Prince Charles Diversion

When we went to the Prince Charles yesterday it was good to see the red lanterns are already up in China town. They’re ready to celebrate The Year of the Ox on January 26th.

I won’t often stray from the Cineworld circuit (unless it’s to the NFT). These and sofa.cinema take care of my foreign film needs. Still, when I’m waiting midweek for a programme change I’m vulnerable. So when R said ‘The Wave’ at the Prince Charles had good reviews I went along.

The German, title is ‘Die Welle’ and it’s about a school teacher who sets out to prove to his class of High School students they could become Nazis if conditions were right. It all ends in tears. The plotline was fairly predictable, but the main problem was the lack of definition to the characters, apart from the teacher, and he had to keep you guessing how serious he was, so acted low-key. I hadn’t expected ‘High School 3’ but these kids were lacklustre to say the least. It was strange, too, that although the wife was heavily pregnant, she and the teacher never mentioned the baby or discussed future plans, such as when they’d move off the houseboat where they lived. It was as if a whole scene had been cut out.

It reminded me of watching films in Singapore, where whole scenes were cut out for censorship reasons, regardless of how it affected the plot. We saw Jodie Foster in ‘The Accused’, for instance, and the rape scene was cut. One minute she’s dancing to a juke-box in a café with some boys looking on and the next she’s hysterical and Kelly McGillis is encouraging her to take them to court. What, for just looking???

The seats at the Prince were less comfortable than Cineworld and the screen a lot smaller than I’m used to. That 'Studio' at the NFT has ruined me. At £4 for the afternoon show it wasn’t bad. The sound wasn’t as good but as it’s often too loud in Cineworld so I didn’t mind that. I thought I might go deaf after ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ at West India Quay.

The huge letters in Leicester Square to welcome Will Smith were startling. I’d be even more impressed if it was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Prince Charles Cinema: http://www.princecharlescinema.com/

The Wave: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1063669/

Sofa cinema: http://www.sofacinema.co.uk/visitor/home.html

The Accused:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094608/

Crime Reading Group

At first glance, the last two books chosen by my crime reading group have only murder in common: Kate Summerscale’s ‘The Suspicions of Mr Whicher’ is a true story set in Victorian England; George Pelicanos’s ‘The Night Gardener’ is fiction, about a serial killer in Washington DC, in 1985. Both, however, foreground the social setting.

Summerscale’s fascinating glimpse into Victorian society suggests that police detectives, recruited from the working class, were supposed to concentrate on pickpockets and prostitutes. They were expected to defer to middle class suspects, not suggest they might murder family members. Mr Whicher should keep his suspicions to himself to avoid being vilified by the forelock-tugging journalists of the time.

Pelicanos’s hero, Italian detective Gus Ramone, happily married with an African- American wife, worries about his teenage son in a neighbourhood where drug crime is rife among teenage boys. Parents will empathise with the officer’s efforts to establish residency in the right school catchment area and his fears about discrimination.

Family solidarity is key, but it works two ways: the Saville-Kent kind breeds violent resentments between siblings while social status protects them from the law; the Ramone kind struggles to guard vulnerable youngsters from a downward spiral into crime.

A big advantage of a library group is books, chosen months ahead, are always made available for borrowing.

It’s great to hear different opinions and discuss styles in crime writing. Most members know much more about crime writing than I do. I can’t wait to start the next choice, ‘Vanish’, by Tess Gerritson, collected from the library today. Looks like a real ‘page-turner’.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: http://www.mrwhicher.com/

The Night Gardener; http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/25/features/bookmer.php


Vanish: http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews2/0345476972.asp

Lewisham Library : http://www.qype.co.uk/place/196911-Lewisham-Library-London

The Gentlemen of St James's

For all government ministers throw up their hands in astonishment at ‘social immobility’ and ‘class divide’, they're embedded in England’s institutions, such as ‘The Gentlemen’s Club’. We spent Sunday afternoon being reminded of this, in St James’s.

J. is training as a Westminster Guide and generously treated friends to an inaugural walk , taking in the arcades and passages, shops and clubs located around the church of St James. It’s an area redolent with the notion of the ‘English gentleman’, and shops which provide the accessories, from fine wines to country house clothes. Woolworths may go to the wall, but here it’s Floreat Asser and Turnbull.

Here, too, are the gathering places. Boodles and The Atheneum, Whites and The Reform Club are concealed behind discreet façades while we listen to tales of gambling, fine dining, and political chicanery within. Admission is by election and our privilege is to be allowed to stand on the pavements and gawp.

That epitome of the English gentleman, George 'Beau' Brummell, commemorated in bronze in Jermyn Street, didn’t worry about pavements. After washing from head to toe, in an age when few people bothered to bathe, he took five hours to dress. Then he had his sedan chair brought into his house so as not to sully his boots by London’s mud on his way to his club.

R once trained as Greenwich Guide and was impressed by the research that had gone into preparing the walk. I was amazed at J’s mastery of a tortuous route and memory for the facts.

The area is not so compact as Greenwich, but the walk was pleasantly varied. Greenwich has some real heroes, of course, unlike the effete and privileged drones of St James’s, for all their tourist appeal. I may be biased, of course.

Beau Brummell :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Brummell

St James's : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James's

For details of future walks, email: westminsterwalks@yahoo.co.uk

Easter Rabbits

Never mind the Brrr... At Asda we're lining up for the Next Big Thing.

‘Complicit’ at The Old Vic


An essay title in Willy Russell’s ’Educating Rita’ reads: ‘How would you overcome the problems of staging ‘Peer Gynt?’ , to which the time-pressured heroine responds, ‘Do it on the radio’.

For ‘Complicit’ I’d suggest the same, but I’d add ‘Do it in America.’ The play's first night had a polite but bemused reception from the Old Vic audience.

In fact, the staging is the best part of a political three-hander which no amount of hi-tech flashiness can rescue from leaden prose, absence of drama and at best a muddy message. The round, see-through stage resembles a dart-board or spider-web, with overlapping screens underfoot. At times dozens of newsreels, or flaming clouds or pastel shades appear, surrounded by a neon circle. Two overhead screens are used to show a TV interview.

