A nice neighborhood to have bad habits in

When, I'd argue, it's a Movie Theatre.
I went off to see the NT Live broadcast of Hamlet last week in a cinema.

I've seen a lot of Hamlet's over the years, live and on film, and this was one of the best. I thought the Cumbersnatch was excellent, the rest of the cast universally up to scratch, and the whole damn thing was audible and well spoken. One of the things that I didn't like about the recent film version of MacBeth was that for long stretches I could only barely hear it - the dialogue was given mostly in a monotone, and quite often in a low monotone. This production was meant to be heard, not just seen, and the language was spoken with such drive that the meaning was always clear.

The set design was also pretty awesome, with the (metaphorical) fireworks at the end of Act One very well done.

And as a viewing experience, it didn't work for me at all.

This was a full blown theatrical production, and an excellent one, but I wasn't in a theatre audience. Cumberbatch did not make the same connection with me as a stage bound Hamlet that Fassbinder made with me as a (mumbling, grimey) MacBeth. Mostly, I suspect, because he wasn't trying to. As the villain in the last Star Trek movie, Cumberbatch held me from the first moment he appeared (ok, and less so as those moments accumulated). I kept expecting to feel the connection I do for actors on a stage, not a screen, and it lifted me out of the immersive nature of a performance as if it was happening behind glass.

Which it was,

So, interesting, well done, and ultimately unsatisfying (and much more expensive than a normal cinema ticket).

I know this must be a well-worn problem by now, especially for Opera fans. But it seemed worse than, say, the movie of The Wall I watched the other week, or other concert movies. And I don't know why that is.

When is a movie not a movie? 

So where were we?

I finished the move to Edinburgh last week. Actually this means that I finished moving all of the boxes and bags. The boxes and bags are now all over the new flat, to the extent that I can't move them or even imagine where I'll move them to. Obviously this can't continue, and I'll need to spend time getting organinsed, but stuff.

Tuesday I went to see The Wall (or "Roger Waters The Wall" as it's ungrammatically billed). I;ve never been a prog fan (this said in the tone of "I've never been a fan of ritually slaughtering goats) but this was interesting on a lot of levels. Primarily, for me, the fascist imagery. I'm always put off by black and silver uniforms, great coats, and Nuremburg rallies. Apparently this is an incredibly wrong-headed reading of the show when set aside Pink Floyd's decades of anti-war material. So why wear the fecking armbands?

I managed not to raise this on Thursday, which was my seasonal dialogue night. Topics raised did include Time, age, death and senility. Despite which, it was a cheery conversation. I also managed to cycle into central Edinburgh and back without actually killing myself.

Friday I flew down to London for Dave Gilmour's gig at the Albert Hall. I'd never seen him, I'd never been to the Albert Hall. Both were very impressive, despite showing obvious signs of age. To be honest, I preferred Gilmour's versions of the Pink Floyd songs, mostly because they were songs, and not excerpts from a rock opera.

On Saturday morning I spent three hours sitting on the floor of a train from London to Newcastle. Virgin Trains (may their licence be revoked) hadn't accounted for the fact that Scotland were playing South Africa there, and that some tens of thousands of people would be going, many of them by train. Time passed. I didn't have a ticket for the game, but negotiations with a cheery chap with a limp and a wary eye out for the cops found me on the touchline for what was, apparently, a dire perfomance by Scotland. I didn't see that, personally - I thought they rested some key players, and still pegged back South Africa to seven points late in the game. Next Saturday's game against Samoa is the crunch, obviously.

I stayed in Newcastle on Saturday, and then was driven back to Edinburgh. And then decided to raid my glasgow flat for 5 bookcases I'd left behind. Because that way I might be able to shelve some of my books.

Monday I drove to Inverness, has a six hour meeting, drove back and slept.

Last night was dinner with an old friend, then off to see the new film of MacBeth. A mixed thing. Lots of stunning visuals and set pieces, but I thought it suffered from too many scenes of people standing about while the leads pose in the foreground (when I see these, I always expect to hear Spike Milligan saying "What are we going to do now?) that the emotional tone was fairly flat, and that it had a problem I've had with the last few productions of Shakespeare I've seen - one blood smeared bearded man in black warrior garb looks much the same as another blood smeared bearded man in warrior garb. Worth seeing, though. I thought there was a huge Japanese influence, but then maybe that's just me.

Today is Edinburgh in the morning, Glasgow in the afternoon, and back to Edinburgh tonight.

