I've been crap and I'm sorry to all three of you. Thursday I had a second date. It was good and now I wish I'd never met him. Nothing less fun than the vulnerability associated with actually liking someone. Will try and forget all about him forever. On Friday, Lucy came to London and placed upon me the heavy burden of the fact that she has two children and doesn't live in town and rarely gets a night off and had driven all the way just to see me so, well, you know, we just HAD to go out in Hoxton and eat Thai food and drink much wine, and then go to another bar and have fruit smoothies for health and cookies for fun and wine for stupidity, and Lucy decided to see what zambuca coffee tasted like (fail), and then go to a club and dance until 2am with boys who were born in the latter half of the eighties, boys who were good looking enough to take their shirts off when they got hot, and of course I had to kiss one of them although I can't remember which one, even when I look at the photos - all I can remember is pulling away and going, "Urgh, you taste of Red Bull." What a charming and petite nymph I am. And then chips from a kebab shop and absurd and unexpected self-control from me, only about seven hours too late, and home on the nightbus.
And then on Saturday I woke up in that curious and deeply unpleasant wasteland between still drunk and more hungover than you'd ever known it was possible to be, and Lucy and I had bacon sandwiches and then I got on a coach in Waterloo and drove to Cambridge to sing in a concert in King's College chapel, to the best of my knowledge one of the most glorious buildings in the whole world, with a nine second acoustic and, at 8pm after five hours of rehearsal, a distinguished audience; and at the party later I was able to say thank you to my choral hero, nonagenarian Sir David Willcocks, without whom etc. etc., and when he'd thanked me and turned away it was all too much and I burst into tears. Pulled myself together afterwards with some Oyster Bay and then tepid rosé in plastic cups on the coach, got home, passed out, woke up on Sunday aching as though I had been a woefully underprepared contestant on Overnight Gladiators without my knowledge, did yoga, sweated as though doing Bikram while actually just in my normal-temperature flat, then went to see Eva's new baby and then off to Mayfair for more rehearsals during which I thought I was going to faint or be sick, or both simultaneously, collapsing into a pool of my own vomit, a bit like I was dissolving into bile a la the Wicked Witch Of The West, or was it East?, but managed to avoid that attractive end by sitting down, and then drinking Lucozade and eating Soreen, and then we performed another whopping great concert, exhausting and exhilarating, followed by a restoratative pint with my parents and an unexpected lift back to my home and a phonecall with Grania where my tattered sanity was hacked into some semblance of shape with her cat o' nine tails and Polyfilla.
Today I am mostly trying to stay upright.
Showing posts with label Dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dance. Show all posts
Monday, 19 July 2010
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
A cornucopia of issues
So I'll update you on my existence and then we can cover this heartbreaking academies project and other hellish current affairs developments.
Friday night I went to see the Chemical Brothers (or as my 26 year old companion Chris insists on calling them, 'The Chems') at The Roundhouse. Last time I saw them perform live, I was eighteen and had told my parents I was staying the night at my friend Daisy's house but in fact we went to a Prodigy gig at Brixton Academy and took speed that our druggy friend Nick had put in a bottle of Ribena for us because we didn't want to snort it. The Chems were the support act but we'd drunk our Ribena too early and I was completely mental during that forty minute gig and then basically started aching and being tired during the main set. The next day I felt like my bones were eroding and Daisy and I compared notes about how horrific our comedowns were, but in retrospect I'd taken about half a gram of speed dissolved in a sugary drink, a combo which was about as likely to get me high as a Tracker bar. I think I was just unfit and six hours of dancing had given my body a shock. ANYWAY. Fourteen years on and the Chemical Brothers have a lot less hair and, personally, I think their music is a bit less exciting than it was when I first listened to Exit Planet Dust or whatever it was called. But it was a brilliant gig all the same, even without the alleged benefit of speed or Ribena - lots of dancing, lots of holding arms aloft to interfere with the amazing laser shows, lots of spilled pints and excitement about Bono's back injury that was possibly (at that point) going to exclude U2 from headlining at Glasto. Come on Bowie.
Saturday morning I was my own middle-class nightmare as I was awoken at 7.30am by the delivery man from Ocado, and proceeded to make my own garlic bread for the countryside gathering that lots of us went to and cor was it lovely. Old friends, hay bales to sit on, delicious food, Pimms and champagne in the sun, laughing, chinese lanterns after dark... a magical time and a blast from the past. Hungover and giggling uncontrollably on Sunday, work and choir on Monday, work and work-sponsored wine tasting last night - we tried bottles from Greece, Georgia, Italy and France and it was interesting. Apparently wine is thought to have originated somewhere around Georgia in 6000 or 7000 BC. Amazing. More interesting was the conversation I was having with my colleague before we sat down. I'd pointed out a guy from our floor who was also at the tasting, and indicated that he was thought to be a bit of a player. My colleague, let's call him Mike, said that didn't surprise him at all. Mike is in his early fifties and has been married nearly thirty years, and he told me that having a black-and-white attitude to infidelity is fairly naive. My jaw dropped.