Richard Dreyfuss plays journalist Ben Kitzer, facing jail for writing an article exposing US use of torture after 9/11 and refusing to name his source. His performance is twitchy but fairly restrained in the first half. David Suchet convinces as his untrustworthy legal adviser. Kitzer’s wife Judy, played by Elizabeth McGovern with a voice barely audible in the ‘gods’, has a marginal role, bleating about ‘the family’ and assuring Ben she loves him.


The themes are interesting, although obscure, but a cringe-making climactic breakdown scene with Ben wallowing in patriotic sentiment and sobbing over and over ‘I did a bad thing’ like Lenny in ‘Of Mice and Men’, was embarrassing. The sniggering I heard during the scene itself is an understandable response from many of the audience probably resentful of the UK involvements in the Iraq war.

On the good side the programme is the best I’ve read for a while – maybe because it fills some gaps. For £4 you get a history of the theatre and experts writing on the main themes. There’s even a slightly creepy ‘discussion’ about the value of hedge-fund financing. That helps explain why although the theatre exterior looks the same the converted auditorium is called ‘The CQS Space’. With seats filling the gap where the stage used to be the space is not so much round as, like the play, a bit pear-shaped.

Website details:

http://www.oldvictheatre.com/whatson.php?id=50

New Year Resolution

Apart from access to materials, there are benefits to going out to do research at the British Library. For a start, I'm showered and dressed rather than still in my pyjamas. Instead of the radio for company or disputes with R about interruptions I have a background buzz of fellow workers discreetly interacting with helpful desk staff in the reading room plus people on either side tapping away at key boards. It's a bit like being in an exam room only more relaxed.

I caught a train from London Bridge station to marvellous St Pancras next door. I’ll soon get fed up with ten minutes crushed into standing room only, and not very much of that, en route to London Bridge from Lewisham. Still, it’s my New Year Resolution to do three days a week. I must remember to take out my book in good time, as once on the train it’s impossible to reach the bag wedged between my feet.

The huge BL interior walls and stairs resemble marble, like the British Museum's entry hall. Quite appropriate for a temple of learning, I’d say; very airy and modern. Walkways surround a central area with a kind of four-sided book-case rising in the middle, leather spines adding a touch of gravitas. I read in the handbook that Anthony Horowitz used this place to research for Foyle's War. It's a feel-good building.

Traffic is heavy in the public spaces, now crammed with desk-chairs and sockets for computers, all fully occupied by noon. The demographic profile has gone down by abut thirty years. I saw a man eating salad from a plastic box balanced on his keyboard and another with baby buggy parked at his elbow. Notices say the cafe tables are reserved for people buying food from 1pm-3pm, but plenty of people are talking or reading. The free Internet Wifi must be a big draw: a ‘pilot scheme’.

The Prue Leith specials look good but a room at the top, with canteen-style furnishings and drinks machines is where you can eat your packed lunch. In Summer people sit out in the vaguely Japanese roof garden. Leaflets about forthcoming highbrow activities are laid out on shelves. Maybe later inthemonth I'll go to a day of silent films about the ancient world.

Two of my research days will coincide with my Chinese classes at Frith Street. I aim to break off at noon to get to my class in Soho, and then come back by 2.30pm. It's not a problem keeping a desk, by leaving stuff on it, but by noon all the desks are taken. I used to transfer to the film library off Tottenham Court Road for the afternoon when I was researching my book. I wonder if I'd have a problem there too these days. That's the trouble with an excellent resource; a lot of people want to use it.

The British Library Website: http://www.bl.uk/

Representing the Past

A variety of styles, from near-fantasy to realism, is shown in three 'historical' films I’ve seen recently. All have a political message and two focus on a love-relationship.

In epic-romance style, ‘Australia’ climaxes those tourism ads that ended with someone pleading direct-to-camera, ‘Where the hell are you?’ - as if the cinema audience should rush to fill those wide open spaces. Despite Lady Sarah (Nicole Kidman ‘progressing’ from tight Edwardian clothes and parasol to riding boots and horsewhip); cattle-droving looks less appealing than jeep safaris. The appeal, for me anyway, was akin to that of the Saturday morning cowboy films, when I galloped home neck and neck with my sisters. The ‘exception story’ about an aristocratic white woman who fosters an aborigine child shows liberalism alive and well and living in Oz. Very ‘Over the Rainbow’.

History as a source of today’s problems is shown too in ‘The Reader’, but not so easily resolved. In fact, some critics have thrown up their arms in ‘Not again!’ protest. Reconciliation here is more as suggestion than fact and closure more complex than mere survival. The opportunity to rewrite history and ‘rescue’ the vilified is refused. Unlike the aboriginal child, the illiterate SS guard is abandoned. The causes lie within the protagonists’ complex psychologies, unlike the cartoon simplicity of the Lady and the Drover. A film to be mulled over with friends.

‘Che: Part One’, is superficially about a different kind of oppression, but rooted in similar territorial and cultural conflict. History here is a media matter, partly the hero’s voice-over memoir, pretend documentary style glossing-over the individual’s tendency to selection and interpretation. Scenes of guerrilla warfare and political discussion alternate with recreated black and white news-reel footage. Late on, an incipient romance throws a sop to mere human interest (apart from sympathy for an asthmatic hero), and maybe a hook for Part Two. History is our contemporary, the struggle endless and, as Mao Zedong declared, revolution’s a constant process. At least, that’s how it seems in Part One. There’s a good chance that Part Two won’t succumb to supposed box-office demand for a happy ending. The Spanish dialogue was a bonus that helped make up for a hazy start.

I read somewhere that Horror-genre films reflect society's contemporary pre-occupations. Maybe that's true, too, of History-genre ones.

Australia:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455824/

The Reader:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/

Che Part One:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892255/

New Year 's Day at the Royal Botanical Gardens

The journey to Kew took an hour and a half from Greenwich. Fortunately, it was enlivened by reminiscesnces with an ex colleague from my local FE college. I’d told her that Kew Gardens was celebrating its 250th anniversary by letting in visitors for free, instead of charging the usual £10 entry fee, so she was happy to join R and myself.

