What We Talk About When We Talk About Laser Birds

 

 I've been giving a lot of thought to why the Arrested Development joke above, where Michael finds a bag in the fridge marked 'DEAD DOVE Do Not Eat!' opens it, looks inside, winces, but then says "I don't know what I expected" is so funny (outside of how well it's played and shot), and I think I've got it: People have an unhelpful amount of difficulty processing unexpected information through any medium other than personal experience.

 

  I've also been considering how much I may have overestimated people's desire to communicate with each other in general – or rather, be communicated to – and underestimated how much they might just rather be left to their own opinions, unruffled by information from other people, aliens, or pets. Here are some photographs of a man trying to teach a horse to count: Wilhelm Van Osten, whose work in the 1890's on or with "Clever Hans" spanned a number of moustaches...

 Their story graces the Extra Material of Helen Zaltzman's ever excellent "The Allusionist" podcast, specifically the second of two episodes about science fiction author Mary Robinette Kowal's apparently successful attempts to establish more nuanced communication with her cat, Elsie, through an increasingly large number of "button boards" (as shown below). While aware that no experiment ever showed an animal to be dumber than we thought, I initially approached these episodes with scepticism, but by the time I was hearing about a cat forming compound words – attempting to summon a light's reflection on the ceiling by tapping the buttons for "laser" and "bird", say –  I was asking myself, My God, why doesn't every pet owner have one of these?

 

 Source.

 

And it was this question which led me to consider that, maybe, people would just rather not know what other beings are thinking. Does any of this have anything to do with "Jonah Non Grata"? Not really, which is why I'm posting it. You guys deserve a break. For the record though, I feel that that night at Soho turned out to be both beautiful and useful, give hot thanks to everyone who came – including those who had to because they worked there – and am very grateful too to Rich Cline, for his lovely review which you can read HERE, but that's not much of a post, is it.  

 

Poster suggestion subsequently vetoed by PR. "Faces sell more." 

 

I will also just say that in, you know... these times...  while I may be writing to my MP quite a bit, and while I wish every friend of mine engaging with the Equality and Human Rights Commission's oppressive, ignorant, and unnecessary instructions on gender conformity every success in their consultation with MPs and hope to my core their consultation helps... that, as Rich writes in his review: "absurdity keeps us on our toes," and that we should, more generally, remember Michael and the dead dove and stop putting so much faith in the idea that, as long as we make sense, we'll be understood. I wish that were true. But, less dispiritingly, I'm also excited to start reaching out again to people through a work they won't have to understand.

 Here are tickets for Jonah at Edinburgh.

 And here are those episodes:

Unposted on Election Night: Spoilers for Vengeance

 Okay, a little more about what's happening in US... 

 B.J. Novak's superb comedy "Vengeance" – released in 2022, but only caught by me on the plane back from Vancouver last August – charts an aspiring true-crime podcaster's attempts to document "the new American reality". And I mean charts. The film is a text. So this post isn't an in-depth review, just a recommendation. I'd originally meant to put it out as an immediate response to Trump's election victory back in November, because I thought: what rational reader wouldn't be thinking "Wait, what the hell's going on?" and I'd enjoyed the film as a search for some answers. Then I didn't post it, and now I've learnt the film's leaving Netflix on February 8th, so quick, HERE IT IS*

 I'll return to "Vengeance" in a bit, and maybe it's too late now for post mortems, maybe no-one's in the mood for "What happened was...", but it's only going to get later, so here's another search for answers I meant to share – answers other than just "Everyone's Abandoned Democracy", which seems hopeless if true – and by the way, I'm so glad Jon Stewart's back...

 

 "What happened was, the country felt like Government wasn't working for them, and – the Democrats, in particular – were taking their hard-earned money, and giving it to people who didn't deserve it as much as them. And so the Democrats got shellacked."

 Or, as Jennifer Pahlka puts it even more succinctly in this article:

"the reality is that Republicans let their voters choose the candidate, and Democrats didn't - twice." 

