Post-Olympics blues...

Very tired after sitting up till midnight watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics.  What a riot!

I hate to utter such a cliché, but looking back over the last two-and-a-bit weeks I feel rather proud to be British.  I really think London has done a damned good job at staging the Games.  All the venues looked fantastic, and seemed to have clear sight-lines (& very loud acoustics).  Transport has run much more smoothly than we anticipated.  The BBC tv coverage has been excellent, too.  They managed to make Dressage interesting, which is quite an achievement.  I even spent one evening glued to a handball game, when I hadn't previously known there was such a thing as handball (except as an illegal move in football, that is).

And the Opening and Closing ceremonies were both, in their totally different and bonkers ways, glorious fun.  Good music (okay, some of it better than other bits!) and mad theatre, perfectly organised chaos, and wall-to-wall British eccentricity.

To finish off with Darcey Bussell arriving as a phoenix to dance the Olympic Flame to its rest was a lovely final touch.  She flew in, trailing fireworks from her wingframes, to join four gorgeous flame-coloured cavaliers (led by the unmistakeable figure of Gary Avis - I'm pretty sure I recognised the other three as well but won't mention names in case I'm completely wrong) and dance with them, being lifted and flung dramatically through the air, until at last they gathered round the great unfurling torch and waited; and like a huge fading chrysanthemum it shed petal after petal of flame, and died away.  Call me a sentimental sausage by all means, but it was real lump in the throat stuff.

And if I am rather sleepy this morning, I cannot imagine how tired the participants and the audience must feel.

I did also get some writing done, I'm glad to say.  I got over a little bump that had been intimidating me.  I had realised it had to come from a different point of view, and it flowed much better for it.  I'm at about the 45,000 word mark, though I'm sure extensive revision will be needed; still, that's not bad after two months. 

Looking forward to the weekend

I was planning to go down to Kent and see my mother this weekend; I haven’t been over there for a couple of months.  But I’ve had a nasty upset stomach, and she’s had a nasty upset stomach, and neither of us feels very lively at the moment, or entirely confident that we won’t simply exchange upset stomachs if we meet up, and both feel ill again next week as a result.  So I’ve called the visit off.  I’m due down at the end of the month for her birthday, anyway. 

So, unexpectedly, I have a weekend to myself.  I know people who would rush around frantically trying to find things to do and people to do them with.  Not me; I’ll be fine on my own.  I like a bit of solitary down-time now and then, after all.  Witness my annual May-time escape to swim in the Aegean and walk in maquis-covered hills, and eat too much, in Greece.  

I’m going to try and restrain the urge to sit and watch the last of the Olympics; there’s more to life than wall-to-wall TV.  I will probably have a walk here at Kew, and enjoy the summer weather that has, so blessedly, returned for a spell.   I’ll have to do some grocery shopping and clothes-washing, of course. But then  can settle with my little A5 notebook and get on with writing Thorn and Carlton through the equivalent of busting someone out of jail.

I have been enjoying the Olympics, don’t get me wrong; enjoying them hugely, in fact.  The skill and hard work displayed on all sides, from the astonishing feats of the winners to the sheer grit of the underdogs (absolutely any of whom is still a far finer athlete than me!) are both magical and heart-warming.  What some of these people can do is simply amazing.  Those runners!  Those gymnasts!  Those swimmers!  And, oh good grief, bring on the dancing horses!...

What’s more, though there have been a couple of really unedifying displays of unsportsmanlike behaviour, in the main there seems to have been a good old-fashioned mixture of damned hard competition and honourable comradeship among the competitors.  Watching all last night’s 800m finalists hugging winner David Rudisha, and then one another, at the end of the race was extraordinarily touching.  Likewise, the sight of two of the runners who had completed their heat in the hurdles waiting for Liu Jiang as he limped in agony over the line, to help him off the field to a wheelchair; or Michael Phelps practically comforting the stunned Chad Le Clos, after the latter beat him to a gold medal; real lump-in-the-throat stuff.  Factor in all the triumph and exhaustion, the cheering crowds, the ecstatic, incoherent happiness, and the sight of big, handsome men like Chris Hoy openly weeping on the medal rostrum, and you have a bit of an all-round emotional wallow.  

