Let's All Lose Our F***ing Minds At The Normansfield Theatre, Teddington!!!

 A seasonal tradition I haven't experienced in decades now is the Going to the Seeing of the Thing. One didn't Go to See the Thing because one would enjoy it, one went because it was only once a year. What exactly the Thing was now I can't remember – a nativity play maybe, or something you parents' friends from work put on – but I have the shadowiest memories of Time itself occasionally dying before my eyes as I sat bewildered in the unheated darkness with no hope of escape now, because Time was dead. I also remember outgrowing this nightmare pretty quickly, and learnt in my teens an adult's talent for appreciating something on principal regardless of the actual happening. It is perhaps in that spirit that this video is posted.

 

  And I genuinely enjoyed Lizzie Wiggons' piss material. And the pipes of John Rawnsley. There was always something in the Thing to enjoy. The Normansfield's proscenium is a beauty too, but it shares with my memories of the Thing  – as I notice I texted Max Hutchinson back when he first alerted me to the space while planning how to beat Covid by staging A Midsummer Night's Dream on cricket pitches – 'a very evocative "why the fuck did I come here" acoustic'. That's why I could only post this around the longest night of the year, because that's when this is needed. Few of us have been able to Go and See a Thing this Christmas, and I've a battered boater in the flat, an even more battered topper, and a bowler hat too small for my head, all doffed to the Paper Moon.

 

Christmas Album 2020 (The Cut Off)

 

 The past never becomes the past more suddenly than on Christmas day.

 I always find, and forget I'll find, that stuff I considered posting before Christmas Eve looks immediately out of place on Boxing Day.

 

 It's a proper petit mort.

 The deadline for all the things I did to get me in the mood.

 Including the things I didn't know I was doing to get me in the mood. 

 My friend Sarah Morgan Margaret Cabourn-Smith called this space between Christmas and New Year's "the Merrineum".

HYMN HYMN HYMN HYMN HYMN HYMN HYMN 

 Margaret's just corrected me. Sarah however has in no way confirmed this correction. I wonder if baby Jesus got to keep that lamb.

Post 366

First, let's mood...

 Oh, you have to go to youtube. Well okay, do that and then come back maybe. There'll probably be an advert first. Sorry this is so stressful.* Okay.

 Hey. 

 Hey there. Dear readers, treasured guests, I know it's late, but this is it: As of December 25th 2019, I have now posted an average of a thing a day for the full leap year. This wasn't a new year's resolution, and it wasn't a response to COVID 19 – which I had no idea would be coming – it was just an attempt to see what would happen, and I'm not sure anything did happen in the end, but I'm still glad I managed it. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to stop. Sorting my laptop out so I can back on the youtube should probably be a priority, but there I go again, writing about what I should be doing, instead of just enjoying this. 

 Hey. 

 Are you playing the crickets? 

 Normally, I'd be in France on Christmas Eve, with my parents. We're all zooming each other tomorrow anyway to unwrap presents. I can't wait. I hope you're all doing tremendously, unatendees. Like the crickets, I'm here. I hope you get everything you want. And I recognise that knowing what you want can be quite hard work.

 Do you think crickets find crickets relaxing? I might look that up.

 Tomorrow though.

 Sweet dreams.

*UPDATE 21/02/2025: That video has now disappeared entirely, but it's pretty clear, in context. what it might have been, so I've put up another.

And John Oliver Returning to the Bugle IS Christmas

 

 ... inasmuch as it's the apex of unadulterated fun and laughter in the dark times.

 Hm, okay. I've been trying to write one post per day for a year now, and every single word is going funny on me at this point. Look at that sentence above. "Inasmuch"? Get a room, syllables. Also, exactly what does "adulterating" actually involve? And why does the word "adultery" feature so prominently in it? Come to think of it, why does the word "adult" feature so prominently in the word "adultery"? I'm going to look this up – Right, that has happened: Apparently, "adultery" comes from a word meaning "to spoil", and has nothing to do with the word "adult", which is actually the past tense of the root of "adolescent". So we're adolts once we're done adolescing. 

