If you've enjoyed dropping by and reading this blog, you may like to know that my new blog, NOT The Berwickshire Advertiser, is now up and running. It is both homage to, and a fond dig at, the naffness of local press.
I'd love to see you there!
Chastity x
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Saturday, 9 October 2010
The Final Curtain
Every blog, I feel, has a shelf life creeping towards the 'EVERYTHING MUST GO!' basket found at the end of each aisle of experience. That was then, this is now, and sadly now has become a bit over-committed; a bit too chuffing busy, if you will.
New creative opportunities flirt with my attention, throwing it come-hither glances, and I've always found it difficult to say 'no' to the original, the novel, and the downright mind-bendingly stupid. Time to stop being coy and rip open my bodice and welcome in these punters of creativity with nothing but my wits for protection. (Witless costs extra.)
Many thanks to all you lovely readers who've popped by to say hello and indulged my blethering over the past year or so with your kind words *furious blush*.
And best wishes to all those brave, struggling am-drammers out there dodging the buns and the boos.
Break a leg!
Chastity x
Thursday, 9 September 2010
A Question of Scale
I was going to start this post by declaring last Friday night's tumble from my heels and consequent broken foot an act of God. I thought this would appear frightfully à la mode, what with the Hawking and Dawkins tag team seizing control of the creationist ring.
You see, as I crumpled elegantly into the footwell of my Megane Scenic while a universe of hot, white pain exploded from the rough edge where physics meets biology in a singular, spectacular event of over-supination in three-and-a-half inch heels and expanded inexorably outwards sending pain into the furthermost reaches of my lower leg, I couldn't help but make connections. One minute there was nothing, nada. Then a whole world of pain was born.
At first it seemed obvious to a blind man with no hands that this had to be the work of a flighty and capricious god, jealous of my shoes. But once things had settled down to a manageable throb (gladiator sandals providing broken bones and compression in a perfect act of harmony) I realised: this wasn't the work of an omnipotent deity. The closer I looked at things — and I was bent over double so I was as close as I could get before washing my foot with my tears — it was obvious I had a torsional deformation situtation. There were things like mass and height and gravity shaking down, with statistical probability loitering about like a serial killer at a crime scene.
C'mon. Gods don't trouble themselves with that kind of shit. Gods are busy. They invent people to do that sort of stuff, people like Hawking. He's not in a wheelchair by accident, y'know. If you were a god, would you want one of your best minds running away and brain-draining into Buddhism? Of course not. You'd want to keep them where you could see them.
Gods need freedom to create; liberty to conjure, to manifest. They have notoriously short attention spans. I mean, don't tell me the platypus is finished.
The god responsible for the platypus just got bored and started on the narwhal. Sure, you'll get the odd idiot-savant god who does, like, a really good line in cats, but on the whole they like to spread themselves thin. Deities simply aren't completer/finishers. If you need proof, look no further than evolution.
But gods are self-aware. That's the trouble with omniscience, see? You can't get away from anything, even yourself. They know they're crap with numbers — they always give themselves a couple of arms and legs too many for a start — so they delegate all the box ticking, the pencil counting, matters of health and safety and good workplace practice, to the scientists. And sometimes, if the geeks have tidied up the universe really well, the gods leave out something for them to, finger-quotes, discover. Nothing too big — the whiff of a Higgs Boson, a rumour of M-theory — a god's equivalent to a packet of cheese and onion crisps, basically. It's all very sweet; the scientists get to feel important but without feeling patronized.
So, as my fourth metatarsal flexed and buckled at the whim of internal and external pressures, I knew I was not dealing with a random act of a higher being, I was dealing with physics and the mundane. Blast and balls.
I love the idea of an 'act of God'. I like its inclusion on home insurance forms. What will they put instead, I wonder? Now that Hawking and Dawkins have put their money on the table definitively declaring they don't believe in fairies, a little bit of home insurance has died. An 'act of God' becomes an 'act of something-that-would've-happened-eventually-physics-permitting'.
(By the way, did I tell you I'm desperate for one of my chimneys to fall down? Y'see, as a tenant I can wave my tenancy agreement in my landlord's face as he tots up the cost to his no-claims, and say with a rich, South African accent "Diplomatic immunity!" with a cold, smug sneer, much like Joss Ackland in Lethal Weapon II.)
So anyway, my thoughts naturally turned to limescale...
The previous tenants were obviously sluts when it came to a bit of basic housework. There's a time and a place for sticky knobs, and on the cooker at Sunday lunchtime ain't one of 'em. Furthermore, the Family Flyte had been in residence a fortnight before realising that the glass in the shower cubicle wasn't frosted, but rather rendered with limescale.
But not just any limescale. This was titanium-based limescale. It was as if the water involved had spent millennia trickling over a stealth bomber. When I first took a scourer to it, the limescale laughed in my face. Laughed. The scourer disintegrated, leaving me feeling foolish and with a sense of burning revenge.
"A bottle of your finest limescale remover, good... er... woman?" I ventured to the person of indeterminate tabard in the hardware shop.
The bottles before me looked frivolous, as if the manufacturers were targeting children in an attempt to corner the market in pre-teen acid attacks. Not good enough, I thought, my limescale would gargle this stuff like Lysterine.
"Do you have anything more... pH-ey?" I looked casual, fondling the head of chicken salt-shaker.
The assistant looked me up and down, considering. I returned its gaze with my most winsome smile.
It seemed to come to a decision.
"You must tell no-one."
"Of course," I lied.
"You must take all proper safety precautions and keep it away from children."
"Of course," I lied again.
And it produced a bottle, white and unassuming, from a deep pocket in its tabard. In blue writing the bottle declared "HG Professional Limescale Remover".
Professional, eh? Let's see how how my limescale likes them ions. I crossed the assistant's paw with silver and fled.
I'm pleased to report the limescale didn't like it one bit. As soon as I'd sloshed the remover over the glass, it was if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
"Hah!" I cried triumphantly.
I felt powerful. Invincible. And in that second, in that brief history of time, I knew what it was to be a god. There in the shower, surrounded by gleaming tiles and sparkling glass, I understood that the mass-extinction of the dinosaurs could very well have been down to a god sloshing around a scale remover of its own, and that the bass-line hum scientists postulate accompanied The Big Bang was actually a god going "Hah!" as it destroyed one thing to create another, solve et coagula.
