Pirates and Punting and Performances

This has been a full week in my social calendar (not sure if there's any relation to the fact that Ms. Sinéad has been away in Ireland...).

On Wednesday I met some friends at the pub down the street to sit about and listen to some live music, the main act being a friend of Amazonas that she met whilst traveling in Brazil (as you do...). Despite the fact that I've lived a three minute walk from the Exeter Pub for the last eight months, I'd never managed to actually go inside before... a couple of near misses, but never that fateful moment of crossing the threshold. In retrospect, it is with good reason. A soul-less bar, with a limited selection of alcohol and bizarre house rules including not speaking at all while a large dog roams the stage and the patron in a rugby shirt casts dirty looks and tries to keep out the students. Admittedly, Jessica, friend o' Amazonas, put on a decent show (especially considering it was three pound entry) - much of her music seemed Bebel Gilberto inspired which I quite enjoyed. Her opening act, however, did not warrant the enforced ban on speaking, poor lad.

Saturday was a fabulous day filled with capoeira, punting, and the cinema. Despite the fact that I am meant to be hard at work this weekend, I took the liberty of going punting yesterday for the first time ever... Punting is Oxford's sport o' choice. Luckily, I ended up in a punt with a master punter because my five minutes of punting fame consisted of me desperately struggling to get the pole in the water and the punt spinning lazily towards one bank or the other... no forward progress was made. I do, however, highly recommend the punting. I did later find out that I was probably holding the pole upside down and I'd like to give it another try, just to see if having it with the weighted end in the water does make all the difference.

As for the pirates... we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. I thought that it was fabulous, but I honestly think that of the seven people with whom I attended, I was the only one of that opinion. And then Dende ruined it all by making us stay 'til the very end, past allllllll the credits, to see Keira Knightly on a hill with a kid.


Related Links:
Jessica Goydar
Punting
PIRATES! (or, more to the point... JOHNNY!)