It was getting dark by the time arrived. We had lingered too long at the Waterstones coffee shop, watching friends re-uniting and showing off their babies. Then the aroma of fish and chips near Kew station reminded us we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. As the temperature was near freezing , we warmed up inside the cabin.

Afterwards we walked against the flow of departing people, who resembled a football crowd leaving the ground after a match.

‘What time do you close?’ R asked the man at the gate.

‘In about four minutes’.

But he gave us tickets and let us in. My friend observed, as we headed briskly in the direction of the palm house, that loiterers would take a while to disperse. At one end of a huge lake a fountain still played and ducks swam about in the dusk. The Palm House, bulked like a grey whale against the darker sky, was closed. However, we came across a little building with the lights still on and an open door. Inside, a few people browsed among glass cases filled with a fascinating collection of plant-derived products, from blocks of compressed tea to pith helmets. There was a lovely little machine where you could twiddle a knob to hear different musical instruments – pan pipes, lutes and a wooden xylophone. It made a delightful mini-concert.

‘What are you all doing in here? Now you’ll have to leave by the Victoria Gate!’

An indignant attendant had found us. At his insistence we walked in the opposite direction to that we’d been following until we saw the lights of a huge Christmas tree. It was at the entrance where we’d first come in. I looked into a shop and a café whose floor was strewn with debris like the aftermath of an invasion. It was the same in the toilets. I was glad after all that we hadn’t been there earlier. There’s something magical about Kew in the dark, walking under the shadowy outlines of exotic trees - especially when it’s free and you know you shouldn’t really be in there.

All about the Gardens at Kew:

http://www.kew.org/

Homer’s Not Just for Christmas

This unwanted present was left outside the flats on December 26th . He seems to have been re-housed.

Spring has Sprung

I spotted this early Forsythia blossom on December 27th , as I walked down to the station. The south-facing wall and sheltered position helped it to an early blooming, no doubt. The weather has been dry and sunny for a while and there were more flowers on the same bush by the next day. Although the frost turned the rooftops white last night, it’s good to see the flowers again.

White Christmas at the BFI Southbank

The washed-out visuals and muffled soundtrack of the trailer at Cineworld does this film no favours. Although my partner made approving noises, I put this down to his fondness for the big-band era of Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, two of the stars. So I wasn’t expecting much, having arrived at the BFI too late for a Mamoulian film, when I settled for ‘White Christmas’ instead.

The BFI studio is the smallest auditorium at the South Bank venue, with only four rows, but the screen seems enormous. The digitalised Vistavision looked freshly minted and the sound was great in what they call their ‘state-of-the-art’ auditorium.

Bing and Danny Kaye play showbiz entertainers, who help a retired General save his Vermont hotel by putting on a show, aided by two showgirls and a troupe of extras. Clooney and Vera-Ellen play the girls. The talents of the lead players and the period interest prevent the film from being overwhelmed by huge dollops of schmaltz.


I was still recovering from the tedium of Baz Lurhmann’s antipodean epic a few days back; White Christmas set a cracking pace in terms of plot development, and flashed by in a whirl of colour. For me it veered too much on the side of dance in the balance between cavorting and plot/dialogue, and younger audience members giggled at the clumsy segues between dialogue and songs. Strange, when you consider no-one baulked at ‘Mamma Mia’s sometimes irrelevant outbursts.



Screening until January 1st
http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme

Byzantium 330-1453 at the Royal Academy

The Byzantines were heavy-handed with the golf leaf, as seen in the familiar icons, sacred figures emblazoned on wood panels. There were plenty of them at the excellent RA exhibition I visited with son D on Saturday. The show rooms were quiet so I assume potential customers were taking advantage of the post-Christmas sales, like R, who’d gone to buy an electric blanket. He’d seen the Byzantium exhibition with a crony before Christmas.

The £100 annual entry fee for two members plus two guests seems a lot, but since just one visit with pals could cost £40 it’s good value. Out-of-town friends really appreciate it. I like to make a few visits on my own to these big shows, one using a £3 audio guide. Maps and charts at the start show the size of the Byzantine Empire at different dates and explanatory notices are in all the rooms, but I’m too impatient to look at these on a first visit.

Gold was the signature motif, sometimes overlaying silver on jewelled necklaces, plates, bowls and boxes. Elaborate bas-relief figures covered chalices, some endearingly battered as if trodden into the mud of many an ancient battle-field. One was even said to be the original Holy Grail.

D raved on about techniques and materials. I remembered that he studied Art History before being sucked in by Computer Science.

My favourites were the ivory artefacts, small hinged pieces called triptych, depicting saints in little arched doorways. It was Jane Austen who said her writing was as if carved on pieces of ivory, but these reminded me she was thinking of detail. I like carvings anyway; usually jade so hard it has to be ground, or the crude lines of woodcuts. Ivory’s qualities permit exquisite detail, as in a bishop’s frown with lines scrunching his face as if his mitre was too tight.

The Friend’s Room at the RA is a treat, and a kind of extension of the experience, with well-heeled members making Bohemian fashion statements.

R joined us, miffed from having to unpack the ‘heated mattress protector’ so it would fit the dimensions of the cloakroom cubby-holes. D expressed shock at the price of £6.50 for a miniature quiche and tiny salad, but an accompanying glass of wine at £2 made it a bargain compared with the stand-alone price of £5 for the wine. The water's free.

After that we saw a small exhibition in the Sackler Wing D was keen on, a collection by modern artists. The main interest there was a wall of front covers of an art magazine but the extenuated statuary was agreeable, particularly one of a hound.

This page has some great links, including one to an article about icons, written by the Archbishop of Canterbury

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

Heathrow Christmas


‘This is known as the world’s biggest car park’, I said to Lu Weiyuan (Luke) as we sped round the almost deserted southern loop of the M25.

‘Really? ‘This had been his standard response to explanations since our re-union the day before. His English is excellent and he has great curiosity, which is what I like most about him. His dry sense of humour is such that I can't always tell when he's being ironic.

With his suitcase taking up all the boot space and his wife Linda’s case jammed in front of the passenger seat, I’d had to leave R at home.