Oh, I've also been on national TV twice this week, on a quiz show called 15-1. I'll try and get a clip of me flirting with Sandi Toksvik, but if you want to see it it's on Channel 4s catch up site. I was much better on Tuesday's show. 

Just back from a week on Islay, with a side-trip to Jura. As someone described it on the Facebook, "Eight Go Mad On An Island".

It was my fourth trip across to Islay, but my first as part of a group. We managed nine distilleries in 7 days (there are 8 opened on Islay, and Jura has another) and I was away on the 7 a.m. ferry back to the mainland.

The weather was most unlike Islay in September - nary a drop of rain, and a few days of fine sun. I may have had the finest dram of my life (a 23 year old Bruichladdich, lifted straight from the barrel) and had plenty more fine ones, with not a single bum note.

I owe NicNac (once of this parish) a vote of thanks for getting the trip up and running, as well as Suzanne and Aled for sharing the driving with her, and Jim and Neil for taking up the burden of dram tasting with me. Sean provided the single entendres (never has Nicky been so thoroughly looked after in the rimming department) and Patrick was the voice of quiet reason (except where the Northern Lights were involved).

There's too much to tell, I'm afraid. Standing outside our rented house in the pitch black, with the Milky Way strung out over our heads and the aurora flickering on the horizon. Taking the tiny ferry to Jura, through the white water Sound, with our little blue van. And the silly company, being silly.

That, my friends, was a week worth doing.

My Edinburgh Festival wound up (very tightly) this weekend with two shows on Friday, an outdoor gig in Glasgow on Saturday, a performance of Lanark on Sunday and the fireworks last night.

I’ll try and catch up on “The Elephant in the Room” (excellent, scary) “Live and Late” (chaotic, late) Paolo Nutini (wired to the moon, in great voice) and the fireworks (away off in the distance, beautiful) later, but what really occupied my thoughts was Lanark, and the post-performance conversations about it.

Here are some things I think it’s important to know about Lanark going in:

1.      It’s an adaption of a novel by Alistair Grey.
2.      Alistair Grey is a towering figure in 20^th Century Scottish Fiction
3.      Lanark is widely acknowledged as one of, if not the, most important Scottish novels of the 20^th Century
4.      The book is split between thinly disguised auto-biography, set in an other-dimensional analogue of Glasgow called Unthank, and even less thinly disguised auto-biography set in Glasgow itself
5.      The book deals extensively with the author’s delusion that he is in some way special, by way of his genius as an artist, but ultimately he is forced to concede that he’s more or less ordinary, and will live an ordinary life and die an ordinary death
6.      Most of the book reflects the author’s obsession with himself (a common trait in autobiography): his inadequacy as a father, his sexual failings, his illnesses, real and imagined, his success and lack of success with women and work and education.

Frankly, I loved the play. It was long, and rich, and dealt with the meat of the novel to my satisfaction. I think Alistair would like it and hate it, that it works as SF and as a biography, and that I’ll probably go and see it again, when it gets to Glasgow, because I thought the Edinburgh audience was a little… flat.

The fun and games started afterwards, with a conversation on the way through the Meadows, continued in a car trip back to where I was staying, and continued further (long after midnight) with the people I went to see it with.
Two of them, an old, old friend and the other a mid-twenties film student, stayed mostly quiet. One,  a mid-twenties playwright, had a lot to say.

What she knew about Lanark going in:
1.      It’s an adaption of a novel

And nothing else. So she went in on the back of four or five years of theatre studies (she picked up her masters this year) having spent half her life in or around theatre productions, and with absolutely no idea who Alistair Grey is, or what Lanark was about.

Her reaction?

A disapointing adaption, and a disapointing play. Three hours of self-indulgent whining, with no sympathetic characters. Practically no female presence except as mobile set-dressing. A second act which was too long, too repetitive, and sucked the life out of the chorus technique. No pay off for the journey. Didn’t focus on the interesting stuff – capitalism eating the poor, politics as celebrity, the relationship between place and self, in favour of a man proving that he was ordinary and would die ordinary.

I was shocked. Loudly and at length. I brought in Hamlet (“What do you want, more sword fights?”) the importance of the novel, the fact that an adaption of Lanark which doesn’t deal fully with Lanark would not be a fair adaption, and I argued that you didn’t need a pay off, or that understanding that we are all ordinary is a fair pay off in itself.

And She Would Not Budge.

