ECHO 30/1/06

London again – so overly familiar that I feel I have not even had to travel there despite the fact I have been up since 7am to make my connections – everything I see and hear is so ingrained in me it holds no sense of the new – plus I feel the weight and size of this city like no other, I don’t for example feel that in Birmingham or Manchester, it’s oppressive, bullying – Streatham (my destination) stinks of burnt cooking oil and cigarettes, fluctuates between the two – the high street is laced with questionnaire holders trying to stop people in the street to complete a survey on street crime or better public transport (both of which are beyond repair, this is the new forlorn hope) – when I leave I am surrounded by this halo of acridity and the bitter gripe of carbon dust from the Underground I can taste at the back of my throat –

A man with an eye-patch climbs up to the top deck of the bus – someone receives some harsh news about their finances; always London seems to promulgate financial woes in certain areas (SW and SE being two prime zones), a city where fortune and poverty are side by side in totally unequal measure – a young Ethiopian man bangs his feet hard against the pale blue plastic facia of the bus interior, he is bored, and as he does his kicking he looks furtively around at the rest of the passengers but carries on nonetheless, almost asking to be challenged – at the rear of the bus another young man plays his favourite music extra loud on an MP3 mobile phone, the music distorts and fills the bus with a grating, unpleasant beat –

Passing through Brixton High Street again, I find it hard to believe I lived there for so long – I have no fond nostalgia for it, just a sense of stress and hurt (physical and emotional), struggle and fear - peppered by the occasional pleasant or special memory –

Eventually I hole up in a greasy café near Baker Street run by a Turkish man and wife – ash and cigarette butts have been left on the table and I sweep them off with the edge of my hand – a watching ‘seer’ in the corner comments in Turkish to the owner about each customer that enters and what they order, the two men laugh impishly – I am waiting out the close of this long day, expensive and strange – the seer rolls a cigarette, wraps his beige scarf about his neck, it is a cold day and with night creeping in now the temperature is dropping to its iciest, felt in here as the door opens and closes onto the street with customers leaving or entering – London always seems colder when it gets cold, all those buildings channelling the wind between them and throwing it out in certain places twice as harsh –

Ponder the street through the window – London is like a coating, some kind of jelly-like substance which it is possible to extricate myself from today, but which rests upon me thick and gelatinous and numbing – I can still see through this layer but everything beyond is slightly distant and blurred – it doesn’t have the capacity to wear me down on this short visit, not as it used to; that wearying confusion of space, speed, cacophony and stress doesn’t infiltrate with the same pervasive, seeping, claw-like power as it did day-to-day – London the invader, the rapacious army: consuming, assailing –

Suspicion everywhere: new anti-terrorist posters, new claims that ‘Together We Can Beat It’ – like a war zone – and everyone scans you far more on buses and tubes, judging, wary –

Back in the café, I ask for the toilet and am directed by the seer to a blistered and scratched white door to one side of the room, it is stiff to open, so much so that I have to pull hard and almost fall back into the café – the seer shows me with a quick gesture that I must go downwards – I peer into the long corridor beyond heading toward the rear of the property, at the other end is indeed a stairwell lit by a kind of dim cosmic-blue light and leading down into what I presume is the basement area – there is a large full-length mirror at the end of the corridor so you see yourself walking toward the stairs – the top step is an ornate ceramic tile, decorated in Turkish style – down the stairs and at the bottom the area beyond smells of mothballs – the lavatory itself, off to the right, has a sagging roof and a dark blue shirt has been left on the floor beneath the two wash basins – the toilet itself, when I venture in, is full of dark, semi-solid shit – I presume a vagrant had come in to have a wash and a dump and then left having forgotten his/her shirt – after recoiling from the visions that greet me down there I go straight back upstairs and into the café, to be greeted by the seer grinning back at me as I open the door – for a moment I wonder if he is the faecal culprit and that he had left it there deliberately, that the whole experience beyond that door (the dim lights, the mirror, the otherworldly atmosphere etc) was some kind of test and that he gleans something of each persons character when they venture down there that he can share with the owner – he winks at me and begins the process of rolling another cigarette -