Sooner than risk the cross-London route to Heathrow recommended by Mappy.com, with one false move at Clapham and I end up in Kensington, I’d opted for twice as many miles but all motorway, starting with the A2 at Blackheath, I had to keep my wits about me at the Heathrow end with five terminals to choose from, but with no traffic I could at least slow down to read the overhead signs.

In 1990, seeking a language-exchange partner, I’d posted a notice on a board in Goldsmiths Library. MA student Luke responded and I’ve been involved with his studies more or less ever since. He’s a wild life photographer teaching in a university in Taiwan. Now he was in the UK for his PhD Viva in Durham. His email said he’d be spending a week in London, mostly while I was in Lanzarote. His return flight was on the 25th.

‘There’s no public transport on Christmas Day’, I emailed him.

‘Really?’

So I picked Luke and wife Linda up from their hotel and we visited the dinosaurs on Crystal Palace Park on the way back.

It gave R and son D time to come round from the evening before, spent trying to find a pub in Blackheath where we wouldn’t be deafened by rollicking locals. After one stand-up beer in The Hare and Billet we’d ended up in the basement bar of the Clarendon where a sedate game of pool was in progress. No wonder it was quiet, with drinks at £15 a round for the free of us. As driver, I was on the lemonade.

The whole lunch, apart from the sprouts, had been cooking for hours. The pheasants had been in the electric slow cooker overnight so only needed a reheat.

The long roofs over the drop-off point at Terminal 5 resembled rows of nun’s headdresses, like gigantic angel wings. Quite Christmassy, really.

Back from Lanzarote

Scenery, food and weather were well up to the mark in Lanzarote, where cultural delights are mainly inaccessible except by car, so I passed the week in a daze: walking by the sea, reading and eating fish dinners.

The two-mile stretch known as the 'strip' alongside the main beach at Puerto del Carmen was undergoing repairs to pipelines. They were laying new ones , for all I know, a bit like central London.

It was weird coming back on a kind of ghost plane, with fewer than 20 passengers, all of us spaced evenly with an entire row of seats each. The pilot said it would equalise the weight.

Down to earth with a bump at Gatwick (literally - the landing approach was over-speedy, and the brakes were jammed on, jolting us foward.)

If I'd been wondering which country it was, exchanges with bad-tempered officials would have soon put me straight. At deserted Gatwick I remarked to the passport checker that it was very quiet. 'Do you want to make a complaint about it?' he snapped. I said that he must have had quite a few already that day. Fortunately, he was trapped in his glass box. so couldn't get out to arrest me and there were no spares about. I put it down to worries about pending unemployment.

We took the Victoria stopping train. A surly guard sold us singles to Coulsdon South, the outer-most stop covered by our Freedom Passes. He quoted £11 60 for the two of us, then got stroppy when R asked him if there were concessions for OAPs. He said he could charge us more if it had been later than 4.30am . R fronted him up, which is a bit unusual for him, and said in answer to his exasperation, 'The answer is 'No', then'. By way of aplogising, I suppose, the man grumbled that it was 1am, which we couldn't dispute. It was 1am for all of us.

The queue for the night bus was a mix of mainly foreign young men with backpacks, a few loungers and a couple of wasted-looking characters crouched on steps in shop doorways. The temperature was a balmy 10 degrees. We had an interesting half-hour journey in 'reserved for the elderly' seats -interesting because I read a thriller whilst listening to a young man with a guitar case, dressed in bright 70s clothes with a full 'afro' hair-do. He was talking to an older man about gigs they'd been to.

Journey to the West at the O2 Dome

The journey west from Lewisham to the O2 Dome is mercifully short via the DLR .

The grandchildren are at that in-between age for pantomime when they think it's for 'kids' , so I was resigned to 'Madagascar 2' and a meal at Nando’s for their annual Christmas outing. Then tickets for 'Journey to the West' came up at short notice. For me it was a bonus that the show is based on the Chinese classic ‘Journey to the West’, known to some from the TV series, ‘Monkey’.

The anarchic hero sets out on a quest for immortality with his strange companions. They include aptly-named Pigsy and a Prince who’s been changed into a horse. Journeying through places with exotic names, they meet a set of oddball characters who help or hinder them in their quest for immortality.

Children in the audience were entranced by the multi-media presentation, which had lots of acrobats, martial arts and characters flying through the air on wires. Nine scenes included ‘The Crystal Palace of the Eastern Sea', 'Heavenly Peach Banquet' and 'Volcano City' , all with fancy costumes and live music. There were subtitles for the Chinese dialogue, but most of it wouldn't have made sense to anybody who didn't know the story, and it didn't detract from the spectacle.

My adult companions whinged at the length of the performance and at the rip-off interval prices; with £2 for cokes as well as £10 programmes, they had a point . The green tea was a bargain, though.

The whole Dome ambience, with dozens of food outlets, a cinema at the top of an escalator and an artifical ski slope so you can watch people falling about, has a buzzy feel. ‘You know, Grandma', said 13 year old Gemma, ‘we could come to the Dome the next time we stay with you, even if we don’t see a show’.

(Oh, and I'm off to Lanzarote for a week, so no more postings for a while)

Deadline Thursday

I think everybody should know about the University of the Third Age. It’s open to people over fifty, and they meet in centres and in each others houses. There’s a wide range of subjects, not just academic but everything from meditation to mahjong. They even organise holidays and rambles. I’ve learned Spanish in the home of a Flamenco dancer and I once led a ‘Study Day’ on Chinese Film at Goldsmiths College, the South London Centre.

The annual fee is £10 and all the sessions are free, although there’s a charge for the online courses they also run. I’ve agreed to tutor the ‘Introduction to Chinese’ one, starting in September.

Yesterday I went to the end-of-term meeting of U3A writers’ workshop and was delighted to hear our anthology had raised £120 for the charity MIND.

Every fortnight eight of us get together to read our short stories and receive constructive feedback from the rest of the group. Next, our tutor gives us writing exercises. We generally work on them for about fifteen minutes then read aloud what we’ve written before completing them at home.

A selection of work, ‘Deadline Thursday’ was compiled by after we circulated and critiqued stories and poems we thought might be suitable, and the editor also organised the printing.