To the calcium carbonate clinging to my shower cubicle, I was an act of God.
PS: Turned out I hadn't broken my foot afterall, so this post is something of a moot point anyway. So shoot me.
You see, as I crumpled elegantly into the footwell of my Megane Scenic while a universe of hot, white pain exploded from the rough edge where physics meets biology in a singular, spectacular event of over-supination in three-and-a-half inch heels and expanded inexorably outwards sending pain into the furthermost reaches of my lower leg, I couldn't help but make connections. One minute there was nothing, nada. Then a whole world of pain was born.
At first it seemed obvious to a blind man with no hands that this had to be the work of a flighty and capricious god, jealous of my shoes. But once things had settled down to a manageable throb (gladiator sandals providing broken bones and compression in a perfect act of harmony) I realised: this wasn't the work of an omnipotent deity. The closer I looked at things — and I was bent over double so I was as close as I could get before washing my foot with my tears — it was obvious I had a torsional deformation situtation. There were things like mass and height and gravity shaking down, with statistical probability loitering about like a serial killer at a crime scene.
C'mon. Gods don't trouble themselves with that kind of shit. Gods are busy. They invent people to do that sort of stuff, people like Hawking. He's not in a wheelchair by accident, y'know. If you were a god, would you want one of your best minds running away and brain-draining into Buddhism? Of course not. You'd want to keep them where you could see them.
Gods need freedom to create; liberty to conjure, to manifest. They have notoriously short attention spans. I mean, don't tell me the platypus is finished.
The god responsible for the platypus just got bored and started on the narwhal. Sure, you'll get the odd idiot-savant god who does, like, a really good line in cats, but on the whole they like to spread themselves thin. Deities simply aren't completer/finishers. If you need proof, look no further than evolution.
But gods are self-aware. That's the trouble with omniscience, see? You can't get away from anything, even yourself. They know they're crap with numbers — they always give themselves a couple of arms and legs too many for a start — so they delegate all the box ticking, the pencil counting, matters of health and safety and good workplace practice, to the scientists. And sometimes, if the geeks have tidied up the universe really well, the gods leave out something for them to, finger-quotes, discover. Nothing too big — the whiff of a Higgs Boson, a rumour of M-theory — a god's equivalent to a packet of cheese and onion crisps, basically. It's all very sweet; the scientists get to feel important but without feeling patronized.
So, as my fourth metatarsal flexed and buckled at the whim of internal and external pressures, I knew I was not dealing with a random act of a higher being, I was dealing with physics and the mundane. Blast and balls.
I love the idea of an 'act of God'. I like its inclusion on home insurance forms. What will they put instead, I wonder? Now that Hawking and Dawkins have put their money on the table definitively declaring they don't believe in fairies, a little bit of home insurance has died. An 'act of God' becomes an 'act of something-that-would've-happened-eventually-physics-permitting'.
(By the way, did I tell you I'm desperate for one of my chimneys to fall down? Y'see, as a tenant I can wave my tenancy agreement in my landlord's face as he tots up the cost to his no-claims, and say with a rich, South African accent "Diplomatic immunity!" with a cold, smug sneer, much like Joss Ackland in Lethal Weapon II.)
So anyway, my thoughts naturally turned to limescale...
The previous tenants were obviously sluts when it came to a bit of basic housework. There's a time and a place for sticky knobs, and on the cooker at Sunday lunchtime ain't one of 'em. Furthermore, the Family Flyte had been in residence a fortnight before realising that the glass in the shower cubicle wasn't frosted, but rather rendered with limescale.
But not just any limescale. This was titanium-based limescale. It was as if the water involved had spent millennia trickling over a stealth bomber. When I first took a scourer to it, the limescale laughed in my face. Laughed. The scourer disintegrated, leaving me feeling foolish and with a sense of burning revenge.
"A bottle of your finest limescale remover, good... er... woman?" I ventured to the person of indeterminate tabard in the hardware shop.
The bottles before me looked frivolous, as if the manufacturers were targeting children in an attempt to corner the market in pre-teen acid attacks. Not good enough, I thought, my limescale would gargle this stuff like Lysterine.
"Do you have anything more... pH-ey?" I looked casual, fondling the head of chicken salt-shaker.
The assistant looked me up and down, considering. I returned its gaze with my most winsome smile.
It seemed to come to a decision.
"You must tell no-one."
"Of course," I lied.
"You must take all proper safety precautions and keep it away from children."
"Of course," I lied again.
And it produced a bottle, white and unassuming, from a deep pocket in its tabard. In blue writing the bottle declared "HG Professional Limescale Remover".
Professional, eh? Let's see how how my limescale likes them ions. I crossed the assistant's paw with silver and fled.
I'm pleased to report the limescale didn't like it one bit. As soon as I'd sloshed the remover over the glass, it was if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
"Hah!" I cried triumphantly.
I felt powerful. Invincible. And in that second, in that brief history of time, I knew what it was to be a god. There in the shower, surrounded by gleaming tiles and sparkling glass, I understood that the mass-extinction of the dinosaurs could very well have been down to a god sloshing around a scale remover of its own, and that the bass-line hum scientists postulate accompanied The Big Bang was actually a god going "Hah!" as it destroyed one thing to create another, solve et coagula.
To the calcium carbonate clinging to my shower cubicle, I was an act of God.
PS: Turned out I hadn't broken my foot afterall, so this post is something of a moot point anyway. So shoot me.
Friday, 6 August 2010
A Brief Encounter
So, continuing with the ageing theme:
As I sat on the loo at a motorway service station this week, three things occurred to me.
1. The poster on the back of the cubicle door. It baldly stated that "an urgent need to empty your bladder is not an inevitable part of ageing" and signed off with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, "help is closer than you think". I felt the last part lazy, as if the copywriter was trying for a snappy finish but with complete disregard for his poster's ultimate destination. When I entered the cubicle I was fairly confident there would be a lavatory. So help was not closer than I thought, it was exactly where I expected. And indeed, if help had been any closer, I wouldn't have been able to open the door.