ECHO 26/1/06

Making our way along the M62 through Saddleworth towards York, spying the red coated man of Hart’s Head Moor watching and waiting by the roadside in his faded serge coat, surrounded by the noise and the dust of this arterial run carved through the high land; his is a vantage point, and he waits like a dumb sentinel as if someone may come and give him release, held in check by invisible shackles – on every bridge someone has stuck the word ‘gouranga’ in huge bold letters on fluorescent coloured paper, this word cascades away into the distance, the last effort of a Hari Krishna devotee who walked miles and miles to do this –

Strange now that I have seen my work recorded and presented in the Jorvik Viking Museum to know that my face is being viewed by the public, relayed over and over again for at least the next 5 years; whilst I age it will stay the same (though there is the addition of make-up and a wig in this case) – I will gradually become an artefact – it’s a pleasant feeling – mixed in with the genuine ancient artefacts of York, the leather and the tools close on 2000 years old –

Sparrowhawk by the roadside with its fresh catch, a magpie, in death throes beneath it’s talons – the bird of prey standing upright over it, wary and proud at the same time, challenging any other creature to come near and demand what it has caught – then, pitifully, another magpie (presumably the mate of the dying one) comes close and tries to fend the hawk off - to no avail, the twitching and fluttering of its mate are the last movements it will make as it tries to salvage life but cannot -

ECHO 24/1/06

Back to Redditch today job-hunting – eye-opener – we make our way to the temp agencies for interviews to register, sign up etc – see what we may get, though we don’t hold out much hope – faces stare back from the windows of the industrial agencies along the same street: sallow faces, shaved heads, shifting feet, sorry looking eyes - as we sit in the reception area of the first one, filling out the forms required, I listen to the background conversations between the agents and their clients, they tell how quiet it is at the moment, how January just doesn’t have the same forecast as December – the mood is grey, dismal – then a troop of young men wanders in and they gather and hang about in the corner – all of them wearing jeans and short jackets or coats, some of them I recognise as those I saw gazing back earlier from the other agency window – they are Eastern European and some speak better English than others who may not speak English at all – one is evidently voted spokesman and he approaches the little blond receptionist and asks for a job – the girl manages her usual routine and realises that the group have not really understood the procedure to register, they smile back at her as if she has given them each the best paid job in the world, but she is merely explaining they’ll have to make an appointment and come back with CVs etc for interview next week – one of them cottons on and whispers and then they all shake their heads ‘no’ – this goes on for a few minutes and then they agree to come back next week but are none the wiser and they file on out – later, two late-teenagers arrive and ask to see ‘Joe’ and are told to take a seat - they are wisecrackers, street hip, and restless – one of them starts to talk openly about his forthcoming court case and reckons he’ll get away with whatever he’s done; he talks about shifting ‘M’ (I am guessing he’s talking in ‘code’ about dealing marijuana); he is proud of himself and he looks around the waiting room as if challenging all those in there to better him – they are both told that ‘Joe’ asked them to come in at 4 and it is only 2.45 so they leave with a kind of subtle noise making (banging feet, slamming doors out in the corridor) – a young Asian man enters wearing a dark blue duffle coat and stands at the reception desk and asks for work - the receptionist gives her usual spiel re: registration and the man replies ‘come on, no, just a job you know, a job’ - the girl repeats herself - ‘but a job’ he says, ‘it’s all I ask here; no, you have a job?’ – it is quietly desperate and he has the air of a man who has been told the same thing everywhere he has gone all day long, and probably has the dole office on his back or may even have had his benefit cut off - in the end the receptionist calls in ‘Joe’ who eventually offers the man a packing job for the night in a new supermarket complex, he goes through the directions of how to get there with the man who nods and finally asks: ‘but only for one night?’ and Joe says ‘yes, but if they like you, you might get a few more nights’ – the man leaves thanking Joe profusely - if he’s lucky he’ll have got minimum wage (£5.05) for 9 hours work without sleep or benefits of any kind and that may have to last him all week.

ECHO 23/1/06 - Burford.

Waking to the noise of hundreds of crows in their tree-top roosts; a cacophony of calls that never ceases or takes a pause from dawn through to mid-day.

Photos of the couple that own the house we are staying in for a night. Everywhere. Some in triplicate and most posed in studios and shot through semi-romantic misted lenses. The pair gazes into each other’s eyes or smile wanly and misty eyed out at the camera. I find it unsettling, at odds with the ease of a relationship as if they are trying too hard.

