Compassion

Last year, the National Theatre embarked on a new project, live relays of its plays to certain cinemas. This is not a wholly new idea, the English National Opera have for a few years now been broadcasting live on big screens around the country productions from the Royal Opera House, meaning that innocent shoppers have occasionally wandered past a public square showing such an event and been shouted at in German or Italian by a lady who looks like her favourite venue is Greggs.

The NT idea is altogether more intimate, show the live broadcasts in cinemas. This is good for a couple of reasons, the first is that one can go to the cinema to see a play rather than have to go to the National, which means you don’t have to go to the South Bank, which means you don’t have to wander past people who are trying to make a living from being painted silver and pretending to be robots. The second benefit is that one is rarely if ever allowed to turn up at your theatre seat with a huge fizzy drink, a bucket of popcorn and a plate of natchos, the downside of this is of course that one is allowed, indeed expected, to drink gin and tonic by the bucketload in the theatre, as this is the only sure way of enjoying any performance. If it’s crap, it’ll dull the pain, if it’s good, it’ll enhance the experience.

The other benefit for the National is that once something has been recorded, it can be broadcast again. This means that anyone who missed the initial run of a play can go and see the broadcast, and anyone who was actually there can go and see the broadcast of the play they attended, with the declared intent of feeling smug they were at the original and the secret intent of wanting to spot themselves in the audience.

Seeing the broadcast of a play at a cinema is an interesting experience. When I went to see recording of the National’s production of ‘Frankenstein’ the other night at the local cinema, it was all very theatrical. The cinema was full, just like a theatre, and the tickets were eye-wateringly expensive, just like the theatre. At the conclusion of the play, the people to the right of me applauded and while one might be tempted with the uncharitable thought ‘the actors can’t hear you’, it certainly added to the theatre experience of the thing, and I rather like to think maybe one of the actors was sat in the back row, muffled up against recognition, to see how the broadcast played out to a captive audience.

As to the production and the play, it was nothing short of astonishing. British theatre has a history of pushing the boundaries and the trouble with being avant guard and seeking to do something wholly original and challenging is that there is grave danger of setting up camp in that territory occupied by so much art and so so much theatre known as ‘pretentious bollocks’. However, if you can get your creativity just the right side of the bollocks line, you have a hit, a very palpable hit, on your hands, and so it was the case here.

The play was stunning and remains with one long after the last natcho has been digested. Frankly, it was both profound and profoundly moving and the message, one of the many messages, was that we have to be kindler towards one another. We have to make a gentler world, and be more tolerant.

For me, this is a particular challenge. Leaving aside the paradox that being tolerant can mean being intolerant of intolerance, I sometimes feel that the default setting of the modern world is intolerance. Obviously prejudice is vile, but there are more subtle, accepted forms of intolerance, that manifest in teevee talent shows and tabloid demonisation.

Becoming more tolerant is like going on a diet, when one feels the need to binge winge about someone or something, one needs to take a beat and wonder if the result will be a better world, or just one with a bit more bile in it.

The eyes do follow you round the room...

Much like an STD, paranoia takes a little effort to acquire but, once you have done so, it's an absolute bugger to shift and it will affect the way you interact with others. Having been a regular visitor to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition over the last few years, I had a pretty reasonable set of expectations of how I would feel when I finished wandering round this year's; uplifted, slightly testy at the inclusion of some sub-art club daubs, possibly a bit pissed due to frequent visits to the champagne bar and resolving that I really should enter something for next year, because if Tracy Emin can get that crap on the walls, then a doodle on a post it note should get me inclusion, a red dot and everlasting fame no bother.

I did not expect to leave the place unsettled and more in need of a drink than when I went in.

It all started out so well. There was an expected theme, the Olympics that overtly or otherwise penetrated a lot of the display. In the architecture room for instance there were models and photographs of the Olympic village, the stadium and of course the velodrome and quite right too, as they are remarkable buildings. There was also a larger than usual number of cartography based paintings, drawings and collages on display, reproducing either real maps or maps of imagined places, or of real places reimagined.

