often seen in the street without a hat

Hello, if you are in London or Manchester, I highly, HIGHLY recommend going to see A Night on the Tiles. It is one of the most enjoyable theatre pieces I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. Scrabble! Gangsters! Devonshire Cream Teas! SCRABBLE! The actors are amazing, the words are spell-binding (PUNS ALL OVER THE PLACE!), the set is creative and intruiging, the plot is genuinely interesting and not a little worrying, I LOVED IT. (The trailer really doesn't do it justice.)

I think that most people who read my journal would also really really like it, so if you get the chance, go and see it. It's in Manchester until mid-November, and then London until the end of November. A mere tenner.

Did I mention the Scrabble?

I have been reading 101 Poems by 101 Women for several years now. Slowly. It is edited by Germaine Greer, and the poems are arranged chronologically, starting with Anne Askew in 1564. I have finally reached the 1950s, and am starting to enjoy it more. I have liked reading the earlier poems, but they tend towards the long and tortuously rhyming which is not at all my preferred style. I had not come across this poem before, and I liked it a lot, so I am posting it. It is not very short, so most of it's under a cut.

The Centaur
By May Swenson (1956)

The summer that I was ten—
Can it be there was only one
summer that I was ten? It must

have been a long one then—
each day I’d go out to choose
a fresh horse from my stable

which was a willow grove
down by the old canal.
I’d go on my two bare feet.

( The Centaur. )

I am going to see The Habit of Art with whatho next month, and I think I should try to read some Auden, and possibly also listen to some Britten. Generally I don't do any preparation for plays, I like to see if they stand alone (and also I am lazy), but somehow it seems that I might get more out of it if I knew something. I'm not sure.

I am currently roasting a chicken. I put onion and garlic and a lemon in it and everything. I'm going to have roast potatos with it, and then I'm going to make stock, and on Saturday I'm going to (try and) make risotto for the first time ever. I can't tell you how grown up I feel.

Last week I was in London seeing people, plays and museums.

( Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, St Barts Hospital Musuem. )

( Pains of Youth. )

( Mixed Up North. )

( LUSU comedy. )

( The Clink, Tower Bridge, Ripper walk. )

( Matt Tiller. )

( Simon Bird. )

( It's Debateable, Ragged School Museum. )

Also recently I had two Nicola Marlow connections that I forgot to mention. In the Royal London Hospital there is an invitation to Nelson's funeral that she could have wrapped with her other Nelson things, and one of the songs in Cymbeline is Fear No More, though I think that Dr Herrick would scarcely have approved of the new setting.

( A link and a thought about men. )

And I like this poem: pick-up lines for feminists, which I saw linked in Bitch's feminist joke contest. (Sadly they have not yet got many good comments - I think the joke about waves is particularly poor, but I do like the masturbating one.) Anyone who says this:

your feet must be tired.
because you have been
running through my
mind and struggling
against the repressive
gender roles
that we have been
socialized into
all day.

to me is pretty much guaranteed a patriarchy-subverting consensual sexual encounter of a mutually satisfying nature to be determined through a fair and transparent system of democratic decision-making.

( I went to the theatre in Manchester. )

I had an absolutely lovely weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon with terriem and felinitykat. We had accidentally, but fortuitously, timed our visit to coincide with an annual fair. So after we had visited Shakespeare's grave, walked along the picturesque river (carrying out experiments on ducks and candy floss, and learning that locals refer to the recreation ground as "the rec"), paid 50p to cross a very small stretch of river on the chain ferry (in the middle of the very small stretch of river Terrie announced that it was a very good business plan, which it probably is), and looked at posh frocks, we went on the waltzers.

This was BRILLIANT. We were the oldest by a good ten years, I'd say, and we screamed because we wanted to go faster, waved our hands in the air, were spun violently by a bored-looking man smoking a cigarette and giggled incessantly through the whole thing. We also went to the Falstaff Experience, where we peered cautiously through curtains, failed to summon the devil, learnt interesting facts and were scared by an unexpected man. At the end there was somewhere where you could buy old pennies and use them to play old slot machines. There was a scary wobbling face, various ping-type things, a fortune teller and one I loved where you used a hammer to fling the penny through the air to a wishing well. I won lots on that.

( LLL )

Our guest house was lovely, and no-one snored.

