Uncle Alec

 Dad asked Susy and me to go through the big box of photographs under the spare bed I'm sleeping in. Here's our first Christmas on the Isle of Wight.

 

 That's my other sister, Alice, on the right. I think for some reason there were Tarot cards in that box on top of the telly. To the left of Alice, in the yellow, is "Uncle" Alec. Not an actual blood relative, he was Dad's first agent in the sixties, but by the time this was taken I think he'd given that up, and was a chef somewhere on the island. "Cor-dong bloody blur, darling." Alec came every Christmas.

 

 He'd come over in the morning for the unwrapping of the presents and help Mum with the vegetables, long after we'd left the Isle of Wight. As his obituary in the Telegraph from 2001 put it "he never married." He was the only one allowed to smoke in the house. I don't think even Dad's real dad was allowed, but Grandad hardly ever came down. Alec Grahame is why Christmas always smelt of cigarettes.

 

 We still have that tree. Also from the Telegraph obituary: "in the 1970s show business became a much more serious industry. Much to Grahame's dismay, the liquid lunch was replaced by the working lunch and first night parties always seemed to end much too soon."

 

 Alec was gorgeous. Here's what must be his last Christmas with us. My hair was now black to audition for The Pianist.

 

 

 

 It's only researching him today I found out that Uncle Alec's original name had been James Alexander Patchett, that he'd been a lyricist in the early fifties, had turned an art gallery into a venue for evening cabarets called "Intimacy at 8" ten years before the satire boom, and had taken the first ever late night revue up to the Edinburgh Fringe, After the Show, arguably inventing the Comedy Festival.

 "Aww," Susy noted yesterday, "the tree's nearly stopped smelling of fags." 

 (But Susy still has Covid. I'll have a sniff.)

Adulting

 

 Love Goddess - The Rita Hayworth Musical has another two weeks at the Cockpit, and I'm enjoying it more and more. Here's another lovely shot from Roswitha Chesher Also making me look good of course is the show's star and co-creator Almog Pail, who gave this fascinating interview in The Jewish Chronicle recently about one of the chief inspirations behind the show – as well as "one of Israel's founding fathers" – her own grandfather Meir Pa'il. During the second act I watch Almog sing the "Gilda"-inspired "I Don't Belong To You" from the theatre's gantry, in character as producer Harry Cohn. Just standing there, hoping to exude a kind of stony, middle-aged command, I realise is a quite familiar feeling to me: I've been playing these kind of characters since my late teens, and now I'm now genuinely middle-aged, yet can't be sure that I'm approaching this moment of onstage stillness any differently to how I might if I were still seveteen. I wonder if Orson Welles felt the same when he suddenly found himself the same age as characters he'd been playing for decades. They're not any easier to play now, but then they never seemed hard. They also never seemed nice. That's what's been going through my head when the lights are on me in the gantry. And when they're off I count the audience.

 

 Top row, left to right: My brother-in-law Tom, Dan Tetsell, my sister Susy, my sister Alice, and my nephew Jake. A beautiful turnout.

The Reviews Are In!

  Photo: Roswitha Chesher     

Yes, two reviews are in! 

 Enormous thanks to tried and trusted unatendees A sea lion in a hat and RedScharlach for generously attending the matinee of Love Goddess today. I don't want you to think from their kind words that we do a total hatchet job on Welles, but this is Rita Hayworth's story, and he was "a man of the world", and to quote London Hughes: "Play silly games, win silly prizes."

 Tech week continues into the actual Press Night tomorrow. We'll do two shows tomorrow, and we did two today, but with every show I feel less and less like John Daker, so COME!  (John Daker is the man in this clip. It is a hard clip to search for if you don't know that, so thanks to my sister Susy for knowing what I was talking about.)

  

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.

Gracious

 Who says a circle has no end? Phil Davis' twitter account put it well: "She did what she was supposed to do." I always thought it would be David Attenborough who went first, but no, Churchill's boss has finally left us. Not all the bus shelters in Notting Hill bear the news yet. "Postpone" is probably the wrong word to use here in retrospect, and "rest":

 

 And maybe noboby was looking at their phone more than normal as I walked home through Soho, maybe I was just noticing it more. I learnt of the news myself from the definitive "1926 - 2022" instagram post on my phone at about seven in the evening just outside Forbidden Planet, but people had been spending all day reminiscing about her already online, so I felt more of an "Oh, right." than an "Oh no!" And the drinks I walked past felt like drinks-after-a-show kind of drinks. Friday kind of drinks. Life definitely goes on. Today's proven that, at least.

