improbable shows
Tomorrow I am going to put a small lighting and sound rig up in Borough Market. This, apparently, is for the worlds largest 'pass the parcel' game.
I am lost for words, the silly season has started early it would appear.
This is, of course, for 'charidy' and I suppose it is to be encouraged, better than sitting in vats of cold baked beans or dressing up as a chicken, and we haven't even begun to approach the 'Children in need' appeal yet.
I'll report on the hysterical jollity of it all once it's done and dusted.
Update:
Well, what a fun time we all had; in a cold and slimy portion of Borough Market, 150 punters wrestled with a six foot ball of paper to the accompaniment of a 'pick-up' jazz band. Somehow, their unbeatable formula didn't quite make it; maybe the cause was the arctic winds whistling through the empty market, the trains clattering overhead in and out of London Bridge Station or the pervasive dampness as rain leaked through the ill-maintained roof, but somehow we only attracted a quarter of the numbers expected.
I think they raised quite a lot of money, nothing like what they expected/hoped for. The quality of the stuff available for auction was high; original artworks by Peter Blake, Quentin Blake and Patrick Caulfield, some items fetching £1000.00. Bizarrely, among the items was Geoff Hursts' football shirt in which he scored three of the goals in Englands' world cup win in 1966, I can't help feeling that they would have got more for it if they'd put it on eBay, or in a sports memorabilia auction, it fetched £650.00 by the way.
When I was in California in february this year, I met a man who, as an antidote to his wifes' art collecting passion (I was working on an Art exhibition), had decided to set up his own museum of sporting memorabilia, he had a medium size warehouse, and about 25000 exhibits. Strangely weak on cricket, I felt, but who am I to judge.
Raptors
I had cause to travel out to rural Buckinghamshire this afternoon, a perfectly lovely sunny day, much more like september than nearly november. Once I had loaded my equipment into the van, my companion was called away to the 'phone, and I wandered off to have a look round.
This particular production company is housed in a selection of farm buildings, on an amalgamated farm, part of what was (and probably is) an extremely wealthy estate. Don't get the idea that this is all mud and cow shit, the buildings, although originally at least 16th century, are very high tech, and contain everything you would expect a glitzy production company to offer. I suspect 'twas ever thus, as you drive through, on your way down to where the buildings are located; on your right hand side you pass a drive through carriage wash, basically a shallow pond with a stone clad ramp down which you could drive your coach, horses and all. You then stop in the middle and presumably stand in it to wash the coach, then, without having to turn round, there is another ramp to drive out.
I was standing outside admiring the view, a very rural scene; fields with improbably clean cows, and a long rolling vista dropping away from me, right down at the bottom a tiny toy train, the only visible sign of human activity. As I soaked all this in, I became aware that there was a pair of hawks hunting way off in the distance below. Gradually they worked their way up the slope towards me, and I realised that they were Red Kites.
They were quite indifferent to me, and patrolled the field adjacent to where I was standing, flying and hovering within twenty feet of me. With the sun on my back I was able to see every detail, they really work those forked tails!
Red Kites were reintroduced into the Chilterns in the early 1990's, the English population having become extinct at the end of the 19th Century, there are now more than 200 breeding pairs, and rabbits are few and far between, as indeed, are wood pigeons.
I'm always pleased to see birds of prey thriving, it's a good indicator for thoughtfully managed farm land, look around you next time you travel up the motorway, quite apart from kestrels, once you look about you there are loads to be seen.
ah, sweet mystery of life...
I've been having a head-scratching problem with the menu at my local pub, their spelling has always been a tad wayward; their Sunday Carvary is a local legend.
They have recently proudly revealed their Christmas menu, which is without blame, there are not many market variables for the spelling of 'sprouts', they steer well clear of those well known danger zones: brockley, pommygranit's, obo's (sense of despair there I fancy), custered apples and too, too, many others. Just for now, let's not investigate the wandering apostrophe, I am far too guilty of punctuation crimes to be able to make fun of the sins of others.
No, the item that has been creating mystification in all of us is in the November menu, unveiled shortly after the Christmas menu, there is a whole section devoted to 'our new pennine specials', now I know the chef is a geordie, but there's no stottie cakes or chips here, it's all 'steak with a dijonaise sauce' (a brave attempt) and 'red pepper and cheese melt'.
During a short pee break I had a moment of huge excitement, when it suddenly occurred to me that with Microsofts malign influence a couple of extra letters might have crept into 'penne' and they were offering an innovative new pasta bowl as a cheap but nourishing snack.
When I rejoined my companion, I offered my spell-checker theory as a possible explanation, and saw the light dawn on his face (be aware he works in the city); "got it", he said, "it's Panini."
I cannot fault this.
the war against slugs
The weather has definitely turned, it is damp and not especially cold, in fact it is perfect for molluscs. Although the summer has been mostly quite dry this doesn't seem to have discouraged them, and every time I go out of the front door of an evening they are clustering. My habit of going barefoot has had some unfortunate and deeply unpleasant consequences.
This evening I decided I had had enough, there were some extraordinarily large and unpleasant specimens creeping up on my bananas. I gathered as many as I could into a convenient pot and dumped them into the middle of the road, there to take their chances with the traffic. I have to confess that I did up the ante on this operation, and when I popped out to the shops I was careful to drive down my side of the road, thus eliminating those invertebrates that made the unfortunate decision to return to my garden. Those who opted to make for my neighbours at least had a fighting chance, the others a quicker death than slug pellets or salt.
