| Friday, August 27, 2004 |
 | I realise that the whole point about 4-star hotels is that they are nice. After all, this is why they are not, for example, 1-star hotels. What is a 1-star hotel, anyway? A bench with a goat on?
Anyway, I am writing this early on Thursday morning at this hotel. I have been bumped to an apartment, and I am feeling quite oppressed by how nice a place can be if you have no possessions in it, a cleaner every day and recessed lighting. God, I want to live somewhere like this. Possibly with a saxophone.
There is in fact something terribly seductive about hotel living - free cable, tiny sachets every morning, batshit old ladies writing novels and having loud sex with toyboys two doors down… The presence of a cafetiere, an espresso machine and a kettle (so tiny! Tiny kettle for batchpad!) has reduced me to wibbling, and that's before we even get onto the dual bath and shower (why? When do two people need to get clean but have philosophical differences about how?). I know that tomorrow the shower controls will test my ability to comprehend them.
And tomorrow I will be back at my flat, which is spacious and familiar, and the faults of which have probably been dwelled upon a little too much of late. I ponder moving every so often, just to get a working hot water tap in the bathroom sink. It's an extreme solution, but might actually be less hassle than dobbing my landlords in to the council. I suppose I do pay rates for just such services. Dobbing, that is.
And back here, there are five different light switches in the bedroom. It's odd to be in one of these places so early - to have time to wander about a bit and still get 3 hours of sleep. The tiny sachets, the tiny sachets are calling.
And the fruit basket full, inexplicably, of lemons and limes. To ward off scurvy from a diet of club sandwiches?
Other happy-making things: Arsenal extend their unbeaten Premiership run to 43 games. There's something almost sacrilegious and certainly pusillanimous about disliking Arsenal at this point - all one can really do is look in wonder. Bentley scores for Norwich (wonder again - Bentley is out on loan). Jeffers starts the long road back to not being an enormous waste of money. The phrase Hedley Verityesque exists… I would love to see this exhibition - shame I didn't end up at BiCon really. It's a good thing today was so grindingly awful, and tomorrow shall be so exhausting and catchup flavoured, or I might simply float off.
Oh god, and the bathroom door is a single slab of frosted glass. I am in love. I need to move in.
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| Monday, August 23, 2004 |
| Headline of the week:
Posh Sees Baby Doc
God knows what they talked about. Tyranny or hair extensions, I suppose
Speaking of the soaraway Scum, the headline today was Roo Liar, referencing Wayne Rooney's past indiscretions with ladies of a) the night and b) a certain age. Apparently other visitors at the brothel texted their chums, with the result that by the end of the transaction there was a mob of supporters gathered outside shouting his name.
Class.
I assume this means that the honeymoon is over - The Sun feels let down that Rooney did not back up their Hillsborough apologia. Then again, even if he had taken to wandering around Croxteth in a T-shirt saying "it was The Sun what administered CPR tot he Hillsborough victims", they wouldn't have been able to let a story like this go.
if anyone needs me, I will be talking to my Billy Wright figurine.
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| OK, so a gold star to whoever can sort this one out for me - what exactly is the profit in remaking Alfie. Is it even a sensible financial proposition? Those who have even heard of the original will be disgusted, and those who have not are going to be asked to watch Jude Law (fresh from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which I suspect will be the Rocketeer de nos jours) oozing and sliming around Manhattan, which sounds about as inviting as a shit sandwich, really.
Ah well. Everything is happening at once at the moment, in a manner that is proving really rather hard to deal with. First up, there is the flat, of course. Flatmate departs end of this week, new flatmate arrives on Thursday following. At present the flat is covered in boxes. It's an exciting time, but a singularly ill-timed one, coincinding as it does with the fist quarter results of my employer, which is making the sort of early nights and dedication recommended for this sort of life-changing event. The plan is to sign a short-term contract, and then see what happens with a) the rent and b) the current dilapidations. If shit can be got together, I'll stay. If not, I might just move down the street to somewhere a bit smaller - the sheer space of this flat is intoxicating, but all it really means is that I have a means not to throw stuff out, creating instead a pantechnicon-cum-garage-sale in the common areas.