"Do you mean that cheating is the norm?" I asked.
"I have no idea," he answered. "But it can't be a deal-breaker. Men are ruled by their pants. If it's going to be the end of your marriage if he fools around with another woman on a drunken night out, then you're going to find it hard going."
"Hang on," I said. "You're telling me that I have to be prepared to put up with infidelity if I get married?"
"I've never cheated, but I think it's not practical to say you will end a 25 year marriage on the basis of a one night mistake."
"Obviously I know he'll want to shag another woman at some point, possibly hourly," I said, just to show that I'm not too much of a purist. "And I'll meet other guys I find attractive too. But I've always hoped that, if he finds himself wanting to sleep with someone else, he'll come to me and tell me, and either we deal with it or we decide to break up."
"It's a nice idea, but I think your standards are impossibly high," Mike said. "These things are - normally - not premeditated. The guy gets drunk, goes home with the wrong person, wakes up remorseful - and just because of that, you're going to end a 25 year marriage, with three kids involved? It's not justified. No one is perfect."
"But that's just such a bad attitude. If he does it once and gets away with it, what's to stop him doing it again, over and over? I see what you mean, that ruining 25 years for one shag seems over the top, but if you can't trust him, then surely the things that make a marriage fun are mostly destroyed? And that's the worst bit - once you've been lied to once, once you've been made a fool of, your next relationship is affected too. You become paranoid and insecure, and having once been a laid-back cool girl, you move to be a divorcee with three kids who can't trust anyone else. Just because your stupid husband fancied a shag with someone else. The cheating moment itself may only last ten minutes but the effects are long-lasting..." Mike looked at me sadly - he clearly understood my point of view but still thought I was being hopelessly unrealistic. I felt totally powerless. And a bit sad. Really quite sad, actually. My first long term relationship ended because I was sorely tempted to cheat on my boyfriend. I didn't though - I spoke to him about it and we agreed that neither of us were happy, and we broke up. If my husband of 25 years wanted to cheat, I'd hope he would come and talk about it with me. But I guess if it just pops up out of nowhere, he's unlikely to phone me from the cab he's taking back to her house, with her kissing his neck as he explains his predicament. Meh, I dunno. I just hate the whole thought of infidelity. It really makes me feel sick. Desire to sleep with someone else I'm fine with - but actually going through with it, and lying to the person who's been there for you for the past quarter of a century... I just can't see how I should be laid back about that prospect. And that whole argument about men being rule by their pants, it's pathetic. It may be true, but it's pathetic. Women have just as strong a need to be loved and flattered and fancied. Maybe the chemicals are different and men genuinely can't control their urges. But I don't believe that's true of all of them. Some of them are honourable enough to keep it in their pants. I won't get married until I find one like that. And I refuse to be grateful if he is. Fidelity should be a given, not an unexpected bonus. Conversing with Mike was unexpectedly depressing. Glad (in many ways) that I'm not married to him.
In other news... It's my country's economy that's going down the pan, but I did laugh when I read this extract on The Graun's website, detailing some very-much-predicted issues with the Conservatives' budget in yesterday's Queen's Speech:
'Osborne was forced to abolish child trust funds altogether after the Tories overestimated savings that could be made on the basis of advice from the Whitehall efficiency experts, Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read. Gershon had said that £1bn of the £6bn cuts would come from savings in government IT projects, while up to £1bn would come from a recruitment freeze across the civil service. The Treasury said yesterday that IT had produced savings of £95m, less than 10% of the amount initially identified, while the recruitment freeze would produce savings of £120m, slightly more than 10% of the amount estimated by Gershon in that area.
Labour had lampooned a two-page document produced by Gershon during the election campaign outlining his efficiency savings. Liam Byrne, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said tonight: "We warned the Tories that their plans were wrong. Now they're having to break both parties' manifesto promises and wipe out child trust funds because they wouldn't listen."'
I've no problem with child trust funds falling by the wayside, but it does show that complex descriptions of proposed financial savings made by a party while in opposition should pretty much always be taken with a shedful of salt.
Meh, no energy to carry on typing - suffice to say, this new academies drive by the Tories (and, yes, the LibDems) is exactly what I feared most - schools being run outside the jurisdiction of the local councils, ostensibly to free up teachers from national red tape: a good aim but a terrible solution. Academies are privately funded by businesses or individuals - how can this fail to create a massive disparity between different schools in different areas? It also opens things up for a plethora of faith schools. Agh. It's a disgrace, seriously. I can't even really believe it's happening. The whole thing makes me massively disappointed and LIVID with the LibDems for sanctioning such a lot of bollocks. I'm still glad I voted for them, because the vaguely-hinted-at referendum on AV in 2011 will mean the next election is slightly fairer than it would have been, had the coalition not been formed. But the Labour leadership candidates look pretty uninspiring at the moment so right now I really have no idea who I'll be voting for in 2015. With the education system going down the pan thanks to a 'solution' that will make the existing postcode lottery situation look like a pleasant dream, this country might be so freaking scary that I might not even be here next time around. Grumpy grumpy.