2. The Dyson Airblade is so stunningly beautiful in its simplicity I could cry.
3. I really am too old to wear polka dot knickers.
This last one's been creeping up on me for a while like a wedgie, bringing with it a similar sense of undergarment unease. Every time I wear a pair I feel that somehow my spot-swaddled arse is being age-inappropriate. A Woman of a Certain Age Wearing Polka Dot Knickers lies within the cold, dark, outer reaches of the clothes-swap universe, wobbling a sheepish orbit around a Toddler Clumping About in Mum's High Heels sun.
I look ridiculous. For one thing the spots aren't small or discreet, dusting my bottom buns with fun yet tastefully restrained hundreds and thousands. Nuh-uh. These spots are black, and the size — and I know because I've measured them — of the nail on my index finger. The background is a bright, brilliant white, the sort of white you only ever see when a portal opens into the afterlife.
The overall effect is of a bum covered in impetigo stapled to a body that's run in the wash. Plague-chic, I like to call it.
So why wear them?
Essentially to get my money's worth, and in a stubborn and admittedly confused act of defiance against Marks & Spencer's nefarious multi-pack undercrackers policy.
Ladies, you know what I'm talking about. In every multi-pack of M & S undies, there's a rogue pair, an agent provocateur. It's brief, if you will, is to look as ugly as possible; to have an appearance so hideous that any self-respecting woman would immediately thrust it in a drawer with all those other manky undies — y'know, the lifers. Grey, broken and deformed, they spray elastic threads of floppy pubic hair as if through a life-time of service they've taken on aspects of their host like the alien in John Carpenter's The Thing, reasoning they might be less likely to end up ripped and polishing windows if they can engender recognition and establish a rapport.
Marks & Sparks have ensured that the results of this instantaneous knicker decommissioning are two-fold.
1. The woman has to buy replacements before she's even worn any pairs from her multi-pack, because now she hasn't got five, she's got four and while five may have seen her between wash loads, four sure as shit won't. So now she's in a quandary. Okay, she could buy another multi-pack, but taking into consideration the further decommissioning necessary from that pack, she's straying into the realm of diminishing returns, and as a canny shopper (illustrated by the fact that she's buying multi-packs) she's reluctant to take that path.
So, our shopper looks for a single pair to add to her five (which she understands implicitly is really four) giving her a grand total of six (five) which should see her right 'til wash day.
But buying a single pair of knickers means stepping outside the circle of safety, leaving behind the security of multi-packs and all she knows gusset-wise to face the very real danger of knickers on hangers.
When Blake wrote about tigers, he couldn't know how his words would go on to equally extol the terrible beauty of The Knicker on a Hanger.
What with their 'touch me!' fabric, 'no VPL!' promises, and seam-free seductiveness, a woman could lose her head and all besides down amongst those silken aisles of rose pink and ivory loveliness. With such scraps of gossamer perfection at her disposal, a woman could almost believe that varied and inventive sex could happen to her!
(As an aside, Knickers on Hangers are obviously designed by women, whereas I suspect multi-pack knickers are designed by men. Multi-pants often have a seam running from front to back. Now, seeing as sitting on a strand of barbed wire isn't something most ladies volunteer for — we're hardly going to add to an already packed curriculum of periods, childbirth, episiotomies, prolapses, DP and sex with horses afterall — and seeing as we all know men think women keep their most precious and sensitive nerve endings in a little Paperchase bag tied to their bra with ribbon, it's not too much of a stretch imagining men couldn't see the harm in expecting a bird's privates to straddle the poly-cotton equivalent of the Great Wall of China.)
Naturally our shopper, overwhelmed by acute Knicker-on-Hanger brainitis, now feverishly believes lingerie could become a lifestyle choice, blows her budget by buying half-a-dozen pairs, unwittingly contributes to the credit crunch, causing banks to crumble and sparking home repossessions right around the globe.
And all the while Marks & Spencer chuckles throatily into its dividends and instructs its sweatshops to churn out an even greater number of pig-ugly multi-pants with polka dots.
So, we've established that Marks & Spencer's primary reason for this shameless multi-pack knicker rigging is financial.
2. The second reason is chastisement. The runt in the the undercracker litter has been bred specifically as a corrective tool.
"Sure," says Markies. "You can be economy-minded and buy a multi-pack, but it comes at a price and polka dots is where you start paying. If you must persist in your foolish quest for thrift management, we will break your spirit with the application of small bows attached to your knickers like injured craneflies. We own you, and any knicker-buying autonomy you lay claim to is nothing more than a carefully constructed DELUSION. Like The Matrix, but with less martial arts and cool stuff."
Here I am then, in my polka dot shorties.
I will not be broken, dammit. Y'hear me, Markies? I will not be broken!
As I sat on the loo at a motorway service station this week, three things occurred to me.
1. The poster on the back of the cubicle door. It baldly stated that "an urgent need to empty your bladder is not an inevitable part of ageing" and signed off with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, "help is closer than you think". I felt the last part lazy, as if the copywriter was trying for a snappy finish but with complete disregard for his poster's ultimate destination. When I entered the cubicle I was fairly confident there would be a lavatory. So help was not closer than I thought, it was exactly where I expected. And indeed, if help had been any closer, I wouldn't have been able to open the door.
2. The Dyson Airblade is so stunningly beautiful in its simplicity I could cry.
3. I really am too old to wear polka dot knickers.
This last one's been creeping up on me for a while like a wedgie, bringing with it a similar sense of undergarment unease. Every time I wear a pair I feel that somehow my spot-swaddled arse is being age-inappropriate. A Woman of a Certain Age Wearing Polka Dot Knickers lies within the cold, dark, outer reaches of the clothes-swap universe, wobbling a sheepish orbit around a Toddler Clumping About in Mum's High Heels sun.
I look ridiculous. For one thing the spots aren't small or discreet, dusting my bottom buns with fun yet tastefully restrained hundreds and thousands. Nuh-uh. These spots are black, and the size — and I know because I've measured them — of the nail on my index finger. The background is a bright, brilliant white, the sort of white you only ever see when a portal opens into the afterlife.
The overall effect is of a bum covered in impetigo stapled to a body that's run in the wash. Plague-chic, I like to call it.
So why wear them?
Essentially to get my money's worth, and in a stubborn and admittedly confused act of defiance against Marks & Spencer's nefarious multi-pack undercrackers policy.
