Dvd warning

I went home yesterday after "The Cunning Little Vixen" (well-played, mostly well-sung, but I thought the production was a bit twee and visually cluttered compared to others I've seen, and over-emphasising the humour at the cost of losing some of the pathos) - anyway, I went home and I saw I'd left the Dvd of "District 9" on top of a loudspeaker. My father would have had fits. So I moved it. Moving it, I found myself reading the back of the box (I've always been inclined to read anything in front of me. Cereal packets, road signs, the back page of someone else's newspaper, you name it. It's as if my brain goes "Ooh look, words; yum..."). Anyway; I read the back of the box, and I noticed this: "Warning; contains scenes of violence and one use of very strong language".

I love these warning notices. First that lovely one for "Mayerling" and now this. One use of strong language? Would that be "one" in the sense of "several thousand instances of strong language, but all of them are of the same word"? Or "one" as in "actually there's so much swearing we think you'll stop counting after a while, and stop noticing it altogether soon after that"?

Now I don't have a problem with foul language (sadly my friends can confirm this) and I'd have to say that, were I in the situations in which Wikus Van Der Merwe finds himself in the film, I would certainly be turning the air blue, too. But I know people who do mind swearing, who might think that "one instance of very strong language" means exactly that - one instance. Whoops.

My guess is that there is a list somewhere of "strong" and "very strong" language; perhaps "f*ck" is only "strong" and other terms are categorised as "very strong". I don't remember, amid the waterfalls of f*cking, f*ckers and f*cks, picking up on any c*nts... but then I wasn't listening out for them, of course...

Who cares? The movie was a thrill-ride anyway, and it gave me back faith in the infinite renewability of the genre. Neill Blomkamp for PM! (Yes, I know he can't be PM, but, face it, the options we do have are so lousy that a talented South African film-maker would probably make a better fist of the job than any of them).

Sketching moving targets...

Yesterday evening I went to the "Insight Evening" at the Royal Opera House; the seats in the Clore Studio are vilely uncomfortable, but luckily the content made up for it. We started with a discussion between Barry Wordsworth and Brian Elias about Elias' memories of composing the score of Kenneth MacMillan's "The Judas Tree" - Elias was a charming, funny and articulate raconteur, and having sneaked in a sketchbook I managed to do a competent thumb-nail portrait of him. Then we got Irek Mukhamedov coaching Mara Galeazzi and Thaigo Soares in two chunks of "Judas Tree" - fascinating, and I'm glad they can laugh as they work on something this disturbing. Then Julie Farmer coached Nathalie Harrison and Michael Stojko on one of the numbers from "Elite Syncopations" - not surprisingly this was also funny. And I had fun drawing the dancers. Now that is a really challenging subject! Their bodies are so superb (sorry, I know how lecherous that sounds but I can't really phrase it any differently!) and their movements so perfectly controlled and so athletic; and they move, well, all the time. In the end I simply went for an overdose of the Zen Spaghetti; one or two of the resulting frenzied looping scrawls are quite evocative, too. Altogether a rewarding evening.

Touch wood...

Oh dear – please excuse the jesting and very mild ribaldry. I am ever-so-slightly high with nervous tension; because, in theory (& touching wood repeatedly) my plaster cast is due to come off tomorrow.

Then the real work starts. Physiotherapy.

I’m really, really ready for this now. Just this last week or so, I have had virtually no pain in my wrist or arm. The aching and the cramp have both stopped (touches wood again!) and apart from the thumb I seem to have almost normal sensation and tendon flexing in all my digits. The thumb is still slightly numb and distinctly stiff, but it has stopped twitching spontaneously. I have done my finger exercises several thousand times (creeping out strangers on the Tube and in restaurants in the process) and am now very tentatively doing a little lifting of items heavier than a sheet of paper – a teaspoon, for instance, or a glove... Anything to strengthen this poor wee imprisoned wrist in advance of its liberation.

So I’ll be as primed for the un-plastered state as I can be. My fracture clinic appointment is at ten to ten and my occupational therapy appointment is at eleven. Yes, I am absolutely counting the hours. I have no idea what to expect, and I am both excited and scared. My wrist and hand are bound to be weak and comically stiff, and I may find they are almost totally useless.

I need a working right hand. I have learned to type, and to write, albeit slowly and eccentrically, with my left hand; but I cannot draw left-handed. Left-handed, I can do those art college drawing exercises designed to “free my mind” by producing images that are not so much zen spaghetti as Tourettes’ spaghetti. But I can’t draw anything left-handed that I can learn from or be excited or moved by; just uncoordinated scribble. I learned fifteen years ago that expressive scribble is a great tool. But it is just a tool, and not an end in itself.

And I want to get back to my Scottish Country Dancing club. I am missing the Strathspey something rotten.