My Sri Lankan Boxing Day

I didn't mention this on my last post, but my Christmas and New Year this year are being spent in the wonderful island of Sri Lanka. As well as this being the first ever blog post on my new Christmas gift of an iPad (!), since arriving here on the 22nd my family and I have spent Christmas Eve Eve (not a mistake, by this I mean the 23rd) in the capital city of Colombo, Christmas Eve with a host of Indian elephants which I intend to talk about more and show you pictures of, but only can access some of them right now :( and most recently Christmas Day in Kandy, Sri Lanka's second city. More specifically, in one of the biggest Buddhist temples in the world, the Temple of the Tooth, where Buddha's canine tooth is supposedly held. But enough of yesterday, let's talk about today. My 26th December was spent hiking up the large, ancient city of Sigiriya in the middle of the jungle, in surprisingly good condition for its age. However, I'm not going to tell you, I'm going to show you...

This is a from-the-bottom view of the rock that once housed the grand palace of the king of Sri Lanka in 500-600 BC. We climbed this, on an array of steep and often frighteningly fragile metal staircases and walkways!

A very cute ( if you like that sort of thing) monitor lizard I saw on the way up.






A small, walled enclosure, apparently home to the Bo tree, the species under which the Buddha was born.

A beautifully painted image, better than most cave paintings, amazingly done in 500 BC!

My Christmas Decorations - which is your favourite?

Hello trustworthy blog followers, considering the success of the quizzing poll, my next sidebar poll is to decide which of this year's decorations in my house are the nicest (i.e. which should be used again next year). There are five to choose from, so here is the selection (rather traditionally, this poll ends on Twelfth Night, the 6th January, when all decorations must be taken down!):

1) Christmas Tree
My Christmas tree is quite alternative this year, a genuine (dead) tree with its summer leaves taken away from it in winter. I spraypainted it red to get in the festive spirit:

I also decorated it with some stars I made years ago:

And also with some very cute birds!!!

2) Advent Calendar

This year's advent calendar was hand made, which makes a difference to the usual chocolate ones. Each day is an envelope hanging from the tree with an embossed (see earlier post) Roman numeral, and each gift is a decades-old, collectible Christmas stamp from a different country every day! I can never wait to see what will be next!

 Here are just some of the stamps we've had so far (sorry for the poor image quality):

3) Christmas Display Cabinet

This is a display cabinet of Christmas trinkets, new this year, and is in some ways a collection of unusual Christmas goodies from many time periods and countries. It includes several Santa Claus figurines, both fun and scary, various Japanese ornaments and even a rather amusing horse (4th shelf down, far left)!

4) Glass Birds

Also new for this year, I have a set of elegant glass birds, painted in tasteful purples and greens (not together though!). There are lots of different sorts of birds in the set, but the prettiest and rarest is this purple pheasant - great as a table centrepiece and very cute!!!

5) Christmas Card Display

Last but not least, in my bedroom I've put up a line of Christmas cards along my bed head, as much a display of my popularity (joke) as a great decoration idea! Some of them have great designs, too.

So, I've shown you all my decorations, so what are you waiting for?! Vote!!!
- DP :)

P.S. I have great news for history buffs - your trivia subject of choice won our recent poll with 33% of the votes. But bad news for sport, music or film fans - your category came last with no one voting for it!

Guest Blogger!!

Hello again, this time my post's going to be a bit different - this time, it's not from me - it's from, for the very first time on Dramatis Persona, I've got a guest blogger! It's someone in my school, who came over to my house today and showed an interest in my blog. This is all her idea, so over to her...
- DP :)

The life story of a Carrot

Carrots lead a very uninteresting life, and die very young. They start their life as nothing more than a seed and live in a very dark and cold place. He/she will slowly grow like you or me. Roots will start to form and leaves will start to appear. If vegtablealists didn't know this, they have miniature TV screens inside them which they watch when they are bored. Otherwise they have nothing to do. As when they get picked they die, they only live a few months which means that many carrot Twilight fans never got to watch the last movie. :'( At least they will never find out what happened to their friends and family when they died...

Wasn't that a great story from our guest blogger! Who knew what happens to carrots! Thanks so much to our guest blogger, we hope to have more guests soon!

Random Book Knowledge At National Level

I've left the title of this blog post a little mysterious this time, which is quite new for me :), but I'll tell you all about it now. This week, I was a participant in the 2012 Kids' Lit Quiz, which is an international contest for book lovers like myself from 7 countries around the world, concerning knowledge of authors, books and characters, both classic and contemporary. However, what I haven't mentioned yet is that it's all for 10-13 year-olds just like me! 