Ladies, you know what I'm talking about. In every multi-pack of M & S undies, there's a rogue pair, an agent provocateur. It's brief, if you will, is to look as ugly as possible; to have an appearance so hideous that any self-respecting woman would immediately thrust it in a drawer with all those other manky undies — y'know, the lifers. Grey, broken and deformed, they spray elastic threads of floppy pubic hair as if through a life-time of service they've taken on aspects of their host like the alien in John Carpenter's The Thing, reasoning they might be less likely to end up ripped and polishing windows if they can engender recognition and establish a rapport.
Marks & Sparks have ensured that the results of this instantaneous knicker decommissioning are two-fold.
1. The woman has to buy replacements before she's even worn any pairs from her multi-pack, because now she hasn't got five, she's got four and while five may have seen her between wash loads, four sure as shit won't. So now she's in a quandary. Okay, she could buy another multi-pack, but taking into consideration the further decommissioning necessary from that pack, she's straying into the realm of diminishing returns, and as a canny shopper (illustrated by the fact that she's buying multi-packs) she's reluctant to take that path.
So, our shopper looks for a single pair to add to her five (which she understands implicitly is really four) giving her a grand total of six (five) which should see her right 'til wash day.
But buying a single pair of knickers means stepping outside the circle of safety, leaving behind the security of multi-packs and all she knows gusset-wise to face the very real danger of knickers on hangers.
When Blake wrote about tigers, he couldn't know how his words would go on to equally extol the terrible beauty of The Knicker on a Hanger.
"What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
What with their 'touch me!' fabric, 'no VPL!' promises, and seam-free seductiveness, a woman could lose her head and all besides down amongst those silken aisles of rose pink and ivory loveliness. With such scraps of gossamer perfection at her disposal, a woman could almost believe that varied and inventive sex could happen to her!
Naturally our shopper, overwhelmed by acute Knicker-on-Hanger brainitis, now feverishly believes lingerie could become a lifestyle choice, blows her budget by buying half-a-dozen pairs, unwittingly contributes to the credit crunch, causing banks to crumble and sparking home repossessions right around the globe.
And all the while Marks & Spencer chuckles throatily into its dividends and instructs its sweatshops to churn out an even greater number of pig-ugly multi-pants with polka dots.
So, we've established that Marks & Spencer's primary reason for this shameless multi-pack knicker rigging is financial.
2. The second reason is chastisement. The runt in the the undercracker litter has been bred specifically as a corrective tool.
"Sure," says Markies. "You can be economy-minded and buy a multi-pack, but it comes at a price and polka dots is where you start paying. If you must persist in your foolish quest for thrift management, we will break your spirit with the application of small bows attached to your knickers like injured craneflies. We own you, and any knicker-buying autonomy you lay claim to is nothing more than a carefully constructed DELUSION. Like The Matrix, but with less martial arts and cool stuff."
Here I am then, in my polka dot shorties.
I will not be broken, dammit. Y'hear me, Markies? I will not be broken!
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Death Be Not Loud
If Death had a theme tune, somewhere in his sexy electro-funk-with-ear-bleeding-bass mix would be either/all of the below:
What you wouldn't find, though, is the sound of a dry cough. Because that, my friends, just ain't sexy enough. It lacks obvious dazzle. It lacks essential, ahem, soul. But I think Death would be a fool to pass over this most modest of percussion and solely rely on a thumping bass to attract drivers of white Peugeot 205s. For nothing signposts the slip road off the Motorway of Life quite like a nasty tickle — tight bends and testosterone notwithstanding.
Like any rigorous social commentator, I base my reasoning on a) observation, and b) personal prejudice.
There I was, last Saturday night, all set for 'The Importance of Being Oscar'.
I'd wined. I'd dined. When I entered the theatre I was feeling mellow, generously disposed and, quite frankly, just a little bit pissed.
As El Hombre, Miss Havisham and I took our seats we passed comment about the audience size — small. This initially surprised us, seeing how well-received '...Oscar' had been elsewhere, but then we assumed with the holiday season in full swing audiences were bound to be un peu patchy. Also we noticed that the demographic was... Well, let's just say 'susceptible to draughts'.
The play got off to a good start. Great scenery, clever use of space and movement, and then...
cuh
from behind my left shoulder. Just the one, small and soft. Apologetic. But then...
cuh cuh cuh cuh cuh
Fair enough, I thought, a peanut's gone down the wrong way, it happens to us all. Then, just as Alistair Whatley was getting into his stride as Wilde,
cuh cuh cuh cuh cuh cuh
It wasn't even a proper cough — y'know, a phlegmy lung-buster that rips its way up the trachea, showing no mercy, taking everything with it. No. This was the dry cough of somebody undergoing the merciless cellular degeneration of ageing; a cough completely devoid of moisture, as if the body was preparing for the greater desiccation shortly to come.
The cough couldn't even escape the chest by itself. It had to have a leg-up from the diaphragm, then use the larynx as a grab rail to heave itself up against the soft palate and catch its breath. Then it tottered over the tongue and fell out.
It was a cough that should've been in a home or, at the very least, sheltered accommodation.
Now coughs are nothing if not social. Like small children, they make friends easily. Soon the auditorium was peppered with the staccato sound of expectoration mingling and generally having a good time.
But of course coughing and theatre-going can be a tricky balancing act. My advice to the rib-racking novice is to copy these savvy splutterers, and wait for a lull in the dialogue. Thus it's possible to choke at leisure without missing a word. Because, be honest, the intensity of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and the poignancy of 'De Profundis' don't actually need any silence or well-placed pauses to distil our emotions in a suspension of time. Coughers provide aural VFM, filling the gaps when the actors can't be bothered.
El Hombre was particularly fortunate in that he was sitting next to a gentleman who, while inflicted with the furtive cough of a suspect sheep, at least tried to do something about it. Oh, yes. He had the decency to whip out his inhaler and pull himself a lungful or two of Albuterol right there and then in the middle of 'Dorian Gray'.
Crikey. It was if the entire audience was drowning in accumulated years. It beggared belief. And don't get me started about the woman to Miss Havisham's right who spent the play's duration going through her handbag like a fox through rubbish.
Or the woman back and over to my left whose sciatica was playing up so bad that she was in danger of rubbing her thigh alight. (And I'm telling you, with those polyester slacks — whoosh! — she would've gone up like a Roman candle.)
