day 13

I didn’t have any class today, which meant I had a leisurely morning do what I wanted, which meant I needed to work on my paper due at the end of all this. I made an outline for what I want to go over and here is my thesis statement: There is not enough evidence to support that hypnosis has any real effect on smoking cessation. Impressive, I know. I read through my books from the library and found some interesting articles online, so hopefully writing this paper won’t be too hard.

Allie wanted to return to Primark today, so I went with her to return my pants. We got there much easier this time because there’s a tube stop right beside the store that none of us saw the first time we went there. We had to wait in line for 30 minutes to return our stuff. Basically, Primark is cheep and has great clothes, but you better be ready to stand in line and fight your way through a hundred people to get what you want. It’s pretty stressful in there. After we finally got through all the craziness I went a bought new shirt, Allie got a very cute purple dress, and we were out of there. We walked around Oxford Street for a bit, going into bookstores and just looking around.



Later that night we went to see “The 39 Steps”, a show you may not have heard of but you definitely need to check out. It’s a hilarious show where only 4 people play a couple dozen roles. Spoiler Alert: The protagonist, Richard Hannay, is accused of killing a Annabella Schmidt in his apartment, a woman who was a double agent before her tragic demise with a knife in her back. Before she dies, she tells Richard that a terrible secret is about to leave the country and he alone must stop this from happening. Dodging the ever persistent police, Hannay meets the Professor, who turns out to be the very man who is smuggling the information of the 39 steps out of the country. Richard meets Margaret in his journeys and is handcuffed to her by the police to prevent him from escaping. But escape he does, with Margaret along for the journey. Through a series of zany and hilarious events, Hannay and Margaret end up in London to see Mr. Memory, who is the only person who has the information the Professor is looking for. The Professor is shot, along with Mr. Memory, and both die a very long, very dramatic, very funny death. Mr. Memory is able to reveal the secret he has been hiding: the formula to make a fighter jet completely silent. Hannay and Margaret are married and live happily ever after.

The whole play was ridiculous and hilarious. The woman who played the three female parts used dramatic, exaggerated accents that made every character different and funny. The two men who played every role but Hannay’s changed into a couple dozen different hats and costumes to play different parts. At one point one of the men was playing two roles at once, one of the assistant to Mr. Memory and the other of the police. He had his trench coat half on and would turn to one side and talk as the assistant to the police, then turn and talk as the police to the assistant. The show also made very good use of very cheep props. They would take three chests and made them be the furniture of a room then the carts on a train then the seats in a car. There were also very entertaining sound and light effects that went perfectly with the crazy queues on stage. The show was amazing and a very good choice for my first West End show (seeing as the whole Wicked thing didn’t work out, but enough about that).

After the show we walked around Piccadilly Circus and Charring Cross road. We saw a group of people that were camping out for the Eclipse premier on Thursday. All the London premiers happen in St. James Square at the Odeon Theater. The girls wanted to go clubbing, so I went back to my room and happily went to sleep.

British word of the day: cinema = theater. Going to see movies is at the cinema. Going to see shows is at the theater.