March doesn't get back to Normal

 Let the record show this post is actually going up on Thursday the 22nd, the day after President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the US Senate. I've been meaning to post something about March for a while, to catch up on the run-down of the year, and Zelensky's address has proved a good incentive, so here are more old photos.

 

 Again, a lot of scenery, including a reminder that a giant mound had been dismantled outside Marble Arch, serving as the reminder it had ever gone up. It looked better stripped of turf.

 March appears to have seen no real change to my routine. I'd use my time walking, and photograph where I walked. Local parks. Local galleries.

 

 I put off buying stuff for the room. We still wore masks at the Crystal Maze. The weather was changing though, behaving itself to begin with, showing no signs for example that in April this would all be snow...

 

 And in August this would be dust...

 Then, just as it seemed it had been decided the pandemic was over now, and "things" should be getting back to "normal", we suddenly remembered the possibility of nuclear annihilation.

 Down the hill from me, outside Holland Park, flowers and signs of support started appearing at the feet of the statue of the Ukrainian Saint Volodymyr. Russia had invaded the Ukraine on February the 24th. I looked it up.

 

 Just up the hill from me, outside Kensington Gardens, fences were erected to protect the walls erected to protect the Russian Embassy from graffiti, and across the road from them, more fences, often peopled by protestors, but I'm normally too shy to take photos of people. 

 

 The fences are still there today.

 

 And the signs.

 

A search for "Zelensky" conducted at the beginning of this invasion reminded me he'd been a popular television comedian before coming to office, and the extraordinary speech he gave in Russian on the day of the invasion reminded me how powerfully a comedian can communicate.

 

Remarkable speech. Addressed to the Russian people, it should also be heard everywhere. pic.twitter.com/RkrDGSYUYq

— Piotr Zalewski (@p_zalewski) February 25, 2022

 

 On one walk, I then bumped into the friend who'd invited me to that concert where the orchestra were all masked. She'd grown up in Yugoslavia, and outlived it, still holidaying as a teenager in what was becoming Croatia while living the rest of the time in what was becoming Serbia (Is that right? Have I got that right? I should look it up.) Anyway, she lived in a war. 

 "Vladimir Putin is an absolute fucking genocidal dictator," she explained over a pint in the Windsor Castle. "But –"

 "America doesn't give a fuck about Europe either. The Cold War's been over for thirty years, why is there still NATO? Putin didn't do this without reason. I cannot believe this propaganda. News should be History. Nothing is being explained. We're not enemies. These are people! They're going to have to discuss! It's exactly like Yugoslavia... I'm sorry." 

 And now I'm thinking of that "Stalin Attacks Churchill" headline from 1946, in the copy of the Daily Mail we use as a prop in Love Goddess. It's a good prop. You can see the beginnings of the Cold War in the story beneath, as "Generalissimo Stalin" warns of an English-Speaking assumption of World Domination. The power of that narrative's still there today too.

 

February in the Black

 For the past couple of years, every time I've finished a book I've taken a photograph of it, maybe hoping that this will make me read more. I took six photographs of books in January I see, and one in February. And none in March. Here's Holland Park. I'd get wheeled around here when I was one, so I've been told. I don't remember. Now it's just up the road.

 

 Photographing Kensington was one thing I managed to keep up in February. Was I doing it hoping to feel more like a resident, or like a tourist? Did I want to feel more at home or the opposite? I still stayed sociable, although I stopped going to the BFI as much, another fad of January. But I still had spending money from my first two commercials shot at the end of 2021. I still met friends, and if I was twenty years younger maybe there'd be photogaphs of that too. Here's a concert I was invited to in February. I couldn't remember why I'd photographed it, until I looked closer and saw everyone's masks. Click to enlarge.

 

 I met Gemma Brockis a lot. I could afford to go out for coffee. We'd knock ideas about, her teaching and seeking meetings, me working a couple of days a week at the Crystal Maze and meandering. She told me how as an immersive theatre veteran she'd also occasionally get approached by Virtual Reality Engines to participate in Research and Development. Intimacy was what they were after now. "Virtual Intimacy" was VR's philopospher's stone.

 

 What does "intimacy" actually literally mean though, I asked? We talked about that a bit – Chris Goode used to ask it back when he still did the blog, and was alive – then I decided to just look it up on my phone. We all have an idea. What do you think it means? As far as I could work out, "intimacy" just means the opposite of loneliness. That doesn't seem to have much to do with Virtual Reality. I didn't think they were going to find it, and I made a note of that on my phone. That phone broke, but I remembered.

 

January in Albertopolis

 I thought about going through my unposted photos from earlier in the year, when I wasn't blogging, and putting some up throughout December like I'd do at the end of every month, but looking through January's, it struck me that a more honest recap of the year might be, just to honour that lack of intention. Why catch up? 

 I had also forgotten how widescreen old photos from my good phone were, but here are four.

 I'd never noticed this collonade before. These are from January, and the earlier setting sun had now made it unignorable. I'd been living in Kensington for three months, and had finally decided to revisit the enormous museums along Exhibition Road as a resident, wanting to feel I was exploring my new environment, with an emphasis on the "my" rather than on the "new." I'd known this area all my life.