 Maybe what resounded most, then, rewatching "Vengeance" after Trump's terrifying majority, were its final words, so here are SPOILERS... Our hero's initial understanding of events, before he even arrives in Texas, has proved completely correct: the girl he hooked up with in New York was just a hookup, and despite the conspiracy narratives spun by her family, she did die of an opiate overdose. But his understanding of everything else now – how to act, how to choose, how to love, how to remember... the big stuff – is scorched earth, and when he concludes to her mother, as we're all taught to conclude, "No regrets", the Texan muses back:

"I never understood that... No regrets... In my life, everything starts with a regret... Ends with a regret... In between, regrets... It's all regrets... You run as fast as you can from the last regret... And of course you're just running straight into the next one... That's life... It's all regrets... That's what you should say... No other way to be alive... It's all regrets... Make 'em count."

 

"So Six Flags, the theme park..."

 

"Exactly."

 

* UPDATE: For those who can, it's now up on All4 HERE.

Is it a loud man getting things wrong?

 Here, ol' Unattendees, to celebrate my love for you all, is a tree giving a little house a hug. Sorry I haven't been posting more, but I am once again between keyboards (in case you were wondering, this post has been compiled entirely from copying and pasting parts OF ITSELF) but this hardware situation should be resolved when I get back from France, pictured above – where I have, as always, been spending Christmas with my folks – and below is the advert that will pay for it:

 

 I might even have enough left over after to take a show to Edinburgh, something I haven't dared do since 2001. Guess which show. "I don't know, Simon. How many shows have you made?" Well exactly, that one. Although, thinking on the previous post, I am growing obsessed (again*) with how abysmal a part of real world, far right economic discourse beloved, old sci-fi tropes such as space exploration and Ai have become, so maybe it will be two shows! Maybe it will be none! No, I've written it down now (or pains-takingly pieced it together from individual characters torn from THIS VERY POST) and 2025 is likely to frighten a lot of us anyway, so nits like me, who are sitting pretty pretty, should give courage a go too! Happy... changing things, then. Yeah. No. Franceuck it. Happy 2025, readers. Happy Change. 

 

Vancouver last August, where this ad was filmed – along with many futuristic sci-fi shows from the noughties, meaning I'd wanted to visit this city for decades. But when I finally get there, everywhere else had caught up, and the biggest thing distinguishing this Pacific shoreline now from, say, Leeds or Chelsea Wharf is just the number of people to a canoe.

 

* Did you get that that was what "Time Spanner" was about? I mean, it was about other stuff too.

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE 32: Where Pounds Won't Go!

"Pound as in the pounding of these zammoths' feet?"

"What zammoths? The ones to our right?"

"The ones I'm pointing at. Well, yeah, those ones, okay. God. So I wasn't exactly pointing at them. But yeah. God."

"No. Pounds as in insert-national-currency-here. The future has no regulated currency."

"Oh, and air?"

"No. And no zammoths. They're hallucinations. This planet's atmosphere is too thin. We're dying of radiation sickness."

"Speak for yourself. My body's packing in because it doesn't know how to function on a planet that has only a third of Earth's gravity. Hey, where are those guys going?" 

"I can't see what you're pointing at."

"Forget it... Where are we again?"

"Fucking everywhere, apparently."

 

 Illustration by nobody.

Election Rabbit Hole

 As America marks Bonfire Night just as we marked Independence Day, let's let it happen and just crawl down a hole, because it's all okay, look into the screen, closer, I found the hole. Come on. Let's go. Just for now. Into the screen...

 

 Once you're out, don't look up how old Kane Pixels is (no relation) or how he shot this. But do look up parts three and one, especially if you're into horror and into general and zillenial definitions of the liminal (thresholds and corridors) because both The Oldest View and its creator are doing something quite firsty. In fact, look up how it was shot as well, and maybe also look at this video about Utopian Botanist Julien Bercheron and the Vally View Mall, Texas, which mysteriously appeared once in my recommendations, and led me to this hole.

Staying In My Lane

 Those old explanations of ghosts – echoes of a trauma baked into place – is it only human trauma that has that power? Might parks be crawling with the ghosts of worms? Is this river haunted by fish, fish ghosts targeted by heron, more than a millenia-worth? I'm trying to get into the Hallowe'en spirit now that the weather is proper October.