This world askew view contributed to a growing sense of unease that had been kicked off with a black and white lithograph titled 'the gamble', a picture of the entrance to an underpass. Anyone who has ever used one instantly recognised the scene and the significance of the title, you could almost smell that distinctive underpass odour of damp, piss and cider.

Thereafter, I wondered if either the entire exhibition had been curated with a sinister theme, or I was just noticing the sinister paintings more than most, or indeed if I was quietly having some sort of episode and imbuing quite innocent paintings with a sinister quality. In fairness, the did seem to be more than a normal number of paintings featuring deserted houses and so on, although even innocent pastorals took on a sinister tone, a green thick hedge might be lovely, but also provides ideal cover for a waiting pervert, or homicidal maniac - flasher or slasher, I'm not sure which was the most intimidating. Suppose it depends on the length of the weapon.

Then I wandered into the gallery with the chair made out of chicken bones, which stank, and the question was settled, and settled beyond question when I caught sight of a large painting of a fish shop front with the proprietor's name - 'Dagon' displayed in large red letters above the shop. The theme was now officially sinister or I was being paranoid, the paranoia being brought on by the sinister theme. Time for more champagne while I pondered why everyone was looking at me, might be the paranoia, might be the 'meep' noises of distress I was making.

In the sculpture rooms, the was a welcome return to normality. What a load of absolute tat. The place looked like a cross between a house clearance of a deceased hoarder who had perished beneath a pile of yellowing leaflets for his local curry house and a charity shop for one of those charities that normal people are reluctant to donate to, like the cats' protection league or the society to provide broadband to peados or something. There was a bright yellow litter bin in the room which was obviously an exhibit but provided both a neat statement on the rest of the junk on display and a powerful temptation to make use of it.

As poor as the sculpture was, it did at least have the virtue of not being a video installation, the last resort of anyone who aspires to be an artist, but can't draw, sculpt or even take a decent photograph and so fakes a career out of producing a grainy three hour film of what looks like a colonoscopy, calls it 'turmoil IV' and prepares to be misunderstood and unappreciated.

Our sporting life

The British are a great sporting nation, but it’s the English who excel at summer sports, not least by managing to persuade people that half of the bloody stupid things they do are actually sports and not, as it appears, some sort of folk rite. If bowls is a sport, morris dancing should be an Olympic event.

The English are good at summer sports because they get the weather for it. True, at present the weather favours summer sports like rowing, but usually the gentle summer sun favours the gentler sports. An Englishman likes a sport where he does not have to actually physically exert himself.

For the Scots, golf is the game they can claim to have given the world. It’s a good fit for the national character, as there is nothing quite like teeing off into the teeth of a howling gale and losing, in no particular order, ball, match and bet in order to set one firmly on the path to alcoholism.

The Welsh have made rugby their own. Large men rub up against one another, sweating and heaving in a dirty and brutal struggle. Then they come up from the pit and play rugby.

The Irish have hurling. Pints of second hand Guinness into the gutter on a Friday night.

For the English, essential sporting equipment is not a bottle, box or hurling tongs, but a panama hat, blazer and club tie.

Croquet is the epitome of an English summer sporting pastime. It is, to begin with, insanely complicated. Not just a matter of thumping your opponent into the ground like a tent peg using your mallet, you instead have to go round and through various hoops before hitting the pin to finish. There is a rumour that Dan Brown’s next book is about somebody who uncovers the hidden meaning in the game and then spends the next 200 pages feverishly wanking with assorted objects, including a pine cone and a small bust of Queen Victoria, up his arse. Erotic fiction is quite the departure for Dan and it will be interesting to see what his fans think of it.

