15 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories, Theatre
We all read The Three Musketeers as children, don’t we? And we play make-believe, and watch the movies (and the fact itself that they keep making more of them must mean something), and go on to read Twenty Years Later, and perhaps The Man in the Iron Mask – but this is already where “we” split into two camps, roughly speaking: those who leave behind Dumas as yet another childhood pleasure, and those who do not. Continue reading
08 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Poetry
I went for a walk on the river bank, early this morning. I try to do it two or three times a week, and it is hard to get up and go – because apparently I can’t wrap my head around the simple notion of “early to bed, early to rise” – but once I’m by the river, it’s more than worth the ungodly levée. I love the slant of the early sun on the dew-damp fields, and the birds in the trees, and the occasional hare or pheasant, and oh, the glory of wildflowers, in every possible hue of yellow, indigo, white, mauve, purple, pink, and blue! This morning I even spotted a few late-blooming poppies. And of course there were bees and bumble-bees humming among the riot of colours and shapes… Continue reading
01 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Theatre
Alice again tonight – on the very, very large outside stage, where we never did it before… Continue reading
24 Thursday Jun 2021
Posted in Theatre
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And tonight we debut Il Rumore delle Ali – that is, The Sound of Wings – my own Amelia Earhart play, the one I’m co-directing together with Nina…
As usual, I want to emigrate to St. Helena, and the natural condition of theatre, and all that – but, for once, not really. We had dress rehearsals last night – well, tech rehearsals and then dress, in quick succession – and it was all the tiniest tad Noisesoffish, in that I’d be hard put to say which was which – but in spite of that, it all went… dare I say it? No, I don’t, of course. One never does, for fear of jinxing things. Let us put it this way: when I say that I want to emigrate to St. Helena, I might be slightly overstating the case. Continue reading
17 Thursday Jun 2021
Posted in Theatre
Two days to Sognando Alice – that is, A Dream of Alice…
Rehearsals tonight, dress tomorrow – and Saturday we go onstage. We just got the hedges in the nick of time, and I’m not sure if and when the back platform will be mounted, and the overall pace and rhythm still aren’t quite what they ought to be, and the Duck’s mask has proved highly unpractical, and there’s that change they still botch every damn time, and last night sudden blanks appeared where there used to be none, and the magnets for the tea arrived in time but just don’t work, and how on earth do I keep the damn pudding steady, and there are moments when I want to hyperventilate, and can I have one more month? A week? Two days? Please…? Continue reading
10 Thursday Jun 2021
Posted in Books, History, Scribbling
You know those moments – those moments when a book speaks to you? When you read something that might have been written exactly for you to find it? Well, I had a rather peculiar moment of that kind, yesterday… Continue reading
03 Thursday Jun 2021
Posted in Poetry, Scribbling, Theatre
…And “June” hummed a bee
In a Bacchic glee
As he tumbled over and over
Drunk with the honey-dew.
And that was Clinton Scollard. That said… Continue reading
27 Thursday May 2021
Posted in Scribbling
And I’m glad to report that, after the one skip last week, I’ve gone back to being a good little storyadayer. So now I have twenty-five little stories (well past my original minimum goal, and counting), and the end of the challenge is near. Not a bad thing altogether, I suppose – considering my insane rehearsals calendar, and the small fact that Dreaming Alice is debuting in less than 3 weeks – but I think I’ll rather miss the daily story-making… Continue reading
20 Thursday May 2021
Posted in Scribbling
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Well, in truth I skipped just once so far. Last night. I came home late-ish after my longest rehearsals in ages… Hereabouts, they just moved the curfew from 10 to 11 pm, you see. This was yesterday, and my group was the first to take advantage of the new deadline. We celebrated by diving in madly and at length – so much so that I ended up driving home in an even greater hurry than usual, and cut it rather close. It was a small miracle that my car didn’t change back into a pumpkin before I was inside my own gate! Continue reading
13 Thursday May 2021
Posted in Scribbling
Day 12 – and all goes well.
In between teaching my writing course, rehearsing Alice, two editing jobs, and a dozen other things of a more practical nature, I’m happy to say that I’ve managed my twelfth story in a row, last night… Continue reading