 

 During Boris Johnson's Mayorship – although he may have had no more to do with this than he had with the Boris Bikes – this road had become a "shared space" to "honour the area's cultural importance," meaning it stopped being a road for cars to drive down, and became instead a pavement for cars to drive down. This apparently resolved "the long stand-off between pedestrians and cars," until ten people got hit by a taxi in 2017. 

 This whole campus is called "Albertopolis" I found out today. It suits it. I keep discovering new ways in which, over a hundred and fifty years after the death of Queen Victoria's husband, the landscape of London still orbits his absence. 

 The railings here weren't always black.

 

Unposted Photographs of November 2022 in Chronological Order

 It's always fascinating to see who's worn your costume before you.

 

 First day of the tube strikes. Choreography starts outside while we wait for the person with keys.

 I see a lot of these signs around Marylebone. I'm forty-eight and I still don't know what American Express is. Is it a credit card? What is it?

 

 We prepare for the plinth. I'm pretty sure it's bigger than this.

 

 After finding out Pizza Express no longer does Veniziana, I start photographing barriers because they remind me of Keir Starmer.

Thoughtlessly shitty quick fixes, looking increasingly unreplaceable.

 We're in the space. We go crazy.

 I acquaint myself with the backstage of the Cockpit.

 

 Show report: I tripped. Where were the barriers?

 

 "Vibrating pockets can still be heard in a dramatic silence." Tickets here.

 

 The Elizabeth Line is not for trypophobes.

 I get lost in Hampstead, and find some cosy blocks with globes in the window.

 Walking home from shows now, I notice the night sky is often coloured in. 

 

 I can't tell by what.

 

  Loughborough Junction has new lights too, where they used to build sets.

 

 Coldharbour Lane is getting a tower block.

 That's not all that's gone up since I left.

 

 I don't remember this book nook. It has a copy of WHSmith's "Treasury of Children's Literature". I sit and read.

 Treasury is a good word for it, although I don't get far with C. S. Forester's "Poo-Poo Finds a Dragon". 

 

 I do consider what kind of brain comes up with protagonists named "Hornblower", and "Poo-Poo".

 

 "Eeyore's Birthday" is also included, the alpha and omega of great sitcom writing. I read it aloud to myself quietly in its entirety, marvelling again, and upon reaching "'Not mine,' said Eeyore proudly" actually get a little teary.

 

 I return to Notting Hill to find Christmas has started. A different vibe.

Unposted Photographs of October 2022 in Chronological Order

 On the first, I left Trafalgar Sqaure in bloom, happy with the city I lived in, and crossed the river to get a better view of it:

 

 In the basement of the Royal Festival Hall, three dancers had found a space outside the toilets:

 

 I've lived in Notting Hill a year now. I finally found the quickest route to the park, but it still feels like I'm finding routes, rather than walks:

 

 Trellick Tower, its green heart still commemorating Grenfell. It always appears in view suddenly, and to the right of where I expect:

 This was the first time I'd revisited the Victoria and Albert Museum since moving up the road:

 

 I suddenly remembered seeing Jennifer Tilly here, and hearing her, and tried to recall the plot of Slipstream:

 Neil and I went to see Big Ben break his News Revue cherry. Their six week run outlasted two Prime Minsters, and Fred Strangebone in a blonde wig turned out to be a very serviceable Keir Starmer. He was the only one to do a silly bio:

 In Tate Britain, I stayed in the box with the racist language for the whole video (I can't find who's this was or what. It was wonderful. Does anyone know?) Others entered the box, and left very possibly because I was in there, but I don't know how better to screen it:

 

 Over the escalators in the tube, adverts are now screened an angle, tampering with my balance over the duration:

 Here, outside the vault of the Ned, it occured to me that on Saturday we should all wear robes:

 

 Then we moved on to Greenwich peninsula, to rehearse the counting of rice:

 Our rice in situ:

 Suddenly, October was beginning to end. I mean, to finish. I caught Ilona's exhibition just as it was being taken down:

 This Flying Tiger model could have got more into the spirit of the season, I felt. I bought nothing:

 On this stage, I saw David dance and speak lines from King Lear. A good block:

 Outside on Regents Street, they were beginning to put up angels:

By this point, my phone had crashed. Everything was harder to record on Badphone, particularly Maxfield Parrish light. Why was it still Summer?

 On this stage, I saw Natasha dance and speak lines from King Lear. I was not expecting that in a production of Henry the Eighth:

 My balance tampered with, I was still happy to have to caught the last matinee, and celebrated with a walk on the beach:

 

 On this stage, I saw my former rice wife Julia cast her own legs as her parents, and her hand as her dog. I'd missed her rumbling, threatening giggle. It got messy:

 

 Rehearsals started for the Love Goddess in Marylebone. Working in daylight suddenly:

 Opposite Alfies Antiques. Everything a walk away:

 And last Saturday, like the first, saw Trafalgar Square in bloom again.