In Stow-on-the-Wold the Brethren preachers come out and stand on the corner of the market square, calling out their messages and sermons, warning the people of apocalypse and sin. Catherine of Siena may well have been proud (see yesterday’s entry)! These three men, two well into their seventies, the other a grey looking man in his thirties are immoveable, as if their feet are stuck fast to where they stand and their mouths keep on bellowing, cavernous. I guess this is an event at least 400 years old.

The cracked iron hearth–plate in the ancient fireplace – cracked into three pieces, yet still upright there – a man on horseback, Lord Fairfax, his steed broken at the sides so the head is separated as are the hindquarters from the rest – it dates from the time of the English Civil War – blackened with age, torn apart, yet still standing – I half expect it to get up and move, to trot off on the baying horse and spew musket smoke and powder and brimstone (seems to be the order of the day here) – fervour and bloody violence underneath the ‘peaceful’ Cotswold town. And as if in prompt my Father tells the story of how, after banning a wholly unpleasant character from his hotel bar for causing damage to it, was beaten up by some of the locals one night. Turns out they all (including the banned man) were members of the local branch of the National Front and they had decided to meet out their brand of ‘support’ for their fellow racist.

- - - - - -

the fieldfare is my echo
gazing from this window to where
he stands – son, marshal, devotee –
listening to the mid-day moment
and the certainty of the next windfall

the radio signal guides me
toward evening - if I’m lucky enough -
swinging through comedy at the basin
cold feet on the ticky tiles
worried about rising ennui

ECHO 22/1/06

Ancient maps and belief therein of geographical legend – distant places, distant lands only ever known by name, where people were sent as outcasts, exiles (lepers, rejects, the insane etc) –

Catherine of Siena’s religious fervour as connected to the battlefield – her devotion explained in imagery of blood, torture, mutilation – perhaps she might appear as a symbol now, to Bush maybe she is an icon?

ECHO 21/1/06

Some say Redditch is built on the convergence of ley lines and that because of this it draws bad energy into itself. Indeed, one woman, a friend of Kay’s, believes this to be true and has been trying to leave for years but never managed it, and as a consequence now suffers from severe depression and has to take prescription pills to keep her from going bonkers every day – who knows, maybe it is. I ponder the meaning of its name: Red-ditch. Does it mean it was built in clay? Or blood? Either way it is a town built in a ditch, which can’t be a good move to start with -
Minibikes (miniaturised versions of full sized speed-bikes) are the accessory of the moment round here; many of the teen boys drive around on them, you hear the tiny, high pitched engines from far off, little more than dressed up lawn-mowers that tootle past with some lank-haired boy riding it low to the ground with his knees stuck out at 45 degree angles and usually a rather sorry looking bunch of mates tagging along with him on their pushbikes, gazing jealously at his toy –

In the Jobcentre a young couple (late teens, baseball cap on him, leather jacket over jogging bottoms on her, ponytail with a glittery hair band) are using a Jobsearch computer console looking for work in the local area. As they scroll through the pages – neither one of them taking much note of any of the adverts coming up – they discuss their relationship. He is evidently very fond of her and kisses her on here forehead at one point; she never lets go of his hand. Finally, and without any sense of confidentiality he asks her: “Will you still love me if I get arrested?” She replies that she will of course, taking the comment as the most normal things to say (like “good morning” or “shall we go shopping?”) without any shock or reticence, it is a matter of course. The boy backs this up by smiling at her and saying: “Cool. Cos’ you know it’s going to happen at some point.” To which she says: “I know, but not too soon, eh?”

- - - - - -

Two men living out of single bedded rooms, bags strewn on the floor with a few possessions in and the confusion of not knowing where things are. Just the immediate artefacts utilised: a couple of books being read, a laptop, a pen, and a notebook to keep up to date with themselves if possible. Good luck to them both. . . .