But it all winds up this Sunday evening; and in the meantime I have sunshine to enjoy and writing to get on with.  Long may they both continue - and long may the gyppy stomach remain okay again.

Ropey as old rope...

I think I ate something.  Something I ought not to have done, that is.

My relationship with food is strong and healthy – not to mention downright erotic at times.  But there’s nothing like a gyppy tummy to make you think “Why would anyone in their right mind want to eat?”  At the moment, the smell of fish pie wafting up from the kitchens downstairs is nauseating; on a normal day it would have had me doing Homer Simpson impressions. So somewhere, sometime, in the last few days, I have had some bad food... 

I’ve sweated out most of the day at work.  I’ve chugged through all the jobs I needed to get done.  I’m wondering whether to ask if I can go home a bit early, as I am now feeling decidedly ropey.  It’s not the worst stomach upset I’ve ever had (not by a long pole - don’t worry, I won’t bother you with any more details!) but I am shaky and headache-y and queasy, and I just want to lie down.   

I had a horrible dream last night, what’s more.  I was attending an interview with an unbelievably rude and aggressive interview panel who all tried to bully me, and who argued with one another in front of me about everything I said and did.  It was like a conflation of all the worst interviews, worst auditions and worst meetings with management I have ever had in my life; to wake up from that and think “also my insides are up the creek” was an altogether miserable start to the day.

The weekend had gone so well, too.  I shopped, I cleaned, I ran the washing machine.  I wrote.  I went for a walk (Kew is looking lovely).  I cooked some good food (a classic tortilla española with a parmesan-and-asparagus twist, and some very garlicky pea soup).  I watched a good movie.  I watched Britain’s athletes and other sportsmen and women continued to distinguish themselves at the Olympics, as well as the great Serena Williams beating the shrieking beansprout Maria Sharapova comprehensively, which was almost as pleasing (Williams is a joy to watch, and Sharapova is a poseuse).   I bought some new sandals in a sale, and I went to see the English National Ballet’s “Swan Lake” at the Coliseum.

I had booked to see the lovely Daria Klimentová and Vadim Muntagirov; one or the other is out of action, it seems, so I got Anaïs Chalendard, who was good but not great (technically polished, so far as I could tell, but her acting is decidedly one-note – Odette total misery, Odile total bitch is slightly too simplistic for my tastes) and, an unexpected treat, Junor Souza stepping up to make his role debut, and seizing the chance with both hands, as the Prince.  Tall, quirkily handsome, lovely clean lines, partners beautifully, gorgeous jump, and he can act.  Go, Mr Souza! 

I’m not too sure about the production in places, though.  We don’t need to see Rothbart enchant Odette to the sound of the overture, so the beginning irritated me straight off.  It doesn’t clarify matters particularly, since one still hasn’t got a clue why he does it (is he after her?  Is he after Siegfried?  Is he after the throne?  Is he just a mean b*stard?).  It’s just a silly fad, pandering to the kind of audience members who won’t stop talking until there are dancers of stage, and so chatter like rude kids through each of Tchaikovsky’s beautiful orchestral preludes.  I’m sorry to say we did have rather a lot of that kind of audience yesterday.  May they go to the special hell, the one reserved for people who talk at the theatre...