All my ebay items finished, and I am just waiting for one cheque to come in. I made £90 (though 20% of that goes to charities). The only things that didn't sell were the t-post shirts, and I was fairly sure that they wouldn't anyway. Woo! I am feeling quite bereft at no longer having anything to check on my ebay. I'm leaving the £90 in my paypal account because I just use it for ebaying anyway. Now I need to spend a few hours sorting out my Scottish Government expenses, and my departmental claims. And teaching contracts. We still don't have them yet (two weeks in...) and we don't know what the level of pay will be. And I keep forgetting that I'll be paid for the lecturing I'm doing too, though I have absolutely no idea what the going rate is for that.th

Film Festival

I saw ( Stone of Destiny. )

After a day's break I returned to see ( Dummy )(  and Love and Other Crimes. )

On Thursday I met up with debodacious and equally charming daughter, and we went to see ( A Film With Me In It. )

Friday was ( Transsiberian. )

On Saturday I saw ( Princess of Nebraska. )

Finally, I saw ( Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day )

As of this week I will be back to making as much use of my Unlimited card as possible, as there are several films that came out while I was otherwise engaged that I'm looking forward to, like Secret Agents and The Edge of Love. I also want to see Teeth, although I think I was misinformed or just overly hopeful, as I thought that a horror about vagina dentata might be quite a feminist thing, but the trailer I last saw suggests otherwise. Still, it'll be something to do, since the television continues appalling.

And now there is but a month to wait until the Fringe and the Book festivals start, and I will have to spend it trying very hard not to buy tickets for everything I want, but to wait and see. I have tickets for my main desires - Debo, Posy Simmonds, Kristin Hersh and The Globe's Romeo and Juliet in the Botanic Gardens, and for the Fringe previews.


Shakespeare

I read The Player's Boy and The Players and the Rebels as a nice break, and then I decided to read the Bill Bryson book on Shakespeare (thanks, Lizzie!) to see where Antonia Forest might have got her source material from. And Ned's dead. I didn't know, and it quite upset me. He died at 27, which is probably not much past the end of the books. I hope he was still there when Nick came back from his voyage. Apparently he's buried in Southwark Cathedral, so I might try and see it next time I'm there.

I thought about Nick quite a lot when I was watching the histories last month, as we started with Richard II and he had to decide whether to inform, and then later with his Feeble not surprising anyone that he was willing to go to war (Feeble here was played by a woman), and having to deliver the lines even after having heard Anthony Merrick say it as his neck speech. I didn't know the histories (or indeed the history) very well, so I didn't follow all of it, exactly. But it was quite great. I remember there was a bit where lords slapped each other with gloves, and quite a lot of French nobles hanging around on ropes, and Katherine wasn't as awful as she mistly is, and the funny bits were funny, which is quite an achievement , considering. I was sitting next to some people who were also there for the entire series, and we started off saying "thank you" for letting each other past, and built up to friendly hellos each day and then I had quite a nice conversation between parts of Henry VIth with the man next to me about the interrelation between history and current politics, and the iniquities of university funding cuts, and whether or not disciplines truly had integrity that might be lost in interdisciplinary undergraduate work.


Art

The first weekend I was here I took myself off to the Museum of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery. They're right next to each other, and I can't remember what I saw in which, as they've merged somewhat in my head. There was an exhibit on maternity, and I liked some of the pieces (like the replica birthing doll), but the signs were very irritating, as they tended to declare that the artist "transcended race and gender" without saying how they had done so, and actually I disagreed quite strongly that some of them did in fact do that, and not just ignore them, which is not at all the same thing. There were some pictures of showgirls on Broadway that I rather liked. Oh, and there was a HUGE robot in one room, which went all the way up to the ceiling and you could go and stand between its legs and look at all the metal. The Dean Gallery had a sort of library which I liked very much indeed, and I'm sorry that I have no academic interest in art so I can't go and use it. It was small, and the staircase sort of built itself into shelves that looked stuffed with interesting books.

I went to the Royal Academy exhibition, which had a lot of things that I wouldn't have on my walls if you paid me (mostly because I didn't like the colours), but which had won prizes. I've forgotten the name of the artist who did my favourite thing, even though I looked it up specially, which was of the Tower of Babel, with lots of rows of tiny elaborate silhouettes of people marching along and then winding their way up the tower and then some seemingly falling down from the top, all in black ink.

I have Plans to go to the Portrait Gallery, and the National Gallery in one of the coming weekends, and I hope that when I'm in Glasgow for work I can sneak off to the Museum of Modern Art there too.

Last Friday I braved the train chaos and went to Preston to see nerdcakes and Juno. I was panicking because of the train CHAOS and ended up getting us to the cinema about an hour too early. We were going to go to Chiquito's so that I could have fried ice cream, but apparently everyone else had that idea too, so instead I dragged Sarah reluctantly to KFC because every time that awful advert about mum's night off has been on recently I have wanted their chicken, or more specifically the skin from their chicken. Now that I have had it I won't want it again for several years.