 

 Unfinished business – that was another explanation. Do only humans get to have that then? Wait, is that all a soul is? Business? Is it? I haven't been busy this year. Maybe. Have I felt like a ghost? A bit. And it hasn't all been unenjoyable, but I watched a youtube essay last week about the films of the Beatles which reminded me that being A CREATIVE FORCE is, you know, an option, and initially may require nothing more than just thinking to yourself "I'm going to be A CREATIVE FORCE" and then seeing what happens, and it's really picked me up. (Here's that video essay.) 

 

 In this case a bit of what happened appears to be me going for a walk and then posting shit phone pictures of it here. Well, good. You'll have to take my word for it that there were joggers. It's odd to me, by the way, that that that's what it's called: "jogging". That's definitely what it looks like, but it's not the aspect you'd think they'd want to advertise. Jogging's normally something you want to avoid, in case you scratch the record or spill your drink. How can I make running forward feel more like running into something? Jog!

 

 Are these pavement demarcations a hangover from the pandemic, or permanent now? And has anyone studied their effect on a pedestrian's mental health? I think I hate them. They just seem like another thing to get on the wrong side of. It's nice to have somewhere to record that though. It's nice to be A CREATIVE FORCE. The next paragraph contains swearing.

 

 I also hate seeing so many people right now take the side of a side, rather than siding with people – to see so many call for an end to Netanyahu's response to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holoocaust while not also calling - seeing as we're calling for things - for the safe return of Israeli hostages, as though we've finally run out of internet and there was just was no room for the Landaus. Well fuck that and fuck the war and fuck taking sides unless that side is Peace. Fuck Bibi. And fuck Hamas; buoyed by their actions, the Iranian Government announced last week it would be targeting Persian journalists working in Britain like my friend Faren. And, parenthetically (do go on, Simon) coming up to a year after the murder of Mahsa Ahmini by Iranian police for having loose hair I decided to search Xitter for any more news of protests, and found myself enaged in the following fun coversation about... let me check... yes, apartheid. Stick with it.

 

 

 

 I know, "mroe"...

 By the way, you can now find me on blue sky at @slepkane.bsky.social. 

 I really hope you're all okay.

Guess who won the election for Asgardia's New Head of Space Nation!

  No, not Lembit Öpik. He's just here to introduce the real winner – and, for all I know, only candidate – Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli. Dr. Igor keeps his victory address short and informative, and since I haven't been keeping up with the Asgardian Parliament, I was grateful to be brought up to date...

 While Ashurbeyli admits the "so-called panemic" has stalled Asgardia's financial development somewhat, I was excited to learn that the Space Nation now has its own currency – the "Solar" – and that the exchange of fiat currencies into Solars has been "enabled", even if "the third part of the cycle" – namely the exchange of Solars back into actual money – "has yet to be addressed." A project for the next five years then.

 The launch of a new sattelite called "Asgardia 2" is also on the agenda it seems, although what it will do, how it will do it, and how it will be launched is yet to be determined. 

 Ashurbeyli is keen too, he says, to create a new language for Asgardia, and website. 

 

An imagining, I'm guessing.

 

 But "the constitutional anchoring of Asgardia's primary mission" remains "the birth of the first human child in Space." The Head of Nation still seems really keen on this, and "on our path to achieving the goal," Ahsurbeyli announces, "we have come close to the first stage – an isolation experiment on the ground, simulating a year-long space flight involving several married couples of volunteers to conceive and give birth in conditions as close to those in orbit as possible. However," Ashurbeyli admits, "the cost of such an experiment is very high and funding has to be secured." Close then, but no cigar. Also I'm pretty sure the closest conditions to being in orbit achievable "on the ground" are forty second burts of zero gravity in a plummeting fuselage, so encouraging couples to volunteer for a whole year of that might really eat into the budget. Still, at least someone voted for him.

 I've dropped you into this video just as the Head of Parliament Lembit Öpik – himself introduced by Asgardia's "Head of Administration" and one-hundred-and-third human in space – appears to be pretending to know sign language. Oh Lembit.

