Dear Tuesday - 14th June 2011 - Frankie Keith

I wanted to write something poignant and meaningful but today seemed just like any other Tuesday for the past 4 weeks since university exams finished. The weather was good though, so outside activities was a must. Some tennis, a bike ride and some food later and I feel content. Things are about to change though and that mainly occupies my thoughts today. Not a major change by any stretch, I am just sorting out my current house before I leave to head to my home town for the holidays. It is weird, sorting it out makes me think about moving on and all the possibilities and fears for the future. Despite ups and downs to this year, I’ve felt settled in this house and going back home seems to be unsettling that smooth status quo. This is the first year in a long time when I’m going home with no plan for the summer, with no idea what to do with myself or what I could do. It’s kind of scary, it kind of makes me realise that I feel entirely clueless about my ultimate future! But maybe not knowing is not such a bad thing? Right now I could do anything…



Packing up my room and taking down my pictures seems a noteworthy moment, like it is the acceptance of leaving and a time of evaluating the year just gone. For me, the end of the academic year has always been more a time when I think back to the year just gone and plan for the future. Right now as no plan exists I have to use it to find where I’m going in life and what the whole purpose to any of this is. I’m feeling a mixture of emotions. I crave the future but will miss the past greatly – as for the present I feel restless.



Perhaps there was more to this day than I thought.

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Frankie is coming to the end of her second year of university. She loves travelling and am is very into sport!

Dear Tuesday - 7th June 2011 - @anastasiaduck

Tuesdays are really just like any other day of the week to me, living as I do a pseudo-student lifestyle.  I say student, but really things are a bit more complicated than that given that I'm working in the last year of PhD in boring old Oxford and moonlighting as a fashionista blogger rushing all over London.  My life is ridiculous (increasingly more so) and probably the best way to see just how ridiculous I have become is to view my Tuesday from the points of view of my two very different personae:



Michael, the research scientist

Today in particular I have been worrying about to calculate the elastic constants of iron from first principles - this basically means understanding how easily a crystal will deform into a certain direction when a stress is applied to it - and whether I can replicate the known results with my new, simpler, model. It hasn't really been working so I'm pretty pissed off with things, although it's only partially my fault being dependent as I am on model parameters coming from collaborators abroad.  It's getting to that point in my research where many tasks are becoming extremely tedious because I feel like I'm repeating them ad infinitum. I'm stagnating, often not learning anything new (which was the original justification for staying in academia).  When you work and work on something and it still goes wrong - well, that's pretty demoralising. Today, however, I did have a minor personal breakthrough. I have been reading this book from the 80s edited by my supervisor ('The Recursion Method and Its Applications') and I came across a really interesting chapter comparing localised and delocalised models of bonding in solids.  I dug up one of the references by Friedel in the departmental library and suddenly found a whole new understanding for my subject, and another reason to keep going with my research.  This is more what I signed up for when I decided to stay after my masters. If only I could find these little gems every day!



Michael, the fashion blogger

Today I've been pretty much concerned with my hair. On Thursday I'm planning to have it dip-dyed.  This is when you bleach out the ends and paint them in another, usually artificial-looking, colour, hence the name 'dip-dye'.  I've been worrying about this ever since I made the joint appointment with my friend Anna, because I can't settle on which hue to go for.  Today I tried on four of my favourite outfits in an attempt to see which colour would go with them all.  And what would go best with my new Comme des Garçons rucksack (which I paid an extortionate amount of money for and simply cannot have clashing with my hair)?? It's a real dilemma.  Luckily, I think I've narrowed things down to washed-out blue/grey tips, or giving it all a beachy bleached-blonde rinse.  I guess I won't know for sure until Thursday rolls around. Today I also took some photographs for a new blog post concerning the aforementioned backpack.  I wore the bag over an Alexander Wang two-tone sweatshirt with black Fillipa K trousers and painted my nails a vibrant yellow in the style of Chanel's 'in' colour, Mimosa. I spent a good 45 minutes in front of my living room wall, snapping myself using a remote control with the old SLR on a tripod.  My neighbours think I'm nuts.  I've uploaded my photos to the site now, but nobody's commented yet.