- - - - - -

she’s away to play
to be reflected
on the water
at the water’s edge
where pebbles turn
by Derwent tide
(though I no longer know
if it’s possible)

she’s away to chew
mint cake
in the reeds
where seeded clarinets
shiver in the wake
of a hundred boats
(through two seasons
to winter’s edge)

she’s away to line
Wordsworth’s daffs
with speeches
of tired meringues,
raspberries and peaches
on the veranda
(the lake shall trade
grey for blue)

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST – Morton Baggot & Holt Fleet

Willow Tit – 1 Robin – 3
Chaffinch – 18+ Blue Tit – 12
Great Tit – 8+ Magpie – 6
Fieldfare – 8+ Redwing – 10+
Collared Dove – 4 Cormorant -2
Moorhen – 2 Buzzard - 2

ECHO 18/1/06

The stories families tell - each other and others – repeating them until they almost have the power of myth – collective – and even though they themselves have told them so many times, laughing in the same places or crying at the end, whatever, they never tire of them, never fade from the same intonations and looks and means of communicating the tale – this process intrigues me, it is indestructible – even if guests have heard the stories before they will still be told, on many occasions after the question ‘have we ever told you the story of…?’ and then carrying straight on into it whatever the answer – the need to share and re-experience again and again through words something that they already know intimately is intriguing – Why? What is achieved? – is it a fear of mortality, a nostalgia for the past? Is it therefore a lack of pleasure with the present? The stories after all often seem to occur in a specific time frame many years ago and certainly have little reference to the ‘now’. In any case it is a reminder of the need for storytelling, the tribe laying out its history for others to see.

- - - - - -

Reflecting on this semi-vagrant lifestyle since the end of the panto - I find I have an odd sense of being a teenager again, but not in some youthful immortality way, more in that sense of being in limbo between freedom, self-will etc and being held in check by circumstance, waiting for something to happen and move life on – don’t get me wrong, I am appreciative of the rest and easy days I am having at present in Studley, but effectively I am a stranger in someone else’s home – in the morning I flit around a little like an awkward ghost, out of my usual routine, making coffee before anyone else is up and setting up my laptop on a wooden board on the bed in the spare room (my room for a while), whilst all my other possessions sit in carrier bags lined up along the skirting board waiting to be set free – without a job, money saved is now becoming money spent – I rediscover those strange hours after mid-day when nothing much happens in the world and one realises the sense of a day passing, the true graveyard shift of day-time TV and post-lunch blues –

- - - - - -

Two women living in the house opposite call me over to give me the post for the house I am staying in which had mistakenly been delivered to them – their Midlands accents are very strong and at first I think they are calling to someone else until they pronounce my surname out loud and I trot over the road – one stands in the window offering the package of letters, the other sits smoking a cigarette over a bowl of Weetabix – I am not sure if they are sisters or dykes – both are in their early 50s and have subtly dyed hair, flabby jowls and heavy eyes (leading me to suppose the sister option) – I apologise for disregarding their first few calls as, I say, I didn’t think anyone here knew me – “Oh we know everything,” they reply in unison. Then the one in the window carries on: “We know everything in this house, we’re magic.” She tips a wink at me and the other one, with a spoon of wet Weetabix held half way to her mouth, does the same.

- - - - - -

SPERNALL - word sketch

Unfettered by routine
The Crow oversees the day
Parts with the space about him
Seeming to digest light
His black coat
Against rain clouds
Are powder over the
Collected hedgerows
Russet weed over weed
Passing through
Race an unknown other
Reel him in
Sightless, tormented
By mud, fire
Avenues of frost
And the line of man

ECHO 17/1/06

Random day list:
- a toy Dalek collecting dust;
- Mother and daughter off to sign on;
- a failed attempt to drive long distance, addled electrics in the car;
- two hours silence;
- a Fieldfare sits in the apple tree and waits;
- memories of an ice-rink and among the people moving slowly round, some slipping over on a regular basis, a child starts to cry then gains confidence and moves on the skates slowly but surely;
- nobody on the other end of the phone at three different numbers I call at mid-day

Toys-
4th birthday,
Faringdon, Oxon

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST – HOLT FLEET

Long-Tailed Tit – 8 Cormorant – 1
Redwing – 15+ Fieldfare – 8+
Robin – 1 Blackbird – 2

ECHO 14/1/06

Leaving Bishampton – tears, so many tears. When I left my flat in London after 8 years I barely cared, a quick goodbye and that was that; here after only 2 months and the wrench is difficult and heartfelt. For me it was the peace I found in that garden, that little paradise, some connection there close to nature. The tight cosiness in the house itself. We leave it for the family to sort out now.