 I didn't hear anyone say "God Save the King" outside the Crown. The mood outside all the pubs, and in the pub above which I write this – have I mentioned, I live above a pub now? – seems more one of "Fair play, who can blame her?" But it's been raining a lot, of course, after the drought, of course, and she'd just appointed a new Worst Prime Minister, of course, so maybe everyone's had their fill of the unthinkable and just wants to kick a ball around. Or maybe that's just me.

 Susy and I went to visit our Aunty June yesterday, in her new care home in Henley. Susy visits her a lot. I love Susy. June's dealing with her sudden dementia incredibly well I think, without distress, finding her way around it like a new phone that doesn't do what the old one did. There's nothing doddery about her condition. Some very specific information simply doesn't take. Every ten minutes or so I just had to reintroduce myself, and explain I wasn't married to my sister. Not "remind" June. That information had gone. Meet her, I suppose. And I like meeting people. "And what do you do?" She can get through a book perfectly well too, she told me, whoever I was. June's not bored. 

 So there's that. The giant illuminated strawberries on the Coronet fly at half mast. And Mum and Dad arrive from France tonight, to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary back here in the United Kingdom. I hope they're okay. "Kingdom". I've never had a king before. I wonder if that will take. I wonder what money will look like. Oh! I was going to send her a link to my youtube Shakespeares, I think she might have enjoyed them. The Queen, I mean. What made me think of that? I wonder what she listened to. I wonder if she ever heard me. 

 

A brilliantly unfortunate front page from the Mirror.

Lights Up.

 Let's take a quick interval from all the film quizzes, just to catch up. How are you? Where are you? In case you didn't know, I'm here now, suddenly.

 That's the moon on the left, and that's the village I'm staying in on the right: a white knight bringing plague to the medieval village! Only joking. No "major incidents" here, yet – Oh, hang on...

 No. Just a cyclist.

 

 Please forgive my relief. I managed to book tickets out of King's Cross as soon as my sister phoned on Thursday to tell me France would be doing the Big Lockdown the following midnight. I got down yesterday. Susy's stuck in London, but I hope cosy.

 

 It's colder here than in London, surprisingly. The roadside raspberries are inedible.

 

   But the light hangs around for longer.

 

  By the end of my walk this evening, the moon was the only light I had. But it cast a sharp shadow. I'll be staying here long enough to see the moon wane, and to see the stars come out. Mum and Dad tell me the village has started turning its street lights off at midnight, to save power.

 

 Dad's put new Christmas lights up in the cinema. He put them up in June in fact. He's been waiting six months for family to come down so he could finally turn them on. They're beautiful.

 Again, please forgive my relief. I hope you're all doing tremendously.

A really good day

 An old sketch for a painting of my parents who today received their second, final vaccinations, in a sports hall in Alès two hours' drive away, requiring an Attestation de Déplacement Dérogatoire – or Certificate of Travel Restriction Waiver (for persons residing in departments subject to reinforced measures) – because France is currently under curfew. 

 "A really good day," Mum emailed. "Sun was shining, and the Tramontane Wind of the last few days had lessened" and it wasn't until my sister tweeted her relief that it struck me just how good. 

 I'd been treating this like a census deadline, rather than the granting of immunity to a global pandemic after a year's lockdown, and I hadn't dared give any outcome other than this a second's credit.

 Thank you, Mum and Dad, for staying safe. 

 And thank you to everyone who is staying safe.

At Least Five Other Actors Who Dress Like Me

 

 I found this commercial or whatever it is while researching Lee Montague, who appears in a gangster-themed Dick Emery Christmas Special from the seventies that my Dad was in and which I might share later. Don't worry about watching the whole thing. The stills below give an idea. I'm unsure what mood, if any, the film-maker's going for. Or rather, since the music is pretty obviously elegaic, I'm unsure how aware the actors were they're participating in an elegy. Maybe I'm just unsure how I feel watching it... I miss the hilarity with which me and my sister would pore over old copies of "Spotlight - The Actors' Directory" as teenagers. Still, it's good to get some perspective. It's almost stupidly obvious to say how easy it is to lose that in lockdown, and so – specifically for any actors reading this – let's keep an eye on the future, and remember that the buildings will reopen one day, and that we will meet again... 

"Charles Bronson, he couldn't get a laugh." The great Michael Craig

 

 theatre, in some form or other, will of course continue, the film studios will reopen...

 

"The women could have been less. On the whole." The great Derrenn Nesbitt

 

and cameras will roll, make-up will be applied, and stories shared, and cushions plumped...

"Don't say to Mr. Chaplin, oh wouldn't it be a good idea if I did this, he said, 

you'll be fucking fired." The great Michael Medwin

 

 all this, again, and for ever, and ever and ever and ever...