Friday night I went to see the Chemical Brothers (or as my 26 year old companion Chris insists on calling them, 'The Chems') at The Roundhouse. Last time I saw them perform live, I was eighteen and had told my parents I was staying the night at my friend Daisy's house but in fact we went to a Prodigy gig at Brixton Academy and took speed that our druggy friend Nick had put in a bottle of Ribena for us because we didn't want to snort it. The Chems were the support act but we'd drunk our Ribena too early and I was completely mental during that forty minute gig and then basically started aching and being tired during the main set. The next day I felt like my bones were eroding and Daisy and I compared notes about how horrific our comedowns were, but in retrospect I'd taken about half a gram of speed dissolved in a sugary drink, a combo which was about as likely to get me high as a Tracker bar. I think I was just unfit and six hours of dancing had given my body a shock. ANYWAY. Fourteen years on and the Chemical Brothers have a lot less hair and, personally, I think their music is a bit less exciting than it was when I first listened to Exit Planet Dust or whatever it was called. But it was a brilliant gig all the same, even without the alleged benefit of speed or Ribena - lots of dancing, lots of holding arms aloft to interfere with the amazing laser shows, lots of spilled pints and excitement about Bono's back injury that was possibly (at that point) going to exclude U2 from headlining at Glasto. Come on Bowie.
Saturday morning I was my own middle-class nightmare as I was awoken at 7.30am by the delivery man from Ocado, and proceeded to make my own garlic bread for the countryside gathering that lots of us went to and cor was it lovely. Old friends, hay bales to sit on, delicious food, Pimms and champagne in the sun, laughing, chinese lanterns after dark... a magical time and a blast from the past. Hungover and giggling uncontrollably on Sunday, work and choir on Monday, work and work-sponsored wine tasting last night - we tried bottles from Greece, Georgia, Italy and France and it was interesting. Apparently wine is thought to have originated somewhere around Georgia in 6000 or 7000 BC. Amazing. More interesting was the conversation I was having with my colleague before we sat down. I'd pointed out a guy from our floor who was also at the tasting, and indicated that he was thought to be a bit of a player. My colleague, let's call him Mike, said that didn't surprise him at all. Mike is in his early fifties and has been married nearly thirty years, and he told me that having a black-and-white attitude to infidelity is fairly naive. My jaw dropped.
"Do you mean that cheating is the norm?" I asked.
"I have no idea," he answered. "But it can't be a deal-breaker. Men are ruled by their pants. If it's going to be the end of your marriage if he fools around with another woman on a drunken night out, then you're going to find it hard going."
"Hang on," I said. "You're telling me that I have to be prepared to put up with infidelity if I get married?"
"I've never cheated, but I think it's not practical to say you will end a 25 year marriage on the basis of a one night mistake."
"Obviously I know he'll want to shag another woman at some point, possibly hourly," I said, just to show that I'm not too much of a purist. "And I'll meet other guys I find attractive too. But I've always hoped that, if he finds himself wanting to sleep with someone else, he'll come to me and tell me, and either we deal with it or we decide to break up."
"It's a nice idea, but I think your standards are impossibly high," Mike said. "These things are - normally - not premeditated. The guy gets drunk, goes home with the wrong person, wakes up remorseful - and just because of that, you're going to end a 25 year marriage, with three kids involved? It's not justified. No one is perfect."
"But that's just such a bad attitude. If he does it once and gets away with it, what's to stop him doing it again, over and over? I see what you mean, that ruining 25 years for one shag seems over the top, but if you can't trust him, then surely the things that make a marriage fun are mostly destroyed? And that's the worst bit - once you've been lied to once, once you've been made a fool of, your next relationship is affected too. You become paranoid and insecure, and having once been a laid-back cool girl, you move to be a divorcee with three kids who can't trust anyone else. Just because your stupid husband fancied a shag with someone else. The cheating moment itself may only last ten minutes but the effects are long-lasting..." Mike looked at me sadly - he clearly understood my point of view but still thought I was being hopelessly unrealistic. I felt totally powerless. And a bit sad. Really quite sad, actually. My first long term relationship ended because I was sorely tempted to cheat on my boyfriend. I didn't though - I spoke to him about it and we agreed that neither of us were happy, and we broke up. If my husband of 25 years wanted to cheat, I'd hope he would come and talk about it with me. But I guess if it just pops up out of nowhere, he's unlikely to phone me from the cab he's taking back to her house, with her kissing his neck as he explains his predicament. Meh, I dunno. I just hate the whole thought of infidelity. It really makes me feel sick. Desire to sleep with someone else I'm fine with - but actually going through with it, and lying to the person who's been there for you for the past quarter of a century... I just can't see how I should be laid back about that prospect. And that whole argument about men being rule by their pants, it's pathetic. It may be true, but it's pathetic. Women have just as strong a need to be loved and flattered and fancied. Maybe the chemicals are different and men genuinely can't control their urges. But I don't believe that's true of all of them. Some of them are honourable enough to keep it in their pants. I won't get married until I find one like that. And I refuse to be grateful if he is. Fidelity should be a given, not an unexpected bonus. Conversing with Mike was unexpectedly depressing. Glad (in many ways) that I'm not married to him.
