Россия — священная наша держава
Jun. 9th, 2008 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyI was feeling under the weather last week and ended up skiving off on Friday in order to sit around the house, coughing in a decorously consumptive fashion like a Victorian orphan and generally feeling sorry for myself. After a while of this I got bored and fired up Mediaeval II: Total war, in which I quickly got engrossed in conquering Europe as the Scots; a challenging but ultimately possible pastime.
Eventually, after invading Mexico and Jerusalem I looked at the clock and realised it was the early hours of Saturday - I'd played for almost a full 12 hours without really noticing the passage of time and it struck me what a futile way I'd spent my time; rather than making the best of my enforced confinement, I'd done little but clicketty on the mouse for more than half a full day.
As a result of this, on Saturday I got up and headed out into the great wilds of London intending to find something worthwhile to do. Naturally this involved a trip to Forbidden Planet, but walking past St Giles-in-the-fields church round the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station I noticed a sign on the door saying something along the lines of "Russian Poetry competition today - Admission free" and thought to myself Russian Poetry, eh? That sounds great! and went in there instead.
It turned out that this was part of an International Festival of general Russianess organised by an organisation called "Pushkin in Britain" and the church was full of Babushkas and the like.
Curious to know more and not put off by the babble of Russian that filled the building (there were surprisingly many people about) I snuck in, not wanting to draw attention to myself, and sat at the back in a row of dour-looking types who wouldn't have been out of place in the 1950's politburo. As I sat, an astonishingly pretty in that high-cheekboned-Slavic-way girl came up and jabbered something incomprehensible to me. I nodded and smiled and she jabbered some more and I, not wishing to seem impolite, nodded and smiled again so she thrust a sheet of paper into my hands and walked off. Looking at the piece of paper, it turned out to be a judges voting form for the poetry competition.
So it was that, despite my knowledge of things Cyrillic being limited to Krushchev's "Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!" speech and having no real idea what was going on, I ended up being a judge in a live-reading Russian Language poetry competition.
I don't know what the form is for judging poetry competitions. Perhaps it's like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flywingedmonkey's job rating pornography and you're supposed to sit there saying things like "Phwor, I wouldn't mind some of her internal rhyming structure!" and "Look at the iambic pentameter on that!". I don't know. At least things were helped along by some of the poems being partially in English, which allowed me to infer that the competition seemed to be about the experience of being Russian in London but when it came down it the only way I could do my judging job at all was to base my marking on the overall Russianness of the entrants.
I tried my best. I tried to take it seriously. But I'm not sure that the broad grin of absurdist glee slapped across my face was the expression I was supposed to have.
Nobody else in there looked very happy, I can tell you. It was one of the things I was looking for in my marking. I was looking for: Dour? Check. Passionate? Check. References to Potatoes, Roman Abramovitch and polonium? Check. Astonishingly sexy Russian accents? Boy oh boy, yes. Hoody Hoo.
My overall winner was a woman whose poem appeared to be called "Do not forget the motherland!" and was delivered in the manner of an enthusiastic newscaster talking about the tractor production figues in about 1962.
It was, without a doubt, the coolest thing I did all weekend.
What did you do?
Eventually, after invading Mexico and Jerusalem I looked at the clock and realised it was the early hours of Saturday - I'd played for almost a full 12 hours without really noticing the passage of time and it struck me what a futile way I'd spent my time; rather than making the best of my enforced confinement, I'd done little but clicketty on the mouse for more than half a full day.
As a result of this, on Saturday I got up and headed out into the great wilds of London intending to find something worthwhile to do. Naturally this involved a trip to Forbidden Planet, but walking past St Giles-in-the-fields church round the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station I noticed a sign on the door saying something along the lines of "Russian Poetry competition today - Admission free" and thought to myself Russian Poetry, eh? That sounds great! and went in there instead.
It turned out that this was part of an International Festival of general Russianess organised by an organisation called "Pushkin in Britain" and the church was full of Babushkas and the like.
Curious to know more and not put off by the babble of Russian that filled the building (there were surprisingly many people about) I snuck in, not wanting to draw attention to myself, and sat at the back in a row of dour-looking types who wouldn't have been out of place in the 1950's politburo. As I sat, an astonishingly pretty in that high-cheekboned-Slavic-way girl came up and jabbered something incomprehensible to me. I nodded and smiled and she jabbered some more and I, not wishing to seem impolite, nodded and smiled again so she thrust a sheet of paper into my hands and walked off. Looking at the piece of paper, it turned out to be a judges voting form for the poetry competition.
