Bundle

I've just finished a rather delightful show. It was called "Ghoooooulty Pleasures", and was a cabaret of tenuously Halloween themed musical numbers. So, if a show had magic, or monsters, or magical monsters it qualified, and we had entries from Rocky Horror, Shrek, Wicked, Evil Dead and Buffy.

Our Director is something of a crazed genius, but I worry about her sometimes, as 70% of all the numbers seemed to involve some sort of sex-bundle. Somewhere down the line, however, my sex-bundle got cancelled and instead I got left deserted on stage by two suddenly unwilling female zombies.

UnLife is hard.

So hard, it seems, that I forgot to finish this entry and it lay for months, in a metaphorical muddy riverbed, ready for my Deagolly hands to fumble upon it unexpectedly. I'd probably throw it away, but it does have the most delightful illustration, and at least my best friend hasn't strangled me in order to get his hands on it.

Though it rather looks as though he has. 

Nonpayment

There's a pigeon war going on outside.

Last night it rained. You may have noticed. It rained so much the storm drains were choked and gasping, chimneys were flooding fireplaces and bipeds of all kinds were taking shelter under whatever outcrops they could find.

On the sanctuary of my window sill a power struggle of awesome intensity served to keep me awake more than the gusts of wind rattling the panes or the steady drip drip of the rain water in the chimney. Derek the scruffy whitish pigeon who roosts regularly outside my bedroom, was wrestling for space with three other pigeons, including one conventionally coloured pigeon bully intent on taking away Derek's kingdom.

Pigeon wars seem to consist of several elements, most obviously high-decibel cooing, scrabbling at window frames (it sounded like rats were trying to get in) and, rather lamentably, vast quantities of shitting. My sill looks as though someone has held an avian Glastonbury on it. The pane itself has smears where wings have bashed against it mid fight, a conflict that dragged me out of bed to confront the offenders only to see Derek and the Bully in a mutual beak-lock dragging each other around their scant square inches of disputed territory.  Two female pigeons cowered in the corner, their support hard to fathom as they hid from both rain and violence.  Normally when I pull back the curtains, the pigeons flap away. Instead, these frightened females just cocked a terrified eye at me, while the tussle went on unabated. Though weirdly, as if they knew they were pushing their luck,  the two males continued their fight in feathery silence.

All this may be punishment for skipping my local pizza restaurant without paying for a glass of sparkling water, though I prefer to view our non-payment as a misunderstanding that has its roots in culinary authenticity. This pizzeria is so Italian that the waiters don't actually seem to understand any English, which meant my companion's multiple requests for water were entirely ignored. After we had requested the bill, we tried again to get a glass of tap water, only to receive a lemon-garnished glass of frizzante. Being both parched and irritated there was no way we were sending our acqua back.

At least my attempt to photograph what looked like the world's smallest stick insect climbing up the side of a cocktail stick ended up looking like the opening credits of the original Hartnell Dr Who. Definitely safer to photograph something with this many splinters than put it in your mouth... I imagine Derek the pigeon will return to the fray with a flaming spear looking very much like this to vanquish his foes this evening. It could be another noisy night.

Strategy

I am not a naturally strategic thinker. I know this for one very good reason - I suck at strategy games. In particular Civilization (of various numerals), a game that has devoured many a spare hour of my life since I was about 20.

I find them a depressingly accurate barometer for my life - I'm very good to start with, opening up early leads against my computery opponents and bossing the game. And then...

Well, not much really. Everything seems to be going well so I stop really thinking about it and keep hitting the 'end of turn' button rather than nurturing my civilisation's cities or upgrading their military units. And before I know it the bloody Russians have stolen my capital city and the French have got rocketry and started building spaceships out of cheese. 

Hey, Saladin, do you like hospital food, pal?

It's not a bad way to discover quite what an abysmal completer-finisher I am. Weirdly I play the game much better when I'm slightly drunk, as all the caution of my sober approach flaps away like a vanquished pigeon and I start kicking the living shit out of the Japanese. In previous decades I could probably adopt this approach in the workplace and achieve some spectacular results. These days, however, I'm told that hip flasks and cans of beer in the filing cabinet are generally frowned upon, and besides there is - conceivably - a difference between destroying the digitised Dutch and drawing up a decent digital inclusion delivery model. Though the good thing about bottles of whisky is that not only can you drink from them, you can also hit people with them, a constant temptation in any modern workplace.
 
Oddly, the discovery that I'm not very good at strategy doesn't put me off playing Civilization, because although I'm a very poor strategic thinker, I clearly am an excellent appreciator of tiny animated workers building roads over the top of mountains. Something to be proud of. Now pass the whisky.

Angora

I turned 40 today. As it is for everyone else when they turn forty, no matter that they might be Peter Pan or fat, balding and possessed of nine grandchildren, it doesn't seem possible. As a number it doesn't feel as if it belongs to me at all, but more as though someone has given it to me by mistake, and any moment now they'll come rushing up and say "hey, sorry, that was silly, that's for the greying, old-looking guy over there."