But back to croquet. Apart from being so complicated that ironically the only person who can understand it enough to play tactically is Stephen Hawking who, of course, is unlikely to be swinging a mallet any time soon, it has a reputation for being played by posh people. Presumably this is because like shotguns, the only people trusted not to go bonkers when handed a mallet are those with breeding. When handed a double barrel shotgun, the correct response is to drive immediately to a grouse moor and attempt to depopulate it, not to drive immediately to a Natwest and attempt an unconventional withdrawl.

So posh is croquet that here in the village the bowling club briefly became a croquet lawn (croquet is played on nothing as vulgar as a pitch) and croqueters were to be seen enthusiastically knocking balls through hoops with every indication that they knew what they were doing. Possibly they were using an app but I suspect they were simply using the same English Assurance About Being Right that allows them to express forthright views on immigration at dinner parties. Not that I’d ever criticise a croquet player, the way they swing those mallets they could do me more damage than a chaffing pine cone.

There is something splendid about croquet though. Like bowls which requires the sort of green that more resembles a snooker table than a lawn, like cricket where the leather and willow are incidental to the tea and the quality of the light on the pavilion, so it is the sport entire that we hold dear; the English summer sunshine on a blazer’s brass buttons, the quiet applause as a player does something unfathomable yet obviously popular, the congratulations through gritted teeth as matches are won and lost and, of course, the shrieks of fear and terror as the president of the bowls club finds out that the captain of the croquet team has defiled his beautiful lawn by knocking bloody great hoops and pegs into it and goes absolutely fucking mental.

Oh, sorry, he’s English…absolutely fucking eccentric.

Jubalympics

The Duke of Edinburgh, one suspects, had the right idea. When the Auld Trouble flared up (possibly brought on as a result of a pavlovian reaction to once more being in the uniform of a sailor) the old boy enjoyed the jubilee from the comfort of a hospital bed, watching the coverage and self administering morphine whenever Fern Cotton appeared on the screen while being intravenously fed quail puree.

Actually, the Duke did very well to stay upright and show every sign of enjoyment during the river pageant, but then I suppose one of the benefits of being in it was that he didn’t have to watch it. There has been, it’s fair to say, some criticism of the BBC’s coverage but it was always going to be something of a huge ask, making small boats on a large river look interesting without involving sinking any of them. My suggestion would have been to outfit a fleet of peadallows with cannon and other suitable nautical paraphernalia and stick some celebrities in them, after telling them that last man floating gets to be a judge on the next series of Britain’s Got Talent. Seeing Freddie Flintoff bellowing ‘ramming speed’ while bearing down on Bill Oddie would have been a jubilee highlight.

Certainly high and certainly alight were the beacons lit across the land to celebrate the jubilee and, following the latest round of civil defence cuts, test the country’s new invasion early warning system. The beacon was lit on top of the Malvern Hills and, rumour has it, the last revellers trotted down the hill about four in the morning. Like the faces of anyone standing too close to the beacon thinking it is essentially an enormous patio heater, one suspects that the Queen was thoroughly toasted.

Being allergic to, and suspicious of, organised fun, I planned to take refuge from street parties and bunting by dodging into the RA and taking a peek at the Summer Exhibition. The RA is, of course, on Picadilly. Which was closed off. For a street party. Apparently Prince Charles and Camilla were there, sitting at a trestle table, chatting with the locals and presumably hoping that none of their ‘neighbours’ would try and borrow their groundskeeper of whatever the royal equivalent of a strimmer is.






If you wanted to eat like a Prince then for seven quid you could buy yourself The Highgrove Burger (eight quid for Highgrove Burger with bacon) from the Fortnum and Mason burger bar, situated next to their champagne bar. For me the burger bar didn’t quite hit the right note. The chefs lacked the easygoing confidence that you find in the proprietor of a proper roadside burger bar, who is able to maintain a relaxed calm while a seldom cleaned grill simultaneously spits fat and flame at him and the large canister of gas under the counter. It might have been posh but it lacked charm. It didn’t lack customers, well heeled locals in their Hunter wellies and wax jackets ate their pricy burgers and washed it down with plastic flutes of champers. I suppose if you had to celebrate the jubilee anywhere, somewhere within easy reach of quality beef, fizz and heir was the place to do it.