In other news... It's my country's economy that's going down the pan, but I did laugh when I read this extract on The Graun's website, detailing some very-much-predicted issues with the Conservatives' budget in yesterday's Queen's Speech:
'Osborne was forced to abolish child trust funds altogether after the Tories overestimated savings that could be made on the basis of advice from the Whitehall efficiency experts, Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read. Gershon had said that £1bn of the £6bn cuts would come from savings in government IT projects, while up to £1bn would come from a recruitment freeze across the civil service. The Treasury said yesterday that IT had produced savings of £95m, less than 10% of the amount initially identified, while the recruitment freeze would produce savings of £120m, slightly more than 10% of the amount estimated by Gershon in that area.
Labour had lampooned a two-page document produced by Gershon during the election campaign outlining his efficiency savings. Liam Byrne, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said tonight: "We warned the Tories that their plans were wrong. Now they're having to break both parties' manifesto promises and wipe out child trust funds because they wouldn't listen."'
I've no problem with child trust funds falling by the wayside, but it does show that complex descriptions of proposed financial savings made by a party while in opposition should pretty much always be taken with a shedful of salt.
Meh, no energy to carry on typing - suffice to say, this new academies drive by the Tories (and, yes, the LibDems) is exactly what I feared most - schools being run outside the jurisdiction of the local councils, ostensibly to free up teachers from national red tape: a good aim but a terrible solution. Academies are privately funded by businesses or individuals - how can this fail to create a massive disparity between different schools in different areas? It also opens things up for a plethora of faith schools. Agh. It's a disgrace, seriously. I can't even really believe it's happening. The whole thing makes me massively disappointed and LIVID with the LibDems for sanctioning such a lot of bollocks. I'm still glad I voted for them, because the vaguely-hinted-at referendum on AV in 2011 will mean the next election is slightly fairer than it would have been, had the coalition not been formed. But the Labour leadership candidates look pretty uninspiring at the moment so right now I really have no idea who I'll be voting for in 2015. With the education system going down the pan thanks to a 'solution' that will make the existing postcode lottery situation look like a pleasant dream, this country might be so freaking scary that I might not even be here next time around. Grumpy grumpy.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Formation anxiety
There appears to have been a shift in my local EAT while I was in Lapland, although I am not the only one who missed the memo. The EAT in question is a rectangular room, with sandwich refrigeration units running along the long left hand wall and the short back wall. The short front wall looks out onto the street and is glass, and along the right hand wall are the tills. Pre-Finland, in the busy lunchtime rush, we would all collect our chosen items and stand behind one of the tills, hungrily awaiting our turn. But yesterday, when I went to buy my sandwich, something had altered. A new, one-queue format had been adopted, with a snake from the front door, running along the length of the left hand refrigeration units and then doubling around the top, with the frontmost person going to the next available till.
I am a big fan of the one-queue format. It is the most fair system, without doubt. It didn't quite work in EAT, physically, due to the layout of the store and the volume of people attempting to line up, but I was enthusiastic about the shift in procedure and willingly took my place at the tail-end, putting up with the irritation as people leaned through the snake to get their sandwiches. Gradually, I moved further from the front door, up along the left hand side, and eventually rounded the top corner. Then I noticed that, with only two people ahead of me, the snake was being abandoned. No one was joining the back, instead reverting to pre-Finland protocol and standing in front of individual tills. Most frustratingly, the staff at the tills could plainly see what had happened and did nothing to rectify the shift. My blood sugar was low and I was furious, so I did what any self-respecting Brit would do: stood politely in silence, not wanting to be a pedantic dickhead, knowing that eventually my time would come. Victory.
EAT today was back to multi-queues. It may be less fair, but one-queue only works if everyone adheres to the system, and sadly EAT's vertical layout just doesn't allow for it. Frankly, I was relieved.