In Redditch we witness two confrontations close to brawls in one Saturday afternoon in the Kingfisher shopping centre. First, two lads (one black, one white) start pushing each other around outside the coffee shop in full view, cursing and swearing at each other; one has a face full of hatred at the other and for a moment it looks like it will erupt into a fight but the bolshy one eventually gives up and returns to his group of mates laughing and looking proud, like he has just achieved something. His gang is mixed girls and boys, and mixed races too. Later, in the bus station behind the centre a group of Asians (boys and girls) are accosting a bus company worker in a fluorescent vest, they have him surrounded and are effectively mobbing him, jeering at him as he tried to apprehend someone who hasn’t paid a fare. There is something medieval about the scene, a witch-hunt, and people look on some with laughter others with concern. The whole is teetering on the edge of becoming nasty but this hubbub doesn’t have the same opportunity for violence as the previous incident, instead it is just mass bullying of an individual, sheep following blindly one person’s misguided cause. Elsewhere in the town boys in their late teens walk in packs being as loud as they can, scaring girls waiting on their own for buses. We find strange mis-spelt graffiti on the car-park walls, talking of someone being owed ‘dews’.

Out in Holt Fleet we are safer. The moon rises over the low crest toward Droitwich and the quintessential winter mix of Redwing and Fieldfare take to the trees ahead of us. The River Severn is placid here, a calm reflector of the banks dotted with small wooden houses and weekend haunts; nooks, shacks, holiday huts and places of escape amid the trees, with sheep roaming and feeding where they will among them.

ECHO 13/1/06

Friday 13th – the garden is cold, greyish this morning and the wind is up and billowing through the evergreens, swaying – the birds have vacated; do they know we are leaving tomorrow and therefore saving me the hurt of having to see them one more time? – we do not want to go – but the house is caught in familial wrangling, misunderstandings and poor communication – it is a shame – even the black cat from next door who has been regularly trying to hunt the birds enters the garden but swiftly retreats, doing a rapid U-turn and heading back the way it came through the trees –

You idiot of movement
Twisting unseen through the pampas
And thistle seeds
An echo of a man
A fold of tragedy
We were barely worthy
But at least we came fairly
Without malice
And will leave the same way

In the ‘disused’ airfield I saw an odd military vehicle parked not far from the radar wall at the south end; two windowed wagons on caterpillar tracks joined by a short articulated arm with a small cockpit and drivers’ wheel in the front wagon – the police were present too, driving this way and that in their luminous cars across the property.

ECHO 11/1/06

London – siren city – the temptation and the outcome – for example, the vocal retribution of a drug dealer whom I ignore as he signals and nods to me persistently upon the street becoming a curse and tirade of abuse as I pass by ignoring him, he snaps his lips – an old house I once lived in is merely a memory without much sentiment; now they are in the process of repainting it, a step ladder in the window, and the ivy over the front now brown, dry, desiccated; the odd plastic rainbow over Brixton High Street, pseudo-religious undertones, semi-deco or else trashy ‘50s – an old face briefly met in a maze of corridors full of missionaries – a strange angle of spit and vomit on the floor of a bus – the sweats and the lack of space returning – the sudden shouts turning heads, the sirens racing, the total sensory assault that is SW9 – make or break rhythm; 20,000 faces in a moment – the pall of skunk weed smoked on high streets no longer clandestine but arterial – every step overcrowded, immediately replaced by another’s step, consumed and filled in perpetuity – organisms alive but diseased with unseen enemies, germs, polluted, throats dry and stiff in one
day -

Jukebox Coffin

The three of them never feel the day’s glory
Their centre too distracted is lost to indecision
Serves up nursery objects rigged for smoke:
Feeding bottles and cotton wool
They make their selection from the jukebox
Stalk the grey flat mouthing anatomical names for Class 'A's
Bone, eyeball – out of recognition
A dripping tap keeps awkward time
A grand with only half its keys
A reel to reel tape machine turns over
Plays a twisted loop of lullabies


Stockwell, London – 1999/2004

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST – SLIMBRIDGE

Tufted Duck – 10+ Black Swan – 4
Mute Swan – 10+ Eider – 6
Bewick Swan – 1 Jackdaw – 4
Robin – 2 Shelduck – 8+
Pintail – 2 Treecreeper – 1
Goldcrest – 1 Blue Tit – 5+
Chaffinch – 5+ Kestrel – 8
Heron – 1 Peregrine Falcon – 1
Great Tit – 8+