Didn’t care that the book was… well, didn’t care that the book was anything. The book wasn’t on stage. What was on stage was an adaption, and it was a bad adaption, that made a bad play. Oh, some things worked, theatrically, but its spine, the sad life and undistinguished death of a middle aged white man, who imagines himself special, who wants to be a writer, or an artist, or a husband or a father, and who fails in a fairly dull way at all of these does not make a good play.

What doesn't worry me is that she’s wrong. By my lights. Plays about self-obsessed middle-aged men can obviously be successful. Obviously. Look at “Death Of A Salesman”. Look at the career of Woody Allen
.
What worries me is that my lights may be wrong. Maybe the days when the self-obsession of a middle aged man made for good story-telling are over. Maybe they should be. Hard thoughts, when you’re a middle-aged man…

(Also, being ranted at by a young, well informed writer who is passionate about her work and who can fight her corner as well as I can was great, thought provoking fun. I’m lucky to know her).

Anyway, I think that all makes Lanark the highlight of what has been my best festival to date.





 

That British Meme, because it’s lunch time. More or less.


1. Marmite—love or hate?
Hate
2. Marmalade—thick cut or thin cut?
Thick.
3. Porridge—made with milk or water?
Half milk, half water, with milk on top.
4. Do you like salt, sugar or honey on your porridge?
Salt and milk – I don’t hold with the sweet porridge heresy.
5. Loose tea or teabags?
Teabags.
6. Where on your door is your letterbox?
On the outside door to the flat, central, about three feet up.
7. What's your favourite curry?
Mother India’s chilli garlic chicken if eating there, lamb rogan josh anywhere else.
8. What age is the place where you live?
No idea, but the street name changed before 1940.
9. Where do the folks running your local corner shop come from?
Glasgow. I haven’t asked where their parents are from.
10. Instant or fresh coffee?
Fresh.
11. How far are you from the sea?
About 25 miles from the Irish Sea, 5 miles or so to the Firth of Clyde.
12. Have you travelled via Eurostar?
Yes.
13. If you were going to travel abroad, where's the nearest country to you?
England by road, Northern Island by sea.
14. If you're female (or possible even some males) do you carry a handbag?
Are we counting sporrans?.
15. Do you have a garden? What do you like growing?
Yes, and the garden and I have a deal. It doesn’t manage programmes, and I don’t grow plants.
16. Full cream, semi skimmed or skimmed?
Semi-skimmed.
17. Which London terminal would you travel into if going to the capital?
Euston or Kings Cross (or, more accurately, Waverley. Unless I was getting off at Haymarket).
18. Is there a local greasy spoon where you live?
Several.
19. Do you keep Euros in the house?
There always seem to be a few around, and some dollars and Czech Crowns.
20. Does your home town have a Latin, Gaelic or Welsh alternative.
Yes, but no one uses it.
21. Do you have a well known local artist or author?
Too many to count.
22. Do you have a favourite Corrie character?
I have never watched Coronation Street.
23. Are your kitchen sink taps separate or a mixer?
Mixer.
24. Do you have a favourite brand of blended tea?
The broken orange pekoe from Fortnum and Mason.
25. What's in your attic if you have one?
Books. Lots and lots of books.
26. If you go out for a cream tea, what jam do you like on your scone?
Strawberry.
27. Talking of scones—scon or scown? Jam or cream first?
Scon, jam first.
28. Barth or bath?
Bath
29. Carstle or castle?
Castle
30. What flavour of crisps do you favour?
Ready salted.
31. If you go to the chippie, what do you like with your chips?
Salt.
32. Take away, take out or carry out?
Carry out.
33. If you have one, what colour is your wheelie bin?
Green.
34. What colour skips does your local skip hire use?
Too many to count.
35. Do you celebrate Guy Fawkes?
I celebrate the attempt, not the failure.
36. Dettol or TCP?
Either.
37. Do you have a bidet in the bathroom?
No.
38. Do you prefer courgettes or aubergines?
I like the colour of aubergines.
39. In the 'real world', do you have friends of other nationalities? Which nationalities?
Irish, American, Canadian, Australian, Finnish, German, English, Czech, Indian.
40. Do you have a holy book of any sort in the house?
A Koran, the King James Bible and the Bible in Scots, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.
41. Do you prefer a hankie or tissues?
Tissues.
42. Are you a fan of crumpets? What do you like on them?
Yes, with butter.
43. Doorbell, knocker or both?
Both.
44. Do you own a car? What sort?
I lease a BMW
45. What sort of pants do you guys prefer? Y fronts or boxers?
Boxers.
46. Anyone still a fan of suspenders?
Most British males of a certain age.
47. Do you have a favourite quote from the bard?
Ah wad some power the giftie gie us, tae see irsels as ithers see us. Oh, wait, you mean that other Bard?.
48. Do you like toasted muffins?
There’s nuffin like a muffin.
49. Do you think a traditional trifle should contain jelly?
Of course.
50. Do you attend regular religious worship? Of what kind?
No. I did enjoy the Quaker meetings I went to, but not enough to feel I needed to continue. 