On the train home the train was full of people who had been to the river pageant and it was then that things took a very un-British turn as strangers took up conversations with one another. It was easy to see who had been to the pageant, as they were all damp and they all had Union Flags with the ‘Hello’ magazine logo on them wrapped round them. The carriage looked like a celebrity endorsed BNP rally. What people were keen to tell you was that it hadn’t rained much and that the event was fantastic. It’s true that these folk did have a better time than most, as they didn’t have to suffer Fern Cotton.

The concert? Didn’t really watch it. Much, I imagine, like the Duke, who at that point was probably acting as all unsupervised husbands do, which means that any day now DVD box sets from Amazon of classic telly will arrive at the Palace.

Fatties and tatties

Summer is suddenly upon us. Not just any summer either, this is the summer of the Jubilee and of the Olympics. These events have gone from being some sort of vague, distant, slightly routine disruptingly annoying event on the horizon to being, well, here an now, without any apparent lead-up period, which is why everyone has panic bought bunting. I'm not kidding, the whole country is swaddled in red white and blue - its almost worth invading somewhere because the decorations for the victory celebrations are already in place.

One of the reasons why summer has suddenly sprung upon us like a flasher from a hedge is that since the instigation of the hosepipe ban it's been raining so constantly that getting those two pandas for the zoo looked less like a way to secure tourism and more like a sensible precaution while the construction of an ark was completed.

In a country with a healthy Celtic population (except for those living in Glasgow) the return of the sun after a drizzly winter, that lasted until fucking May, has unsurprisingly been met with ritual. Goats and virgins breath a sigh of relief as the ritual in question is less about disembowlment and more about disrobing, as the British greet the reappearance of the sun by slipping into something that doesn't cover them up enough.

The first sunny weekend of the year is the one for the national audit of fatties and tattles, that is, who has put on weight over the summer but has still squeezed into, and in some cases is being squeezed out of, last summer's clothes, and who has got themselves a new tattoo or two during those long winter nights.

In terms of fat, it's good to see that at least one sun ritual persists, as it looks like the legacy of those pyramid loving coca munching sun worshiping psychopaths the Aztecs is kept alive by young maidens apparently gorging on toblerone all winter.

In terms of tattoos it's interesting to track the developments of fashions as new tats get their first airing. There are, of course, some classic tats, such as the small oriental symbol that a young woman has in a discreet spot and you usually only find out that she's got a tramp stamp when it's too late, that is, when she's taken her top off and you will now have to be polite about a symbol you suspect she does not realise features on the label of a popular brand of soy sauce.

Also popular are the names of loved ones and family members along the inside of arms in a font that the wearer calls classy, the Tatoo artist called copperplate and the owners of the coca-cola logo call 'tm'. This is replacing the former trend of Sanskrit tats which largely fell in popularity because the wearers habitually forgot what the tat actually read and were panicked into saying it was their hotmail password.

For men this year, large and swirly Celtic tattoos seem to be the order of the day. Big blotches of black that first appear in outline form, and largely stay that way. Because a lot of blokes appear to be walking round with the outline of the patterns traced thinly on their arms, as if they go to the tattoo parlour first to get the outline drawn and then any subsequent visits, should they be drunk or stupid enough to make any, are a sort of tattooing by numbers. Judging from the number of fellows wandering around with an outline but no thick, black, heavy colouring in, the first experience of the needle has been enough to persuade them that another six sessions of intermittent fainting and vomiting in a chair while the girl with the pierced lip on reception sniggers at you is not how they want to spend their weekends.

As for this year's trend, I predict union flags and Olympic rings for the blokes and for the girls - beloved children's teevee characters so that in future, when she slips her top off, you will have to both be polite, and remain interested, when confronted with Postman Pat as a black and white tat.