Last night I went to see Blaze at the Peacock Theatre in Holborn. It was excellent and rubbish in equal measures, almost schizophrenically so. My favourite bit was the beginning. There were approx. 12 pairs of trainers in a row across the front of the stage, and the three of us chose our favourite ones. Then suddenly, as the lights dimmed, Grania announced that we had to kiss the people who put on our shoes. A tall ugly guy put on the red velcro boots I'd picked. I was annoyed. Then I saw that Grania and Emily's favourite shoes were both being put on by girls. I felt better. The dancing started and it was very cool. But there just wasn't enough street stuff to sustain an hour and twenty minute show, so the choreographers padded it out with nods to Wii games, 80s pop and acid house that just didn't sit right. Inexplicably, the lighting was absolutely superb for about six minutes in total, and pretty rubbish the rest of the time (how does this happen?); similarly, a lot of the music was original and it was occasionally very good, but mostly a bit lame. And while there were three break dancing guys who were absolutely exceptional, several of the others seemed about as street as Prince Philip - they could do the moves, but it was all a bit staged and I felt like I was watching an end-of-term performance at Sylvia Young, and then I was, like, 'Well what do you expect, Jane - this is a theatre, they're on a stage, of course it's choreographed.' And then I was, like, 'Well, maybe street dancing shouldn't leave the streets,' and then I was like, 'Well, then you wouldn't be here and none of these lovely people in the audience would be having this nice night out,' and I was like, 'Well, I'm fine with that,' and then I was like, 'Well FINE.' So much for the show being schizophrenic. I think it's clear who is the mentalist.
I am a big fan of the one-queue format. It is the most fair system, without doubt. It didn't quite work in EAT, physically, due to the layout of the store and the volume of people attempting to line up, but I was enthusiastic about the shift in procedure and willingly took my place at the tail-end, putting up with the irritation as people leaned through the snake to get their sandwiches. Gradually, I moved further from the front door, up along the left hand side, and eventually rounded the top corner. Then I noticed that, with only two people ahead of me, the snake was being abandoned. No one was joining the back, instead reverting to pre-Finland protocol and standing in front of individual tills. Most frustratingly, the staff at the tills could plainly see what had happened and did nothing to rectify the shift. My blood sugar was low and I was furious, so I did what any self-respecting Brit would do: stood politely in silence, not wanting to be a pedantic dickhead, knowing that eventually my time would come. Victory.
EAT today was back to multi-queues. It may be less fair, but one-queue only works if everyone adheres to the system, and sadly EAT's vertical layout just doesn't allow for it. Frankly, I was relieved.
Last night I went to see Blaze at the Peacock Theatre in Holborn. It was excellent and rubbish in equal measures, almost schizophrenically so. My favourite bit was the beginning. There were approx. 12 pairs of trainers in a row across the front of the stage, and the three of us chose our favourite ones. Then suddenly, as the lights dimmed, Grania announced that we had to kiss the people who put on our shoes. A tall ugly guy put on the red velcro boots I'd picked. I was annoyed. Then I saw that Grania and Emily's favourite shoes were both being put on by girls. I felt better. The dancing started and it was very cool. But there just wasn't enough street stuff to sustain an hour and twenty minute show, so the choreographers padded it out with nods to Wii games, 80s pop and acid house that just didn't sit right. Inexplicably, the lighting was absolutely superb for about six minutes in total, and pretty rubbish the rest of the time (how does this happen?); similarly, a lot of the music was original and it was occasionally very good, but mostly a bit lame. And while there were three break dancing guys who were absolutely exceptional, several of the others seemed about as street as Prince Philip - they could do the moves, but it was all a bit staged and I felt like I was watching an end-of-term performance at Sylvia Young, and then I was, like, 'Well what do you expect, Jane - this is a theatre, they're on a stage, of course it's choreographed.' And then I was, like, 'Well, maybe street dancing shouldn't leave the streets,' and then I was like, 'Well, then you wouldn't be here and none of these lovely people in the audience would be having this nice night out,' and I was like, 'Well, I'm fine with that,' and then I was like, 'Well FINE.' So much for the show being schizophrenic. I think it's clear who is the mentalist.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Dancing in the Dark (would have been preferable)
And now it really is the last LLFF of the Noughties. It's about 6pm and Nick and I have returned from a long day's wandering and learning and eating and being confused. First stop was the fantastic Museum of Communism, which had a lot of boards displaying photos and quite small writing, and both of us later admitted that we had thought we were going to struggle to focus, but were pleasantly surprised with how well it held our attention. It was really quite amazing. I was 11 when the Berlin Wall came down, and I don't think I really understood what Communism was until about 2006, when I read The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists and 1984 in quick succession. Part of me briefly thought I was a Socialist for a while, and I suppose I still might be. But I also feel a bit Libertarian, which really doesn't fit on the same side of the fence at all. Hmmm. Either way, I would like to believe in democracy. There was some interesting footage at the museum showing ordinary Czechs in ordinary, slightly Eighties clothing, fighting the Communist forces in squares we'd been walking through moments earlier. It was inspiring. Not that I want to start a revolution but just that, maybe, if we needed to revolt, one day, we could find the courage. Power to the people.