ECHO 8/1/06

Hotels – having been brought up in them all over the country, I find them fascinating places – microcosms of class, pretension; where people from diverse backgrounds are put together in intimate space – watching the different dynamics of behaviour and environment playing out – the lone businessman left stranded by work commitments amid the weekenders, where normally during the week he is surrounded by his clones and therefore more relaxed, less obvious (his the biggest car in the car park on Sunday morning); the two couples come away for the weekend but neither sure why they did so as they don’t really like the others that much and this was something to do, so they are each nursing hangovers over breakfast and stumbling their ways around the buffets style service with its countless bowls of fruits, cereals, the strange revolving toaster and the confusing coffee dispenser; the Sunday staff who are in a permanent state of abrasion and surliness, any request even for the smallest item is met with a look of withering disdain and the moment a bowl or plate is empty they swoop in and remove without asking or attempting anything close to patience. If I could afford it, I’d love to research them all over the country.

In Tewkesbury Abbey there is a 14th century statue of a cadaver with vermin crawling all over it – the stonemason or sculptor must have been working from life when he carved it, the remains of the face are oddly alive even in stone, and the look of agony on it makes it hard to look at for any length of time –

Panto End - 2

Panto End - 1

ORNITHOLOGICAL CHECKLIST

Blackcap (f) – 1 Great Tit – 8+
Song Thrush – 1 Barn Owl – 1
Buzzard – 5 Dunnock – 2
Greenfinch – 3 Robin – 5
Collared Dove – 4 Kestrel – 8+
Bullfinch – 2 Blue Tit – 6+
Starling – 20+ Chaffinch – 6+
Pied Wagtail – 1 Goldfinch - 6

ECHO 7/1/06

Final panto performances – magical last two shows – both sold out completely -in the first I was blessed with an energy that allowed me to reinvent much of what I had achieved, which at this late stage gave the show for me a clear way to say goodbye to it – the second show was more accomplished, perhaps less edgier than the first, but as Pol said: ‘You were on fire out there’! There were of course tears from the little ones and some of the back stage crew; in the ensuing party complements abound from the director and his wife who said that I had truly made this dame my own and that she had been a pleasure to behold – she was sweet, funny and believable! I was humbled by all of these things people said, but most of all by a note from an old Equity member passed on to me by the DSM in the interval between the two shows which stated that she thought I was ‘the best Dame since Clarkson Rose’. I do not yet know who this name refers to but must find out. Either way, it touched me deeply. And not only that but my parents had made a surprise visit to see the final show, all kept secret by Pol and my brother and other relatives for the past two weeks. Such a joy to see them there afterwards, I was overwhelmed by the pleasure of it, and of the fact they had a chance to see this piece of work after all. At the end of the night I did something I never normally do at the end of a run, I made my way back to my dressing room, all the lights out, the party coming to a close upstairs gone midnight, and in that room I said goodbye to Nora, all my wigs and costumes hanging there in colourful rows but now removed of their life until next Christmas.

Dame face, my routine –
- Soap down eyebrows until flat;
- Moisturize face and neck;
- Apply Leichner No.5 to face, neck and eye area, where necessary applying tow or three layers to hide five o’clock shadow etc;
- Add a dusting of Leichner Blending Powder all over to seal foundation;
- Apply eye shadow (in my case vivid green) to upper eyelids and up over the brows in an arching shape to accentuate look of ‘surprise’;
- Apply false eyelashes;
- Add eye liner as follows: false eyebrows again arching over the eyeshadow shape applied earlier to further the ‘surprise’; then add clown-like lashes beneath the eyes (akin to the Clockwork Orange gangs eye motif); then a fine line above the false eyelashes onto the eyelid that curves out either side of each eye to accentuate depth and darkness of the eyes and the false lashes;
- Rouge cheeks with lipstick and blend into the ‘circular’ clownish motif on each cheek, though never as clearly defined as a clown or doll for example, bringing a little bit of the colour down to accentuate the cheek-bones and jowls;
- Add the ‘kiss’ lips with a lip brush, with the heart-shaped, divided curves on the top lip and a truncated semi-circle on the bottom and fill with lipstick;
- A beauty spot added to the left-hand side of the cheek or beneath the nose above the top lie with the eye liner and a final dusting all over with the Blending Powder to seal, dress into your first costume (of 7) and go play!