So, on to my own results... Well, after successfully qualifying for my school's A team, three teammates and I travelled to compete at The Broxbourne School in Hertfordshire for the North London heat. This turned out to be a relatively easy, pub-quiz style written with ten themed rounds of ten questions, one of them a picture round (this one was probably our favourite and the only one we received full marks on, themed on classic characters and including film depictions of Robinson Crusoe and Huckleberry Finn among others). Believe it or not, at this heat we actually won by 10 points! And, even better, we managed the unusual feat of beating the Authors Team (basically a group of authors competing just for fun)!

Winning this heat meant we had to attend the National Final just 2 days later, in an incredibly fancy-looking hotel in Coventry with, in my opinion, excessive red and gold furnishings and Tudor-style design. I have a picture at the bottom if you want to have a look. But after photos for local newspapers and parading in to the quiz hall to "And last but not least from North London...", we discovered that the quiz was about to be a thousand times more difficult. I mean, one whole round on literary archetypes seems ridiculously hard, who's going to guess that "a humorous male, known in royal circumstances as a jester" would be a clown! And another equally challenging round followed it: first pages of novels. The kind of thing you have to actually read books to know, that no amount of Ultimate Book Guide for 8-12 year olds reading  and online practice questions could teach me. Still though, despite the fact that we didn't make the world finals in South Africa next July, we came an admirable joint 6th of 17, a result I'm proud of!

- DP :)

P.S. Recently I've made a few updates to my blog, for instance now you can subscribe by email, which is great because you don't need to give any details apart from your email address, and you don't need a Google account. I've also made a poll on the sidebar which, to celebrate the Kids' Lit Quiz, is all about what trivia topic is your favourite! There's also a new translate button at the bottom so everyone in the world can see what I've got to say! oh, and the hotel image isnt mine ;) 

A Little Quiz For All Of You...

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while, as I have just started a new school so made a conscious decision to stay off my blog for a couple of months while I settled in. Anyway, to come back with a bang and as you might soon be planning a winter trip, I made up this personality quiz for you:

What Type Of Holiday Should YOU Take?

The ultimate planning tool!

Q1) Which of these gadgets do you have or would like to have?

A: An All-weather camera

B: An iPad with a sparkly tiger striped case

C: DJ designed headphones

D: A corporate BlackBerry with no games

Q2) Which of these Red Letter days (company-made days out) would you take?

A: Abseiling down the Shard

B: Celebrity cookery class

C: Private art gallery viewing

D: Pamper session

Q3) What sort of music do you like most?

A: Something with a strong beat that I can run along to

B: Rihanna

C: Some random Eritrean music no one's ever heard of - I still like it though :)

D: Frank Sinatra - that guy never gets old!

Q4) You've got a night in to yourself - what do you do?

A: Watch (and perform to!) an exercise video

B: Write a new song

C: Watch an arthouse film

D: Curl up with a great book

Q5) Which of these sports is your favourite?

A: Zumba

B: Gymnastics

C: Croquet

D: Ping Pong

Q6) You decide to go out for a meal. Which of these are you most likely to do?

A: Get a table outside, whatever the weather

B: Invite 30 friends and sit at the head of the table

C: Go to a resaurant specializing in an unfamiliar cuisine and try something you've never heard of

D: Go to a restaurant you go to all the time and order the same thing as always

Q7) Where do you go to buy a new top?

A: Outdoor/climbing shop

B: The high street

C: A quirky design outlet

D: Charity shop

Q8) What's your favourite soft drink?

A: Green smoothie

B: Fanta

C: Espresso with biscotti

D: Hot chocolate with marshmallows

Q9) What sort of hat are you most likely to wear?

A: Bandana

B: Fascinator

C: Panama hat

D: I don't wear hats

Q10) Which animal do you most identify with?

A: A mountain goat. Living in the mountains would be great!

B: A leopard. They're fierce, just like me!

C: An eagle. Seeing the world from up there would be amazing!

D: A tabby cat. Oh, the joy of being loved by a caring family...

Results!!!!

Mostly As: You're an adrenaline junkie, and love the wild. Your ideal holiday would be rugged and off the beaten track, independent and away from tourists. Your days would be full to the brim with adventurous activities like mountain-climbing, abseiling, skydiving, surfing and so much more! Just don't forget to pack the hiking boots...

Mostly Bs: You love to be the centre of attention, and are both fashionable and creative. This means your ideal holiday destination would be extravagant, luxurious and exotic, somewhere that will stand out among the crowd. Staying in a luxurious riad in Morocco and browsing the souks would suit you, or perhaps learning to ride horses in spectacular Patagonia or seeing orang-utans in the wild in lush Borneo! Or if you really wanted to push the boat out, try the beautiful coral atolls of the South Pacific!

