The BBC you might have heard is incredibly nervous at the moment about putting another foot wrong: you can hear Adam and Joe
checking with their producer to see if they're allowed to say "Smack My
Bitch Up" just like the old days when you weren't allowed to hear "I Want Your Sex",
all shows are now undergoing a three-day vetting period to ensure
nothing which might possibly offend anyone reaches the internet etc,
everyone's clearly under a lot of pressure to play it as safe as is
humanly possible with no more "slip-ups"... in the light of which I
found this image from The Mxxl On Sxndxy illustrating what's accidentally been programmed for Christmas Day SO HILARIOUS I CRIED.
(It
was lying in a cafe. I did not buy it. And it's not the outrage I'm
promoting, just the delicious Oops of it... Sorry, have you already seen
this? I'm a little out of the loop.)
Yes, moon alert: Tonight's full mooon
will loom larger in the sky than it has since 1993, although peering
through the blinds tonight all I see is cloud. Actually I should put
some curtains up. Venetian blinds are all very well for a two-fisted man
of letters keeping faith with Ridley Scott's vision of 21st century
living, but it's getting quite cold now, and the bonsai tree by my brass
bed's beginning to smell ill. Seriously it took me ages to locate the
garlic odour.
On the subject of the moon, here's a short animation made by Paul Barritt accompanying a story by Suzanne Andrade; she stands in front of it, looking eerily like Jean Charles Deburau but with sexier hair, in their show "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" which I saw last night at the BAC:
They don't do cabaret any more. That's a shame because
an hour of this on its own can look a bit phoney, whereas a
fifteen-minute invasion of the stage of the Battersea Barge, say, is
awesome… That's a terribly ungracious judgment for me to make however
because I was sitting right at the front on my own, with a bad neck, and
hadn't even paid and paying always gets you in the mood. But this was a
Big Christmas Treat from the Battersea Arts Centre, you see, who'd
invited me along to a "Brainstorming Session". I felt like a real
player. After the show there were probably about two-hundred of us sat
around tables with crackers and lasagne, two-hundred who had all, we
were told, been "put on a list". Lewis was there (of "Alf and…" fame) and personal favourite Julian Fox.
Crackers were pulled and tiny pairs of nail-clippers sent flying across
the hall. And then the time came to "round table" some subjects, and I
joined the round table that read:
ONE ON ONES
… firstly because of The Books of Soap
and Interview Room H, but also because I found the name very pleasing
to the eye and couldn't quite work out why. At this table the BAC's
joint artistic director tabled the notion of a "one-on-one theatre
festival" which sounded great. Then he suggested this festival might
answer a demand from a public finding themselves in a "post-capitalist,
post-Blairite, post-spin" era, hungry for honesty and "energized by
Obama" etc. and I thought "Who? What? Oh no..." But it prompted Lewis to
make what I thought was the most interesting and important point of the
evening, namely that this demand for "one on one" theatre wasn't in
fact coming from the public at all, but from us artists. It's us who
want "the house-lights turned up" as he put it, far more than our
paying or non-paying house. I love Lewis. And it seems to me a very
important distinction for an artistic venue to make when deciding on its
focus, and indeed for commentators in general. Art doesn't change
direction because the public want it to but because the artists do; but
artists are also of course the public - they're seeing stuff as well as
making it, and chances are they're making the stuff they want to
see. In other words, you don't necessarily need all these feedback
forms. And the idea that the Battersea Arts Centre is somehow a
barometer of national public interest is, when you think about it for a
second, bonkers; what the BAC can I think genuinely take pride in is the
interest they generate from the large number of artists wanting to
produce work there. Dedum.
So anyway I walked home well-fed,
clearly knowing everything there ever was to know about my chosen
medium, found a DVD of "Planet Terror" in the living room, bunged it on
and was immediately reminded how much I clearly wanted to DO THIS! THIS!
MOVIES NOT THEATRE! THIS!!! Gah:
I have written no screenplay-he-dee-dee-doe. I have written no screenplay-he-dee. Done nothin all the livelong day but written this song And then whittled a fiddle out of whicker from a skip And stuck it up me bum-dee-doe.
Dear
Hollywood, I'm afraid I did not get round to writing "Fat Adolf" in the
end but here is a song I just done instead, can you make a film of
that? Yes? Excellent, phew that's a load off.
Writing isn't hard
you know. Graham Linehan said in an episode of Screenwipe I have left
it now too late to link to, it was like "doing a poo". Perhaps I should
get off the pot then. Certainly I'm not going to get anything written at
the British Library; people are distracting, and I've never written
anything in a library I now realize. When I write I tell myself a story
and take it down, and that means being on my own, maybe in bed, with
warm low lighting. Sounds nice enough but I'm still not doing it, I'm
simply filing these reports. Some excellent writers were interviewed for
that Screenwipe and the only thing, disappointingly, they had in common
was that they all dreaded writing. And willies. They all had willies in
common I mean, they didn't all dread willies. Russell T. Davies' one
piece of Advice To Writers was "Finish it", which is sterling.
Wednesday's
the half-point, yes? The half-point of the week? So I'm at the
half-point of my paid holiday now and that's five livelong days of
procrastination (ten day week, yup... You weren't told? You're in for a
big shock come Stansday)... five days in which I have written nothing,
and done very little else either because I know I'm meant to be writing.
