Zao Gao! It's printed on on recycled paper so the lines run together, especially when the characters have about fifteen strokes. Even worse, it's in traditional 'fanti zi' style characters instead of the simplified 'jianti zi'. It's the kind that's designed to be read from top to bottom instead of left to right.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Zao Gao! It's printed on on recycled paper so the lines run together, especially when the characters have about fifteen strokes. Even worse, it's in traditional 'fanti zi' style characters instead of the simplified 'jianti zi'. It's the kind that's designed to be read from top to bottom instead of left to right.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
'If only 46% of the homes at the development are 'affordable', what's the point of building the others?' I'd been dying to ask that question for a while, and now was my chance.
We were in Lewisham Shopping Centre, viewing screens with 'architects' impressions' of the new Loampit Vale development - houses, shops and a leisure centre.
I was laughing at R's suggestion that the non-affordable homes were meant for squatters, when the developer's head appeared from behind a partition. I listened while a young woman told him it was a 'crap scheme' because the new swimming pool would be smaller than the one it replaces. Then I put the question.
'No, no! ' He laughed at my literal-mindedness and poor grasp of council-speak. 'Affordable' doesn't mean that. It's the recognised term for 'social housing''.
'Social housing. Do you mean council houses?'
He winced again at my obsolete terminology. 'Housing Associations.'
'But how will the poorer people be separated from the people in the 'unaffordable' houses? Will there be fences, or will they be on different side of the street?'
'Oh, no, madam. The properities will look the same. We call it 'Blind Tenure'.
Blind tenure. I could hardly believe it. It's worse than 'affordable housing'. 'Blind' must mean 'barely noticeable difference in wealth' - even if some are commuting to banks on Canary Wharf via the nearby DLR, and some (46%) are a lot less well off, perhaps unemployed.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Our return to the entrance led us through a gallery full of jewellery in a room with glass winding stair-cases and then through the museum shop. Here padded silk jackets and exquisitely embroidered coats seemed as theatrical as those in the rooms upstairs.
Fridays at the V&A http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/events/friday_evenings/friday_late/
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
There's no evidence here that Van Dyck even noticed England had any poor people. The only servant depicted is a young Indian boy, dressed as smartly as any liveried flunkey and pointing out a parrot in a tree to a pioneer expat Englishman.
Van Dyck's strength as a painter was, as the audio guide has it, 'flesh and fabrics' and there's any amount of dress material here to prove it, not to mention rosy complexions and curled locks. There's even a case with an example of a costume lent by the V&A and a facsimile of Van Dyck's will. The curators make a case for Van Dyck's influential role in the history of portrait-painting, an argument supported by examples of from earlier as well as later times. His work was not intended for the common gaze, which was perhaps just as well. Many of the individuals shown in all their finery were killed fighting on the royalist side in the civil war or, like the king, were executed. After an hour or so of exposure to their supercilious glances, that particular bit of news, conveyed by the audio-guide, didn't upset me.
Van Dyck Exhibition:http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/vandyck/default.shtm
Thursday, March 19, 2009
I won't give the game away about the outcome of what turns into a battle of wills and the ability to deceive in this sophisticated yet tacky drama. As for whether Maude falls for his charms, all I'll say is prepare yourself to look away when they move into the bedroom - those walls are like the ones they have in police station interview rooms. The denouement is as chilling and as not-quite-credible as what has gone before
All it lacked was the slow-motion 'dumb play' featured in Jacobean drama, and the strobe lighting beloved of seventies directors to transport me back in time. As I remember, we students learned that the taste for graphic horror and sex in the Jacobean era reflected a sick society. So perhaps feeling slightly queasy when I came out is a good sign.
Toyer:http://www.londontheatre.co.uk/londontheatre/reviews/toyer09.htm
Tennyson's poem on record (click on the Webster recording to the left of the bearded poet):
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?hl=en&q=Come+into+the+garden,+Maude&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=Ro7DSdenCZDDjAfptKSACw&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Writers Café
They say London's a city where everybody comes from somewhere else. Not so surprising then, that the Writers Café I attended on Monday had international flavour.
As regular readers of this blog will know - those kind enough to heed my reminders - for some time I've been trying to write fiction. I've been on courses, read books and joined a couple of local group for feedback and advice. I've written quite a few stories, the first draft of one novel and an outline for another.
It made a change to attend a group where I didn't know anybody, and the pub had a calm atmosphere, in contrast to The Counting House on Cornhill. The Shooting Star is a fairly modest Fuller's pub off Bishopsgate, in the quaintly named Catherine Wheel Alley.
I met a friendly Russian woman ordering a drink at the bar. The upstairs room was a bit forbidding at first, with its long boardroom-style table, but the dozen or so writers, mainly in their twenties and thirties seemed comfortable and supportive to the people who'd requested twenty-minute reading slots.
It's a great treat to be read to, recalling childhood pleasure. There was a variety of themes and styles: a low-key tale of a man whose son and family move abroad was followed by one about a young woman's fantasies in her overheated apartment;next an engaging portrait of a boy doing his homework while his parents wrangle in the next room; finally two poems: one enigmatic about a seashell and hidden passion, one welcoming a friend's newborn daughter. Readers were English, American and Australian.