No doubt one day I'll feel the inexorable pull of a Soothers lozenge myself. When that time comes I plan to seek my entertainment at home, with my many cats and several DVD box-sets of House. Then when Death eventually comes calling I'll criticise his taste in music and offer him a spin in a Peugeot 205.
- the lone toll of a bell
- the quavering hoot of an owl
- the croak of a raven
- the ripple of ascending harp strings.
What you wouldn't find, though, is the sound of a dry cough. Because that, my friends, just ain't sexy enough. It lacks obvious dazzle. It lacks essential, ahem, soul. But I think Death would be a fool to pass over this most modest of percussion and solely rely on a thumping bass to attract drivers of white Peugeot 205s. For nothing signposts the slip road off the Motorway of Life quite like a nasty tickle — tight bends and testosterone notwithstanding.
Like any rigorous social commentator, I base my reasoning on a) observation, and b) personal prejudice.
There I was, last Saturday night, all set for 'The Importance of Being Oscar'.
I'd wined. I'd dined. When I entered the theatre I was feeling mellow, generously disposed and, quite frankly, just a little bit pissed.
As El Hombre, Miss Havisham and I took our seats we passed comment about the audience size — small. This initially surprised us, seeing how well-received '...Oscar' had been elsewhere, but then we assumed with the holiday season in full swing audiences were bound to be un peu patchy. Also we noticed that the demographic was... Well, let's just say 'susceptible to draughts'.
The play got off to a good start. Great scenery, clever use of space and movement, and then...
cuh
from behind my left shoulder. Just the one, small and soft. Apologetic. But then...
cuh cuh cuh cuh cuh
Fair enough, I thought, a peanut's gone down the wrong way, it happens to us all. Then, just as Alistair Whatley was getting into his stride as Wilde,
cuh cuh cuh cuh cuh cuh
It wasn't even a proper cough — y'know, a phlegmy lung-buster that rips its way up the trachea, showing no mercy, taking everything with it. No. This was the dry cough of somebody undergoing the merciless cellular degeneration of ageing; a cough completely devoid of moisture, as if the body was preparing for the greater desiccation shortly to come.
The cough couldn't even escape the chest by itself. It had to have a leg-up from the diaphragm, then use the larynx as a grab rail to heave itself up against the soft palate and catch its breath. Then it tottered over the tongue and fell out.
It was a cough that should've been in a home or, at the very least, sheltered accommodation.
Now coughs are nothing if not social. Like small children, they make friends easily. Soon the auditorium was peppered with the staccato sound of expectoration mingling and generally having a good time.
But of course coughing and theatre-going can be a tricky balancing act. My advice to the rib-racking novice is to copy these savvy splutterers, and wait for a lull in the dialogue. Thus it's possible to choke at leisure without missing a word. Because, be honest, the intensity of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and the poignancy of 'De Profundis' don't actually need any silence or well-placed pauses to distil our emotions in a suspension of time. Coughers provide aural VFM, filling the gaps when the actors can't be bothered.
El Hombre was particularly fortunate in that he was sitting next to a gentleman who, while inflicted with the furtive cough of a suspect sheep, at least tried to do something about it. Oh, yes. He had the decency to whip out his inhaler and pull himself a lungful or two of Albuterol right there and then in the middle of 'Dorian Gray'.
Crikey. It was if the entire audience was drowning in accumulated years. It beggared belief. And don't get me started about the woman to Miss Havisham's right who spent the play's duration going through her handbag like a fox through rubbish.
Or the woman back and over to my left whose sciatica was playing up so bad that she was in danger of rubbing her thigh alight. (And I'm telling you, with those polyester slacks — whoosh! — she would've gone up like a Roman candle.)
No doubt one day I'll feel the inexorable pull of a Soothers lozenge myself. When that time comes I plan to seek my entertainment at home, with my many cats and several DVD box-sets of House. Then when Death eventually comes calling I'll criticise his taste in music and offer him a spin in a Peugeot 205.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Variety is Indeed Spicy
Woo-hoo! Just when I thought he could do no more to impress me, just when I thought my ardour was cooling to the listeriotic temperature of an egg sandwich in a Tupperware box, The Milester has picked my expectations up, spun them around, then set them down to totter into the furniture stoned and giggling like a pack of teenage hyenas toking on a bong.
You are, I am sure, agog. On tenter-hooks. Clenching buttocks in an agony of anticipation.
Calm yourself, my lovelies, for we've a lot to get through first.
Cast your minds back a few weeks to when I'd been asked to review a burlesque show down at The Stage Door Bar at The Maltings Theatre in Berwick. I commented on my bafflement at the burlesque resurgence. As one of my male correspondents put it:
Things I will happily pay for:
Things I will not happily pay for:
The same male correspondent stated what a lot of women feel about burlesque:
Expedient, isn't it, to label someone an uptight prude when they don't go along with a whooping crowd? Things are allowed to continue, a tedious status-quo maintained, because no-one likes to be labelled a stick-in-the-mud. But none of the women I spoke to looked as if her chastity belt was chafing, or that her gusset contained nothing more than tumbleweeds and a lone, howling coyote. They were simply women who liked their entertainment to be inclusive... And with cake, obviously.
However. I've also heard from a number of gals who've attended burlesque workshops and had a whale of a time. Sensible, sane women, holding down jobs, raising families — even voting, for God's sake — and who were probably, in a previous life, fully fledged bra arsonists.
Welcome to Camp Empowerment, pitching their tent a spit and a hop away from Camp Exploitation.
Well, with such disparity of views I needed to go all Nancy Drew; I needed to get inside. What could give me more insight into burlesque than attending a workshop myself; than learning how to twirl and tease with the rest of 'em? Thus equipped, I could review the show from a place of lofty wisdom.
But bugger and bollocks, if I didn't get a ticket in time. It seemed burlesque fever had swept through Berwick like a police ARV through Rothbury and lo, there was no room in the giant champagne glass. However, occasionally the universe turns an administrative cock-up into an opportunity, and a few emails later I found myself on a Sunday evening, in full evening dress and boa, compering the show itself.
What larks, ladies and gents! What larks!
