February’s been an interesting month but it has trickled away towards the end and is now limping along like a dog who’s past its prime. This is unusual for February. Normally, being the month straight after the year’s worst and being only 28 days long, it is incapable of fizzling out and instead rushes headlong into March with a cheery whoop of impending Springtime joy.
Unfortunately not this year, or at least not for me.
I’ve noticed advertising have many funny effects on people and the way they see things - the inability of many people to say armadillo except in a west country accent and adding “soft on the outside, crunchy on the inside” being one of them. The fact that many people find it necessary to refer to toilet paper every time a a labrador has a golden puppy is another.
Some of these are funny, some are just annoying but the use of marmite as a descriptive term (adjective/adverb - I’m not hot on the difference I’m afraid) is brilliant. It’s a bit “marmite” - you either love it or you hate it - it’s pure Guinness genius.
I’d like to coin the word ”tequila” to have a meaning in language - it always seems to me that the first time anyone has a shot of tequila, their face shows their complete indecision over whether they want to grin or vomit. You’re never sure if you love it or hate it until you’ve had at least one more and perhaps several.
I decided I wanted this word this after watching an Oak Tree at Soho Theatre last week. I liked the concept and found elements of the play interesting but I have absolutely no idea if I enjoyed it or not. I was left with the desire to go again just to see if I could clarify my reaction and make some sense of it. I’m not going to go again because if it does turn out I hated it I’d be pretty out-of-pocket and I don’t know if, like tequila, it might leave me with a headache the next day.
It’s not the first time I’ve had this love it/hate it dilemma and I think a word would be useful. Probably can’t be tequila though because it’s probably impossible to counteract the automatic response of many people to follow any use of the word tequila with a chirrupy sing-song “it makes me happy” and so as a linguistic term it would be far too confusing!
It’s a dark and chilly but not actually wet evening in London. A young woman, crossing the road (the Strand if you’d like specifics) is bumped by a rude person crossing from the other direction and drops something onto the street (not sure what it was - a phone, a card case? - something metallic anyway coz it sounded metallic when it hit the road).
A young man, walking just behind the rude person bends down and picks up the metallic item and hands it back to the young woman with a dazzling and sympathetic smile. His eyes lock with the young woman’s and her face is transformed from disgruntled and slightly upset to a grateful and shy smile as she takes the metallic object and stammers her thanks.
It’s a beautiful moment.
Had I been a Hollywood executive, no doubt I would write the moment into a multi million pound movie, probably starring Jennifer Aniston and/or Ben Affleck. It would be a perfect movie full of perfect moments all resulting from a chance encounter on a busy street in rush hour.
Of course, this being real life, the young woman and young man were probably both in committed relationships and/or married and even if they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t even have the decency to fancy each other.
I don’t know that for certain because I too, was crossing the road and felt obliged to carry on walking in order not to get trampled by the many people storming with me. So for all I know these two young people might have chatted and flirted, maybe they’ve flown to Vegas and got married already.
Most probably though they carried on walking. A beautiful moment: utterly wasted on a real life situation.
I would like to award the ”Well duh!” of the day award to BBC online for a section in this article on the decline of marriages in the UK (or more specifically, the second sentence!).
In 2005 only 2.4 % of unmarried men tied the knot, down from 2.7% the previous year.
For women, the marriage rate in 2005 was also down.
What else would the women be marrying I wonder?
UPDATE: Unfair - they’ve changed the article. Guess someone spotted that the statistical analysis was a bit silly.
It wasn’t intentional but I seemed destined to watch a lot of actors in animal costumes this weekend since I took my family to see the Lion King on saturday afternoon. Apparantly the masks in the show were in part inspired by the horses’ heads in the original stage production of Equus.
That is as far as similarities go of course! The Lion King was harmless, painless (verging on mindless if I’m to be strictly accurate!) entertainment. It won’t stay with me forever but it was incredible fun and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. What I would like to remember was the minute attention to detail of the staging. It seemed that no moment was compromised for the sake of ease (or even, I’d imagine, budget) but was finely honed to create a superb visual feast.
I’m quite reluctant to write about seeing Equus on Friday night because I have a horrible feeling that my blog might be inadvertently found by teenage girls looking for wizard porn. Sad really. If this does happen - please be assured that I did not use my mobile phone to take poor quality pictures of a young boy with protruding ribs and please go away.
Right, disclaimer over with, I can begin! I bought tickets to the first preview of Equus months ago for two main reasons: 1. Because I’ve wanted to see Richard Griffiths on the stage for a while now and 2. Because I liked the idea of seeing a preview - a chance to see a play without having any preconceptions from any source, having never read the play or seen the film.
Of course, the second point was destined to fail because even at the first preview there was NO chance of seeing this particular play with no preconceptions - there’s been so much fuss about Daniel Radcliffe’s role, or rather his nudity. Knowing this much in advance I was a little surprised that there were small children sitting a few rows behind me and amazed that these children were given 50p so that they could use the little binoculars!
I was also surprised (naively perhaps) that there was a man taking photographs on a suspiciously professional looking camera. My companion, (who has worked for several years in a theatre), was furious and went to report him during the interval. Fortunately the man did not return for the second act and so missed the chance to photograph the scene he was presumably wanting to capture.
