ritas kleine welt

grab your daffodils, hug a stranger and sing, sing, sing!

happy saint david's day!

we only got to meet a couple of times during my last visit to wales one year ago. but we clicked instantly and had a couple of animated conversations. this is how i will remember duncan tanner:

you are sorely missed!

instead of just counting off the different stations of my life in the past 365 days, let me just show you, what i did on the occassion. spanning from one new year's eve to another, it seems like most of my activities have been taped either by night or underground with an equal lack of proper light.

preparing for my seminars tomorrow, quite by accident i stumbled across the charming flickr portfolio of a british cartoonist who goes by the name of tom gauld. his work has already been picked up by the guardian and recently he has also illustrated a book sleeve for a publication about british history. especially the comic strips concerned with literature, british history and critical theory tickled my funny bone.

behind the cut, find a few examples that i liked best of his portfolio. but make sure to check out the rest of his work either here on tom's website or on his flickr account.

to conclude this series, here is the fourth part from my four-days visit to london last week. there are tons more pictures, of course, but you can only so often look at jude law before you get bored. that's you. not me. i could never get bored with looking at the pretty boy.

and now to the main attractions: hamlet, jude law, hamlet, the wyndham's theatre, jude law, upcoming new actors who look like cute little hobbits, jude law. have i mentioned lately, that we went to london last week in order to see jude law in hamlet -- playing hamlet?

btw. pretty boy may attrackt very low expectations, due to the very common opinion of, 'how often have you seen film actors successfully take the stage?' (::cough:: tom cruise ::cough::) but jude law aced it! and i knew he would because he had played on a stage before. successfully, may i add. he may attrackt loads of negative press and, well, in some of the cases he deserves it! you just don't go around bonking and impregnating everything that's gets in your path. but that certainly doesn't take away the fact that he's a bloody brilliant actor. angry!hamlet was quite a treat. like being dipped in chocolate and then eaten alive.

this morning for something different, but not so unexpected. here are my three chaplin moments during the last week. the first one was meeting little chuckles on leicester square where some nearly 30 years ago they unveiled a sculplure of the little fellow -- which looks nothing like his real-life counterpart, except for the mustache. the second chaplin-moment was finding a poster advert for victoria chaplin and her husband's invisible circus. and the third moment was paying a little visit to the duke of york's theatre in the west end (just around the corner from the wyndham's). here ickle chuckles played billy the page boy in the gillette adaptation of sherlock holmes. -- my three comrades, mary, ellie and alex bore these moments of spontaneous public fangirling like brave soldiers.

it is a bit strange: all those four times i have been to the island so afr, the weather was pretty much constantly splendid. in and out of season. hardly any rain -- and nearly 30°C last week. i even got a slight tan which is something that happens only once every decade. and because we were so extremely lucky, the pictures came out especially well. so, here's the first round of pictures from an extremely sunny london. including pictures from an extremely nocturlan london.

and all that matters is having seen jude law FOUR times. collective cheers to mary, ellie and alex -- partners in crime!!!

because access to the web may be limited next week, i just wanted to let you know why it may be a bit more silent than usual on this blog. i'm off to london to enjoy the enrapturing mr law in his role as the great dane. (::points at countown::) i am trying to write this in the most sane manner possible, but..... I'M GOING TO LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONDON TO SEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMLET!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!

see you all around at latest in about six days.

wales. land of the hills and mountains and farmers -- and sheep with LED blankets.

this is what made this nation great!

it has taken longer than i had originally planned, but here are finally the pictures of the many chaplin locations in and around kennington and what was formerly walworth. the short trip across the thames and into the south of london was the first part of stiw's and my marathon walk through london three weeks ago. just let me say, i got more out of it than i had bargained!

it's called, 'spot the chaplin!' and it is really easy. i give you a picture and you find the chaplin. it's a bit like where's waldo?