 

 

"I hug all of you and every one of you."

Sure, I'm still on twitter.

 When I first returned to this blog* after Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory I thought I'd just remain on twitter to post links and provide a little daily – but potentially always topical – keening over our exit from the EU inspired by Megan Anram's daily "Today was the day Donald trump finally became president" posts. Initially, I thought spending less time on everyone's favourite hellsite was simply for my own good, but when I watched Lindsay Ellis' video about her own cancelling last April I realised maybe the problem wasn't just me, but twitter's own business model, which now required the active promotion of upsetting content in order to keep our attention. Capitalism depended on growth, and twitter had grown as big as it was going to get. So I pinned this to my profile:

 

 Yes, stay cool. Because Fascism Thrives On Division. 

 Then, just over a week ago, Elon Musk finally bought the site or app or whatever it is for forty-four billion dollars.

 

 

 And immediately sacked its content moderators – one week before the American midterm elections, and exactly one day before a terrorist attack on a migrant processing centre in Dover followed by our reappointed Home Secetary's warning of an "invasion" of the south coast by refugees – and I was initially nonplussed by commentators passing the popcorn and using phrases like "it's going to be a wild ride." I mean, I get it. I write, and sentences must be finished, and lot of this blog is just me sharing stuff I find ineresting and then realising I should probably provide some kind of commentary, and "it's going to be a wild ride" is a handy sign off. But it still seemed a weird way to describe the rise of Fascism.  

 

 My sister's a meme!

 

 But maybe that wasn't what was being described. Maybe those commentators anticipating twitter's downfall were looking forward to the fall of the rise of Fascism, certainly something I'd like to live long enough to see... That's maybe not entirely true. What I mean is, given that I have to keep on living, I would very much like the fall of the rise of Fascism to happen at some point during that. 

 Has the word Fascism gone a bit weird on me now? Maybe.

 Anyway, here's some chat.
 

 And I was talking to my uncle Gordie last week, and learning how well his children's generation have been rallying around each other, and how much help is now provided – ar at least seen to be needed – which wasn't when I was their age, and I have to remember that I'm living to see other, far better things also on the rise. 

 

 

* Here's how this post originally began: 

 

 When I first started

 Okay actually, before I continue I'm going to let you a little into how tediously I go about writing these posts: I've just started writing this, about four minutes ago, three of which have been spent arriving at the word "tediously" which I might still change, and it would normally now be about an hour before I looked back over all this and finally noticed how... again, I'm going to spend a while now trying to find a synonym for "bad"... let's just stick with "bad" then... how bad those opening four words are, only as it happens this time I noticed almost immediately. "When I first started"? Surely that's a... I'll look this up... tautology? Doesn't starting mean doing something for the first time anyway? And yet it sounds okay to my ear when I say it out loud. Maybe I just like the sound of my voice too much. "When I first started..."

 Okay.

 When I first started returning to this blog to post daily

 Oh bloody hell....

 "First started returning"? That sounds terrible. What can that mean? But no, back in December of 2019 I returned to the blog after a bit of an absence and I started posting daily, which I hadn't done before, and then there was a break in early 2021, and now I'm blogging daily again. Hence "first", hence "returning"... Yeah that"started" is redundant.

 When I first returned to this blog to post daily... I've honestly forgotten now what I was going to say.

Zan Zendegi Azadi continued...

 Yesterday I met Faren (not pictured) and her friends and colleagues in Trafalgar Square to join a human chain across Wesminster Bridge in support of the protests in Iran. October the 29th was also Cyrus the Great day, so I thought about researching him before writing this, then realised it probably wasn't that necessary, but I'll still research him after I've written this. I've got Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe open next to me right now.

 

 

  

 Whitehall had been busy. The March of the Mums had made front pages earlier that day, and there was also a Ukrainian protest outside Downing Street, with which we ocassionally intermingled. "Down with tyrants." A lot of the chants were in English, but we were also taught "Azadi! Azadi! A-zad-i!" the Farsi word for freedom. And I finally learnt how to say Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, meaning Women, Life, Freedom – as taught to the people of Hastings by Omid Djalili here, and written across the Jason hockey masks of some protestors. Others hid their face behind David Lloyd's Guy Fawkes mask, now associated with Anonymous, possibly unaware of the seasonal appropriateness. Others still were dressed as zombie nuns, but I'm pretty sure they were just cutting through.