Talk about split personalities.

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Michael Ford

http://www.anastasia-duck.com

Dear Tuesday - 31st May 2011 - @BrewedBoy

My early mornings in Soho are just late nights for many locals. The market where I peddle my wares has long since been deserted and my solitary barrow acts as a lifeboat for those lost in a sea of drink and drugs. My bleary, tired eyes often meet the glazed, insomniac saucers of drug addicts and late night prowlers. We meet like opposing magnets - my sobriety just as non-sensical as the chemical feuled ramblings of the damned. This morning my street was still enough to hear the familiar sound of someone void of sleep. It's the sound of feet shuffling along the flagstone cobbles. It's the sound of someone about to fall.

"I've just been with a brass up the road there," he says with a bottle of forgotten lager in his hand. I have never seen him before but he has taken me on with a wink and a nod as if I were an accomplice to his late night antics.

"Brass " is  cockney for whore. This chap found himself an old brass door and, for a substantial fee, got to knock on it.  He inflicts all the gory details on me. Turns out this brass was a bit brazen for him. He reflected on times passed when the knocking shops offered a simpler, more dignified, experience. A time when the girls grumpily let you take care of your business and the focus was on your pleasure not theirs.

"At the end of the day I'm the customer. Know what I mean?"

He stands with his legs apart, swaying gently with the swells inside his brain.

It's Tuesday. It's 7.30am and the office workers are slowly making their way to their desks.

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Rob Lockyear

Rob and his coffee cart can be found on Rupert Street in Soho - go say Hi and grab a great flat white!

@brewedboy

brewedboy.wordpress.com

Dear Tuesday - 31st May 2011 - @geoffwakeling

Dear Tuesday

I’m not sure whether today is for celebrations or a crisis, and I’m not sure if I actually wanted you to come because, you see, today I’m 30. In actual fact, it’s not been nearly as bad as I thought. I’ve had the pre-thirty wobble for the past couple of weeks now, worrying that everyone’s moving on with their lives. That all my friend’s are settling down, getting married, having children. And what I’m doing? Still trying to work through the dating minefield and find my someone. However, whilst the lead up to 30 has been a little traumatic, a great night out with the Twitterati, copious amounts of bottles and shots, and then a full day of monkeying around yesterday at Go Ape has turned my woes on their head and I’m back to my chirpy self.

With the weekend being a whir of partying and celebrations today is a little quieter and I intend to gorge myself with pastries, chocolate cake and any other sweet treat that comes into my line of sight. Yes, I’ll feel momentarily guilty about my waistline, but a ten mile run should help sort that out. My sister is also coming down to see me, my best friend in the whole world and someone who I speak to at least once a day but only ever get to see every few months. And her presence has instigated out activity of the day.

As kids, we were addicted and obsessed with Titanic. I had a weirdly straight crush on Kate Winslet, boobs and all. My sister literally covered her entire bedroom in pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio. There is a strange morbid fascination with the disaster of that ill fated ship, and the fascination is probably stronger today than ever before. Perhaps it’s because the remnants of the once glorious ship are fast crumbling away on the sea bed. Perhaps it’s because we now have the means to bring back artefacts from the ship, enabling for the imagination to go wild with the stories, both true and fictional, from ‘the ship of dreams’.

Charles Williams, my 1st class passenger, didn’t survive

The O2 Titanic Exhibition is sadly great. It’s well staged, taking you from the excitement of the new ship through to the fateful night, the personal accounts of passengers, and the resulting tribunal’s after the catastrophe. A large print out of the deck layout is fascinating, showing detailed drawings of room by room, promenade by promenade. A tiny platinum and diamond choker really stirs thoughts – someone wore this, possibly whilst aboard Titanic itself. And your entry ticket gives each person details of a real passenger which you then look up at the end of the exhibit to see their fate.

I’ve been cultured, I’ve been drunk, I’ve been gorged with food and I’ve been socialised like never before this weekend. And now Tuesday, as you’ve come around and led me to 30, the woe is gone and I’m ready to start the flirty thirties in style.

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Geoff Wakeling

http://theguidetogaygardening.com