 

"I drift into these very, very pleasant studios." The great Freddie Jones.

 

 until one day, if we're lucky...

 

 

"It's not over yet." The great Roy Dotrice 

 

this could be us.

Sometimes this blog will just be "Over the Garden Wall"

 

 A troubled big kid and a carefree little kid. That's probably all you need. It worked for Peepshow, it worked for The Mighty Boosh, and it works here for Patrick McHale. This was his first creation after working on Adventure Time, and its prepubescent non-sequiturs ring just as sweet and true. The Autumnal treat above is the first episode on the DVD my sister gave me for my birthday, telling me to watch it immediately before the seasons changed. According to the trivia section on IMDB "the phase of the moon in the show was meant to match up with the phase of the moon on the night each episode originally aired." Is this Folk Horror? Who knows? I love it and I think, dear unattendee, you might love it too. (Also, for anyone who remembers my show Jonah Non Grata, one scene features an actual spanky axe.)

BY A LOT

 This is the last of the four posts that will begin with me confessing I'm posting them all on the evening of Saturday the seventh. This is the evening that it was finally confirmed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had indeed won the election, and Trump's legal team had indeed chosen not to concede graciously but instead announce that "lawsuits will be brought, starting on Monday", and that "networks don't get to decide an election, courts do" from a freestanding podium in a parking lot because they'd booked the wrong Four Seasons. 

 

 I have been waiting so long to be able to find this monstrous administration funny, and now... oh god... I just... and all of us... I know that when I decided to try blogging daily it was because I didn't want just to be reacting to stuff on twitter but... Oh God look at it! This, and the sudden revelation of the unpopulairty of populists. And everything. 

The other Four Seasons

Thank you. Thank you to those courageous enough to stay in line for eight hours in the face of unprecedented and state-mandated voter intimidation, thank you to everyone who made a plan for this, and thank you, thank you, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, beside Fantasy Island Adult Books, and opposite Delaware Valley Cemation Centre, for taking that call.

Daylight For Beginners

 This is the second of four posts which will begin with me confessing that I'm posting them all on the evening of Saturday the seventh. Sometimes the light is just too good not to take a record of it. The clouds will gap to light the foreground brighter than the sky, and the trees, like pressed leaves, will do the opposite of hiding.

  I've just remembered Joel and Will – whom we met in the last post – made a horror film with my sister. I'd been pondering, on the the walk from which these pictures were taken, why I don't share my contemporaries' gut love of Folk Horror. I blame Brambley Hedge. I love the idea of living inside a tree. Even if that's a pipe dream I'm still on the side of trees, or at least would want to impress a tree if I ever met one. They may resemble monsters, or parts of the body, but no monster or part of the body that I fear. Eyeless and mouthless, they'll leave you alone.

 My Folk Horror blindness might also be symptomatic of a deep-seated prejudice I harboured as a child against films which looked like they might be taking place up the road. America is where fiction happened. Or the past. I grew out of this prejudice, and worked out how to romanticise my surroundings, but I didn't work it out by watching films.

 

This walk was on my birthday, the day before or of the election, depending on your time zone, and two days before the second Lockdown. Now that the days are shorter I'm planning on cutting down on the night walks. This is the furthest I've made it up the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal. Perivale. Storms had been predicted but never materialised. And this is factory where they make the smells you get in fairgrounds

Hungry Hungry Harpies

  

 

 "Gods, Men, and Monsters"... I'm still thinking about that title.

 Of all the monstered women of Greek Mythology the most referenced is probably the harpy. There are no drawings of harpies in my old Greek Mythology notebook however, so here instead is Raoul Servais's Harpya, a cracking interpretation, funny in a way that makes it hard to see how one could faithfully depict the myth of a lady with the body of a large bird who repeatedly steals food without being funny. Her gender here is a default rather than a dig though, and her modestly civilized Phineas an identifiably unsustainable sap. Originally recommended by David Cairns here, I came across it again looking through the same unposted, old drafts from 2015 in which I'd found my David Icke notes. The draft began: "I was thinking about monsters," - so, not as new an activity as I thought then - "and who to make the baddies. Binge-watching Buffy and thinking about how, growing up, the monsters don't actually appear to go away..." then there's some stuff about the House of Lords. No idea. Let's just watch the cartoon. They don't give out Palme D'Ors to any old rubbish, you know.

 

 

 (Having never drawn a harpy at school, my first attempt at depicting one must have been at University, sellotaping bamboo canes to my sister's fingers for a film of The Tempest that she'd come down to help with only to end up being cast as Ariel. She was excellent, and looked nothing the Harpy above. Tom Lyall's Caliban on the other hand...)