Find out more about U3A and a group near you:

http://www.u3a.org.uk/

Changeling

Odd, the things that motivate people. I’ve been encouraging R to take more of an active interest in the Internet recently. Even if he'd just look up and print off the Guardian Quick Crosswords it would spread the burden.

I took it as a sign of progress that he’d researched Christmas cakes online. The crit. recommended Asda’s ‘Extra Special’, and R located a store at Crossharbour, next to the DLR station. We’d call in en route to to see ‘The Changeling’ at West India Quay.

Fine, I thought. It would be a quick ‘in and out’ job and for once we’d leave early enough to get to the Cineworld in time to see the trails.

But no – although there were dozens of all kinds of Christmas cakes, not to mention stollen and mince pies and chocolate logs, the ‘Extra Special’ at £7.98 was not on the shelves.

As for ‘The Changeling’ it was almost as disappointing. The 1930s décor and costumes looked authentic enough, especially the telephone exchange supervisors on skates, but Angelina Jolie doesn’t look right as Christine, the heroine. Her surreal appearance suited Grendel’s mother in 'Beowulf' or Lara Croft, the cartoon-based character. As for her acting as an ordinary ‘mom’, even the LA street cars looked more authentic. In fact, given the general oddness of the performances, even the roller skates were more convincing.

The characters were all one-dimensional, and coincidences notched up the melodrama. Saviour Malkovich arrives just as the asylum nurse is about to throw the switch on the electric shock machine and even worse, when Christine faints at seeing the headlines in the street, he's there on cue to catch her. Maybe the director Clint Eastwood thinks the past just was more melodramatic, or that ‘women’s films’ should be.

Meanwhile R seems to be going great guns online. He’s located the Bose European centre and arranged for the wonky radio to be collected. My own research showed ALDI’s Holly Lane cake as best value and R thinks the other report may be from a previous year. So he’ll be ringing the Catford ALDI before calling in on the way to his bridge game.

Christmas cake report

http://www.which.co.uk/reviews-ns/christmas-cakes/christmas-cakes-compared/index.jsp


The Changeling reviews

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0824747/

Plus ça change...

I'd only called in at the National Portrait Gallery to use the loo. After choosing Christmas cards in St Martin's crypt I had an hour or so before I was due to collect tickets , in Covent Garden. In the downstairs hall, though I spotted one or two people waiting for the doors of the lecture room to open. ‘Conversation Pieces in Georgian Society’ sounded promising.

They turned out to be a type of eighteenth century paintings the speaker had been researching. Slide examples showed well-dressed families in elaborate costumes dealing cards, drinking tea, playing the harpsichord, etc. Sometimes they were in rural settings. These paintings, she said, were not so much about reality as about aspiration: 'exemplars' rather than ‘examples’ of polite society at the time. The pictures were as much about costumes, leisure pursuits and furniture as about the people, she argued and their function was much like that of today’s Sunday supplements – a kind of showing off of the aspired-to ideal. They were very keen on all that - there were best-selling books telling men how to stand in a drawing room. The one in the picture shows the:

‘relatively bare settings of Arthur Devis, which emphasized restrained good taste, in contrast to William Hogarth's more lavish scenes of refined consumption…Such settings were not intended to represent specific spaces. Rather, like the interiors of Hogarth's modern moral subject paintings, they were to be understood as signifiers of abstract virtues—‘

Hmmm. I'd certainly recommend these free talks. There was a big screen for the slides and a steeply raked auditorium with comfortable seats. Well worth dropping in for. I can recommend the loos, too.

More about the speaker and her subject:
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hafvm/staff/staff/staffMembers/RetfordKate

House Full

I’d found a left-over theatre voucher in a drawer so decided to treat myself to a 3pm matinee at the Old Vic. I still had the programme from ‘Living Together’ a few weeks back. Sadly, the House Full sign was up, and all the box office could offer was a ‘standing ticket’ for £10.

‘Not what you’d expect on a Wednesday afternoon’, I whinged to the woman standing behind me in the ‘returns’ queue.

‘You’d never know there was a credit crunch on’, she agreed. She was older than me and wore a woolly hat, but apart from that we were twins: short and round with northern accents. We were well down the queue.

‘It’s the schools, too’, put in a pink-faced man on my other side. Back against the wall and buttoned into a navy overcoat, he looked like the youth who visits his gran in the Catherine Tate show.

The woman frowned. ‘When I was at school, we went to see Shakespeare, not to comedies’ She’d travelled from Chertsey, so no wonder she was cross.

‘Student groups are more likely to have returns, though’.

‘Yes, but I went to see ‘The Doll’s House’ the other week’, I said, ‘and teenagers in the row in front were a right nuisance texting one another, with the teacher telling them off.’

Then we chatted about plays and theatres and prices until a woman in a fur hat came up and offered the young man a spare ticket. ‘Oh, no, you don’t have to pay!’

Soon after, an usher in black, waving a walkie-talkie, made his way along the queue and said there were standing places with restricted views for £7.50.

‘What’s the point of that?’ said my companion.

I decided to walk to Piccadilly because I'd read that ‘The Day the Earth Stood still’ was being screened at the Cineworld at 4pm. The late afternoon sun turned office blocks to gold as I crossed Hungerford Bridge at dusk, and a five-strong band, including accordion and trumpet, played ‘Kalinka’

‘That film only starts next week’ said the girl at the cinema, so I watched ‘Zack and Mirri make a Porno’ instead, which was silly and very rude but had me and an audience of a dozen laughing out loud. It had an attractively grungy look.

When I walked through a very crowded Leicester Square afterwards I heard screaming and saw a screen had been put up to show the front of the Vue cinema. Girls were hanging over barriers, waiting for the stars of a film called ‘Twilight’ to appear.

So altogether it was a good afternoon, even though I didn’t get to the play.