Then we walked out of town a bit and went to the Museum of Prague, mainly to see a miniature model of the city that was made in the nineteenth century. And we would have enjoyed seeing it if it hadn't have been for the freaking annoying feature which meant that the model, which was about as big as four ping-pong tables and surrounded by a glass case, could be lit up in different sections by one person standing at a computer screen at one corner. Fun if you are in control of the screen and wanted to light up the Old Town Square or the Charles Bridge or whatever, but unbeLIEVably irritating for everyone else, who has walked around the glass case and is staring in detail at one particular area and then all the lights go out and only one patch of the model, invariably on the other side of the case, is illuminated and the bit closest to you is in pitch darkness. Badly thought out and made us both strop off. Still fun though.
Suddenly we noticed that all the while, time had been marching on, and we had to rush back across town to our hotel, pick up a couple of things and then wolf down a delicious lunch in a nearby eatery where we had gone because our hotel had supplied us with vouchers giving us 10% off if we ate more than 400 CSK which was basically impossible as a main course was about 125. But the waiters were charming and the food was perfect so we were well happy innit. Then we charged over to the National Theatre where we'd bought our tickets for Godzilla: The Ballet yesterday and the man at the door frowned at us and we thought it was because we were late, so we went up the stairs and he shouted at us and then his colleague explained that it was at another theatre and that we needed to go out and turn right, which we did, but we couldn't find anything resembling a performance of Goldilocks, so we went into another building and asked a woman who said "Hmmm. You have three minutes to go two kilometres," and it turned out the theatre was directly opposite the Museum of Communism, and we ran back across town and got there a bit late and flustered, and walked into our box, expecting to see taut men and wispy women in 200 dernier tights and perhaps some sort of figurative bear costume, delicately acting out 'Who's been eating my porridge?' in a routine choreographed by Rudolf Nuryev or similar, but instead appeared to have walked in to the live version of Let's Pretend, where the rejects from Prague's second-best ballet school went to get drunk and then die. I know as much about ballet as I do about microbiology, but even I can say with confidence that the dancing was a disgrace. The main man did four average pirouettes in a row and then expected applause from the audience. And then there was the singer/narrator, who sounded like a haggard, inebriated tramp who had stumbled onto the stage and been told to make up a song as he went along. There were no bears and no bowls of porridge. There were lots of people dressed up as red ants, some of them with women's knickers attached to their thoraxes, doing routines with silver Swiss balls, looking like something any sixth form girl could have choreographed in a twenty minute tea break. It was all quite extraordinary. In the first interval, the lights went up and I looked around - Nick and I were almost certainly the only people who had not brought a five year old with us. In the second interval, I felt a bit drowsy after my nap and Nick said he had had enough, so we culled. An experience.
Since then, we've been to a couple of shops. I developed an obsession with buying a fur muff while I was in Prague, and must have been in about thirty shops over the past two days, miming inserting my hands into a soft fur ball. I have been greeted with many strange looks, although one lady showed me a gigantic, bottle green one made of fox yesterday that I loved until I found out it was around £200. Today I walked past yet another shop that had hats on display in the window and said to Nick, hopefully, "Muff?" He agreed it looked possible, and yes, lo, inside was my dream muff, creamy white, very soft and - crucially - much cheaper than the other one. I now own it and am very happy. Sorry Peta.
Tonight we have a table booked at a restaurant near the Old Town Square, and all around everyone is getting excited. Nick, however, has a hatred of New Year's Eve so we are not allowed to talk about the end of the decade. He is lying on his bed next to mine reading Barbara Walters' autobiography and I am desperate to compile lists of best albums of the past ten years, best movies, best moments, worst moments, top three lessons learned, etc., while he just wants to forget about the passing of time. He tells me that he gets excited on New Year's Day, and looks forward to the future, but hates to think about what has been lost, missed opportunities and ineradicable truths. So, just between you and me - my best album released in the Noughties is Poses by Rufus Wainwright. My best book published in the Noughties is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My favourite movie released in the Noughties is... TBC. I can't think of any good films I've seen at the cinema in the past ten years. That's insane. I did love Anvil. Maybe it was Anvil. Is that possible? I'll come back to that. My personal highlight is one long complex string - it's that I'm finally happy, but I wouldn't have been happy if I hadn't bought my flat, and I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't taken the job in the bank, and I wouldn't have taken the job in the bank if I hadn't been tutoring my boss's kids, and I wouldn't have been tutoring them if I hadn't been doing my MA, and I wouldn't have been doing my MA if I hadn't had been lost and blue and had my wonderful parents to help me... it's all a beautiful chain of events that's reached a wonderful viewpoint, crystal clear in retrospect but murky as a swamp at the time. What I know for sure is that everyone who's reading this makes me happy, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. TBC.