Originally posted by xkcd_rss at Solar System Questions

When the funeral lunch ended, it seemed natural to say "Everyone back to mine". Not everyone, of course, but my brother and sister, their partners, a nephew, two neices and one of their partner's, and of course my Mum and her husband (that only looks funny written down - normally it's "Mum and Billy", which gets us past all of that step-father stuff). I ran around buying booze and soft drinks and snacks, and found out that I'd only over-catered on the soft-drinks front. It was a good night - much chat, much drinking, and the now-traditional moment when someone realises I've served them beer that went out of date two years ago (who knew that beer went out of date?).

Everyone was gone by not long after midnight - my mum was last out, after we sang Happy Birthday to her, and she did a bit of light tidying. No, seriously.

Her birthday celebration proper was on the Saturday night, a splendid Italian meal with a slightly expanded cast, and then back to her hotel for a few drinks. It was mostly West-End based, so I walked, putting a bit of a dent in my over-indulgences. Which were modest.

Mostly modest.

Modest compared to the following Friday.

Friday was that rarest of things these days, an LJ meet up. The occasion was N's visit to Edinburgh, but also in attendance were people who's LJ handles rarely get a run out these days, such as psychochicken and zantic, compulsive scribblers danieldwilliam and rhythmaning, and an unplanned but delightful meeting with ms_chatelaine, in town doing something creative or cultural or both.

We started on the Royal Mile, taking up the back corner of a pub which sold lots of whisky, native Scottish food (I had steak and ale pie (or "fake pie" as N described it) and much Haggi was slain by the others). After quaffing some beers and wine, we made our way across to the other side of Princes Street (stopping en route at the Halfway House, a small but perfectly formed pub on the Waverly Steps, and possibly my favourite spot of the evening) where we settled in the Cafe Royal, another place for beer and it turned out wine.

Dan then found us a cocktail bar, which met with mixed reviews. I actually really liked it, since it had a great view out across the Gardens to the old town,  but it was short on beer and long on cocktails, which is a bit of a bugger if you don't like cocktails. Which I do.

On again, to (I think) the Electric Circus, which was having a Hip Hop night and not, as it should have had, an Eighties Night. After showing the children how to boogie, there was time for another beery pub (I may have been saying things like "Why do they have so many beery pubs? Couldn't they just have one big one?" loudly by now) and then staggering off to our various beds. As I say, propably the most I've over-indulged in a good long time, but I woke up feeling remarkably chipper for so little sleep. Yes, N, you can come back again.

Next: Idol Worshipping in Glasgow....

My wee Gran passed away last Thursday, peacefully in her sleep, a couple of months shy of her 95^th birthday.
All of the old clichés apply (there’s a reason why they become clichés): she had a long life, she was delighted with her family, and in the end, the end was a blessing. Her Alzheimer’s was not going to get any better, and though her health was good (the doctor said he couldn’t use his old standby of “heart failure” on the death certificate, because her heart was as strong as a horse’s) she was growing frailer each month.
She lived on her own, well into her eighties, and the Alzheimer’s was the reason she went into a care home – she left the cooker on a time too many, and liked to walk the length of the town. It was her decision to go into the home – my mum assumed she’d move in with her, but she was too used to her own space, I guess.
She only ever had two children, my mum and her brother Thomas, who died young in a motor-bike accident. From three grandchildren she ended up with six great-grandchildren.
She died maybe a mile from where she was born. We’ll be taking her to the church she was christened in on Thursday, and she’ll have a mass on Friday.
At the crematorium she’ll have two songs – the one she loved to hear my Granda sign (“I’ll Take You Home, Kathleen”) and the one she always said was her favourite (“I Belong To Glasgow”).
She didn’t have an easy life, when she was younger. My Grandad joined the AA before I was born, and he never drank in my memory, but he had good reasons for stopping. He was in the army when they married (he deserted to marry her, and served his time in the Glasshouse for it) but he did come home from the war. He died twenty five years ago, and she never stopped missing him.
At the end, I can say she lived a life of quiet decency, and she’s left fond memories.