 Our numbers grew as we walked down Whitehall, sometimes side by side and filling the road, sometimes holding hands in single file to form the human chain, (which I couldn't photograph without breaking of course). There hadn't seemed to be as many in Trafalgar Square as a month ago, but now we were on the move we were closing roads. This was my first march. Faren said she hadn't felt as safe as she'd have liked at the last one, because people had started shouting "Down with the BBC", believing the corporation hadn't been doing enough to support the protestors, or that reporting the deaths of students was bad for morale – meanwhile the very fact of Faren's employment by BBC Persian has seen her upgraded by the Iranian Government from spy to terrorist – but on this demonstration however, I only saw the one sign with the letters "BBC" dripping in blood, and Faren had her friends around her now. She seemed happy. She was loud. "I'm letting out a lot of anger." I realised I'd only been throwing my voice. Pretend shouting. Shy.

 

  Posting some photographs of the protest on Instagram that evening, I wondered for the first time what my phone is actually up to when it says it's "finishing up" after the loading bar's filled, and I had flashbacks to Arthur Pewtey at the Marriage Guidance Counsellor. I don't really know how well I've fulfilled protestors' requests to "Be the Voice of Iran". But I know what I can do if it's okay with you, and that is to sign, and ask you to sign, THIS PETITION to whoever's Home Secretary when you read this: to drop an already twice rejected Public Order Bill that would make criminal offences of everything that happened yesterday – "interfering with key national infrastructure" for example – in other words, closing roads – and "locking on" – in other words, holding hands. If not for me, do it for Cyrus the Great.

 

Breaking

  No wonder that podium's always doing a double take. 

 I reached the end of yesterday wondering how I'd managed to get so little done given how little I currently have to do, and only realised with Liz Truss' resignation today how much time I've spent simply checking who's in charge.

 

 

 To be fair to the Daily Mail, she lasted longer than an hour. She also lasted longer than Andrew Neil when he tried to launch a similarly naked culture war over on that GB News then left after two weeks. And how long will the Tories last? Sorry, I mean the Conservatives! I'm trying to stop using the T word, as I have a theory the way they've managed to stay in office for so long is by having two names: the "Tories", who soak up the bad news and the hate, and the "Conservatives" who actually appear on the ballot paper, name unsullied. We'll see if this works again. I've no idea when. Anyway hats off to the Daily Star's "Will Liz Truss last longer than this lettuce" live feed, a properly salient piece of journalism – Yes I know we all know about it, but this is an archive too. To whoever's reading this in years to come: Shush, I know political chaos is never a prelude to good news, but let me enjoy this. Right, the rain's just stopped, laptop closing, I'm off for a walk. 

Poem About Nuclear Weapons Written Possibly Before I Knew What Nuclear Weapons Were

NO-ONE RECALLS THAT FATEFUL DAY

WHEN, NOT FROM WATER, WOOD, OR CLAY

THE NUCLEAR MISSILES FROM THEIR BIRTH

HAVE TERRERIZED THE EARTH

OUR PRECIOUS LIVES SWING LEFT AND RIGHT

NOBODY CARES WHO'S WRONG OR RIGHT

THE DESPERATE STRUGGLE OF THE LIVES

OF HUSBANDS, CHILDEN, WIVES

ALL WE DO IS SCREAM AND PROTEST

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN THESE MISSILES ARE PUT TO THE TEST

 

 Happy National Poetry Day! 

 Despite growing up during the Cold War I've no memory of actually ever being particularly scared of a nuclear winter (although I was definitely enjoying the work of artists who were). I can't think of anything else I wrote for school in block capitals either, so this is certainly an outlier. Is it a spoof? I normally only used block caps for comedy. So now I think about it, it might have been a spoof. But then why was it marked? And what kind of corrections are those anyway? No idea what year. I just found it loose in the box. Yes, now I've been living in Notting Hill for a whole year it's time once again to start sorting through the boxes and make sure I just keep the good stuff. 