About the Aykbourn Trilogy at the Old Vic

http://theater-ticket.conciergedesk.co.uk/articles/?p=737


About the film:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1007028/

I went to Shanghai to buy a Hat

Guests crowded thestairs leading to the basement of the Italian Bookshop in Cecil Court, and no wonder- the guest speaker was from the ‘ministro’. Or could it be he was the ministro? I couldn't quite catch it, although classmate Bamboo tries to keep my Italian up to scratch. The talk was about Sino-Italian relations, all in Italian, and it sounded like one of those political speeches delivered at some low-key venue that's headline news next day. He gesticulated a lot, so sounds from the hand mike came and went and his talk was punctuated by protests from people in the one-and-nines at the top of the stairs. Bamboo had persuaded someone to bring one of those kick-steps for me to sit on.

It’s not long since I reviewed her last book, ‘Blue China’ for the Dimsum website. The daughter of an Italian diplomat and Chinese opera singer who met in Shanghai during the war, she moved to Italy when she about ten years old and I admire both her elegance and her industry. She lives in London with her English husband and entertains me when she sits next to me in the twice-weekly Frith Street Chinese class.

Most of the speech went over my head so I admired the elegant dresses, footwear and hairstyles in the audience. The bookshshop manager, a tall woman in satin velvet printed with a kind of muted Mondrian pattern, made graceful arm gestures at the throng and at the speaker. Bamboo began to talk and soon had everone laughing at her anecdotes about Shanghai. I remember how well she compared with Xinran, no mean speaker herself, at the Asia House launch of 'Blue China'

The latest book, whose title is a quote from a Marlene Dietrich film, is autobiographical too, but with a focus on the city. Even the post-talk snacks were stylish - ciabatta squares filled with piquant cream cheese and cooked sliced courgette and mushroom. I didn’t stay for wine, although tempted by the cosy atmosphere of the upstairs shop, as I faced a cold train journey home

Bamboo’s Books:http://www.uklitag.com/site/project_detail_new.php?id=1682&cur_page=0&cat_id=81

My Review of Blue China:

http://www.dimsum.co.uk/culture/meet-the-author-bamboo-hirst.html

The Italian Bookshop website:

http://www.italianbookshop.co.uk/

Family Flops

I find films about 'eccentric' families hard going, especially American ones. (Not counting 'The Addams Family', currently satirised in the best-yet Orange ad.) I don’t just mean 'Meet the Fockers’ which I once saw by mistake in Barcelona, because the Spanish title was nothing like that I’m one of the few people I know who didn’t like Sam Mendes’ 'American Beauty' because of the 'quirky family' theme. Last Friday, though, I thought an antidote to John Boorman's harrowing 'Deliverance' on TV was in order. 'Four Christmases' was about the only light comedy at Cineworld that we hadn't seen.


One advantage of paying £14.99 a month for as many films as you can watch, apart from saving on heating costs, is you don't mind the odd 'turkey'. That's just as well.

‘FC’ had Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn play a loved-up couple fog-bound in their home town of San Francisco at Christmas. An airport TV interview blows their cover so they have to visit all four sets of their divorced parents. In a way the constant shifts are good because each set of in-laws is more unfunny than the one before. Some of the scenes were amusing, such as the one where the couple are forced into playing Mary and Joseph in a nativity play at a revivalist church and the husband lets his luvvie instincts take over. Otherwise it is so bad it makes you long for a nice slow French film where the families may be dysfunctional but at least the house décor is tasteful and there's a bit of obscure philosophising.Come back, then, 'I’ve Loved you so Long', even with unnaturally genial (and silent) grandfather and false-bonhomie dinner table scene. All is forgiven.

Come to think of it, 'Summer Hours' wasn't bad.

Should have read this first:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290002/

Meet the Fockers:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290002/

American Beauty:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/

I’ve Loved you so Long review:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068649/

The Addams Family:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101272/

Deliverance :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/

Summer Hours:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/18/drama.worldcinema

Rubbing shoulders with Artists

Oh’, I explained to Zadie Smith ,' it’s not difficult but it can be tedious; you just have to keep slogging away, without much progress.’ Zadie had been expressing her admiration for anyone who learned Chinese. Her large brown eyes swivelled towards my classmate, who piped up. ‘And then one day, it suddenly clicks and you get a breakthrough’. Zadie nodded as if she knew exactly what we meant, then laughed and said she’d stick to Italian, as that was difficult enough for her. Remembering my manners, I asked what she was working on at present and learned she’d been awake until 4am finishing a talk she had to deliver in New York the next day. As she moved off, I explained to my friend that the life of a successful writer involved a lot of time-consuming publicity.

Three of my Chinese classmates and I were in a tiny back room of Probsthains bookshop, tucking into refreshments at the launch of a Chinese woodblock exhibition. I was eating sandwiches because I was due to meet R at Cineworld later.

As I reflected on the consolations of obscurity, a Chinese guy with a pony tail squeezed passed. Surely, my friend said, he must be Ma Jian, author of the Chinese novel ‘Red Dust’ .

I asked the He Weimin, the woodblock artist, if he could effect an introduction. We’d talked to him earlier, a very modest young man currently enjoying a residency at the Ashmolean in Oxford. He was pleased that I knew Harbin, the city where he was born. Although he didn’t know the suspected author, he went over and said something. The pony-tailed one began to laugh uproariously and told us he was an artist, but not a writer. That’s another launch in the pipeline, then.

'Long hair and a pony-tail is more or less a sign of artistic non-conformity with Chinese artists, I said to my friend.


More about the artist and images of his work here:

http://www.oriental-african-books.com/chinese_woodblock_pr.html

More about Zadie Smith:

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth257

An Interview with Ma Jian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/may/02/fiction.features

Here's one for a wet Friday:

Crowe and DiCaprio were adequate in Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, a film about American counter-terrorism in the middle east. The real star was Mark Strong, playing a kind of Jordanian James Bond with suits to match. His lean grace and brooding glances enhanced every scene he appeared in. Fortunately there were plenty. The plot’s better than ‘Syriana’, in that I could at least follow it. Amazing establishing shots such as barren Afghanistan mountains roads or the high-rise hotels of a Dubai cityscape were impressive, but never overwhelmed the storyline. For me the critique of casual US violence was too muted, and embedded romance was about as credible as DiCaprio speaking fluent Arabic. High-tec satellite monitoring scenes in command headquarters, demonstrated that an eagle’s eye view was nice and safe but not much use when the enemy kicked up a dust storm. This metaphor for the gap between the generals the and ground fighters delivered a trite message in an entertaining format. Torture scenes were grisly but short.