Then we walked out of town a bit and went to the Museum of Prague, mainly to see a miniature model of the city that was made in the nineteenth century. And we would have enjoyed seeing it if it hadn't have been for the freaking annoying feature which meant that the model, which was about as big as four ping-pong tables and surrounded by a glass case, could be lit up in different sections by one person standing at a computer screen at one corner. Fun if you are in control of the screen and wanted to light up the Old Town Square or the Charles Bridge or whatever, but unbeLIEVably irritating for everyone else, who has walked around the glass case and is staring in detail at one particular area and then all the lights go out and only one patch of the model, invariably on the other side of the case, is illuminated and the bit closest to you is in pitch darkness. Badly thought out and made us both strop off. Still fun though.
Suddenly we noticed that all the while, time had been marching on, and we had to rush back across town to our hotel, pick up a couple of things and then wolf down a delicious lunch in a nearby eatery where we had gone because our hotel had supplied us with vouchers giving us 10% off if we ate more than 400 CSK which was basically impossible as a main course was about 125. But the waiters were charming and the food was perfect so we were well happy innit. Then we charged over to the National Theatre where we'd bought our tickets for Godzilla: The Ballet yesterday and the man at the door frowned at us and we thought it was because we were late, so we went up the stairs and he shouted at us and then his colleague explained that it was at another theatre and that we needed to go out and turn right, which we did, but we couldn't find anything resembling a performance of Goldilocks, so we went into another building and asked a woman who said "Hmmm. You have three minutes to go two kilometres," and it turned out the theatre was directly opposite the Museum of Communism, and we ran back across town and got there a bit late and flustered, and walked into our box, expecting to see taut men and wispy women in 200 dernier tights and perhaps some sort of figurative bear costume, delicately acting out 'Who's been eating my porridge?' in a routine choreographed by Rudolf Nuryev or similar, but instead appeared to have walked in to the live version of Let's Pretend, where the rejects from Prague's second-best ballet school went to get drunk and then die. I know as much about ballet as I do about microbiology, but even I can say with confidence that the dancing was a disgrace. The main man did four average pirouettes in a row and then expected applause from the audience. And then there was the singer/narrator, who sounded like a haggard, inebriated tramp who had stumbled onto the stage and been told to make up a song as he went along. There were no bears and no bowls of porridge. There were lots of people dressed up as red ants, some of them with women's knickers attached to their thoraxes, doing routines with silver Swiss balls, looking like something any sixth form girl could have choreographed in a twenty minute tea break. It was all quite extraordinary. In the first interval, the lights went up and I looked around - Nick and I were almost certainly the only people who had not brought a five year old with us. In the second interval, I felt a bit drowsy after my nap and Nick said he had had enough, so we culled. An experience.
Since then, we've been to a couple of shops. I developed an obsession with buying a fur muff while I was in Prague, and must have been in about thirty shops over the past two days, miming inserting my hands into a soft fur ball. I have been greeted with many strange looks, although one lady showed me a gigantic, bottle green one made of fox yesterday that I loved until I found out it was around £200. Today I walked past yet another shop that had hats on display in the window and said to Nick, hopefully, "Muff?" He agreed it looked possible, and yes, lo, inside was my dream muff, creamy white, very soft and - crucially - much cheaper than the other one. I now own it and am very happy. Sorry Peta.
Tonight we have a table booked at a restaurant near the Old Town Square, and all around everyone is getting excited. Nick, however, has a hatred of New Year's Eve so we are not allowed to talk about the end of the decade. He is lying on his bed next to mine reading Barbara Walters' autobiography and I am desperate to compile lists of best albums of the past ten years, best movies, best moments, worst moments, top three lessons learned, etc., while he just wants to forget about the passing of time. He tells me that he gets excited on New Year's Day, and looks forward to the future, but hates to think about what has been lost, missed opportunities and ineradicable truths. So, just between you and me - my best album released in the Noughties is Poses by Rufus Wainwright. My best book published in the Noughties is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My favourite movie released in the Noughties is... TBC. I can't think of any good films I've seen at the cinema in the past ten years. That's insane. I did love Anvil. Maybe it was Anvil. Is that possible? I'll come back to that. My personal highlight is one long complex string - it's that I'm finally happy, but I wouldn't have been happy if I hadn't bought my flat, and I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't taken the job in the bank, and I wouldn't have taken the job in the bank if I hadn't been tutoring my boss's kids, and I wouldn't have been tutoring them if I hadn't been doing my MA, and I wouldn't have been doing my MA if I hadn't had been lost and blue and had my wonderful parents to help me... it's all a beautiful chain of events that's reached a wonderful viewpoint, crystal clear in retrospect but murky as a swamp at the time. What I know for sure is that everyone who's reading this makes me happy, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. TBC.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
AWOL
It had to happen eventually, didn't it? Either my liver was going to grab some essential possessions and slink out of my slender frame, or my brain was going to call 'Time.' I think it is the latter that has happened, although it may be a combination of the two: I developed a sore throat last Thursday after my choir night out, and now appear to have two colds running concurrently, a delightful circumstance that offers me continual surprises as I never know which merry new symptom is going to hit me next. This is despite taking it relatively easy over the weekend. I had a great night out on Friday with a lot of old faces, held at a Hammersmith pub, where I felt simultaneously comfortable and strangely out of place. Before the booze kicked in we talked about new media and Twitter and politics and the Middle East, and after about 9pm we talked about kissing and flirting and, honestly, I have no idea what else. I am the Queen of Sincerity, I tell you, earnestly engaging in these chats with true interest and then sweeping down the decks moments later to make room for some other gems.