Everything has been put off, even sleep. I mean I've been for walks.
And into second-hand bookshops, as should now be obvious (NICE FACT TO
STAVE OFF PANIC NECESSARY TO GET MY ARSE IN GEAR: Shunt have asked me to
be in their next show, which is based on "L'Argent" by Zola. I've been
looking for a copy). And I've been eating out a bit (SECOND
PROCRASTINATION-FRIENDLY FACT: The money came through from those
Mitchlook and Webbell sketches, the ones with this
in,
on the back of which I have now been invited to write for BBC 3's "The
Wrong Door" following a very friendly meeting with – I think – the
producer and receipt of a brief in which "Edgeyness" was misspelt.) I've
been swimming. I've been running baths. I've found an old sitcom of my Dad's
in its entirety on youtube, and been reminded yet again just how kind a
writer he is, and how glamorous ITV used to be back in the eighties:
that handover from Thames to LWT, those floodlit office blocks along the
South Bank promising such good times for the weekend (recalled to
perfect life in the opening credits of "Man To Man with Dean Lerner"),
and Richard O' Sullivan in a pastel blue track-suit toppling suavely
into Regent's Canal... I mean, yes, the BBC had the world for its logo,
but ITV had the South Bank! And the West End! AT NIGHT!
And
what am I going to see of that glamour, eh, in this day and age? Where
will I find all the magic bits in a W1 I now know like the back of my
tiny hand?... Anyway sitting in front of the laptop this morning looking
at – I don't know – this maybe –
- I received a text out of the blue from Dr. Meikle of
Foix: "Lazy bottom..shift and do something other than pretend you know
what its like ouside!scoot!i think you should go to....maida vale
today!why not." So I got up and headed out. I went to Maida Vale. I'd never been. It
was sunny. I had ciabatta on a barge. I picked up a leaflet called
"Little Venice Circular Walk". I hit Regent's Canal and attempted a run,
like Richard O' Sullivan. I felt queasy and slowed down. Ibis to the
left of me, dingoes to my right and up ahead moored to the Cumberland
Basin, the top-heavy Feng Shang Floating Restaurant just waiting to be
hijacked. I continued my way to the top of Primrose Hill and, similarly
buoyed, awaited further instructions.
From
"Adam and Eve" by the late Willie Rushton and the Primitive painters of
the Portal Gallery, a beautiful little book picked up in Oxfam in
Kentish Town on a Sunday evening set aside to be spent as though the
doctor with a talent for tenderness was in town and knocking about
beside me (the "she" mentioned below is Mrs. Bradley, Rushton's own
imaginary companion, like my doctor or that American who lives inside
Jack Dee's head in 'Lead Baloon' - or maybe he's a ghost, or a cylon, I
don't know. And the painting is "First Love" by Martin Leman):
"Now she's tut-tutting very loudly. " 'Mr Leman,' I say, 'is well-known for his cats.' I don't know why I think this will help. 'World famous.' " 'Tut-tut-tut.' " 'He loves chess.' "There is no way I am going to persuade her that these are two cats playing chess."
That made me laugh a lot. I loved this book:
"Tuesday:
God brings every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air to Adam
'to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof.' Here we were very lucky as he was
100% right."
And here's one of a number of bizarrely oblique
jokes I recently unearthed that I had sent off to Private Eye back in
the nineties. Eh?
Some
water damage. A little plastic cup full of soapy water routinely
toppled onto this hundred year-old Welsh hymnal. I think the damage
suits it though. Mother if you're reading this sorry.
I
hit my nose on a beam that first evening and I think I also look better
now as a result of the damage. The scar draws one's eye away from the
chin. "And and Bee" also got wet (shown above) and I love And and Bee.
They're out of print now, I'm pretty sure. The page above makes them
look creepy. They're not. They simply met this GIRL on a BOAT bound for
ASIA, and later they will meet a fairy in a STAR while standing in a
QUEUE by the ROAD who helps them catch a TRAM, gives them each a VEST
and sneaks them into someone's back YARD just in time for XMAS. Which
reminds me, it snowed this morning, what a kick!
Anyway,
here are the rules for the Books of Soap: "Bag checks in operation.
Only one visitor allowed in at any time [only the display case is
illuminated, the walls covered in mirrors that are cracked but not
smashed, and you have a torch]. Certain volumes may be handled [beneath
strips of processed chicken - that and the soap were my nods to the
Trinum Magicum] Simply ask an attendant. Every visitor must be
accompanied by an attendant [so me]. Please do not mark these books.
Goggles to be worn at all times ['The place is a bit of a tip.' 'But I
can't see anything.' 'That's why we ask you wear them. Because it's a
bit of a tip.'] Attendants to be blindfolded [so take my soapy hand and
lead me out]." And once out you were asked if you'd like to go back in
without the goggles - If you'd kept them on, this treat was your reward
and if you hadn't, this not being a treat was your punishment. Only half
said yes... And the last book:
"Simon, did you write this?" shouted David R from behind the soapy goggles while I stumbled into the leg of a chair. "Describe it." "It looks like it was made by a child, with access to a typewriter." "What's it say?" "
'But then Sam Spaghetti, Picky Pear and Quarrelsome Cucumber slid into
the whale's tummy because they were swallowed... and I expect you can
guess what happened then!'