So it was that, despite my knowledge of things Cyrillic being limited to Krushchev's "Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!" speech and having no real idea what was going on, I ended up being a judge in a live-reading Russian Language poetry competition.
I don't know what the form is for judging poetry competitions. Perhaps it's like
flywingedmonkey's job rating pornography and you're supposed to sit there saying things like "Phwor, I wouldn't mind some of her internal rhyming structure!" and "Look at the iambic pentameter on that!". I don't know. At least things were helped along by some of the poems being partially in English, which allowed me to infer that the competition seemed to be about the experience of being Russian in London but when it came down it the only way I could do my judging job at all was to base my marking on the overall Russianness of the entrants. I tried my best. I tried to take it seriously. But I'm not sure that the broad grin of absurdist glee slapped across my face was the expression I was supposed to have.
Nobody else in there looked very happy, I can tell you. It was one of the things I was looking for in my marking. I was looking for: Dour? Check. Passionate? Check. References to Potatoes, Roman Abramovitch and polonium? Check. Astonishingly sexy Russian accents? Boy oh boy, yes. Hoody Hoo.
My overall winner was a woman whose poem appeared to be called "Do not forget the motherland!" and was delivered in the manner of an enthusiastic newscaster talking about the tractor production figues in about 1962.
It was, without a doubt, the coolest thing I did all weekend.
What did you do?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 10:16 am (UTC)I acquired a fantastic dress in bright pink tiger print, and proceeded to wander around burning out people's retinas for the rest of the weekend. It made me strangely happy.
I also discovered that the best place to get decent vegetarian food on Tottenham Court Road may, in fact, be Hamburger Union, which does amazing huge salads, with interested cheeses and no scary additives. This strikes me as wrong on some level, but made me feel very chirpy about the world.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 10:38 am (UTC)I've spend a weekend running around an 1100 acre site in Wales, sleeping on a degree slope, marvelling at an area where the only background sound is the occasional bird and sheep. I've been kitted out like a contractor from Blackwater in a MilSim event where in the end our small group shafted the other two teams, blew up the objective and legged it.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 11:28 am (UTC)I somehow ended up in a samba drumming procession in Stoke
Newington, saw an opera singer sing sea-shanties with a violin and accordion backing, an entertaining transvestite band and went to an underground hair metal club. Not neccesarily in that order.
I installed a photocopier, & swept up some rat poo.
Date: 2008-06-09 11:32 am (UTC)Re: I installed a photocopier, & swept up some rat poo.
Date: 2008-06-09 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 11:34 am (UTC)Re: I installed a photocopier, & swept up some rat poo.
Date: 2008-06-09 11:37 am (UTC)Hehe, brilliant
Date: 2008-06-09 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 12:10 pm (UTC)And yesterday was, of course, Stokefest. Which was insanely busy.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 12:52 pm (UTC)Rather dull, all in all.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 01:08 pm (UTC)The most interesting part of the mausoleum is that many people had covered the bricks on the exterior with prayers -- each prayer written on separate bricks. There was a woman there saying that it was forbidden to write on the bricks, but it didn't seem to have had any effect on their actions. Her statement was that prayers on the bricks might cause people to revere the bricks and not Allah, but I think that the powers that be don't want any signs of personal expression anywhere. I am sure Allah can tell a prayer written to him on a brick is to him and not the brick.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 03:02 pm (UTC)Sunday: morning - watched my boyfriend attempting to make a Lego Mindstorms robot; afternoon - went wandering around a nearby Capability Brown garden, where we bumped into one of my more eccentric work colleagues and ended up exploring with him in tow. That was fun, if a bit weird. We ended up buying him an ice-cream. :-) Evening - ate dinner outside and pretended to be on holiday.
Fun!
No Russians, although on the linguistic front, a spot of translation of Latin inscriptions occurred, courtesy of my Classicist colleague.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 09:45 pm (UTC)I spent the weekend in fear of mortal injury being inflicted by my son. A warming combination of him having autism and the mumps at the same time.
Re: I installed a photocopier, & swept up some rat poo.
Date: 2008-06-11 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 10:30 pm (UTC)Have added Cruella deVil to the cast list for Jeeves, BTW.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 07:11 pm (UTC)But who won?
And did you understand a word?!