After the party, I took a minicab back to my parents, driven by a man who was, himself, the size of a taxi. It was a bit like an Escher drawing and I couldn't work out how he managed to fit inside the car's frame. The next 36 hours are a haze of Christmas familial love and involve me wearing a huge jumper, lying on the sofa listening to festive music, while my mum brings me amazing snacks and cooks beef brisket, sitting up briefly to eat lunch and dinner at the table, even standing once or twice to help put up the Christmas tree, and then sitting down again to watch Gavin & Stacey and Take That's incredible Circus tour at Wembley over the summer. God they are amazing, aren't they? What lovely young men. I'm very proud to have supported them since the start. Gary's voice is just gorgeous. Yum.
On Sunday I went to Waterloo to meet Grania and we watched In The Hood or Into The Hoods or In Da Hoodz or something, which was (as it was billed) a cool, festive, dance-off thing for teenagers, so I couldn't be legitimately disappointed, but it was all a bit Sylvia Young Theatre School and not enough genuine edge. The fact that Gra and I knew most of the music suggested it was a little more mainstream than it tried to suggest - more The X Factor does hip-hop than convincing urban grime. Fun though, with a kind of depressing undercurrent as I had to face up to the fact that, even after a thousand hours of classes, I'd still never look that good on the dancefloor. Still. I have many other special talents.
Then I went home for another early night, and my body, I think, saw me relaxing a bit more than I have of late, and sent a message to HQ that this was the start of a permanent hibernation rather than a brief hit of R&R before getting back onboard the party train to oblivion. Since the weekend, I've been in an ME-esque haze, my face contorted into a permanent yawn and my desire even to put on a bra at its lowest ebb. The concept of getting dressed up in high heels and putting on make-up makes me want to laugh very sarcastically, weep a bit, and pull the duvet up over my head. Last night I went home after work and wrapped presents in front of the TV, and even that seemed like an excruciating amount of effort. I am meant to be going to a party tonight, a lunch tomorrow and a party tomorrow evening, all of which are full of fun people, but I think my chances of making any of them are slimmer than I'll ever be. It's the kind of day when I feel like I should get high fives and back-pats for even turning up at work at all. Mmmm... massage...
After the party, I took a minicab back to my parents, driven by a man who was, himself, the size of a taxi. It was a bit like an Escher drawing and I couldn't work out how he managed to fit inside the car's frame. The next 36 hours are a haze of Christmas familial love and involve me wearing a huge jumper, lying on the sofa listening to festive music, while my mum brings me amazing snacks and cooks beef brisket, sitting up briefly to eat lunch and dinner at the table, even standing once or twice to help put up the Christmas tree, and then sitting down again to watch Gavin & Stacey and Take That's incredible Circus tour at Wembley over the summer. God they are amazing, aren't they? What lovely young men. I'm very proud to have supported them since the start. Gary's voice is just gorgeous. Yum.
On Sunday I went to Waterloo to meet Grania and we watched In The Hood or Into The Hoods or In Da Hoodz or something, which was (as it was billed) a cool, festive, dance-off thing for teenagers, so I couldn't be legitimately disappointed, but it was all a bit Sylvia Young Theatre School and not enough genuine edge. The fact that Gra and I knew most of the music suggested it was a little more mainstream than it tried to suggest - more The X Factor does hip-hop than convincing urban grime. Fun though, with a kind of depressing undercurrent as I had to face up to the fact that, even after a thousand hours of classes, I'd still never look that good on the dancefloor. Still. I have many other special talents.
Then I went home for another early night, and my body, I think, saw me relaxing a bit more than I have of late, and sent a message to HQ that this was the start of a permanent hibernation rather than a brief hit of R&R before getting back onboard the party train to oblivion. Since the weekend, I've been in an ME-esque haze, my face contorted into a permanent yawn and my desire even to put on a bra at its lowest ebb. The concept of getting dressed up in high heels and putting on make-up makes me want to laugh very sarcastically, weep a bit, and pull the duvet up over my head. Last night I went home after work and wrapped presents in front of the TV, and even that seemed like an excruciating amount of effort. I am meant to be going to a party tonight, a lunch tomorrow and a party tomorrow evening, all of which are full of fun people, but I think my chances of making any of them are slimmer than I'll ever be. It's the kind of day when I feel like I should get high fives and back-pats for even turning up at work at all. Mmmm... massage...
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