( Juno )

On Saturday I went down to Manchester, where I had the nicest roast beef I have ever eaten in my entire life, along with roast carrots and beetroot and the best potato wedges of recent memory, and went to reclaim the night with irrtum. I was getting anxious about it, because as I have said I generally don't enjoy the marches, but this was really good, actually. They kept the chants going well enough that I didn't worry about it, and was able to join in as well. I didn't notice any negative reactions, and plenty of people clapping us as we went by. It had two sections - women-only march (including transwomen) at the front, and mixed supporters bringing up the rear. I think it was a really good way of doing it, and it worked well - about 400 people, I think they said on the f-word (where I also appear in severe profile in some pictures they posted). It was also shorter than London, and not as slow-moving, which is always a plus for lazy me. We marched past the very Spar where I went for help a few years ago after I'd been attacked, which also made the whole thing more meaningful for me.

We skipped the rally though, and went to see Margot at the Wedding instead. Then we went back to Rachel's and ate french fancies for supper and then for breakfast. In the afternoon we went to see My Blueberry Nights. ( Films. )

On Tuesday I went to a Fair Trade comedy thing with nerdcakes, who is great to go to comedy things with because she will cheer for things she likes even if no-one else does. I am always cowardly and wait to see if other people are making noise before venturing any noise of even moderate committal. This time she cheered for both Liverpool and Fair Trade fortnight, which are actually good things to cheer for.

( Just Fair Laughs )

Today I went to see Banter being recorded, which I really enjoyed. The series starts in April, and I'm not sure where this comes in.

( Banter recording )

It ended at 19.20, which meant that, despite an uncomfortably full bladder, I had to set off at top speed to Euston to try and catch the Last Train. I was successful, and in fact had to loiter while thinking of deserts, crackers and the like until they put up the platform.

Actors' penes seen in the flesh thus far this year:

1. Harry Potter's wand
2. Gandalf's staff.

( Oh, the play? )

When I left it was absolutely pissing it down, and it didn't look like it was goig to calm down, so I just went for it. The wrong way, it turned out. So what should have been a five/ten minute brisk walk turned into maybe 20-30 mins, and I was absolutely soaked. The water running down the hill just from the rain was over the rubber bits of my shoes, the gutters were well up to my ankles. And yet, the back of me was barely damp. The front made up for it, though. I spent the next day feeling decidedly damp.

wonderlanded was very lovely and took me to see Mary Poppins, which had a very badly organised foyer. The theatre was very pretty once we got in though. I'd been prepared to have small children forgetting themselves in the excitement, but I was sitting next to two elderly men. Who sang along. Loudly. It two times of me telling him I couldn't hear the actors before he stopped with his "pom pom pom"s. It was a relief when it was one of the new songs they'd inserted that he wouldn't know the words to. At the interval (mmm, Haagen-daz) they swapped around with some elderly women, which was a vast improvement until one of them started talking at normal volume. Dear lord.

But, the audience aside, it was totally magical. I loved the sets - it was like a giant doll's house. The main part was a two-storey hall, with Mr Banks' office to the left side, and a small sitting room to the right. In the middle the stairs went either down to the kitchen, or up to the bedrooms. For the nursery, that pushed back, and an attic bedroom came down, with sometimes a roof on top. There was a kitchen downstairs for one scene as well. The bank was wonderful - forced perspective so that the dome looked huge, and there were silhouettes of scribes on the pillars that moved like they were writing.

When I was little, I always thought that the 'Chim Chiminee' part of the film was amazing, and the sweeps were so brave for defying death by dancing on the edge of the rooftops. So I was a little disappointed that they didn't do that again, but it was still wonderful. Bert walked up the side of the stage and then danced upside down on the top, and it took me a tiny amount of time to realise that it wasn't magic, and I can only imagine seeing it as a child and how incredible it would have been. It was pretty damn incredible at this advanced age. Also when Mary Poppins flew right above the audience with her green parrot head umbrella.

They added bits from the books, so 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' happens when they go to see Mrs Corry, who is all out of conversation, and even words, and can only sell them some assorted letters. Which spell...and there was a great dance for it. When they go to the park the statues come to life as well. Mary Poppins was however even nicer than she was in the film. I miss grumpy Mary Poppins. There was also some weird ahistorical parenting, where Mrs Banks says at the beginning "can't we do without a Nanny?" to which the answer is, no, of course you can't and that wouldn't even occur to you DON'T BE SO SILLY. Jane was a little bit shrieky. The programme was stuffed with the various child actors playing Jane and Michael, with saccharine bios. There was one tragic part where one of the Janes said how pleased she was to be playing opposite her friend Lawrence, but Lawrence doesn't mention her. The utter sadness of childhood unrequited love.

The only real sad thing was that they cut 'Sister Suffragette'. Which I suppose goes hand-in-hand with Mrs Banks' discovery of her anachronistic calling to parent her children singlehandedly, but it was sorely missed.