Performing on a stage with less surface area than my stretchmarks, Miss Annabel Amaze and her colleagues Sarah, Chris, Sabor Latino, and The Mamatones, wiggled, flirted, gyrated, played, salsa'd, belly danced, sang and body-popped their way through a cabaret that for me captured the true spirit of burlesque — fun, warmth and most of all humour.
Simply by adding the element of humour, it no longer felt a 'men only' variety act. Chatting to performers and workshop participants after the show, I began to understand the enjoyment this type of burlesque offers — a simple celebration of femininity at a time in which, historically, a woman's identity has never been so fragmented by the need to perform so many roles.
The girls, it would seem, really were doing it for themselves.
Check-out the wonderful Anna Fur Laxis* on YouTube.
Of course, this will not stop me getting a face like a cat's arse should a pole-dancer so much as think of grinding in my direction. Let my pennant fly proud over Camp Exploitation...
Moving on then. (Some of you might want to stop reading now, I know how exhausting I can be. Others might like to put the kettle on.)
So, already Miles has got a smiley face from me on his Wall-Chart of Good Behaviour for supporting Sarah Riseborough and Anne Kingston in their endeavours to bring burlesque to Berwick.
The Maltings Theatre has a gem of a Youth Theatre Leader in Wendy Payn, who managed to marshall the marauding hordes of The Maltings Junior Youth Theatre long enough to put on an excellent production of 'Wind in The Willows' last week. How she does this without employing techniques banned by the Geneva Convention is beyond me... Or maybe she does employ them, who knows? The end justifies the means, as someone-with-kids-who-never-leaves-the-house-without-Haribos once said.
Now. Children's theatre. There are limits aren't there, y'know, as to what I can and can't review? And more importantly, how I review it? Because children are fragile and precious objects made of very, very thin glass that should ideally be kept on a high shelf and just brought out for special occasions. So within those parameters of understanding, I shall press on and say how much I adored 13-year-old Daniel Howlett and Dexter Keenan as Badger and Ratty respectively.
Watching Daniel was like watching 'Stephen Fry — The Early Years'. Avuncular, measured, with a wonderful twinkle in his eye — his future as an after-dinner raconteur is assured. And then there was Dexter, who also had a presence on stage way above his years. He delivered his lines in the clipped fashion of an actor from the black and white film era, and thus his Ratty became a house-proud Kenneth More. I couldn't take my eyes off him because he was so good at reacting even when he wasn't directly involved with dialogue. Very impressive.
Am I allowed to say Most Beautiful was dazzlingly brilliant? No? Thought not. (She was).
This weekend El Hombre, Miss Havisham and I are off to see The Original Theatre Company's production of Micheál MacLiámmóir's one-man show The Importance of Being Oscar, starring Alastair Whatley in the title role. Being wild about Wilde, I'm very excited about this, coming as it does so hot on the heels of the superlative Morecambe at the end of May.
Behold! Two smiley faces on The Milester's wall-chart!
But I STILL haven't got to the part that'll expand your mind so much your brains will have nowhere else to go but out of your ears.
Are you ready?
You are, I am sure, agog. On tenter-hooks. Clenching buttocks in an agony of anticipation.
Calm yourself, my lovelies, for we've a lot to get through first.
Cast your minds back a few weeks to when I'd been asked to review a burlesque show down at The Stage Door Bar at The Maltings Theatre in Berwick. I commented on my bafflement at the burlesque resurgence. As one of my male correspondents put it:
"Since the advent of freely available hardcore superporn
it all seems very tame. Strip clubs seem to be a
permanent feature of many men's friday nights nowadays
and so I think the naked genie is out of the bottle.
It seems a little futile to me to try and regain some
of the innocent mystique of 1920s vaudeville and burlesque."
He, like most people, saw the purpose of burlesque as being one of male titillation. My research seemed to uphold this view, and I sobbed further into my Marks & Sparks wobble warmers upon learning that the Pussycat Dolls claim burlesque has had a big influence on their act.
Really?
And again, really? Are they sure, do they not want to go back and check? Suspenders and corsets aside, I fear the Catty Skanks have missed the point of burlesque entirely, for how else could subtle, flirty wiggles transmogrify into something akin to a gynae exam set to music? Oh sure, Catty Skanks, you're hotter than his girlfriend, but only because you're burning up with disease.
Even the sainted Dita Von Teese, standard-bearer of New Burlesque, I find disappointing. I sat through her videos drumming my fingers with boredom, just waiting for the inevitable boob reveal so I could get on with seductively pushing the Dyson around. There's no escaping the fact that Dita's act primarily targets men, ergo, it's of no interest to me whatseover.
A Pussycat Doll checking
her cervix is still where she left it
And again, really? Are they sure, do they not want to go back and check? Suspenders and corsets aside, I fear the Catty Skanks have missed the point of burlesque entirely, for how else could subtle, flirty wiggles transmogrify into something akin to a gynae exam set to music? Oh sure, Catty Skanks, you're hotter than his girlfriend, but only because you're burning up with disease.
Even the sainted Dita Von Teese, standard-bearer of New Burlesque, I find disappointing. I sat through her videos drumming my fingers with boredom, just waiting for the inevitable boob reveal so I could get on with seductively pushing the Dyson around. There's no escaping the fact that Dita's act primarily targets men, ergo, it's of no interest to me whatseover.
Things I will happily pay for:
- age-defying beauty products
- cake
- the assassination of anyone naming their kids after a football player.
Things I will not happily pay for:
- watching a woman get her kit off and twirl last year's Christmas decos from her nipples.
The same male correspondent stated what a lot of women feel about burlesque:
"I'd feel like I HAD to look like I was enjoying it,
even if I thought it was a bit shit."
However. I've also heard from a number of gals who've attended burlesque workshops and had a whale of a time. Sensible, sane women, holding down jobs, raising families — even voting, for God's sake — and who were probably, in a previous life, fully fledged bra arsonists.
"It seems it should feel wrong, against feminism,
but it feels right, it does not feel lewd."
Well, with such disparity of views I needed to go all Nancy Drew; I needed to get inside. What could give me more insight into burlesque than attending a workshop myself; than learning how to twirl and tease with the rest of 'em? Thus equipped, I could review the show from a place of lofty wisdom.