Then there’s too much posturing and gurning generally from Rothbart, and there are one or two other moments when the cheese factor gets a little strong (just think “A Bullet in the Ballet” and you will have an idea what I mean).   But the sets and costumes are good, ENB field a fine corps and some excellent national dances for Act 3, and there’s a strong emphasis on making the blossoming of the relationship between the protagonists really clear.  Odette and Siegfried don’t fall in love because it’s in the script but because they click, and then click more, and trust and longing and hope start to flow between them as each realises the other is what they have dreamed of and prayed to find one day.  Of course, that makes the whole thing even more tragic, but then “Swan Lake” should be tragic – and at least we don’t get a happy ending here, even if from the balcony seats of the Coli I could only see half of the dead lovers’ heavenly apotheosis (the lower half – thoroughly nice legs, but it was hardly the full spectacle, and I was only in the fourth row).

Anyway, that’s my last ballet fix until October.  Sigh. 

It’s nearly five pm – can I stick it out?  I still feel grotty and queasy and I’ve begun burping like a drunken marine.  Not nice.   

Why do I do this?

Why do I write?  That’s not what I trained for.  I spent five years at art school; five years of thrills and spills, being abused and then praised and then abused again, having my best work rubbished comprehensively and then being urged to carry out stupid ideas I had dreamed up during a drunken pizza lunch with my mother...  (FYI, it’s useful sometimes having a mum one can get plastered with!).  I painted and drew for the life of me.  I learned an enormous amount about myself.  And I tried (& tried, and tried) to connect what I could do with the Fine Art Newspeak Bullsh*t that most of the tutors spoke, most of the time. 

In the end, though, it didn’t work.  I’ll never regret those five years: they were fascinating and fun, I made some great friends, I learned to salsa and speak Spanish, and I did make some good paintings.  And drawings.  Good, big drawings.  If I ever know someone whose house is large enough to hang the really big stuff (which isn’t that big – I think the largest pieces were about six feet by eight – come on, some people make artworks hundreds of feet long) then he or she will be welcome to any of it that they like.  I’m unlikely ever to be able to hang it myself, after all, since I’ll never own a mansion.  I still paint and sketch with great happiness, on holiday, or down at the London Wetland Centre.  But I have come to see I’ll never be an artist.

It’s partly that I haven’t the patience to sit and listen and try to engage with the aforementioned Fine Art Bullsh*t.  I managed to, at college; but five years of it was more than enough.  Way more...  Life is too short to waste time bending one’s brain into that distorted worldview, just in order to please someone who will then turn around and say “But I don’t like the shade of blue you’re using, either”.  Excuse my French, but f*ck them.

I am someone who got a tremendous amount out of spending five years making what I consider to be art; but “an artist” is someone who wants to make a career in the Art World and embrace the Fine Art BS; qv my earlier rude comments, above.  I got into art because after ten years with no creative outlet except my job cooking (which I was good at, and also don’t regret), my rediscovery of creative activity when I was in my late twenties blew my mind.  I could have gone full-tilt into anything creative that I had happened upon, but it was an adult ed art evening class that I hit on, and that hit me. Like anyone who's been hit, I was a little punch-drunk afterwards, though in this case it was punch-drunk with joy.

Ultimately, all I was doing at college, though, was having fun and playing.  I think I had a whole second childhood in those five years at KIAD, and all the fun and all the frustrations of adolescence, too; but at an age when I was mature enough to experience them fully – and, crucially, gain from them - instead of simply drowning in them.  So no, no regrets whatsoever, but still I have come to feel it was a dead-end for me.

When I sat down, in autumn 2005, and did that “what are your creative goals” exercise from The Artist's Way, what came out wasn’t art works.  It was stories.  And they have been coming out ever since.  Not as steadily as I would like, but pretty steady even so. 

I wanted to write when I was a kid.  I had a head full of stories I wanted to tell, and all these years later they are still there.  The “back burner” exercise I did last year uncovered the fact that some of them, even some of the really old ones, were actually worth doing.  New ones pop up in my brain all the time.  Urban fantasies, pseudo-historical fantasies, romantic fantasies; slight things like the fairy tales, and epics that could run to four volumes.  Storytelling; that’s what I was made for, it seems.  I ignored it for all those years, and the moment I let it see daylight, it sprouted anew.  Stories, stories, stories.