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| Can anybody recommend a decent:
a) Professional floor-shampooer/wet cleaner person
b) Professional cleaner generally
in London? I am supposed to be getting estimates to place against the landpeople's estimates. The landpeople have put forward the landlady's father's girlfriend for option (b), which I am sure would ensure a terribly good job but might first encourage further predecessors and epigones to join the value chain and second creates yet more of the bewildering family business that was bamboozling me here. Still and all, since I have now been waiting since July 2 for a replacement of the kitchen flooring (at present a set of rough boards with hardened tile glue forming odd geometries atop it), my sense of urgency seems a little dampened. There seems to be little point in forcing the matter - while the floor remains uncovered it will be almost impossible to avoid treading disintegrating epoxy into the more floor-covering-positive areas of the house, whereas when the floor is replaced the amount of crumbling, keratinous matter and wood shavings hurled into the air is likely to undo the best work of the most noble cleaners.
Speaking of recommendations, I'm a bit startled to find that Gordon Strachan and I share a taste for floppy posh boy stand-up. Also speaking of recommendations, how many of these goth classics have passed your tenebrous eyes?
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| Can anybody recommend a decent:
a) Professional floor-shampooer/wet cleaner person
b) Professional cleaner generally
in London? I am supposed to be getting estimates to place against the landpeople's estimates. The landpeople have put forward the landlady's father's girlfriend for option (b), which I am sure would ensure a terribly good job but might first encourage further predecessors and epigones to join the value chain and second creates yet more of the bewildering family business that was bamboozling me here. Still and all, since I have now been waiting since July 2 for a replacement of the kitchen flooring (at present a set of rough boards with hardened tile glue forming odd geometries atop it), my sense of urgency seems a little dampened. There seems to be little point in forcing the matter - while the floor remains uncovered it will be almost impossible to avoid treading disintegrating epoxy into the more floor-covering-positive areas of the house, whereas when the floor is replaced the amount of crumbling, keratinous matter and wood shavings hurled into the air is likely to undo the best work of the most noble cleaners.
Speaking of recommendations, I'm a bit startled to find that Gordon Strachan and I share a taste for floppy posh boy stand-up. Also speaking of recommendations, how many of these goth classics have passed your tenebrous eyes?
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| Saturday, August 14, 2004 |
| This was never going to be the leisuriest holiday ever, given the need to sort out the flat in advance of the arrival of the landlords for the first time in some years, to sort out the departure of one flatmate and the ingress of another. Lots of cleaning products, lots of black bags. My next holiday will be spent doing my tax return. The fun just don't stop.
However, I did find time to hurtle up to Edinburgh. One night, one day, one morning, six shows. Actually, the original plan was to do rather more, but a series of comic mishaps involving missing not one but two performances of the Women of Troy in quick succession, and being perhaps the first ever to wring a refund out of a fringe box office ("We don't give refunds." "Well, now would be an excellent time to start") and deciding that, actually, popping back to Black Bo's and taking the time for the vegetarian haggis to be home-baked (vegetarian haggis. A vegetarian version of a meal the constituent ingredients of which are pigs and pain. Madness) was a better plan than beating feet to I Fucking Hate my Dad, or indeed I Hate Fucking my Dad (Steven Berkoff's triumphant return to the Fringe). The haggis, incidentally, was delicious.
So, first night we caught Beauty and the Bitch, who will no doubt be performing again in London after the Fringe if you don't get a chance to see them. Everybody is still at the alterations stage with their acts - B&TB have put in a stand-up section to break up the songs which hasn't quite gelled yet, but the songs are very funny indeed. The new tribute to Michelle from Big Brother rocked very hard.
I will fiiiiiiind you,
You'd better sleep with one eye open,
I do...