(BTW, this is what I got when I took this quiz)

Mostly Cs: World culture is your thing, whether it's art, music, films or food. You also enjoy contrast, so the ideal holiday for you would definitely not be a package. You would eat and sleep in the coolest places in town, but in the daytime you would visit interesting reminders of your destination's history while, of course, experiencing lively international culture. However, your trip would have to be just a short city break, because you have (or should have) an enormous schedule of exhibitions, gigs, festivals and restaurant trips planned!

Mostly Ds: You seem to have a strong idea of what you would like to do this winter, but most of it is best done at home. You may have a hectic life, so perhaps this winter you should relax and take a staycation this year. After all, there are many things I'm sure you haven't yet done in your hometown, and remember that you really don't have to travel a long way to have a great time!

By the way, if you are undergoing holiday or Christmas stress, here is #2 in my Shower Era series to cheer you up, a Dimetrodon with a dish cloth for a fin...

- DP :)

From Korea To Kings Road

The title of this post refers to a very diverse and interesting exhibition I went to see last Friday, devoted to young Korean artists and based on the Kings Road. Every single piece was unique, and its one of the only exhibitions I've ever been to where each artwork is different from the last and really worth looking at. One of my favourites overall was these two vases, made from a very unusual material - try to guess it! (answer below)

                                   

     

                

                    

                         Answer: soap!

                                   

They were never prying...

...but they were nosy Parkers!

A rather uncomfortable outfit for a dog...

Is it a mountain? Is it a skyscraper? No, it's a pile of chairs!

You wouldn't want to be attacked by this massive burr!

Guess where these amusing animal pics are from? 

Google Maps!

The Shower Era #1: The Brachiosaurus

You might do embossing, or knitting, or whatever more obscure craft you care to name, but I guarantee you've not done a weirder craft than towel origami, which is exactly what it says it is but with a lot more safety pins on a much bigger scale . I've seen it done in hotels across the world, but would never have thought anybody would think to write a book about it. But that's exactly what Alison Jenkins has done, the fourth of her towel origami books being Jurassic Towel Origami, the prehistoric theme of which inspired my next series of posts, where I aim to create all 15 megalosauric creatures in the book and blog about them. Jenkins' creations have inspired me to think about how these towel dinosaurs etc. would have survived against the force of the real ones. Perhaps they would have clipped their many safety pins together as swords and launched an attack on the real creatures, using several towels packed together as inventive shields. OK, before I get carried away, here is my first one, the gigantic herbivore Brachiosaurus, with his technically challenging drooping tail and easily collapsing legs. I even creased a mouth and put a grape leaf in for authenticity :).
 - DP :)

The Grape Harvest Has Come Around Again!

These are from a Bordeaux vineyard I visited last week - no, just joking. We grow grapes in the conservatory of our country house in Suffolk, and this year I'm pleased to say we had enough for a bottle of very sweet grape juice! It's always a very exciting preoccupation picking grapes from the vines hiding (and also giving shade beneath) the glass roof at around this time of year, and it's something to look forward to at the tail end of the summer holiday (apart from the new school year, obviously). This particular bowl is only usually half full on most harvests, so the fact that it's almost overflowing this year is a pleasant surprise. I don't know what it is. Perhaps the grape gods who live on a dark purple cloud high above a French vineyard have decided that more positive attitudes toward grape-growing and more vineyards worldwide are grounds for a better grape harvest this year. Or maybe that's a little far-fetched. Just I don't want to be boring by saying it was just luck.
- DP :)

The Wild Chicken Tribe

I haven't done a story or imaginative post for a while, and this chicken, spotted at my family's rented home in Grassington, Yorkshire, provided an interesting avenue of opportunity. The chicken doesn't have a coop, and he also doesn't appear to live anywhere apart from in the huge grounds of the house. But perhaps he once did. The once thriving, now nearly extinct tribe of wild woodland chickens, living in forest areas in Northern England and Southern Scotland, are taught by experienced chief chickens to fend for themselves in practically any environment they choose. Those skills are eventually put to use when the chickens come of age (they have to learn survival skills quite quickly, as they come of age at two years) and they must venture out and choose an environment which they deem suitable to use as a home for the rest of their life. Another tribe rule is that chickens must visit they former home at least once a year. This chicken, unlike his adventurous siblings, hated the tribe's independent nature, so sought out a house with extensive gardens to get a taste of domestic life which he, of course, loved. However, when reluctantly returning to his family, they were taken by nasty surprise as they realized this rebellious chicken had chosen a somewhat calmer life than his siblings, who chose caves, trees and waterfalls as their dwelling place. The chiefs were horrified and subsequently disowned the chicken, who didn't mind at all, returning to Grassington to roam around the plant pots once again.