 Like this:

A small sad sausage sat beside a spider.

The Silence

 I only finished reading Marianne Levy's Don't Forget To Scream on Monday so it's too early to say if it's changed my life, but I've definitely learnt something (beyond confirmation of a bias that polite society tragically underestimates how much people need looking after – you know, that bias). Specifically I've learnt that it won't matter if a book has words like "SCREAM" and "UNSPOKEN" on the front; if it also carries the word "MOTHERHOOD" that third will work like an aneasthetic against any content warning. (To try and mitigate this I've photographed the book on my most unpleasant table.) Like shouting for help in a language with no word for help, the very words used to describe "being a mum" have made protest impossible: 

"Perhaps I'm being hyperbolic but it felt like the Newspeak from Nineteen Eighty-Four, designed to make wrongthink impossible." 

 Marianne writes this in a chapter called Bumbo. In a later chapter, Some Discomfort, having described what the British Medical Journal terms the "wide range of physical and psychological consequences" of her episiotomy, she concludes:

"I almost hit delete before this made it onto the page." 

 I remember these two chapters as a swift double punch in the gut, but leafing back I find they're nearly a hundred pages apart. Partly that suggests how readable she is, but also it suggests why her cry for help needs to be the size of a book; because what Marianne describes is a living nightmare, and she descibes it over and over again, because she has to, because we're – I can't find another word for it – programmed by mumthink not to listen... Or, if we do listen, to place what we hear on its own separate, cuddlier scale of oppression. Because "being a mum" is clearly the most laughably trivial subject there is.

"Our dining table was designed for four..."

 Who are those Doctor Who monsters you forget as soon as you can't see them?

 Ideally, this is what "red-pilling" should refer to... I'd even read Marianne's interview in The Guardian, from which the photograph below is taken, describing very specifically what the book would contain, but still my mind was going: "Being a mum. Yeah. Crayons on flock wallpaper. Meh." And I know Marianne, a little, which is why I'm calling her Marianne, but look at that photo, look how cosy it is! It was only the interview's closing words which made me realise I might have missed something: “I’m desperate for men to read it; I’m desperate for people without kids to read it.”

 So I did, and I learnt something, and like any other sap who's had a veil lifted, I can't now think of anyone who shouldn't. Thanks therefore, Marianne, and congratulations.

 

Not A Good Look

 Another big scary face. Gemma Brockis sent me this: it's Mussolini's Italian Fascist Party headquarters in 1934. There's a lot going on, isn't there – the face may be saying "No", but the walls... It's got my name written all over it! Anyway, it's a lot more ghost-trainy an aesthetic than I normally associate with fascism. When I think of fascist architecture, I think of Albert Speer's slave-built "cathedrals of light" at the Nuremberg Ralleys, and those huge, bare rectangles and domes reminiscent of and maybe even inspired by John Martin's extraordinary designs for the Hellish city of Pandaemonium in his illustrations for "Paradise Lost" made a hundred years earlier...

 

All of which I guess means there never really was a "fascist aesthetic", beyond Big and Dumb. It's just a numbers game. Changing the subject completely, walking home last night I noticed – it was hard not to – more police on the route from Victoria to Hyde Park Corner than there were non-police. I asked one of them what was going on, and she explained that the Qeeen had died – thanks – and that they were here for the funeral. "Isn't that a week away?" I asked. "It's just, this is quite intimidating." "Don't worry," her partner replied, "We're here to keep people safe." I didn't ask from what. 

 Hey, remember when that Russian guy got arrested for holding up a blank piece of paper? Can you imagine if that happened here LOLZ!

A Dullish Life Re-Thrilled!

 What larks, Pip? These larks!

 Time is like butter. When I buy a tub, it seems to remain nearly full for ages, until somehow, suddenly there's just two days' worth left. I voiced this thought to Alicia (pictured below, enjoying rose petals) in the kitchen we share in Newbury, while I was making breakfast at two in the afternoon, and she suggested I put it on the blog, since I hadn't posted anything since December. This was three weeks ago.