Sleep, breakfast with our lovely and gracious flat-provider at Spoon, a chance encounter with Louise Welsh, followed by the Women of Troymageddon, which we thought disappointed our hopes of seeing a lead-handed treatment of the War in Iraq. How little we knew.
So, getting into the panic on mode, where it seems inevitable that every attempt actually to see some theatre would end in hideous failure, we finally managed to hurtle, about five minutes late, into Horror Vacui, which actually does itself no favours by playing up the darik part - mainly this is a romp, with some excellent Lecoq sound-mime, clowning and some nice character touches. Not to mention a kick-ass wardrobe - my companion emerged inspired by the eldest sister's librarienne chic.
Inspired by our success, we leapt to the Underbelly and The Best Man, a one-man show of Glyn Maxwell's verse play. Good stuff - it felt idiomatic and smooth, and Maxwell seems to have been taking some tips from Simon Armitage. The plot I was less convinced by, likewise the ending - too neat and too dovetailed - but definitely worth watching, and the room was cool enough to make the next rush, to Boothby Graffoe and the Following People, positively pleasant. Boothby Graffoe remains one of the most adorable and funniest comedians on the circuit - a lot of the songs I had heard before, but his delivery is laugh-out-loud, and he is just so damn likeable. And the space fox routine is a killer.
Hopes high and bellies full of fauxggis, we forged on to Nick Revell - Like it Matters. As a great fan of the Nick Revell show way back when, I was hoping to be a witness at the second stand-up coming of one of the greats of Radio 4. Unfortunately, Revell has reacted to the world going to Hell by working a lot of political material into his act, which really just doesn't work very well. Remember that lead-handed handling of the war in Iraq shortfall? It's early days, but too much of it is loose, self-indulgent and, the cardinal sin of political comedy, badly researched. One whole strand of the evening depended on the suicide bombers/72 virgins canard, but the basic principle and origins of that idea were never questioned. When he's talking about the effects on everyday life - the impact, say, of bomb scares on British reticence - he is funny and engaging, but too much of this show seemed to be short on match-fitness, which is a real shame. Hopefully he will be able to hone both material and performance in the next three weeks - although actually the best-handled part of the whole gig for me was when he realised near the end that he had failed to seed one of his closing gags ten minutes into the show and could not work out any way to ad-lib through it.
Ah well. We were thinking of the Whoopee Club, but were a bit disheartened and I wasn't really dressed for it. So, home to bed.
But what's that I hear? "Please, Mr. Berg, but you've been to the Fringe, and have not seen one production in which a group of drama students smear themselves in jam and roll around under a duvet. What gives?" And quite right that oddly sourceless voice is. So thank God for a quick break in our journey home to see The Duchess of Malfi. No duvet, but plenty of jam, cross-dressing, cantaloupe music and the tiniest Ferdinand ever. Not quite as ground-breaking as the players believe, but rollicking good fun. Mind you, I think you lose a lot of emotional impact when your Duchess covers key scenes as a Barbie on wheels.
And home. Bit sleepy now.
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| Sunday, August 01, 2004 |
| Yeesh. On my way to Brighton, delayed by security alert at Euston and human frailty, I watched a man push himself through the well-fed body of a tube train like a dog's nose. Odd but explicable - maybe he really needed to find a seat. Until, far from my reach, he opened the door to the next carriage and swayed through. The sound of mass transit changing shape on a turn and making jam did not, thank God, follow. Fascinated, I did, as he took the stairs to the air, and there we parted. I imagine he just wanted to get to the surface as soon as.
It reminded me of perhaps my third week in London proper, not hiding out in East Finchley looking for a home, on the way back to Islington from Stockwell, words still without location, when a fellow traveller announced his intention to the class, levered open the connecting door and pissed. I suppose that if you have to piss on a tube train it is your least worst option, but, new in the ways of the world, all I could think was, unaware of the wipe-clean rubber and steel membranes wrapped around the carriage ends for just such an occasion, was live rail, dude.
Not that I said anything. This is London, after all. And wherever he had pissed, somebody was going to have to clean it up.
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