But bugger and bollocks, if I didn't get a ticket in time. It seemed burlesque fever had swept through Berwick like a police ARV through Rothbury and lo, there was no room in the giant champagne glass. However, occasionally the universe turns an administrative cock-up into an opportunity, and a few emails later I found myself on a Sunday evening, in full evening dress and boa, compering the show itself.
What larks, ladies and gents! What larks!
Performing on a stage with less surface area than my stretchmarks, Miss Annabel Amaze and her colleagues Sarah, Chris, Sabor Latino, and The Mamatones, wiggled, flirted, gyrated, played, salsa'd, belly danced, sang and body-popped their way through a cabaret that for me captured the true spirit of burlesque — fun, warmth and most of all humour.
Simply by adding the element of humour, it no longer felt a 'men only' variety act. Chatting to performers and workshop participants after the show, I began to understand the enjoyment this type of burlesque offers — a simple celebration of femininity at a time in which, historically, a woman's identity has never been so fragmented by the need to perform so many roles.
The girls, it would seem, really were doing it for themselves.
Check-out the wonderful Anna Fur Laxis* on YouTube.
Of course, this will not stop me getting a face like a cat's arse should a pole-dancer so much as think of grinding in my direction. Let my pennant fly proud over Camp Exploitation...
Moving on then. (Some of you might want to stop reading now, I know how exhausting I can be. Others might like to put the kettle on.)
So, already Miles has got a smiley face from me on his Wall-Chart of Good Behaviour for supporting Sarah Riseborough and Anne Kingston in their endeavours to bring burlesque to Berwick.
The Maltings Theatre has a gem of a Youth Theatre Leader in Wendy Payn, who managed to marshall the marauding hordes of The Maltings Junior Youth Theatre long enough to put on an excellent production of 'Wind in The Willows' last week. How she does this without employing techniques banned by the Geneva Convention is beyond me... Or maybe she does employ them, who knows? The end justifies the means, as someone-with-kids-who-never-leaves-the-house-without-Haribos once said.
Now. Children's theatre. There are limits aren't there, y'know, as to what I can and can't review? And more importantly, how I review it? Because children are fragile and precious objects made of very, very thin glass that should ideally be kept on a high shelf and just brought out for special occasions. So within those parameters of understanding, I shall press on and say how much I adored 13-year-old Daniel Howlett and Dexter Keenan as Badger and Ratty respectively.
Watching Daniel was like watching 'Stephen Fry — The Early Years'. Avuncular, measured, with a wonderful twinkle in his eye — his future as an after-dinner raconteur is assured. And then there was Dexter, who also had a presence on stage way above his years. He delivered his lines in the clipped fashion of an actor from the black and white film era, and thus his Ratty became a house-proud Kenneth More. I couldn't take my eyes off him because he was so good at reacting even when he wasn't directly involved with dialogue. Very impressive.
Am I allowed to say Most Beautiful was dazzlingly brilliant? No? Thought not. (She was).
This weekend El Hombre, Miss Havisham and I are off to see The Original Theatre Company's production of Micheál MacLiámmóir's one-man show The Importance of Being Oscar, starring Alastair Whatley in the title role. Being wild about Wilde, I'm very excited about this, coming as it does so hot on the heels of the superlative Morecambe at the end of May.
Behold! Two smiley faces on The Milester's wall-chart!
x 2
But I STILL haven't got to the part that'll expand your mind so much your brains will have nowhere else to go but out of your ears.
Are you ready?
DEREK ACORAH IS COMING TO THE MALTINGS!
Everybody SQUEAL!
Yes, my friends, you hear right. Derek-FREAKIN-Acorah! A man who knows the power of a good blow-dry. A man whose psychic ability makes astrology look like nothing but made up stuff, and relegates Derren Brown to beta dog status and then rubs his nose in it!
Rest assured, this November I shall be in a front row seat waiting to see if Sam — Derek's spirit guide — has managed to hook up with any of my dead pets.
Miles Gregory, Artistic Director, you've earned yourself that many smiley faces you could cash them in for a Tonka toy.
Rest assured, this November I shall be in a front row seat waiting to see if Sam — Derek's spirit guide — has managed to hook up with any of my dead pets.
Miles Gregory, Artistic Director, you've earned yourself that many smiley faces you could cash them in for a Tonka toy.
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
When the Hurly-Burly's Done...
It occurred to me, as I gazed vacuously into space during an after-show party last weekend, that my natural inclination is to be an observer rather than an active participant. Of course I've always known this, but nothing brings your introvertedness home to you more than sitting amid a hive of people well up for getting mashed on house white and pork scratchings.
The production itself had been a long time coming, plagued as it was by bad weather, lack of drive, and a smorgasbord of underlying health problems. The whole thing had to be re-cast three times, props were last minute, publicity hard to come by. If the play had been a dog, it would've been kinder to take it out back and shoot it long before opening night. But we limped on and finally, with much pushing, panting and application of forceps, the show was born if not quite bouncing, then definitely waving triumphant arms and legs.
But within five minutes of attacking a post-curtain egg sandwich with the crust still on, a wave of exhaustion hit me. I could have chalked this down to late night rehearsals and sustaining a character only marginally brighter than a BNP supporter, but that would be disingenuous. The basic fact of the matter is this:
Over the past fortnight I've spent too long in the company of other people. I had overdosed on social interaction.
I know! I know!
Believe me, I'm not some sort of misanthropic old crone with a festering grudge against society for failing to invite me to a cruddy christening years ago. Put simply, I faced a stand-pipe crisis with regard to my own interpersonal reserves. I was having to slog down to the end of Conviviality Street in order to bring back a bucket half full of strained smiles and forced laughter to eke out until my bonhomous reservoir had time to refill.
See, some folk are people-people, others...
That's not to mean the latter are antisocial; I've touched on this before. We enjoy other people's company. It's just that rather than seeing a lot of people a lot of the time, we prefer a few people every now and again if they book in advance and then ring ahead. As far as other people are concerned, we don't give good head; we need to keep a large proportion of head-space free for ourselves.
Which is why I can find myself in the middle of a group of fantastic people telling amusing anecdotes, re-living the horror of missed cues and on-stage practical jokes, yet still crave ten golden minutes of me-time correcting the spelling of the grafitti on the back of the pub bog door.