Bye, Gran. 

Well it looks like the diagnosis and treatment for my Mum were spot on. She started perking up and was much less confused from Tuesday onwards, and after two weeks on intravenous anti-virals, she was discharged on Saturday, with another week’s worth of tablets, and some industrial strength pain-killers.
It’s a big relief. I think what was scaring me most was her confusion, and the worries that there might be brain damage. Well there’s no sign of it, and the prognosis is that there should be no lasting impact. She is going to have painful headaches, though, for anything up to another month. She says the pain is manageable, which is one of the ways in which my mum is tougher than I am.
Of course, she was only out for a couple of days when my Gran took poorly, and she practically had to move into her nursing home.
Last night I got the “your cat’s on the roof” call from my brother. My Gran’s doctors had “made her comfortable” and she was “sleeping peacefully”. My mum warned us off until she’d been examined this morning, but the clear implication was that that wasn’t going to happen.
I should know better. Apparently this morning she had two energy drinks and was off to the loo. The doctors were “pleasantly surprised”. The woman is 95, and I think she’ll see out her century…
So thank you all for the kind thoughts: they’ve helped keep me rooted which so much has been going on.
Given the good news about my Mum and Gran, I’ve allowed myself to be talked into flying down to London on Thursday, and back on Friday to see a Brandon Flowers gig. Sorry to London chums (you know who you are) that it’s not a longer visit, but I promise to be down again soon. 

Well that’s not quite entirely true.
Some elements might be slightly inaccurate.
Oh, ok, it’s a lie…

Things are very busy indeed.

Work has settled down from the weekly visits to Inverness. I might still have to do the odd single day visit, but no extended stays (that might change, in the summer, but for now I’m mostly in Edinburgh). That makes life a lot simpler for me, or at least it would if I weren’t…

Currently house-sitting for a friend. She’s off in Chicago, leaving a dog, two and a bit cats, and a lot of birds and squirrels to be looked after. She lives out in the country (well, by my standards) but within 10 miles of my office. So the commute is cut down, though the pre-work routine is quite a bit more extensive (feed two and a bit cats, give dog three types of medicine and food, fill bird and squirrel feeders). At night things get quiet. Maybe too quiet – I’m used to a bit more going on at night. Still, after the first week of two I’m starting to like it and settle into a routine, or at least I would be except…

My mum is in hospital. She was on holiday, and started getting really bad headaches half way through. The local doctor was giving her injections (which she later found out were Tramadol!) but no diagnosis. My brother picked her up from the airport on Saturday, and took her straight to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow. After a couple of days of tests, during which possibilities like meningitis and aneurism were thrown about, they’ve settled on shingles in her head. Which sounds better by comparison, but is actually pretty horrific in terms of pain. So she’s going to spend two weeks in bed having anti-virals and pain killers pumped into her at Gartnavel hospital, which is only five minutes from my Glasgow flat. It’s a place of ill-omen for me, since it contains the Beatson cancer centre, and it’s where my friend Bill’s sister got her diagnosis. It’s also harder for her husband to get to, since he doesn’t drive. So she’s very upset, and in a lot of pain, and that puts a lot of things in perspective for me, especially since…

The General Election is coming up on Thursday (in case you haven’t noticed).  I haven’t said a lot about this, here, but it’s been on my mind a lot. For one thing, I won’t be voting Labour, breaking the voting pattern of every GE since I was able to vote, back in 1983. I’ve decided to vote SNP, along with a lot of other Labour voters. There’s a lot of reasons for this – I voted SNP in the last Holyrood election, based on their record in government, and they’ve done well in this term too. I voted Yes in the referendum, which maintaining my Labour Party membership, with the intention of being part of the Scottish Labour Party after independence. That vote was lost, and (to coin a phrase) in the past it must remain. But I was shocked by Labour’s behaviour in the referendum campaign. Not just the relentless negativity which had failed them so badly in the 2011 Holyrood elections, but an actual hostility to policies like nuclear disarmament and land reform, things that brought me into the party in the first place.

Hmm. This post is growing, and will grow further… I’ll cut it short here, for those who aren’t interested in North British politics, and post a new one this afternoon…