"You know, the one that looks just like you."

And then I wake up.

Unfortunately, I wake up freezing cold. It was sunny when I set out this morning. People texted me and said "look, the sun's come out for your birthday!" It was all joy and tweeting birds. So I threw on my best joy-and-tweeting-birds 3-piece suit and strolled to work whistling a jaunty tune. Now the only whistling is the ice-tinged gale blowing refrigerated drizzle into my 3-piece face.

There's no escape. I'm going to have to buy myself a birthday cardie, just to get through the day. Angora or no, old age clothing here I come.

(it'll probably be red, though, if it helps)

Mutter

I need to get my brain working. Somehow. Although it’s still capable of sending instructions to my mouth to articulate the words of Tony Blair, it is reacting in shock to any suggestion of cognitive analysis of, for instance, anything happening in an office environment. This was acceptable for the first Monday morning after Easter, but the inbox is piling up and very soon my own Spongiform brain is going to get diagnosed by everyone around me. This would be more of a problem for me than it was for Tony. If I get kicked out I’m unlikely to get invited to be a peace envoy for the Quartet, while the only after dinner speaking I have experience of is muttering, “that was nice, is there any pudding?”

With my 40^th birthday hoving into view it was inevitable that my body would sent me some sign of impending decrepitude. Its chosen method was to knock me out cold less than an hour into the last night party for War of the Waleses. I then proceeded to sleep through several hours of raucous partying, including – I see from YouTube –  some very entertaining guitar work from John Major. Members of the cast kindly photographed me in my unconscious state – I look really rather peaceful. It’s certainly the best night’s sleep I had all week.

My Post Show Blues (PSB) are rather less than they normally would be, as attention has moved to our one-off, one-hour mini-version for the RSC Open Stages regional showcase next Thursday. Again, it is impossible to know how a half-length version of this play is going to come across, but I do know that it has the potential to be snortingly good fun again and I shall be heartily recommending it to everyone who missed the official run last week. In fact, I might turn into a theatre-promoting version of Pratchett’s Foul Ole Ron and wander around muttering endlessly about how I’m playing Tony Blair one last time; “Bugg’rit. Millenium Dome and Cherie.”  

Perhaps.

There’s even some sentence structure emerging somewhere. When this lunch break comes to a close there’s half a chance of work being successfully navigated. It really, really, really could happen. 

Hairstyle

Yes, I'm an inconsistent blogger. Probably stylistically as well as in frequency. But I have been a bit preoccupied this year, often with things with which I shall not bore you, but sometimes with the fun and frolics of the featre.

Waaay back in the second age of middle earth (possibly February), in response to a friend's prodding I auditioned for KDC's "Measure for Measure". Although I'd only seen one KDC production - not one, I'm afraid - to inspire massive enthusiasm - I also know a lot of their active people through association with other groups, so when they announced the other plays in the same season as M4M I kept an open mind and was tempted by the sound of a new play. Since I was attending auditions anyway, I thought I'd try out.

Yes, I'm playing Tony "Demon Eyes"Blair himself.

I've not performed in a great deal of new writing. Actually, I'd not performed in any new writing. I'm a picky son of a bitch, and have been ever since my association with Finchley Youth Theatre resulted in my involvement in the truly execrable "Light in the Village", a play that could not be rescued by a future Eastenders actress and a stylised comedy rape scene (though it did give me further opportunity to confuse acting with shouting).

Since then I've installed an early warning radar system in my brain to weed out shit. I've probably got it set to slightly over sensitive, which is why I've been in so much Shakespeare lately (it's a safe bet). Not having done much (any) new writing, I was more than a little surprised to get through the read through without any red lights flashing and sirens wailing.

My goodness, I thought - could it be that this is actually quite good? So I went for it.

Two month's later, it's opening night. The result of the creative hard yards of three of KDC's finest is "The War of the Waleses", an innovative and fascinating response to the challenges of the RSC's "Open Stages" project. It's the story of the messy public divorce of Charles and Di - obviously the Waleses* of the title - along with the political and media context of the times and the impact upon them. And to RSC it all up, it's told in the style and structure of a Shakespeare history play. But with added newsreaders.

And it's enormously exciting.  The cast is supremely talented, the Director/Writer brilliant (and - best of all - not given to enforcing lengthy and irritating warm-ups) and I get a seriously kick-ass speech. I'm still a bit nervous about the audience reaction - a 'Shakespeare' history play about the mid-nineties could just baffle them - but we've done everything possible to invite them into our quirky little world and make them welcome. If they're willing to be entertained, they surely will be.

On the off chance that anyone reads this, you can get tickets and info here. We're on till Saturday 14th April 2012 (for archive divers).


Finally, I have arranged a "Blaircut" for this play that leaves me looking more follicularly foolish than at any time since, appropriately, the mid-nineties. It's worth coming just to see that.  OK, no it isn't, but it's going to splendid anyway.

* try saying that without the urge to add "My preciousssss..." to it.

More info: http://warofthewaleses.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/all-the-worlds-a-stage/