02 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories
They come to you, and say that they have a story, a really good story that you should really write.
In time you learn to recognize this, a certain gleam in their eyes from the very first moment someone mentions that you write. Then they sit on it, they observe you, sometimes they ask questions, trying to determine whether you might be the right person… Continue reading
27 Friday Aug 2021
I am looking for a book.
“Well, you are always looking for a book – or three,” my mother said when I told her – and she isn’t entirely wrong. But the fact is that, this time, I’m a bit stumped. Even the all-encompassing Internet, so far, isn’t helping much. Continue reading
19 Thursday Aug 2021
Posted in Scribbling
I’m not writing enough.
I’m not writing enough.
I’m not writing enough!
And I could go on, you know. I could go on for a rather long time, because… yes, well: I’m not writing enough. Continue reading
12 Thursday Aug 2021
And it is World Elephant Day, so… Elephants!
Last year I wrote a post about the general lack of fictional elephants, in which I mentioned the historical but nameless elephant given by the Sultan of Egypt to Emperor Frederick II, and gone down in the chronicles as the Elephant of Cremona… * Continue reading
23 Friday Jul 2021
Tags
Early morning walk (because I truly am that good… if only once in a blue moon)
Rush to town
A meeting
A gazilion small things (“Since you’re going to town anyway…”)
Home and the quickest lunch ever
The images – oh Lord, the images! (Because I did have them all but ready – but then lightning struck, and I changed them all, and had to begin again from scratch, and this one is much better, and… and… and…) Continue reading
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
Tags
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
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