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.
"NO! THIS IS ENOUGH! I DON'T WANT ANY MORE OF THIS, NO! NO! STOP!"
Good. I look less surprising at the age of forty-eight than Little Nemo here, but that's still no excuse for not getting on with things – not that I haven't been entirely okay with not getting on with things this past year, and not that I'm not entirely supportive of the absence of resolutions for the coming year. But while 2022 saw me comfortably protected from most of the year's crises by jobs and a nice big bedroom, I've no guarantee 2023 will do the same, so some kind of "project" might be an idea, as fortune at least favours a moving target.
The Med, from which I'm now back.
That project probably won't be this blog though. It's
not just the holiday that's caused my contributions to thin. I thought
about doing a big New Year's Dump of my favourite unposted
photographs from 2022, but could never get beyond trying to caption the photo from January below, simply because I couldn't think of anything to say about it.
It's only now that I realise that's probably exactly what I had to say about it: that this photo represented a cycle of me going outside,
into Kensington, and coming back with absolutely nothing to say, and realisations like that are what this blog is great for – coming up with ideas as I'm writing. But putting the time into a post which an idea might deserve is ungaugeable when you've decided to turn out one a day. And it's the not coming up with ideas that takes up so much, well, everything.
Also, I've finally worked out how to download Word onto this old laptop. So if I like something now I'll just share it on twitter (as long as that's around,) and if I have some pictures I have nothing to add to I'll share them on instagram (oh, if my new, even worse phone's memory lets me, I've just remembered.) Otherwise I'll take notes a bit more privately in 2023, and try to find some other blank pages to stare at. And maybe this is just the January talking. But it's January's turn. Let's hear it out.
On Monday I joined friends to catch The Wind in the Willows Wiltonsat Wilton's Music Hall, chiefly to see Darrell Brockis as Toad; it's amazing what a really high-waisted pair of trousers can do to a man's shape. The weasels were sort of bankers now, as was the book's original author
Kenneth Grahame, who resigned as Secretary of the Bank of England in
1908 after either being nearly shot in the face during an anarchist
raid, or – depending on which motive you ascribe to the enforced retirement – accusing the Bank's future Governor of being "no gentleman", so I've no idea whose side he'd be on here.
(I have only my parents word for it that, many Christmases
ago, "Toad of Toad Hall" was the first show they ever took me to. It was the biggest room I'd ever been in. They tell me the sheer scale of the room made me whimper, then the lights lowered, and I didn't like that at all, and then old
man dressed as a mole stuck his head out of a trap door and shouted
"Hang white-washing!" and I howled and we left and that was it.)
Pleasingly concurrent with the fortunes of Toad Hall in this production were that of the baby otter puppet, Portly: It's always nice to see the inclusion of Pan, and "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" made a lot more sense as subplot here rather than just interlude. A lovely, lively, warm evening, and Wilton's Music Hall is an exciting space to explore during an interval. Do these photographs convey that?
I don't know. Badphone finally expired on Sunday, alas, but I appear to have found a
replacement with just as MySpace-era a camera, which was not my intention. I'll have to start hanging around more light.
On Tuesday I caught up for drinks with an old friend who told me that she can get married in Saint Paul's Cathedral, a thrilling possible future theatre project. I also found the following extraordinary performace on youtube while searching for video essays on "Brimstone and Treacle". I'd never made the connection before between Dennis Potter's fable of Satanic Home Invasion, and Mary Poppins (OR HAD I?)
I just wanted to write a good part for Olivia Colman.
And the TKA Smith Family Conservatory of the Art's family production of Poppins sheds little light on the banned seventies teleplay. But it does throw up a blisteringly confident turn from an uncredited singer in a role I don't remember as a rival nanny with a bun of grey hair fastened inexplicably to the top of her head, which the Conservatory has liked so much they've posted twice. In case you didn't manage to catch a Christmas show yourself this year I share both versions here, not for comparison, but to be played simultaneously to see if the resulting reason-shredding resonances open a portal to anywhere.
On Wednesday evening we performed the ante-penultimate Love Goddess at the Cockpit Theatre. The weather was milder now. The snow had gone. I didn't walk home directly. Badphone's replacement took what it could.
On Thursday, well, I wrote last Sunday's post, but I also learnt that that ante-penultimate show had actually been our penultimate as one of the cast had fallen ill, although testing negative for Covid. We'd planned our cast drinks for that evening however as some people had to rush off on Friday, including myself, who would have to be up early to catch a flight from Gatwick on a day of border control and train strikes. Our producer Laura had booked a table at a pub called the Pereseverance, and I hadn't left the flat all day.
As with the long walk home on Wednesday I found a refreshing solitude in that place. The barman gave me a Guiness in a weird glass, free nuts and sample of an unnamed Christmas cocktail he'd worked on. A lot was ending. Enjoying the uniterrupted ambience, it occured to me I could just try and go straight
to Gatwick after the final show though and not worry about sleeping Friday night.
I woke at midday, feeling finally Christmassy. The last night went ahead and everything felt new, which may not be unusual for a last night. As I said from the start, everyone's lovely, and while I may not have tried so much towards the end not to be too weird, it's only because that's what happens when you get to know people.
Then that stops, and there's no getting used to it. The show's over. Almog's on another continent now, and I took the Thameslink to Gatwick however many hours ago it was and found a nice, small copy of "Pinocchio" at the airport bookshop. Its tone is very Vic and Bob. In fact Bob Mortimer would make a brilliant Pinocchio. I woke on the plane surprised to see the land up at the top.
Mum met me at Montpellier just as I received the message that the cast member had now tested positive for covid after all, but that was okay because Susy's tested positive for Covid too. We made it down. That's the main thing. Dad showed us "Creature Comforts" in the cinema (because it's important to be reminded just how perfect Aardman can be...)
Tom put on the "Bottom" Christmas special. I'm about to put the presents out. I was meant to be cacting up on sleep but appear to haev written this instead. I hope you get everything you want this Christmas, ole unatendees.
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