Mixed Reviews on my favourite film website:

http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/10009225-body_of_lies/


This page tells you how to see as many films as you want in London and the UK for £14.99 a month:

http://www.cineworld.co.uk/unlimited

Korean Film Night

Most foreign cultural centres in London lay on freebie events, often with food and drink thrown in. It was a choice of orange or apple juice at the film show at the Korean Cultural Institute in the Strand (entrance opposite The Sherlock Holmes pub in Northumberland Ave) . Not very exotic fare, but still very welcoming.

I wouldn’t say the viewing conditions were optimal, either – four shallow steps at one side of a wide hall, with long thin leather –covered cushions. Tip - for the next free screening, (Thurs. Dec 11th, 7pm) arrive early enough to get a seat at the back, where I can lean against the wall, or ask for a chair to put on one side, like the late-comers. It's free but you have to book in advance.

I’ve never seen a bad Korean film, but mostly they’re firmly in the horror genre. ‘Barking Dogs Never Bite’, directed by Joon-ho Bong, is an entertaining slice-of-life comedy about city dwellers. These include an the academic who needs to raise $10,000 bribe to himself into a professorship, his pregnant wife with a craving for walnuts, two hapless shop workers who dream of TV fame and a sinister janitor who may know something about the pets that keep disappearing.

I noticed there was an art exhibition to check out later, with a wonderful semi-translucent jade tea service. I like jade so much I must have been a Chinese Empress in a former life.

I enjoyed the film but was fidgeting by the end, being unused to sitting with my knees drawn up towards my ears. I may have been an Empress in a former life but I don't have the physique for crouching.

Never mind – looking forward to canapés and wine at a Chinese exhibition opening tomorrow.

Here's a Review of the film:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269743/

For further info. and to book: info@kccuk.org.uk

Imagination isn't enough

For a while I thought 'Imagine This' was connected with John Lennon. When I did find out it was a musical set in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 that really put me off. I dislike vacuous shows like ‘Mamma Mia’, but this went too far in the opposite direction

I like a bit of triumph over adversity in musicals –it’s almost ‘de rigeur’ for that feel-good effect. The marvellous ‘Zorro’ I enjoyed the other week was based on real events, and ‘Dickens Unplugged’ was a bit of a mishmash but a reasonable reflection of the great man’s protest at social injustice. ‘Imagine This’ would at least have a story. Came a weekend with heavy rain forecast and I thought, ‘Give it a go’.

When I write reviews for websites I can get in free but it’s mainly fringe theatres, or subsidised ones like the Young Vic and The RSC .The ‘price’ is a write-up which seldom takes less than five hours. My contact's ‘affordable’ ticket supply tends to be at short notice and it’s mainly previews or sluggishly-selling matinees. Often front-row seats, though.

I’d asked to be further back after nearly getting my eyebrows singed in ‘Zorro’, but I found that in the New Theatre, Drury Lane, Row D is the front row. R said he missed one key point entirely – a slogan painted on a briefly appearing backdrop. It was because we were looking upwards at an angle. A bit nerve-racking too when the Roman soldiers were using their lances for impromptu kung fu fights- .even more attention-grabbing than Ian MacKellan’s full frontal as ‘King Lear’ in the same theatre.

In fact, ‘Imagine This’ wasn’t half bad as far as staging, costumes, singing and acting went. The plotline, about a troupe that puts on a show to boost morale in the ghetto, about oppression in ancient Rome, was promising; the star-crossed romantic leads were good. The music was weak, though, and in fact the best tune was in the first scene, called ‘The Last Day of Summer, performed by the whole cast, on the great revolving stage, in marvellous thirties costumes. The carousel motif was used cleverly throughout to reflect the theme of recurring historical cycles, rises and falls and the triumph of hope over adversity.

Unfortunately, it didn’t convince me. The second verse of title song, very well delivered by star Peter Polycarpou asked us to imagine a giant statue with a torch rising from the sea. Just in case anyone had missed the pointed reference to the US, one of the cast climbed on a table, draped in a cloth and holding a rolled magazine aloft. No wonder the Americansin the audience liked it, but in light of recent occupations and complaints of oppression it wasn’t exactly tactful. The rest of the audience took it quite well, I think.

There was indeed a strong positive aspect to the play – where people share common bonds and fight a common enemy the mind’s capacity to soar above immediate circumstances is inspiring. Unfortunately, as the outcomes of the double plots made all too clear, the end of suffering is not so uplifting. Ultimately the message of the show seemed Hollywood-inspired and chimed ill with stark realities, however stylistically presented.

'Imagine This' is at the New Theatre, Drury Lane. More about it here:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article4991906.ece

'Zorro' is at The Garrick Theatre, Charing Cross Road:



http://www.zorrothemusical.com/

'Dickens Unplugged' is at The Comedy Theatre, Panton Street:

http://www.dickensunplugged.com/

Lost in the Mists of Time


I wouldn’t say my arms are my best feature, being short, podgy and freckled. Much of a piece with the rest of me, I suppose, but a future spare-part surgeon would be challenged to find a match in his (presumably frozen) stock.

Aesthetic considerations aside, an out of town car trip and an overnight stay in a bargain hotel chain resulted in additional bright red blotches.

It wasn’t so much the appearance that annoyed me as the constant itching. When, after a week, it was no better, I consulted a GP.

From what I hear I’m lucky, because if I get to my local surgery by 8am I can make an appointment to see a doctor the same morning. That’s if I’m not too fussy about which doctor I see. I’m not; I assume they’re all more or less trained to the same standard and in any case I like to meet different people. As it happened, said the receptionist, I could see Dr X right away.

By the reflected light of his PC, the doctor looked a little pale. I asked him how he felt instead of the other way round and perhaps we got off on the wrong foot. After all, 8am isn’t an unearthly hour. I showed him the problem and asked him if the allergic reaction could be any way connected with the flu and pneumonia jabs I’d been persuaded to have the week before. He looked offended. ‘Unlikely’, he said, moving his eyes back to the screen. It was even more unlikely, in my opinion, having survived 65 years, three of them in the tropics, and never had an allergic reaction before, that they were unconnected.

