Campaigns Blog

STARX'D blog - Day 7

By Zahra Akbar

Our last day of the project!

I arrived to the usual laid back late breakfast scene with everyone lazing around the table talking animatedly about something or other which I didn’t quite catch, all I noticed was the remains of the biscuits which had I arrived a few minutes earlier, wouldve gladly eaten to satisfy my grumbling stomache.

Once most had arrived that were expected we sat in our usual semi circle and started with our final round of 60 second speeches, this time it was about our experiences and opinions about the project. We were all happy to have gotten this chance to be involved in such an amazing project but most of all we were all extremely grateful and happy to have gotten to know such an amazing group of people from the youngest little upcoming poet Fatima to the oldest (not Bilal as he seemed to have stressed) amazing teacher for the day Rukaiya.

After our final speeches we’d ever make in 60 seconds in a semi circle in that particular room (hopefully), we gathered round to see the product of our hard work and sweat and toil, we gathered to see the draught of our (going to be) blockbuster, oscar nominated short film of the year ‘Rami and Jamila’! woo. The final stage of our film making was the editing, we went through the film a few times adding and deleting, copying and pasting, doing all the little bits that make it work, till finally, our film was as close to perfect as we could make it. I cant say much about my acting skills except, I don’t think I will ever make it as a professional actor, but other than that, the film was mostly how we hoped it to be. The editing took roughly two hours with a ‘healthy’ snack break in between consisting of lots and lots of ‘healthy’ packets of crisps, a lot of very nutritious chocolates and of course the classic one of your five a day coke bottles.

Once all our remaining members had arrived (Samia and Osha) who seemed to have been caught up in a variety of different activities ranging from exams to pushing stuck heads out of moving trains, we finally decided to move and head for Nando’s for a finishing party. However, before then we couldn’t possibly miss a chance for a group photo! Taken by the never satisfied MYH worker Samiya, we managed to finally achieve one photo good enough for Samiya with the help of our expert cameraman Muche. Then we were finally able to depaart to our much awaited meal at Nando’s.

Our time at Nando’s consisted of many laughs, we played truth or dare, had an extra hot chicken wing eating contest, extra extra hot chips eating contest (the food contests were just between Fatima and me), mentally scarring images while washing hands and great food. We were all dreading the time when we had to leave and go our separate ways. But alas it had to come, Bilal and Muche left and shortly after, everyone else got up to leave. BUT before then, who could resist desert! We all had to go over to the milkshake/ ice cream/ shisha café to buy ourselves milkshakes apart from me who always strives to be different and bought an ice cream instead. As the clock ticked and the day got darker and darker and the hour hand was halfway between 5 and 6, I realised I had to be getting back home and urged a few others to leave the nice warm milkshake shop to venture out into the now dark street and head back home. We said our sad goodbyes with hope that we will see each other again soon at our film screening and set off.

It was only Fatima, Samia, Suraya and I who were travelling back to catch the train, however on that day half of the jubilee line seemed to have been closed and we needed to get to Finchley road were the trains started to run. So, we had to reach the replacement bus services. Lucky for us, we had no clue where that was and ended up running up and down a street (literally, we ran up and down) only to have missed our bus and then ended up chasing the bus because it was one of those old fashioned jump on buses. Once we finally managed to jump onto the bus, we realised that we didn’t actually know which bus we had caught but thankefully it was the correct bus. Having done my exercise for the entire month, we sat back and continued our journey home after an extremely satisfying and eventful day, the last day of our awesome Star X’d project 

Go MYH!

Peace