Our Zoo (A Review) + Some Thoughts on Juggling

Hello blog! I mean, Dear Zoo,

Well looky here. 2017. I love all 20 days of this year. It’s shaping up nicely. You know that thing where you are forever on the quest to find a TV show in the post-GOT world? A TV show where people don’t get butchered and people are happy at least sometimes. Yeah, that. Well we found one! The supremely bad news is that they only made a miserable six (six!) episodes. Ah, the mini-series.

Our Zoo, BBC drama, with absolutely exquisite period detail (helllooo 1930s, you so pretty) is about the opening of Chester Zoo and the Mottershead family who threw caution to the wind and embarked on an adventure of the most magical kind: to create a new style of zoo (cage-less) in a small village in the UK in post-war 1930s.

A few things to note: firstly, they only made one season so you will be left desperately wanting more fluffy penguins and other zoo delights. It’s unfortunate and we puzzled for some time over why it would not have been renewed. The second thing to note (and sorry, slight spoiler but worth knowing) is that this isn’t so much about Chester Zoo as it is about the opening of. In this sense it’s more of a prologue.

The cast is absolutely fault-less (including the furred variety) and the acting, pacing, story line all superb. And if you’re a sucker for details then this is the show for you. I would re-watch for the 30s clothing and ephemera, setting, accents and so on.

On juggling.

I can’t juggle. I can throw some balls in the air and catch them – mock juggling. But a real juggler would point out that there is some technical flaw that separates one act from the other. In real life I juggle all the time. I’m a working student and that is what we do. We balance a day job with assignment deadlines and readings and papers ticked off. At the moment however I’m juggling more than two balls. I’m also planning a wedding – have you ever done that? It is HARD. I hereby advise all brides present and future to get yoself a wedding planner. Sell your arm if you have to. It’d be worth it. I digress, anyway my point is that there are lots of things happening in my life this summer and so I haven’t been using this space as much as I’d like to, but I’m thinking about it.

I hope your 2017 is ACE so far.

Yours,

Amateur juggler.