Now, if only the foxes would eat them, maybe starvation induced by the new compost buckets will encourage them to eat them up. We don't have hedgehogs or thrushes any more, the weather has been ideal for slugs and snails and we are over-run with them. Although there are plenty of frogs, in many cases the slugs are bigger than they are.
Nomenclatura part 3
Two new terms from the techy world, in this case from the sound industry.
Roadies loading a truck with flight cases will often be heard instructing each other to 'ozzy that box' or 'belgium that one'. To 'ozzy' a box is to turn it upside down on top of another, and is fairly self-explanatory. To 'belgium' is to turn a box onto its side, and I haven't a clue why. Suggestions gratefully received.
For those who are not in the industry, I present for your mild entertainment one of the rare lighting jokes. In order to understand why we call certain little lanterns 'birdies', it is necessary to know that a staple unit of the lighting business is called a PAR lantern (If you wanted to know PAR stands for polished aluminised reflector), the birdie is a smaller version and is thus one under par.
There are other jokes, but they are not as funny, trust me.
I knew it
I was travelling on the tube on sunday and saw a picture of a red-eyed and comatose squirrel on the back page of another passengers' newspaper, unfortunately for me and several other passengers a small far-eastern boy began projectile vomiting before I could investigate further.
Subsequent researches brought me to this story:
http://icsouthlondon.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200southlondonheadlines/tm_objectid=16217629&method=full&siteid=50100&headline=squirrels-on-crack-name_page.htmlThis begins to explain their desperate searching of my pots, although this part of West London is rather short of crack houses. What other highly addictive substance might our well-heeled neighbours be hiding in their gardens; Waitrose Organic Pork Pies perhaps? Some little time ago Tesco reported an 85% disparity between the number of pork pies actually sold and the number that their shoppers admitted to buying, as addictions go, you are likely only to hurt yourself.
Finally, and with grateful thanks to my highlands and islands correspondent, a new descriptive term to thrill you all, this refers to the type of anodyne 'hits from the shows' recordings made by boys' choirs as 'granny catnip'.
Weather Warning
It is starting to be quite chilly in the evenings now, and my tender plants are gradually being migrated indoors. In theory the bananas should all be ok down to -5 or so, but in practise they will need to come in for this year at least. Their roots are much more sensitive to frost, and as they are in fairly small pots still, are more likely to suffer.
I had a musa basjoo (japanese hardy banana) which died last year, whilst there were flowers on the citrus trees around it.
The weathermen are predicting a cold winter, so I'm not taking any chances.
Strange days...
This is shaping up to be a very strange month, my expedition to the top end of Suffolk has resulted in my getting a very peculiar project. I am to create a sound and lightscape for the Theatre Royals' christmas show. As the theatre is closed for renovation, they have rented the National Theatres' touring tent to perform their production of Robinson Crusoe in a local park. My brief is to get the audience to the tent in a suitable state of anticipation and excitement. I had originally conceived of dividing the journey into five segments, but my first site visit revealed that the approach is rather short, and not possessed of a great many trees.
Current thoughts are still to make the actual journey a series of small adventures (not too exciting or scary, this is for age five upwards) starting from the present and travelling back through time to end up with an arrival at the desert island/tent, my transitional point, I think, is going to be a storm and a shipwreck. I'm still in the early stages with this one, much headscratching and thoughts about technology at the moment.
My other project, which re-emerged from the gloom where it had rightfully been lurking, is a production of Annie, time to break out the pink I think.
I also have a recce for a major outdoor project in a day or so, curious how these things only come in once the weather turns nasty.
go East young man...
Today I had to go to Bury St Edmunds, which sounds like an archaic and peculiar instruction, but in fact was an opportunity to pitch for a piece of design work, about which I may have more to say later.
The market town of Bury St Edmunds is at the top end of Suffolk, near to Newmarket, and seems to me to epitomise a wealthy medieval market town. At a guess, wool, beer and religion were the engines that propelled this town, the brewery (Greene King) still dominates the town, indeed the regency theatre that I was visiting today owes its continuing existence to the fact that it was used as the brewery barrel store during the period when most such buildings were destroyed in the name of progress and property development.
I have a theory, which would have had me drummed out of the Theatres trust or any of the other beardy sandal preservation societies, that the fact that we still have so many good old theatres is due to their having been commandeered for unsuitable purposes, and consequently overlooked. Our biggest benefactor, perverse though it may sound, is probably the bingo; at least if a theatre is being used for bingo it is being kept heated and ventilated and the worst of the holes in the roof will be plugged. The worst thing you can do to a large and complex building is lock it up and leave it; there is a very large old theatre in Dalston which is now in such a poor state that it will never recover, just waiting for the right cheque book I'm afraid, preserved for years by its unpopular location and inacessibility, it is right next to the East London tube extension (don't start me on that!), and will be characterless luxury flats before you can say £££ (I believe that a luxury flat can be defined by the fact that it is smaller than a normal flat, but does have granite worktops).
All this is unlikely to occur in up-town Suffolk, maybe twenty years ago, when the wrecking frenzy reached its peak the local demographic could have supported luxury flats, judging by todays' charity shop feeding frenzies, and the extra-ordinary number of pensioner buggies (dozens! it was safer to walk in the road), but now, I think all that has gone and the town is slowly settling back into the fens.
Part of the project I was pitching for involves creating a sound collage epitomising the place, so my walk through the town was partly for research purposes; I have never been anywhere so quiet, on a market day all you could hear was the rumble of car tyres on the cobble stones, church bells ringing the quarters and the persistant whining of electric buggies. Even the stall-holders conducted themselves in polite and level tones. If I do get the comission, I might have to rethink my ideas.