 And now here we are, after a month's run, with just four nights left of Mark Evans' theatrical adaptation of his Radio Four Bildungsroman Behemoth "Bleak Expectations" – I can hear the piccolos from "Whistle Down the Wind" rehearsing what will replace us as I write – and so here's the plug for it. Come if you can, and haven't. Tickets are here. (I've been plugging the show relentlessly on other social media, obviously, but have you seen how depressing things are over there?) Really, I couldn't be happier to be in this. I get to play a baddie previously played by Anthony Head, and Mark and director Caroline Leslie, and, well, everyone, have done a miraculous job of not only taking capital N radio Nonsense and making it work onstage, but also probably more trickily, chanelling five series of a sitcom into a moving, two-hour, cod-Dickensian narrative. We perform it in a real old watermill too, which is gorgeous, like Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room" but with Victorians instead of toucans, and if it's a bit out of the way, it still gets National Press. Here we are in The Metro!

 

We also received a nice review in The Times, which you can read the top bit of without paying, as well as maybe the best three star review I've ever read in The Guardian - its only rival being the review from which these quotes accompanying Pamela Raith's gorgeous photos have been taken, HERE.

 

 Some other reviews, for – if no reason other – my own miserable hoarding:

 Broadway World

 Theatre, Films and Art reviews (Theatre, arts and films),

 A five star review from Caitlin's dad, presumably, Mickey Jo Theatre

 The original exciting cast announcement in WhatsOnStage

 An interview with our producer stroke star, Dom "Pip Bin" Hodson, for West End Best Friend (he honestly auditioned other Pips)

 And this single tweet from another Dom:

 

Uncle Francis' Advice to Writers

 

 Portrait by Lucy Stopford  

 "Take firm hold of a goose. Yank out a feather. Trim it. Whittle the tip. Dip that in ink, and the one thing you'll find you can't do with it is draw a diagonal line. You can't cross out a paragraph with a quill." I remember, if not verbatim, this explanation from my Uncle Francis – complete with actions – for the appearance of two different versions of the same exchange at the end of Love's Labours Lost. I also remember his dissection of Shakespeare's reasons for redrafting it: "One idea, one line: good... One idea, two lines: bad!" 

 I saw him give this class in 1999, in Oxford where he'd invited me to rehearse an installment of his blank-verse epic of Western Culture, Agora. A few months earlier, he'd invited me to a mysterious meeting at the Athenaeum Club - Mum had always said she and his other siblings thought he might be a spy - then he walked me across Pall Mall into the National Gallery, stood me in front of a Rembrandt self-portrait and asked, "How do you fancy playing him?" It was my first paid acting job outside of touring schools.

 

  It was fun. 

  Francis Robert Le Plastrier Warner was an excellent uncle, who lived right up until this Tuesday. He was also possibly one of Theatre's greatest friends. He studied under C. S. Lewis, and taught Ian McKellen. He strolled along the Sein with Samuel Beckett. He strolled with Burton and Taylor. He invited R. Buckminster Fuller – architect of EPCOT's Spaceship Earth, and populariser of domed cities – to design the first ever "black box" theatre, deep beneath St. Peter's College.

 

(source)

 

 This was never built in the end, but the money raised for it became the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust, whose annual award you can still apply for here.

 I'm bad at visiting, and I think the last time I saw him was when he came to see me in Ring at the Cambridge Junction in 2013 (Francis was a Fellow of both Universities). This was David Rosenberg's first binaural collaboration with Glen Neath, taking place in total darkness in front of an audience wearing headphones: "What it reminded me most of, of course," said Francis in the restaurant afterwards, quite out of the blue, "was being interrogated: I was in Egypt. Lucy and Georgie were with me. I'd gone out to look for eggs to scramble, because my daughters wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast, and some men bundled me into a car. In the end the only thing that saved me was that I didn't have a gun on me. Everyone had told me, going out, I should carry a gun. But it saved me. They had to let me go. Never carry a gun." Presumably, then, the Official Secrets Act's thirty years' injunction was finally over. Mum was right. 

 That's Lucy's wonderful portrait of her father at the top of this post. 

 He would always ask what I was writing.