I didn't linger for drinks afterwards, but the Russian lady gave me a story about an elderly exile who reminisces about her childhood while walking a troublesome dog. It was excellent entertainment for the journey home.
I think I should follow Fagin's advice: 'Make them your models, my dear!'
The Shooting Star: http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/pubsandbars/the-shooting-star-info-13392.html
Saturday, March 14, 2009
It was back to Cornhill on Friday, this time after dark, for a further dose of 'Gin and Vice' a talk by Rob Taylor of The Benjamin Franklin House.
Hogarth's famous drawing 'Gin Lane' depicts eighteenth century London, when the between rich and poor was at its most extreme and a servant could be beaten to death with impunity. Rob Taylor is an expert on such Georgian topics as the price of high class courtesans and tavern prostitutes and the ingredients of the gin-based cocktail known as 'poor man's punch'.
The Counting House: http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/pubsandbars/counting-house-review-7225.html
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
'Due to a signal failure at Liverpool Street, there are severe delays on the Central Line. Passengers are advised to seek an alternative route...'
I'm immediately into the London commuters' default mode: one third alert to further announcements, one third calculating alternatives, one third drawing on reserves of patience and fortitude. You'd go nuts otherwise.
Soon, having detrained at Bank, I'm waiting for a 25 bus in Cornhill and taking in the scenery: poetry in grey stone, soaring over the hubbub of office workers hurrying into Pret-a-Manger. Coleridge spent a lot of time figuring how to get here - not to Cornhill, of course but to this state of heightened perception. He should have tried London Transport.
I'm not really commuting, thank goodness. I'm on my way to a lecture on music and film near Chancery Lane. It starts at 1pm and it's already 12.30pm. Bank station is very confusing.
The third Lord Burlington spent a fortune 'Palladianising' his main residence after the Grand Tour, more or less de rigeur for eighteenth century aristocrats. He wasn't to know that a few centuries later anyone could walk into the courtyard off Piccadilly and admire the facade it it cost him hundred of thousands to construct. Not to mention the gilded ceilings with their scenes from the classics. Anyone can go in for free. It's the same story all over London.
Thoughts about the effects of grand architecture were prompted by a talk at the Royal Academy last week, as well as a chapter on statues in a book by a Chinese artist visiting London in the 1930s.
As I admire the Bank of England' decorated pediment and the three statues I can see from the bus stop, I recall a baritone I sometimes hear intoning on Radio 4 :
'I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.'
Don't get me wrong, I'm as fond of a nice tree as the next person, but for inspiration I prefer something hand-crafted in grey stone, that doesn't shed its leaves every Winter.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The nurse crossed the room and began tapping away at her computer. I hung about until one of the male attendants, seeing me, asked her if I should wait.
Waldron Health Centre: http://www.londononline.co.uk/profiles/180052/
Monday, March 09, 2009
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Just before my holiday I agreed to write a short story review. Having missed my first choice of books I wasn't bothered which of the others I was offered. I'm free to report as I find and the only rule is I shouldn't know the author.
It's easy to imagine writers tempted to indulge in mutual back-scratching.
This letter condemning some over-generous theatre critics makes a similar point. Not having seen the 'glowing reviews', I was surprised to read that 'Plague Over England' was heaped with praise. I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'truly terrible' play. But like the writer, I've seen enough plays to know a bad one, and for all its worthy aims and thorough research, Nicholas de Jongh's piece had serious flaws. Episodic, and with too many minor characters it lacked suspense.
Its only human to take a kindly view of a play written by a friend and it's hard to see how this play could have been reviewed by a stranger to the well-known Evening Standard critic. However, I agree that reviewers have an obligation to be objective, especially when they could benefit, as the writer suggests, from favours returned. I'm not quite sure how, because it isn't made clear in the letter.
I don't review plays anymore, but when I did I knew about of time and effort, not to mention talent, involved in bringing a work to performance. It's rare to condemn a play outright, because there's nearly always some aspect that's well done. With such a wide range of things to consider - acting, set, lighting, costumes, etc, it's almost impossible to find nothing to praise. It seems to me the critic risks a loss of credibility with his readers, though, if he fails to point out serious flaws in the writing.
For me, 'Plague over England' was a timely reminder of how attitudes change and how easy it was, and is, for the establishment to demonise particular groups. I'm reminded of the recent case Hollywood delegates to Iraq to appologise for all the middle-east villains cropping up in recently. (I suppose they'll all have to be European, now)
I'm even more convinced, though, that the part of John Geilgud was severely underwritten. I read in 'Peter Hall's Diaries' that in 1970 Michael Feast had an opportunity to observe the original - he played Ariel to Gielgud's Prospero in a version of 'The Tempest' directed by Hall. I even found myself thinking of ways the character could have been shown to be very well-known and admired -a scene with fans at the stage-door, for instance, or a TV interview before his arrest for 'importuning'. That's a sure sign that a play's inadequate - when you can think how it could be improved.