- DP :)

My Recent Activities In London #2: Somerset House

 Don't be misled by the title of this post and think that I went to see the usual exhibitions at the titular gallery; in fact, during the Games period, every country has taken over a major venue to showcase their culture and cheer on their athletes (hospitality houses), and my first visit to them has been Brazil's Somerset House base. Here the 2016 Olympic hosts have set up a gallery devoted to Brazilian modern art, a tourism room with guidebook sale and exotic-looking pictures, a Rio 2016 area with information on arena and logo design as well as a souvenir shop (I picked up a souvenir pencil as well as samples of the 2016 font, but there unfortunately weren't enough of each letter to spell Dramatis Persona!) and apparently restaurants and carnivals in the evening. Here are some of my favourite bits of it.

Who came up with this idea?

An interesting pun on the phrase "flying carpet"

Two of many cute sculptures on display - see also the wooden lizard below

Traditional Brazilian fabrics

A room showcasing the Brazilian rainforest

A very confusing Brazilian flag

The Eames wheelchair!

A very difficult game of football!

My Recent Activities In London #1: Waterloo/Southbank

Since I haven't blogged for a while, I'm going to be blogging to inform you followers out there about what I've been doing around London for the first Olympic week. First up is the Southbank. There's been quite a bit of interactive stuff around there, in particular the Waterloo area, my personal favourite being this build-a-Lego-map activity. Each participant is given a square of Lego to build on and a sheet showing which colours to put where, and everyone's square is eventually incorporated into an enormous Lego world map.

Me placing my Congo located square down

The as-of-today incomplete map

The annual Watch This Space dance, music and circus festival at the National Theatre is smaller than normal this year due to the Olympics, but I still managed to see Spanish comedy/acrobatics group Los2Play perform yesterday. Here they are in one of their bigger balances.

Here's the latest sculpture outside the Hayward Gallery, which I think is better than that fox thing last year. A baobab tree made from rolls of fabric, how original does it get?

 A South African mascot parades around near Waterloo Bridge, giving random people hugs as he goes.











That's all for the Southbank, but tomorrow I plan to go check out Brazil's London 2012 base at Somerset House(also home to a lot of Rio 2016 souvenir shops)...

My Conversion To Electronic Books

this image isn't mine

I'm sure the picture above needs no explanation to you as the Amazon Kindle. However I would need to mention to you that I won a free one as part of a school art contest, and I spent pretty much all of yesterday reading my first book on it (a good one too, Carnegie-shortlisted My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher, about a boy coping five years after his sister's death). Previously I'd never got the point of the advertising slogans "Lighter than a paperback" (who cares? Paperbacks aren't exactly ten-ton weights) and "Can carry thousands of books" (why would you need to have that many books on you?), but now I see that's not really the point. What is the point is the new generation way of reading, where you press a button to turn a page rather than going through the ordeal of lifting one (OK, a little hyperbole there) and the thrilling, never-disappearing novelty of simply touching a word to have it immediately defined. And there's the excitement of buying your whole bookshelf in one go - next on my list is the Australian outback-set growing-up tale Everybody Jam by Ali Lewis.

- DP :)

P.S. On a similar literary theme, I recently entered a short story competition for 500 word yarns starting with the line "Dad was flabbergasted when I told him the news". The prize is a collection of books and online publication, but we're not allowed to publish entries elsewhere until the winner is announced. So you'll have to wait a month for mine. Sorry about that.

My First Go At Being Behind The Counter

The title of this post suggests that I've signed up for an after-school shopkeeping job, so I'll put your minds at rest by saying that all I'm doing is a small-scale tombola with 4 friends. Still exciting and definitely blog-worthy, though. Particularly when you're designing and making the tombola itself and also contributing to toy sales and craft sales (see my gorgeous little knitted blue mouse below). I've always wanted to participate in the organization of charity sales like this (if you're wondering about the charity, it's DEBRA, a charity dealing with EB or butterfly skin, a rare condition where the skin can blister or even cut at the slightest touch), and I honestly can't wait to see people buy/win stuff that I donated, even if it is a little saddening at first losing them. Anyway, it's a week on Monday (9th July) so I guess all that's left to do is decorate the tombola...

My homemade tombola

- DP :)

The fore-mentioned blue mouse (sooo cute, though I say so myself)