Wednesday 6 May 2009

oh no, what will our local councils do next!

Rosie told me something rather disturbing earlyer. Sutton Council, yes Sutton Council are pouring an un-affordable £4million into a youth centre that....wait for it. That will have a virtual street, with virtual drug dealers and peodofiles in order to teach primary school children, yes, primary school children about street crime and violence. What? Why? All a child needs to do is, watch the news! Or go out! or talk to people! We say that children spend to much time inside being unsociable playing on there computers and then some mad person decides, lets make a virtual reality, to teach them about reality! What? If you want a child to gain life experience, send them outside to play, they will see, and hear things, but no, lets coop them up in cyber space and teach them about reality in hyperreality! ahhhhh!

This makes us worried to, I want to go in to community theatre, I want to be able to teach people things, through community theatre, how am i, and a bunch of other just about to graduate theatre fanatics, going to do this when virtual reality is taking over the world? How I ask you?

How?

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Pub communities

I work in a pub called the Cabbage Patch, in Twickenham. Its a big put right next to the train station and is very successful and nice place to go for the family, for friends. Its a good place to meet, eat, socialise, party, get smashed, make a mess of the toilets, start a fight with your best friend...

I like pubs, I like drinking, but when the time comes when you've had a enough to drink, you can't stop? Personally, I have some self control, other people don't. I was in the pub one time when two best friends started a fight with one another, the stronger one of the two grabbed hold of a pool que and smashed it over his best friends head. Why? Because he was angry and pissed. Not a good combination. The influence of alchol on our bodies and minds also holds a certain degree of influence over the decisions we make when it comes to the people around us. I could be drunk, someone might innocently bump in to me and I might hit the roof and swear at that person, not because I'm a nasty person, but because I'm drunk.

I love the sort of drunk you might get when your feeling over confident, you talk to people you might never talk to, tell someone you like there outfit, and ask them where they got it from when your in the loos. When your dancing (of a sort) you might grab the nearest person next to you and dance with them, just because you like the song and want someone to share a moment with you. I find it strange how little social groups might form or fall apart, just from the influence of alcohol. The enjoyment of a football match might unite one side of the pub, and not the other, or vise versa. There's the people in the resaurant and people by the bar, people outside smoking, all these small social groups that form, shift change and dispearse, everyday. Interesting is it not?