ECHO 5/1/06

We are reaching the sad, ragged end of the panto run, the middle of the final week. Playing out in an absurd and forlorn sense whereby we are still operating in a festive mood, trying to maintain the magic of the past two weeks into the opening of the year while the rest of the population makes its way back to reality. Putting my make-up on feels a little futile and silly. Turning out the same gags that are stale now for us on stage, though somehow still manage to garner laughter from our rapidly depleted audiences. There are cold winds running along the riverside; rain is coming in, almost as if we are at the end of a pier out of season. The gifts we give at the end of the show are now wrapped in fading publicity posters as opposed to the brilliant gold paper of the previous weeks. Children cry more readily in the audience, confused by all the spangle and glitter on stage now that Xmas is forgotten. Or else the audience is full of OAPs from rest homes sitting there silently, falling asleep, heads nodding down and the spittle oozing. I look at my painted face in the dressing room mirror and some dusty images of the past seem represented there – vaudevillians out on their tails at the end of a job roaming round the country looking for another place to play out their stock characters; or else they are monsters from another time, dark creations become pariahs.

I wonder too about my experience of playing a Dame. It has been awkward and exhilarating at the same time. The Dame is the loose cannon, the trickster. As such she has no allies either on stage or in the audience because she blurs the boundaries of good and evil – one minute she is helping the protagonists or heroes, the next she is berating them or putting obstacles of her own devising in the way (more out of a sense of impish fun than of any evil motivation) which lead the audience, and most definitely the children, to find their affiliation with the character compromised. She also mocks the audience as much as she appeals to them. Then there is the gender swapping issue. The knowledge that there is a man beneath the make-up is both alienating as well as a cause for affection (in the British love of traditional camp comedy). For the children it is a sudden realization and leads to confusion on their part and, I suspect, fear; in many ways the dame is equally a ‘monster’ to them as the baddies’ own creations of evil (giant spiders and dragons in our case). The dame is discomforting I believe because she has no fixed character layer as such – in my case she comes on as a supposed caring Nurse (in the Mary Poppins tradition) and then rapidly peels away her outer layers to become a number of different personalities: saucy siren, though the gag is that she is too ugly to ever be attractive; maniac matron etc. All of which turn on a pinhead so that even these definitions remain slippery, she usurps herself at any moment and in that way is her own worst enemy. But the joy of being the dame comes when you realize that, as an actor, you are not going to get sympathy and that you have free reign to play and improvise and mock. The anarchic spirit can be let loose and there is nothing that can’t be possible fuel for the Dame’s humour; there are no ‘No’s’.

ECHO 3/1/06

Shadows and sadness return – fear of the future unknown - our time here is now finite – we no longer know where we will go after this – some suggest Birmingham, others are more flippant and say just go where the feeling takes you – I am inclined to stay in the country and not return to another city for at least a year –

ECHO 2/1/06

Female Blackcap returning to the garden to feed, usually on the suet and berry feeder and primarily before 8.30am whilst it is still quite dark. She has a distinctive reddish-brown cap (despite her name, the male dictates that) and almost green body plumage and a very pale breast, a giveaway amid the Blue and Great Tits alongside her. She returns and departs regularly.

‘Chronology protection conjecture’ – that Nature will somehow always find a way to stop intelligent beings from manipulating matter and energy in order to travel in time. Presumably that means that Man will have a go!

ECHO 1/1/06

when heat turns droplets of water momentarily into a sphere rolling across the smooth hot surface of an electric cooker, then to vanish –
tears of realization roll, I am at one and the same time content beyond belief and saddened for the man I was a year ago at this time – now I am released I can’t hold back the sympathy and the relief –
dancing in the garden at midnight, feet on cold stone, with so many fireworks going off for miles around the sky is lit like a storm and the noise rolls in from as far away as Birmingham -
high places, vistas, altitude; we crave these on this auspicious day and make our way to the top of Fish Hill as the sun descends and spreads a misty light between the hills and through the vale; children run with kites or else weep at the cold; deer remain in the lower shadows watching; groups of friends take pictures of themselves for posterity with one among them the constant joker whose voice carries on the wind –
the ‘arrow of time’ points toward the direction of increasing entropy: the future -