of other people from school. I met Duncan and Jeremy outside Smith’s on Queensgate; Lee had had to walk, and after he turned up at ten-past seven we all made our way across to the gloomy, seedy backstreets off Whincliffe Road and the Playhouse. The play all about, as the blurb says, a “. . . conflict between two forces, family and society, each of which is inherently good. The driving intensity of the drama centres on Joe Keller and his son Chris with their different senses of morality and attitudes to the two circles of family and society . . . .”  I thought it was pretty poorly done; the actors kept forgetting their lines and losing their corny American accents. If it had been done well I might’ve enjoyed it more, but as it was I found it a bit cardboard-y and unbelievable, and all-in-all it was a pretty wooden performance.

Afterwards, Jeremy and I went down to the Playhouse bar and met Ms. Hirst, who had been prompting in the play. We both had a pint of lager and talked to her and Mrs Slicer and her husband. I got home at elevenish or thereabouts.