Which is also why I find reviewing a complete delight. I can turn up incognito, melt into the darkness as the house lights dim, then lose myself in my own thoughts and a vanilla tub for the next couple of hours. If I don't find my own jokes funny, I don't have to laugh. If I find I'm telling myself the same story for the second night in a row, I can tell me to shut the boring fuck up. And if I don't like what I'm wearing I can pointedly say nothing to myself at all, but bitch about me later in the car on the way home.
This coming weekend El Hombre and I head off to the thronging lights of London, a city perfect for seekers of solitude. Now the hurly burly's done we plan to plonk ourselves, known only to each other, in the middle of Covent Garden and savour the anonymity granted by the rest of the world. We shall press the pause button on our lives and become mere observers.
Now, as it happens a bubble of serendipity floated through a window I left open somewhere. This bubble took the form of an email. Not just any email, mind. This wasn't your run-of the-mill "crack granite with your cock" email, or a "Lovely laydee, you can be helping my children by sending me your bank details, yours sincerely Ayotunde Smith" email. No, this email came high-kicking in — all feather boa and giant champagne glass — asking me to review a burlesque show.
Yes, my friends, you may well gasp with wonder. Burlesque is coming to Berwick, a town with a climate where every layer counts.
The hows and whys of the current burlesque resurgence sparked by Dita et al has been puzzling me for a while now. I have absolutely no idea how I feel about it, which is strange coming from a woman who has an opinion on everything from ankle bracelets to obesity (slaggy, and visually distressing). Does burlesque encourage yet another form of voyeurism, hiding behind the fake moustache of that false friend, female empowerment? Or is it a harmless bit of fun in fabulous undies? Who gains most from it, I wonder, the active participants or the passive observers?
So here I go. On my return I shall cast my all-seeing eye on the complicit parties of the burlesque scene. As well as talking to the performers themselves I shall be observing the observers, viewing the voyeurs.
The aptness of this state of affairs pleases me mightily.
Burlesque Cabaret in the Stage Door Bar, The Maltings Theatre, Berwick-upon-Tweed, at 6.30pm, Sun, 27th June, £5
Feeling brave? Burlesque Workshops, The Maltings Theatre, Sun, 27th June, 12.00-2.00pm; 2.30-4.30pm, £13 per workshop
Booking: 01289 330999
The production itself had been a long time coming, plagued as it was by bad weather, lack of drive, and a smorgasbord of underlying health problems. The whole thing had to be re-cast three times, props were last minute, publicity hard to come by. If the play had been a dog, it would've been kinder to take it out back and shoot it long before opening night. But we limped on and finally, with much pushing, panting and application of forceps, the show was born if not quite bouncing, then definitely waving triumphant arms and legs.
But within five minutes of attacking a post-curtain egg sandwich with the crust still on, a wave of exhaustion hit me. I could have chalked this down to late night rehearsals and sustaining a character only marginally brighter than a BNP supporter, but that would be disingenuous. The basic fact of the matter is this:
Over the past fortnight I've spent too long in the company of other people. I had overdosed on social interaction.
I know! I know!
Believe me, I'm not some sort of misanthropic old crone with a festering grudge against society for failing to invite me to a cruddy christening years ago. Put simply, I faced a stand-pipe crisis with regard to my own interpersonal reserves. I was having to slog down to the end of Conviviality Street in order to bring back a bucket half full of strained smiles and forced laughter to eke out until my bonhomous reservoir had time to refill.
See, some folk are people-people, others...
... are not.
That's not to mean the latter are antisocial; I've touched on this before. We enjoy other people's company. It's just that rather than seeing a lot of people a lot of the time, we prefer a few people every now and again if they book in advance and then ring ahead. As far as other people are concerned, we don't give good head; we need to keep a large proportion of head-space free for ourselves.
Which is why I can find myself in the middle of a group of fantastic people telling amusing anecdotes, re-living the horror of missed cues and on-stage practical jokes, yet still crave ten golden minutes of me-time correcting the spelling of the grafitti on the back of the pub bog door.
Which is also why I find reviewing a complete delight. I can turn up incognito, melt into the darkness as the house lights dim, then lose myself in my own thoughts and a vanilla tub for the next couple of hours. If I don't find my own jokes funny, I don't have to laugh. If I find I'm telling myself the same story for the second night in a row, I can tell me to shut the boring fuck up. And if I don't like what I'm wearing I can pointedly say nothing to myself at all, but bitch about me later in the car on the way home.
This coming weekend El Hombre and I head off to the thronging lights of London, a city perfect for seekers of solitude. Now the hurly burly's done we plan to plonk ourselves, known only to each other, in the middle of Covent Garden and savour the anonymity granted by the rest of the world. We shall press the pause button on our lives and become mere observers.
Now, as it happens a bubble of serendipity floated through a window I left open somewhere. This bubble took the form of an email. Not just any email, mind. This wasn't your run-of the-mill "crack granite with your cock" email, or a "Lovely laydee, you can be helping my children by sending me your bank details, yours sincerely Ayotunde Smith" email. No, this email came high-kicking in — all feather boa and giant champagne glass — asking me to review a burlesque show.
Yes, my friends, you may well gasp with wonder. Burlesque is coming to Berwick, a town with a climate where every layer counts.
The hows and whys of the current burlesque resurgence sparked by Dita et al has been puzzling me for a while now. I have absolutely no idea how I feel about it, which is strange coming from a woman who has an opinion on everything from ankle bracelets to obesity (slaggy, and visually distressing). Does burlesque encourage yet another form of voyeurism, hiding behind the fake moustache of that false friend, female empowerment? Or is it a harmless bit of fun in fabulous undies? Who gains most from it, I wonder, the active participants or the passive observers?
So here I go. On my return I shall cast my all-seeing eye on the complicit parties of the burlesque scene. As well as talking to the performers themselves I shall be observing the observers, viewing the voyeurs.
The aptness of this state of affairs pleases me mightily.
Burlesque Cabaret in the Stage Door Bar, The Maltings Theatre, Berwick-upon-Tweed, at 6.30pm, Sun, 27th June, £5
Feeling brave? Burlesque Workshops, The Maltings Theatre, Sun, 27th June, 12.00-2.00pm; 2.30-4.30pm, £13 per workshop
Booking: 01289 330999
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