Back To Shore

Hello from lovely, albeit today a bit drizzly, Brighton. Time for a bit of an update.

Back in my cute little studio apartment for a nap / rest yesterday afternoon I was scrolling through the Brighton Pier website to figure out if I wanted to take my camera and tripod down there in the evening even in the drizzle. Under “What’s On?” I found an interesting event happening at Horatio’s Bar on the pier: “A talk with actress Imelda Staunton”, which I knew from some of her iconic roles like Prof. Umbridge in Harry Potter. I dithered a bit, because did I really want to go out again? Turns out, yes and man, am I glad that I did.

The talk with Imelda on her own was super interesting and she was very down-to-earth and fun to listen to. Early on she mentioned that she met her husband when she was working with him on a theatre production – so a fellow actor, though I had no idea whom. Silly me! She also mentioned that he was in the room. Later on the chat turned to Downton Abbey, where Imelda starred in the first two movies. Suddenly the host said, “Let’s just bring on your husband as well, shall we?” and that obviously was planned from the start, but like I said, I had no idea! Hello, Mr. Carson! (aka Jim Carter, aka Imelda’s husband for 41 years!)

OMFG! Seriously, how did I not know this? Easily answered, because even though I liked Downton Abbey well enough, I wasn’t a fan as such and I’m not really up-to-date with the who’s who of showbiz people in general. But what can I say? Jim Carter also was so much fun to listen to. A born storyteller, very funny, very quick-witted. He coined the term I used for the title of this post and once he realized how much laughter it caused, he used it quite a bit. It also was very lovely to see how much they cared for one another, but also how in sync they were sometimes, which is no wonder after four decades of marriage. And how they still managed to make each other laugh, which is so important. Imelda said at some point “I heard him tell that story so many times over the years and it still cracks me up.” Which I thought was so sweet.

My personal tiny highlight: At one point the chat turned to awards in general and the Olivier Awards: “They are coming up soon? Next week or so?” the host said. I of course had to intervene and shout “on Sunday” from my seat in the 2nd row. “Sunday! Are you going?” the host asked of Imelda and Jim. “No”, was their reply. Imelda then looked in my direction and asked “Are YOU going?” Hahahaha. I wish! Because Operation Mincemeat is nominated a couple of times and they are the only reason I know about it.

All in all, I had such a great time and I’m so glad that I a) found out about it in enough time to go and b) actually went.

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The other lovely activity happened in the late morning: I visited the “One Week In Brighton” exhibition at the Brighton Museum, which was all about how ABBA had won the Eurovision song contest in Brighton in 1974 which catapulted them into the stratosphere of pop royalty. Or something like that.

While I was walking through the exhibition and learned all the tiny interesting / nerdy facts about that event, I thought how strange it was, that there had been a time when ABBA hadn’t been the household name they were and still are. I was born in 1975 and I never knew a world without ABBA. Which is true for a lot of other things that have happened before I was born, but this somehow just illustrated it once again.

Thanks to a lovely gig-buddy I had the chance to be at an exclusive, small and thus super cool Frank Turner gig earlier this week. It feels like it’s been too long since I’ve seen him play some songs on a stage in front of me. Almost five months ;-)! I know, I know, I’m a spoilt fangirl of a touring maniac who actually provides me with ample opportunities to see him play on a pretty regular basis. Did I just book four more of his gigs in October / November? Maybe… ? Kidding. Of course I did!

Back to that surprise gig; for the first part of this post anyway. Frank played for about an hour to about 100 people. Half of them won the ticket by telling the radio station why they should be at the gig, e.g. how big / special a fan they were. The other half (like me) were ‘plus ones’. I could have argued my case for being a big fan as well of course, but I hadn’t even entered the lottery, because I thought I couldn’t make the date work. Thus I was especially happy that I was able to tag along . Frank played five of the new songs – the four already released plus “Never Mind The Back Problems” and besides that it was a “Greatest Hits” set, which is always fun. The gig came with a “Meet & Greet” if you want to call it that. Frank was available for autographs, photos and a quick chat afterwards and of course we went to that as well and even though it’s always only just a short moment, it’s always nice to have that with him…

Lyrics: “Fuckin’ Perfect” – P!NK, 2010

Last week I went to see a P!NK tribute show at the local theatre and it was lots of fun. Going in I was aware that I don’t know all that many songs of her. I mean, I know the hits of course and a few more, but there were also a few which felt new to me. When I looked up how long ago she had her first big hit, I felt so old. But I guess, with nearing 50 (next year) that’s just the way it is. Anyway, it was fun to sing and dance along and I’ve downloaded some more of her music to listen to on the next long car drives. For some reason I didn’t get around to catching up with her music on on Sunday as I had planned originally.

When I started a draft of this post on Sunday I had actually planned to give you an insight into the various newsletters I’ve subscribed to in order to get a variety of perspectives on news and politics and global and social issues. But I then spent way too much time catching up with the various news articles that day and in the end couldn’t be bothered to compile a comprehensive list of my sources. Next weekend, maybe.

But I’d still like to share one – not news article – but “Dlf nova Hörsaal” science podcast episode I listened to on the weekend, which blew my mind. It’s in German, so maybe not available to all of you, but if you speak the language and are interested, I’ll share the link below.

A lecturer of evolutionary anthropology talked about spatial and social cognition in non-human great apes and children and how different cultures and thus languages have different words and a whole different way of spatial awareness. He started with the simple test how easy we can agree on what something looks like, because we all have the same understanding of colours (blue is blue to everyone). But how difficult it is for us to describe smells or tastes and how different we experience and describe smells. And how other languages have much more words for different tastes and smells and so much more.

What blew my mind then was his report on how people in other parts of the world have different spatial cognition. These days the majority of people think that “left and right” are the proper terms to talk about the space around us. But that’s not the case everywhere in the world and it hasn’t been the case all through history of mankind. From what I took away from his studies using absolute terms like “north and south” to navigate the world around us is the more natural way than to use directional terms like “left and right”. Great apes think in absolute ways, but also small children and like I said some cultures elsewhere still do. According to him more languages in the world in fact use absolute terms than directional ones. It’s just that those languages are going extinct and that the majority of people in the world by now grow up in cultures that use directional terms like left and right. According to him that also explains why children only learn to use those terms correctly after a certain age and that even adults sometimes have problems with that. It’s not natural!

I thought that was super fascinating. NerdAlert? Maybe!

Dlf Nova Hörsaal: Kognitionsforschung: Über den Zusammenhang von Sprache und Denken