Love Sick at the Edinburgh Fringe

Steve has been one of Monkey's directors at Fourth Monkey so his show was definitely on the list of things to see. At Monkey's insistence we were first in the queue and had prime front row seats. Love Sick is bought to the Fringe by All in Theatre. Steve and Amalia play a couple of aliens, coming to earth to find the answer to their planet's decline and are learning from the human race all about 'love' and its consequent procreation. Using not much more props than what looks like a giant version of a pop-up washing basket and some minimal but very effective audience participation they manage to fall in love and save the day. While it is a clown show and thus very physical it has some very subtle things to say about the human condition. I have not managed to convey one ounce of why this show was so brilliant and hilarious; I think the skill is partly in the absolutely dead-pan performance, never finding themselves funny but staying in character as these slightly naive and curious aliens. Best line had to be, after we had thrown our ping-pong ball 'sperm' to fertilise the egg, he announced, 'Casey is the inseminator!' Playing until the 30th at the Assembly Hall (venue 35) at 7.00pm, don't miss out. (I guess they might be touring with it too, but no mention on their website.)



(Tickets for all events can be booked through the Edfringe website.)

The Grim Tales

The Fourth Monkey Theatre Company are presenting four productions this year; Year of the Monkey participants are putting on three Grimm's Tales: Rapunzel, Little Red Cap and Hansel and Gretel, while the two year course are doing 'The Bloody Countess' (which we did not see), based on the true story of mass murderer Elizabeth Bathory.

While they have all been directed by different people the three productions have all used a dual narrative, with the original tale running parallel to an alternate more modern story. Their interpretations have more in common with the disturbing original tales than any sanitised version that you might be familiar with, and are not suitable for families. In fact Steve had to insist that one parent who came in with a young child was asked to leave by the box office staff. Rapunzel gives us three witches who jealously guard the innocence of their 'adoptive' daughter, with the parallel story being about a modern day mother suffering from post-natal depression. Little Red Cap follows the naive young girl sent into the woods to face a fantastic wolf. The second story mirrors it more directly with a tale of a young girl coming to work in a care home, and finding that there are unpleasant goings on beneath the benign surface. Hansel and Gretel gets to grips with the big issues of child abuse, neglect and incest, in a dark and disturbing story told without words. Their second story tells the life of Antonin Artaud whose theories about the Theatre of Cruelty have influenced 20th century theatre, and this production. They have had one 'bad' review (all publicity is good publicity so they say) and one good one, and they have enjoyed counting how many people walk out each evening (only three on Friday), but the flyering has obviously been going well as they have been consistently packed and even sold out several nights. 

They are preforming in Space 9 on Niddry Street every day until the 29th, at 4.30pm, then 6.00pm and 7.30pm. I left Monkey my camera so hope she will get some other photos of them in costume/on stage, but Dunk caught some of the cast doing an impromptu rehearsal outside just before their performance earlier this week:

(Edited 15th September) The cast of Hansel and Gretel looking awesome after their last performance.

Flyers, flyers and yet more flyers

Walking the The Royal Mile in Edinburgh during August is not for the faint hearted, even on a damp day it can be quite an ordeal (though fortunately for us the sun shone most of the time). Everyone has a suggestion for how you might like to spend an hour or so of your day. I had browsed the Edinburgh Fringe Festival website quite extensively and had a handy list of things that I thought I might see. As you might imagine, I did not see many of them, because there were so many other, much more exciting things to see.

People turned up with banners, in costume, and with puppets of every shape and size:

From the monotone:

to the vibrant:

to the downright scary:

Some with interesting techniques for staking out their spot:

It is part of Monkey's responsibilities to spend a couple of hours flyering every day (that's Casey, not everyone is so enthusiastic):

Though it is exhausting work, so you do get to take a break:

Flyers, and more flyers

and yet more flyers

inside and outside, on every available surface...

And then you carry them home and use them to repaper the living room.

Coming up next, reviews and recommendations.