All these inconsequential matters aside, the play was amazing. If only for sheer stamina, I was impressed with both Richard Griffiths’s and Daniel Radcliffe’s performances - from the first scene they are never off stage. That alone must make the role of Alan a tough ask for an inexperienced stage actor, I imagine it would be a challenge for an old hand.
The gut-wrenching sympathy I felt for Alan, however, testifies that this was an incredible performance. Despite the almost constant identification of Daniel Radcliffe with Harry Potter, there was no-one in the boy on the stage except Alan and his tormented obsessions. His frustration, confusion and anger were overwhelming and his gradual submission to the force of Dr Dysart’s personality was as painful as it was a relief.
The feelings invoked by Richard Griffiths’s character are probably the ones that will stay with me longest however. Alan is, in the play’s own words, an “extreme” example of a mentally disturbed person but the questions raised by Dr Dysart are applicable to a much wider range of cases. He agonises over his role as “Priest to the Normal” and questions every foundation of his profession and the cause he has devoted his life to.
I agreed with the sentiment of Hesther (played by Jenny Agutter whose performance was, strangely enough, the only one that didn’t ring true for me) that for Alan there could be no choice but that Dysart ease his pain. But Griffiths’s powerfully projected anguish lives on - the question rings from the horses’ heads - even if Alan has crossed a line to the point where there is no choice but to ‘cure’ him, what does that line mean and where should it be drawn? What is “Equus” and how do we know that we are right to banish him?
During the play my emotional pull was for Alan, in my memory I will think of Dysart - to that extent at least, I think the partnership of the two performances was perfectly and poignantly balanced.
Oh, as a side-note, there was one moment when Radcliffe’s inexperience showed - his curtain call. It was quite endearing to watch him shuffle shyly onto the stage looking down at his feet but I hope he will develop more confidence for these moments - he deserves it.
I almost managed to let Valentine’s Day go without getting too infuriated by it. I suffered the bashing with bouquets on the train (they’ve just spent 50 quid on these displays of soon-to-be-dead vegetation, shouldn’t they carry them more carefully?!) and the need to avoid anything resembling a bar or restaurant, knowing they would be jammed full of couples making goo-goo eyes.
This afternoon though I tried to book a table for tomorrow night at a middle level restaurant. Since it was an early booking I was a little surprised that they were fully booked.
“Well what do you expect?” said the lady on the phone, haughtily “It is Valentine’s Week”.
NO. Na-ah. That’s not fair - it’s one DAY not a week - surely they can’t change it without warning!?!
It better not go the way of Christmas and last all month. They milk this poor excuse to get people liberating the credit cards enough already.
I just read about a woman appealing her conviction for sending photos of aborted foetuses to chemists. Forgetting the pro-life debate for a sec, how does her action make any sense? She’s targeting people who sell the morning after pill and showing them what happens when an abortion takes place. Surely, selling the morning after pill is a way to prevent an abortion later down the line?
A lot of the time when it comes to activists, it’s not their opinions that rile me so much as their complete lack of logic.
Unimaginative title but it is the name of a song I listened to last night so I have forgiven myself. Slightly less forgivable is the fact that I am about to describe the last 11 days rather than 7. Oh well.
Done a few different things recently, Cirque de Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall was absolutely gorgeous, I never knew circus routines could be quite so sophisticated. I had regretted not seeing any of their Vegas shows so I was glad to have the chance to enjoy them in London, and at half the price of Vegas tickets too. It has, however, left me with a vague hankering for the more traditional and shamelessly tacky circus I remember from when I was little. It’s a silly yearning - I’m not sure they even exist any more. And I’m not foolish enough to believe that I wouldn’t now find fault with the performances from the big top but perhaps that’s half the fun! Cirque de Soleil was so slickly flawless it was almost dull. I certainly didn’t re-experience my childish terror that the trapeze artists would fall - although I was still relieved that they put up a safety net.
Love Song was good - interesting and amusing if perhaps a little too predictable. Fast paced though, I didn’t feel any drag and didn’t feel deprived of an interval. Cillian Murphy has got to be one of only few people whose eye colour can be determined from the dress circle! On a side note, the dress circle at the Ambassadors theatre is decidedly cramped. It was lucky that most of the audience appeared to be female - most men wouldn’t have had enough leg room to get closer to their seats than a squatting position.
Woman in Black was creepily fun although perhaps after a tough working week I hadn’t loosened up enough to really get into the spirit (no pun intended, but left in nonetheless) of the thing. Several members of the audience insisted on screaming hysterically every time something creepy happened, the most annoying ones started several seconds after the dramatic moment which made it impossible to forgive. Despite them though, the play was fun. And with tickets at £10 I’m easily pleased.
Last night I celebrated Russian pancake day - highly enjoyable although I’m not sure I will recover in time to celebrate UK pancake day next week! My gracious hostess invited people to bring fillings - perhaps inevitably causing an eclectic table spread including salami, chorizo and other cold meat, four varieties of cheese, fried onion and mushroom, cheese sause with bacon and mushroom, frankfurter sausages, blueberries, melon, strawberries, grapes, dark chocolate, milk chocolate and cream.
Oh and lemon juice and sugar too, obviously. Let’s not break with tradition entirely, just because we’re a week ahead of ourselves!
Stupid white stuff’s trapped me at home. Stupid trains don’t like the snow. Neither do I. It might be pretty, it might be fun but not when it stops people getting about.
Stupid white stuff. And stupid trains. And stupid me for not being able to ski 50 miles to work.