Let it pass, I thought.

After a glance at the blotches and a verdict of ‘Insect bites’, he typed a prescription. Then he scrutinised me. ‘Do you smoke?’

I told him no. ‘What about in the past?’

‘Oh, only about forty years ago, when it was fashionable.’

His features, never exactly cheery, took on a graver cast.

‘I don’t think smoking was ever fashionable!’ It sounded like a reprimand to frivolity.

I sized him up. He’d be in his mid forties, I guess, the same age as my daughter. He was too young to remember the TV ads of the fifties - ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’ - or those Bacall and Bogart films where you could hardly see the stars behind the clouds of cigarette smoke. Not to mention Jack Hawkins and his pipe in ‘The Cruel Sea’. Didn’t he know that medical practice has its fashions, like education? They must keep the historical aspects from them in training.

So I said nothing, but, as R’s mother would have said, ‘thought the more’.

I’m glad he prescribed antihistamine tablets and cortisone cream instead of a course of leeches, though. The problem cleared in three days and my arms were restored to their usual level of unsightliness.

I All Dressed Up

I first met Hannah at the local baths. ‘You do more chatting than swimming’, says R. He doesn’t understand that women can swim and talk at the same time.Hannah commutes from Haringey and swims before going to work. A lay reader, she more or less lives for the church, so I listen, fascinated, to accounts of retreats, sermon preparations and what the bishop said to the other bishop. She’s also kind and funny and brings in all kinds of back-up literature for me to look at.

Last Wednesday R went with me to the ‘Readers’ Quinquennial Eucharist’, at St Pauls, a kind of re-licencing ceremony for lay readers as well as a swearing-in for new ones. I’ve never been inside before, which is probably because there’s a £10 charge for sightseers. It was all very dramatic, and we had good seats under a high side arch to the left of the main arena, under the great dome. The infamous acoustics scrambled the hymns. We could gawp at gold-leafed cupolas and the inside of the dome itself, with its railing.

By chance we were seated alongside a marble statue of a local naval hero, Nelson, on a plinth above smaller figures. To our right was another battle hero, some Marquis who was Governor of Bengal. They're not exactly religious subjects, I thought. On the other hand, these national heroes were no doubt associated with religious inspiration in peoples’ minds at the time.

The only other person on the back row with us was a vicar with a purple shirt, letter-box collar and Lancashire accent. He’d recently been posted to North London from Manchester. ‘You won’t get used to it’, I told him, but he assured me the people were very pleasant. I suppose it makes a difference when you’re a vicar and people habitually defer. He wondered how the England v. Germany match on TV that night was getting on, which I assumed was ‘man of the people’ talk for R’s benefit. He was on a loser there, though, and Roy adroitly changed the subject. The vicar revealed that now he’s in London he has a free pass to St Pauls, which was the least I'd expect. He said he too had been a lay reader before becoming a priest, and when I asked him was it a natural progression he said no, he’d resisted, but his own vicar had said he had a vocation.

This reminded me of Francis Thompson's poem 'The Hound of Heaven' :
'I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;I fled Him, down the arches of the years;I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.'


An officious usher or ‘wandsman’, told him off for trying to take a photograph.

I was astonished to hear R say St Pauls was built on the bones of our ancestors. I wonder if all the regalia and ceremony was getting up his nose and provoking a kind of displaced anti-royalism, as he’s usually so discreet. Apart from the visual splendour and the singing, plus a short but topical sermon by the Bishop of London, there was the dramatic dialogue during the service. It’s designed, I suppose, to check out the aspiring readers’ resolution, a bit like the marriage ceremony when they have to declare any impediments, except there were more questions along the lines of ‘Will you endeavour to fashion your life according to the way of Christ?’To which they had to answer : By the grace of God, I willAfter the ceremony there was general mingling and photo-calls, the Bishop of London happy to pose with his crook alongside groups. I was pleased to find Hannah alongside a minor bishop. She’s uncharacteristically stern in the photo, but I think she was still feeling nervous, and the robes crackled with starch. She looks quite different with no clothes on.

Afterwards we went to an O'Neills pub near Cannon Street station. It was all quite festive, large-sized bunting with pictures of Irish menu dishes strung across the bar and young men in suits who'd removed their ties. I told R that as his ancestors were Welsh he could hardly claim St Pauls had been built on their bones. He said he meant his ancestors on the other side. As to that provenance I think I'll draw a veil.

Here’s a website with a commentary about St Paul’s :http://www.explore-stpauls.net/oct03/pano_pages.htm

My Luck is in.


One of my favourite views is the approach to the coffee shop in Waterstones in Greenwich. It always feels like a reward at the end of a walk across Blackheath and down through the park. It was a cold day when I took the photos, making me think Winter is really on the way. The trees still make a colourful show.

R was ahead and later refused to led me money when I decided to buy ‘Wannabe a Writer?’ by Jane Wenham Jones. I was tired of my Chinese homework, especially as I’d forgotten to bring my magnifying glass and the characters are small in my so-called ‘pocket’ dictionary that weighs at least 2lbs. Another reason I was glad to sit down. Jane’s book made me laugh – well, the section on ‘Writer’s Bottom’ that I read. She writes for the Writers' Magazine I subscribe to.

Trouble is, the book cost £9.99 and I only had £6.50 on me. R took out his wallet to show he didn’t have any cash on him and no, I wasn’t supposed to use the card because we’d agreed we’d only get money once a week and it wasn’t his fault I’d left my spending money at home. He’d come back later in the day, if it was so important.

But there was only one copy! What if it was sold? As R was still in the coffee shop I went over to the desk and hung about for a while. Should I ask them to reserve it? I could pay a deposit. Then I heard the assistant ask a customer if he wanted his loyalty card points taken off the price of a book purchase. Hmm. With the Society of Authors 10% discount and the loyalty points on my own card the price of the book came down to £6.05. Happy Ending - I bought it.