Saturday 19th October 2013, day 101 - Macbeth, and a nice stroll around Downtown... not

For the first time since I've been here, I went to the cinema. Not to see a conventional film, but rather a screening of National Theatre Live: Macbeth. Until last year I had no idea that such things happened, that plays, ballets, operas and museum exhibitions were filmed and broadcast live in cinemas. I would have started going to see them years ago if I'd known. Anyway, unlike Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, I didn't know Macbeth at all, not even the basic plot, and so wouldn't be able to understand of what was going on and being said, at least not in detail. However, this performance starred the fantastic Kenneth Branagh as the title character and Alex Kingston as his Lady wife - so I had to see it.

The performance - held in a deconsecrated church in Manchester - actually took place back in July, not long after I left for Canada. I was disappointed about missing it until I found a cinema here that would be screening it. It was broadcast live to UK cinemas, but that live performance was recorded and sent around the world for international audiences to see at a later date. It was really good, I enjoyed it, and while obviously I'm not an expert in Early Modern English and all of Shakespeare's nuances, I understood what was going on in general. Kenneth Branagh was of course brilliant, as was Alex Kingston (who I've only ever watched as River Song in Doctor Who, so it was great to see her in something else, in a completely different role). The cast included a few other faces I'd seen before: John Shrapnel, Jimmy Yuill... the young man playing Prince Malcolm looked familiar and I later found out it was Alexander Vlahos, aka Mordred in the last series of Merlin. Ray Fearon's performance as Macduff was particularly impressive; his voice was just so powerful.

So yeah, that was good! I'll be going to more of those events. NT Live: Corialanus is coming soon. It's starring Tom Hiddleston :) so I might go. My debit card allows me to earn points, and a certain number of points means a free cinema ticket!

The annoying thing about my Canadian debit card, though, is that it's a bank debit card, not a Visa or MasterCard, so not everywhere accepts it. I haven't been able to use it for the few things I've tried to pay for online, including my phone bill - so I decided to go to the phone shop to do so after the cinema. (That bill is more than annoying too: I never send a text or make a call so thirty dollars every month is currently a completely unnecessary expense. It's kind of essential for job-hunting, though, and hopefully I'll use it more when I make friends, but I do wish they had pay-as-you-go here.)

I thought the phone shop was on an intersection on Granville Street. I didn't know which exact intersection, but Granville was only a few blocks away from the cinema so I thought I'd easily be able to find it. It wouldn't take long and I could go back to the house and have lunch.

Nope.

The red line on the map below is my accidental, hour-long route from the cinema to the phone shop.
The blue line is the route I should have taken, a journey of ten minutes.

Hahaha!

I laugh about it now, but it was frustrating at the time. I didn't want to hang around Downtown. I made it there eventually, though. I don't imagine I'll be forgetting that intersection again.