Trinity Buoy Wharf (not an A to Z post)

It is not a journey for the faint-hearted to make your way down to Trinity Buoy Wharf, hidden in the backwaters of east London, for there are strange sights and sounds to encounter there.  

The Floodtide listening post makes music determined by the tide of the Thames. A submerged sensor reads tidal flow data and converts it into notation that is played by the listening post:

Then just around the corner the Time and Tide Bell is one of a series of bells planned around the coast of Britain; the bell is rung by the high tide, but because of the unique shape one ring makes a series of notes one after another (we weren't around to hear it unfortunately).

And across the courtyard a sign outside a tiny wooden shed invites you to enter and experience the sights and sounds of the scientist Michael Faraday, who worked there on the electrification of lighthouses. Here I was thinking it was some kind of mock up but according to the wikipedia page, "His workshop still stands at Trinity Buoy Wharf above the Chain and Buoy Store, next to London's only lighthouse where he carried out the first experiments in electric lighting for lighthouses". 

More strange sights and sounds were in store when I descended into the basement of the Electrician's Shop to see Monkey performing in Midsummer Night's Dream and (here below) As You Like It. The Year of the Monkey are currently doing three Shakespeare comedies for the London season. The run finishes on 25th April and shortly after that they will begin rehearsals for the Edinburgh Fringe.

Little Villages and Big Cities

'Notwithstanding' by Louis de Bernières was picked up randomly in the library because I was attracted by the title. It turned out to be a charming (the only appropriate word) collection of tales about village life, set in a somewhat bygone era, based vaguely on memories from the author's childhood. I'm not sure it was intended but many of them are about the old stalwarts of village life and their eventual demise, maybe symbolic of the fact that such communities are literally, as well as metaphorically, dying out. They are not a continuous story, but many of them have characters in common, particularly the 'hedging and ditching man', who appears in many but does not get his own story. The village is populated with people like Joshuah Entincknapp, Leafy Barkwell and Royston Chittock, the Major and the Colonel, Sir Edward Rawcutt and Miss Agatha Feakes. In one tale a young boy becomes a man when asked to catch a very big fish. Several include people who live with and chat to ghosts, and in several others people have complicated relationships with animals, both wild and domesticated. While bits of the book feel twee and clichéd there are moments when he really captures something quite poignant, here talking about Mac and Mrs Mac:

"They had married after the Great War, when she was a bonny laughing girl of eighteen, and he had already been reduced to a semi-silence by the infernal din and carnage of Ypres and Passchendaele. They were of a generation, more than any other that has ever lived, that had been cauterised by history, and come through it all with the conviction that there is no higher aim in life than to live with common decency." (p.69)

And this is young Peter, coming of age in the 60's:

"Peter started to wonder why life was meaningless. Given his Anglican inoculation, it was perhaps strange that this should have happened. But it wasn't that he knew life was meaningless; it was that, deep in his bowels, he began to experience it. His bones and blood began to tell him that one day they would be nothing but earth and ash." (p.104)

One of the encounters with the hedging and ditching man:

"The hedging and ditching man was an unexplained person. He was at that time in his sixties, very slim and fit. He wore braces and a flat cap, and worked in shirtsleeves even in winter. He had laid hedges and cleared ditches since he was a youth, but nobody knew who employed him or paid him, or where he lived. Parents told their gullible children that he was a supernatural being appointed by nature, who turned into a birch tree at night, and ate leaf mould in his sandwiches." (p.66)

And just because I loved the word 'disembog':
"Somewhat in advance of the hunting season, Piers de Mandeville set off one evening to scout the Hurst for fox earths. He encountered his particular little vixen at a place near one of the ponds where, within living memory, Prince George of Denmark had got bogged down in his carriage on the way to Petworth, and the men of the village had gathered to disembog him." (p.126)

I am on leave and so went to I spent a couple of days this week hanging out with my big sister Claire, chatting and eating cookies and watching films. We set the world to rights and sorted out our respective children's lives. It was a lovely way to spend a few days. We went to see 'Interstellar' ... it was unfathomable, and the story is full of black holes, but an excellent spectacle if you like that kind of thing.