 I digress. But that's fine, because so does this video. And it is so wonderful seeing John Oliver (who hasn't done too badly in America either) catch up with Andy Saltzman since their last broadcast together five years ago, clearly relishing the chance to bollock on about inconsequential nonsense like the sex life of frogs, or the naming of snow ploughs, with no danger of any of it getting a sewage plant named after him. "Nothing's changed," he says, and that's what this feels like, and it's a lovely feeling for the end of the year. I've missed this sound. 

 Parenthetically, and tangentially – and I really don't know what words mean any more – over on f*c*book, I saw more love being shared for Stephen Oliver's brilliant soundtrack to the BBC's Lord of the Rings as recommended in this post, and learnt that he was John Oliver's uncle...

 

 What do you think?

HUGHESDAY, 22ND DECEMBER 2020

 

 I used to love the idea we only ever use ten per cent of our brain or whatever it was. Like Odd John, or the pill that makes Bradley Cooper get his shit together in Limitless, it threw up superb fantasies of human potential, suggesting if we could only get that percentage higher, maybe we could read all of "War and Peace" in a single minute by just flicking through it without blinking, or blinking very quickly, or we could move objects with our mind, or walk through walls, or turn invisible...

 

 

 But then I learnt it wasn't really true. It was like saying "you only ever use ten per cent of your home." We just never use a hundred per cent at once, and human potential is actually, sadly, a lot more knowable and mapped than I'd hoped. We aren't all secretly Captain Marvel (D.C.'s or Marvel's, take your pick) sitting on untapped panoplies of super powers. 

  But then... 

 

 Oh, then I saw London Hughes perform "To Catch A D*ck" at the Soho Theatre and, reader, I saw a human operating at a hunded per cent. That show has since been turned into a Netflix Special, which dropped today in something like a hundred and ninety countries worldwide, as one of the many fruits of London's move to Los Angeles back in February, and I watched it this morning, keen but also wary, because it couldn't possibly have been as good as I remember, but no it was, and that's the thing about London: she promises everything, and then makes good on it. She gives it all, and not a quantum of it is wasted, because her aim, like everything else about London Dionne Mischa Stacey Stephanie Estina Knibbs-Hughes, is true... 

 

 Respect to Hannah Gadsby, but not all comedy relies on self-deprecation. And respect, too, to W. B Yeats, but the best don't all lack all conviction. How is it possible for a comedian to have the energy levels of the oustanding and beautiful Robin Williams without projecting a quantum of that man's desperation? I've no idea, but London manages it. Also, her material's better. And she didn't nick it. Banging on about her positivity risks missing how funny she is, from which I'm guessing all the rest of it springs, but she is one of the bravest people I know, because none of it is fake, and her courage is contagious, and the fact I met her while casting a character who's energy has to fling the protagonist of Time Spanner through Heaven in a circuit round the Universe remains one of the nicest things I know about being me.

 

(London in LA)

 

Frankly, world, this was long overdue. Hey, welcome to London!

Free Access to Saturnalia and Birdsong

 "Today, in London, your gift begins at 8.04 and ends at 15.53" says door 21 of Gemma Brockis' Oddvent Calendar, the shortest day of the year. This being the peak of Saturnalia, rules are for fools, and so today the door is free to all. Through it you'll find a radio helmed by Oddvent's staunchest contributors, who are taking requests. 

 It's just through here. Click on "IT IS OPEN".

 The calendar's other doors (including mine) are still available here of course.

 And tangentially you can watch me play Saturn really horribly here.

The Artists' Mews

 My tree was missing an angel. 

 Then Morgan got in touch today, and I made this, inspired by a significantly better picture he painted for me back in 2010 to welcome me into his home after the fire. Both of those links will take you to more pictures of Kato, the old Wanless Road cat. Morgan posted more images of her on instagram last weekend. He's taken care of and made work about her until the very end, which end was the subject of his message today. Morgan, I'm so sorry. And Kato, thank you for being an angel. For all I know, you took care of and made work about Morgan too. Rest In Power, Meeower.