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Archive Entries for July 2022

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Sunday July 31, 2022

Books in July

  • A Song from Dead Lips by William Shaw [read by Cameron Stewart] BOM-ASongFromDeadLips.jpg
    I thought The Birdwatcher was a great book, and I'm wondering why it took me so long to read another offering from Shaw.
    This story is also excellent, and again was a good fit with my interests - which, apart from the dead bodies thing, was set in the not too distant past of London in the 1960s. This era covered my life from a very small child to a young adult, so I can remember it, but as it were "through a glass darkly" (which must also apply to the author as we are of an age). However, it seems to me to quite accurately reflect what I remember of wandering around London as a teenager - trying to find Carnaby Street and the Swinging Sixties, (unsuccessfully) - and looking for Rupert Street (successfully) to find a wonderful shoe shop, (as opposed to the Raymond Review Bar). So having been reminded of all this - I find I strongly agree with a the NY Times comment "an elegy for an entire neglected generation".
    The war in Biafra is featured fairly centrally as part of the unravelling of the murder mystery. This war provided my first exposure, (with zero appreciation of the true situation), to mass appeals for aid for victims of a terrible famine, and of graphic TV footage showing starving children. The war itself ended by the 1970s and Biafra disappeared as both a news item and a separate state. An estimated 2 million civilians died of starvation, of which three quarters were children.

  • The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz
    BOM-ATwistOfTheKnife.jpg "I've written three books and our deal is over.", says an exasperated Horowitz, having been subjected to a series of near death experiences as a well as some ridicule (which is worse I wonder...?) through his relationship with the irritating ex DI Hawthorne. As you can imagine, this state of affairs lasts about 5 minutes before Anthony finds himself on the wrong side of the law, and has (reluctantly) to call upon Hawthorne for assistance.
    I have come upon this fourth in the series somewhat sooner than I expected as I was lucky enough to be allowed a review copy; thus I've read it on the page as opposed to listening to it.
    This particular story - another of the "locked room" genre - revolves around a theatre production of a play written by Anthony himself; the play receives a scathing review, leading to... a murder. As with many other snippets revealed in these books, it drove me to look up "Mindgame", to find that it is indeed a play of his from 1999, (and it did receive lukewarm reviews at the time, but, happily, spawned no murders that I could find). Once again, I loved the book- my favourite Horowitz series - clever, thrilling, and wonderfully entertaining. And as I love Rory Kinnear's narration so much, I shall definitely be listening to it all over again once the audio version is available.

  • Secret Water by Arthur Ransome [Read by Gareth Armstrong]
    BOM-SecretWater.jpg This is not quite so adventurous - nor set in such a picturesque a location - as some of the other books up to this point. The Swallows' Father was unable - at the last minute - to take them on a planned sailing trip all together, so he arranges something else for them to do, a little more statically: a mapping project while camped on islands within tidal mud flats; he also arranges for the Amazons come to Norfolk to join them. Since it directly follows the (alarming) events in We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, one can only surmise that the adults felt they needed a safer environment for their unaccompanied children. What could possibly go wrong? Nevertheless, the 3 youngest of them manage to end up in yet another disastrous situation. Again we watch helplessly as, despite sound planning, they make a series of last-minute faulty decisions, inevitably leading to their being stranded in the middle of the causeway as the tide comes in...

Posted on July 31, 2022 at 11:17 AM. Category: Books of the Month.

Saturday July 30, 2022

WOMAD

WOMAD2022.jpg

Rob felt he wanted to go to WOMAD just for the day this year, so I drove us there - and and back in the middle of the night. It was quite crowded enough for me - though Rob tells me fewer numbers than previous years - but none the less jolly and festive for all that.

ADG7.jpg

ADG7

LesAmazonesAfrique .jpg

Les Amazones d'Afrique

TarafDeCaliu .jpg

Taraf de Caliu

Posted on July 30, 2022 at 11:52 PM. Category: Art and Culture.

Thursday July 28, 2022

South Pacific

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This is my favourite musical (maybe second to Sweeney Todd), thus I've seen a lot of productions, and, seriously, this is the best. Truth to tell, most shows suffer because of my internal comparison with the film. However, I haven't seen such a charming and enthusiastically naive Nellie since Mitzi Gaynor - and There is Nothing Like a Dame is performed quite brilliantly (unlike some stagings where you think "is this ever going to end?"). True, modern productions benefit from performers being miked up, but nonetheless this one is really exceptional.
The musical itself has a lot of underlying serious themes - not sure if they are considered PC these days, but they are certainly at least addressed. This one showed very clearly the "unintended consequences" - of war, I suppose you could say - where a military outfit descends on a pacific island, totally disrupts the local economy, and then abruptly ships out. Being a creation of Americans, not long after said war, there is no real blame attached - just a terrible sadness. One even wonders how Nellie will fare after her "happy ever after" moment - maybe her good heart and her cock-eyed optimism will be enough to see her through.

Posted on July 28, 2022 at 11:53 AM. Category: Art and Culture.

Tuesday July 12, 2022

The Glass Menagerie

TheGlassMenagerie.jpg

An interesting production of this play. The character of Tom is played by two actors - one is the young, brash, and pretty resentful Tom in the timeline of the story, and the other is the older, cynical, tortured (and perhaps unsuccessful), writer Tom who acts as narrator, played brilliantly, I felt, by Paul Hilton. I'm not sure if this was how it was originally intended, but overall I think it worked well as a construct - the way the story is told, in itself, separates the characters.

As to the other aspects of the staging, I am little more lukewarm. The set is spacious, without any borders, which is a little contrary to the intimate nature of the play; I was uncomfortable with it. The most intimate scene was created by an excellent lighting design for the blackout and candlelight - which was a necessity given the set. But by far the most peculiar aspect was the menagerie itself - which was HUGE. I can see it was allegorical; however, to me, Laura's precious and slightly broken unicorn is sufficient as the real allegory, and not her collection. I always imagined the menagerie to be in a rather small cabinet in keeping with their life of relative poverty, and only large in its importance to Laura; I don't think it needs to be physically large and looming to convey this.

Posted on July 12, 2022 at 11:53 AM. Category: Art and Culture.

Saturday July 9, 2022

Hampton Court Flower Show

HamptonCourt2022.jpg

My sister got tickets for the show, and it was her first visit - which unfortunately was not really a good experience for her. We hooked up at Wisley and I think we'd have had a nicer day if we had stayed there. Instead, as we had parking available to us, we drove into Kingston, and spent over 2 hours in absolutely solid traffic the like of which I have not seen there before, and arrived at lunch time. Queues for eating were off the scale, so we did not try for a restaurant. From the limited other choices, we queued for burgers, and then sat on the ground as it was the only shade available. I had failed to brief her about what to wear, so she spent the whole time shaking dust out of her sandals. And I would say - the gardens were not as lovely as I have seen in previous years - too much scrubby wild garden/recycling/mindfulness themes - too much hard core structuring, and not enough plants.
However, the real problem was - it was too hot.
It was too hot to shop in the many lovely retail outlets, too hot to view the gardens for more than about 10 minutes at a time, and too hot buy plants.

I do hope I'll be able to persuade her to go again on a cooler year - if there ever is one, which judging by the gloomy climate predictions may be unlikely.

HamptonCourt2022-2.jpg

Posted on July 9, 2022 at 6:18 PM. Category: The Garden.