Then yesterday I travelled back up to London and spent the days with Monkey ... who I have not seen for nine weeks, the longest separation we have had in her entire life. She is now a real Londoner and knows all about the underground and oyster cards and which way it is to the river. She met me at Victoria and we took a circuitous walk past all the tourist highlights of the capital. We started with Buckingham Palace where there was a big crowd for the changing of the guard, but I was more excited to get this photo instead, of the queen's postie.

And this photo of one of the many, many policemen dealing with the crowd out front; this is the first time I have seen a real live policeman with a gun. It felt surreal, who did he think he might need to shoot?

Then we passed the National Gallery and Trafalgar Square. I am a bit old to climb on a lion or jump around in the fountains. In searching for somewhere for lunch we detoured past the Houses of Parliament and the Thames and the London Eye. 

We called in on my nephew Mat who is an assistant manager in Morrisons on Tottenham Court Road and then spent a while with the mummies in the British Museum. We saw the war memorials that had been decorated earlier this week for Remembrance Day and also, totally coincidentally, we passed by the small memorial to the people who died in the terrorist bus bomb on 7th July 2005.                           

By this time it had been a pretty long day so we ended up eating doughnuts in a packed Euston station and having amazingly found some empty seats we sat and chatted until Monkey had to go off to her class. They have a few more weeks of 'lessons' and then in January they start rehearsals for the 'London Season' which is going to be three Shakespeare comedies. For someone who hopes to spend her career performing she is still not fond of being photographed, but here she is in her Monkey hoodie. 

NaNoWriMo and all that

Savage Chickens

Well it amused me anyway.

I am not ready for NaNoWriMo. I am exhausted before I even get started having worked without a day off for three weeks (and anticipate probably doing so again next week). It is going to be a difficult month without Monkey here to keep me on track. As agreed at the end of NaNo last year I am planning a rambling fantasy story that will allow anything and everything to happen, fuelled by random suggestions from the adoption forums on the NaNo website. A starting point might be a decent title but Dunk's automated title generating website was rubbish.

I was hoping to have a photo to share of Monkey in her monkey gear (hoodies and stuff with the theatre logo) but it has not been forthcoming. We have exchanged texts and real letters but I have not got much information about what they do; she says it's too hard to explain and would just be meaningless anyway. They do sessions that are entitled things like 'Voice' and 'Mask' and 'Clown' (Clown is a favourite apparently). Next term they go full time and rehearsals start. She was only there two days and she got herself a job, in a call centre of all places, and it is enough to pay the rent. The second week she texted asking how to cook rice but apart from that she has not needed me at all ... I should be pleased that she has been so independent but I am feeling pathetically redundant and having to fight the urge to offer unsolicited advice.

 This is my Nano writing space, cluttered up with junk and not looking very welcoming at all. I think I am going to be able to procrastinate very effectively on Sunday by spending half the day sorting stuff out. 

Having worked on my fair-isle sweater quite a bit recently I have gone back to knitting hexipuffs. I started a second beekeeper project back in summer 2012 shortly after the first one but is has hibernated all this time. I keep looking at the photographs of the Monkey quilt and thinking how much I really want one of my own, so I have been knitting one every day while we watch Deal  and a couple more at knitting club ... at this rate it will take me about another four years. I am estimating at least 600 because they are smaller puffs. The current total has just reached 100.

Welcome to the Monkey House

We have been joking for weeks that it has all been just a game, but the deed is finally done. The last of my offspring has flown the coop. Yesterday I drove Monkey, with most of her worldly goods, down to the wonderful and exotic Golders Green, where she will be sharing a house with four other monkeys. She has a couple of days to herself and then the others will gradually be joining her in the metropolis. 