That’s why I do it.  It’s what makes me, me, and it’s the greatest delight I have in my life.  I have no idea if I will ever be published (though I intend to keep trying) but I cannot stop the storytelling, because that would be like stopping growing.  I could stop doing the art in any serious way, because it was, ultimately, a blind alley.  But the stories are not blind.  The stories have intense eyes that see me, and see the world, and through which I can see; and nothing looks the same when I see through their eyes. 

I describe Anna and Thorn talking about sensory interference, I send the protagonists of “Café Tana” into the maze in the heart of someone's mind, I trap Simon Cenarth on a battlefield and walk across a desert with Maramne Myas to try and save her husband and reach her lover; I meet aliens, heal gunslingers, discover creatures that feed on fear, and learn to overcome them by overcoming fear, and I find love and lose it and find it again; and then wake up and want breakfast.  In stories.  Which are my truest world.

What more to tell?  A busy weekend: The Olympics Opening Ceremony was great fun, beautiful, exciting and relatively cheese-free, and also managed to be very smoothly drilled while looking completely anarchic and organic; Saturday I got sunburned again helping TCI to gloss paint doors on trestles in her garden; Sunday I did my grocery shopping and cleaning and all the other domestic duty stuff, and got rained on, and wrote, and watched “The Town”, which was excellent.  A classic-tropes heist movie, extremely well done and totally gripping; I’d put it on a par with “Heat” and “Ronin” and “Ne le dis à personne” in terms of good old-fashioned thriller quality.  And surprise surprise, Mr Renner is terrific – playing a terrifying, and ultimately tragic, murderous nut-job. 

And someone came home at 4.00am last night and slammed doors and played music in the flat.  At 4.00am.  Gods, I wish I had my own place! 

Another week gone and by gum! -

By gum, the Olympics are upon us at last.  After all the years of planning and money worries and bad press (and the odd touch of chaos and old night), we're there.  The Opening Ceremony is tonight; and I don't care what anyone says, I am looking forward to it.

On Tuesday the Olympic Torch came through Kew Gardens; a very jolly occasion, festal and crazy, with boiling sun beating down on everyone.  This morning it came by again, but in conditions that could not have been a greater contrast; classic English summer rain, misty skies and startled cormorants on the Thames.  The royal barge Gloriana slipped by, oars swinging, white-and-gold banners flying, with the flame burning in a sort of giant teakettle in the bows; accompanied by assorted rowing club teams, a lot of police divers in rubber dinghies, the Port of London pilot boat and the RNLI.  They glided past me on the river bank and on towards Kew Bridge, sirens echoing, to vanish under the central arch in the quiet drizzle.

What more?  I managed to write the love scene I had been brooding about, and am pleased to report that it came off fairly well, so far as I can tell at the moment, anyway.   I also watched another of my sale dvds; "Inception".  I do love a good bit of Science Fiction, and this is more than good, it's corking.  I won't try to describe it though, as on top of having a good cast and some stonking special effects, it also has a plot that is deliciously complex and requires a proper degree of mental engagement.  Go on, treat yourself, engage with this one; it's worth it.  So far the three films I bought for a total of £12 a couple of weeks ago have been one rollicking good fun (MI4) and one terrific (Inception); let's hope "The Town" scores as high (no prizes for guessing one of the reasons why I bought that - but I had been on the lookout for it turning up in a sale anyway, as I do love a good policier, and this one got really excellent reviews.  If as I suspect the Man of the Moment turns in the sort of bottled-up raging intensity he seems to specialise in, playing a murderous nut-job,  I'll probably end up trying to hide behind the bed).

The bad news is, tonight I have a stomach ache, and am promised to help TCI with more decorating this weekend; I'm hoping the stomach ache goes away, so that I will be useful to her rather than gripey and ill, and consequently slow with a paintbrush.  But for now I am thinking, hmm, a plain supper, watch the Olympics opening, write a bit, and bed at a civilised hour.