 She nobly offered to take the tiny bedroom; we have tried to make it feel cosy and personal but there will definitely be no cat swinging:

 After a trip to Tesco, a five minute walk away across the Hendon Way, we toured the delights of Golders Green high street, with its many delicious smelling kosher bakeries, and then came back and ate some tea with an episode of Gilmore Girls. It was very strange to say goodbye on the doorstep and drive away leaving her there. 

There will no doubt be regular updates of goings on in London once the Year of the Monkey gets started in a couple of weeks time. 

Reading etc has all still been happening recently but I have been a bit taken up with preparations for the move. Hopefully I will do a few catchup posts over the weekend.

Monkey Boots

Just over three years ago now I bought this shiny pair of Doc Martens for Monkey:

They have been well loved and well worn but are on their last legs (she is in denial about it and has been refusing to give them up). I invested in a new purple pair for myself two years ago because my white nubuck ones were filthy and getting worn. However they sat on the shelf because they were not really in 'throwing away' condition. A while ago I put them in a bowl of hot soapy water and scrubbed them clean. They came out pretty well:

 Add a dozen brightly coloured sharpies and they have become completely

and utterly

 fabulous!

 (But she still doesn't like being photographed)

The countdown to 'Year Of The Monkey' is now under one month, with moving out day probably in less than a fortnight. The last minute panic is setting in. Only about half a million things left to do.

Not a half-arsed book review

I have three book reviews sitting half done in the draft folder and not much inspiration to finish them (not that they were bad books, I've just been feeling a bit meh), and then we are off to HESFES on Saturday, so this is just a quick hi and bye post. We have spent most of my spare time in the last couple of weeks getting stuff sorted out for Monkey's grand adventure in the real world (Year of the Monkey) in less than two months. She went to a getting-to-know-you party in London at the weekends to meet some of the other Monkeys, and might even have some housemates organised. She now has lots of plain t-shirts, a dish for macaroni cheese, a wok (£3 bargain charity shop find), a cheese grater, wooden spoons, her own nail scissors and tweezers, the very important notebook that we are going to make a felted cover for, and, most excitingly, nude coloured underwear! 

One issue that did remain was the safe transportation of the Monkey Quilt:

 So this morning I have made it a bag:

 and she is all set to leave home.

Monkey Quilt - the final chapter

It has been a quiet week work-wise but a hectic one on the hexipuff front. I spent the entire of Sunday and then Wednesday sewing together the beekeeper quilt. It was quite a trial, that involved a certain unmentionable amount of picking apart as well as sewing together. We were still two half hexipuffs short but since Monkey had missed Knitting Club on Tuesday when we went to the Tea Hive to celebrate World Wide Knit in Public Day she insisted that she wanted to participate in a KIP and so we went to the park yesterday afternoon to knit them. 

Then we came home and I sewed them into place. 

And now the quilt is finally finished.

The project has taken two years and 29 days. We knitted 414 hexipuffs, but used only 410 of them (it is 21 by 20 puffs), and 20 half hexipuffs, Monkey decided to name them 'trapezipuffs'. Credit also going here to contributions from my sister Claire who was visiting when we started and knitted some, and Tish who has intermittently joined the madness. It measures 5' 4" square. We reckon about 300 hours of work have gone into it. I have no idea how much yarn has been used nor any notion of how much it has cost, but it is worth every penny.

We both had a little cuddle to appreciate its exquisite squishiness:

Then I made her pose in the garden where the light was much better;

I am thinking maybe I should hire it out for interior design photo shoots to help pay for her fees:

We are also considering making a 'beekeeper blanket bag' to protect it and transport it safely (she was a bit iffy about letting me put it on the grass, but I pointed out the carpet in the living room was probably dirtier).

Final details that I neglected to mention are the pockets. There are four: two empty hexipuffs open at one end, one double empty hexipuff for keeping her phone in and this lovely creation with a button fastening for keeping the sweetie stash in

It is comforting to know that whatever adventures may befall her when she leaves home for the big bad world in September ... she will have a constant reminder of how important she is to me and she will definitely not be cold at night:

Linking back to Fibre Arts Friday for craftily sharing.