Busy day

This morning I had the chance to get out of the office (unusual, lately) and model for a press launch photoshoot.  One of the other models was very beautiful and had a very beautiful three year old with her, so I should imagine most of the press coverage will feature them.  But if your paper has a shot of a lot of feet, mine might be one of the pairs featured.  Chipped blue nail varnish, if so (o, the shame).  We were demonstrating the Barefoot Trail.

For your information, and rather to my surprise, the Barefoot Trail does exactly what it's meant to do; I came away feeling relaxed and revived, and as if I had been close to nature for a short time.  All from wandering about barefoot on assorted surfaces such as wet grass, logs, pine cones and sand.  The New Age Fluffy Stuff won over my cynicism, hands (or rather feet) down.  It was glorious.  If muddy.

In the afternoon my boss and I had a long meeting with someone from Finance, someone from Visitor Services, and The Man With The Answers, to talk about hitches and glitches in the new ticketing system.  Most of the aforementioned hitches and glitches, if I'm honest, are in our handling of the system, not inherant in the thing itself.  It was a hugely constructive meeting, the kind I wish all meetings could be.  Although we only got through about 20% of the things we needed to sort out, we did have really thorough discussions about those things, and make real progress on them.  I suppose we just need to have more meetings, and slowly work through the remaining 80% of the issues with the same thoroughness.

Halfway through this meeting the weather turned on its flipside and began to pour with rain, then hail, and then thunder as well.  The office we were in is in an attic and the rain and hail were pounding on the roof and bouncing into the open windows.  The Man With The Answers sat smiling in his usual unflappable & Buddha-like way - until I said "Answers, I'm getting worried about your books" (which were on the windowsill behind him) - at which point he suddenly reacted with alacrity.  Good chap; I am sure even Gautama Buddha preferred to keep his books dry.  Keep your powder and your books dry, eh?

He appears to be reading a playscript, which is intriguing (I would know the Faber & Faber Drama livery anywhere).  But being nosy about other folks' reading can seem tremendously rude, so I bottled it and didn't ask.  Now I'm just curious (equals nosy). 

Then it was back to the office, and then to the leaving drinks for a colleague who is moving on to pastures new.  This last happened to coincide with the Grand Re-Opening of a local bar (sheer chance, but it meant we got two free drinks each and a lot of slightly random free tapas).  So by the time I left, early, to go and vote, I was full of food and drink, and decidedly relaxed.

Trotted to my local polling station (the infant school over the railway line) clutching my poll card.  Even at well after nine pm there was a steady trickle of people.  I handed my card over and said, maybe a tad too brightly, "I hope it's okay to vote when you've had a couple of pints, I've been at a colleague's leaving do."

Polling officer:  Dearie, if you're here and you can make a cross with a pencil, you can vote.

So I voted.  I'm not sure whether I should be cheered or depressed by the discovery I'm allowed to vote even if half-cut.  I've decided to be pleased about it.

Like many good Lefties I sometimes have those moments of wondering if there's any point in casting my vote.  Parliamentary democracy has its flaws, goodness knows, and ours is as messed-up as the rest in many ways..

But so many people across the world even today never have had and never will have the chance to make that cross on a ballot paper, to try and add a drop of influence to the vat.  Most of my ancestors didn't have the vote - none of the men, to my knowledge, until 1918, except possibly the Hyders in Bristol, and certainly none of the women until 1928 (property qualifications are intended to exclude the peasantry, after all, and I come from very solid working class stock!).  I would be utterly ashamed of myself if I didn't go out and vote. 

Now home, sobering up, and writing this.

Last night I was at the ballet; two lovely non-narrative pieces and a gritty, grim, bleak story ballet about the spirit of Jack the Ripper haunting London and inspiring Walter Sickert and a friend of his to commit the Camden Town Murders.  "Sveet Violence" said the German woman in the row behind mine, carefully reading her programme aloud to her neighbour.  Well, quite; I couldn't have put it better myself.  Actually the title is "Sweet Violets", but anyway...  It's choreographically terrific.  Also grim, grimgrimgrim, also grisly and dismal.  Beautifully danced, though, of course (Lauren Cuthbertson in particular was superb as the second woman to be murdered).  But it was a relief to go from that to "DGV" with its superb score, high energy and rich, resonant optimism.  Graphic violence and murder in pointe shoes may be very impressive; but hope and love and human connection carry the more meaning, for me, cockeyed optimist that I am.

Annual leave

From tonight I start two weeks’ leave. Two weeks’ leave! Even if I still don’t know if I’m getting to go away anywhere, it’s still nice to have my time to myself for a fortnight… I can visit some exhibitions, have a drawing day or two, take some peaceful walks, see my family, bake a cake, have a beer with friends, and relax.

Given that the only rational response to the general election results and the associated press coverage is "We live in interesting times", I need to relax; otherwise I might start to scream and throw things.

Relax…

Some kind of wonderful...

I was at the ballet last night. It was a triple bill, with two pieces I’d seen before, one of which (Christopher Wheeldon’s “Electric Counterpoint”) I love and the other of which (Mats Ek’s “Carmen”) worked a lot better for me on the second viewing. The third piece was new, and terrific; Liam Scarlett’s “Asphodel meadows”. One of those occasions when you come out of the auditorium thinking “Wow!” because your expectations have been so greatly exceeded. “Asphodel meadows” is full of images of love and loss, yearning and rejection, grief and death but also of life being held to and entered into with joy (being danced to Poulenc’s gorgeous, jazzy, haunting Double Piano Concerto is a plus, too). On this evidence, Mr Scarlett will go far.

His work is deceptively simple; lyrical, nuanced, emotionally truthful and visually delicate. Traditional in layout and content, it is profoundly not deracinated, but draws on tradition and moves forward in its company without either sneering at it or cringing to it (oh dear, please excuse that ugly metaphor).

I suppose it's partly the result of five years at Art School, but I am deeply suspicious of iconoclasm. So often it seems to me that the iconoclast has nothing else to say beyond their challenge to convention; they are relying on the deification of the rebel in contemporary culture to make their name and swing their fame. But challenge without content is ultimately meaningless, and is dependent on an acceptance of the (crass and false) notion that the past must, by its very nature, be no good.

Mr Scarlett takes the harder but infinitely better path, not denying the worth of his antecedents but developing his work from the roots of what has come before, unafraid to be himself and to use his own ideas and language, as these grow out of that rootstock. With young choreographers like him and Wheeldon around, contemporary ballet can look to a future both secure and deeply exciting.

As regards the other two pieces, I’m still a bit distracted by the recorded voices in “Electric Counterpoint” (Ed Watson doesn’t like his hands? Silly him. He has very nice hands) but the dancing is simply thrilling. “Carmen” remains a bonkers, but surprisingly effective, distillation/revision of the Carmen story. Interestingly, it is a good contrast to Liam Scarlett’s work, illustrating almost exactly the point I was trying to make about tradition and iconoclasm. The least interesting parts of “Carmen” are the most deliberately challenging elements; all the shouting (boring idea), the image of Carmen pulling a red silk ribbon out of Escamillo’s crotch, the comically overt sexuality (all those men rolling around the floor playing with their giant cigars – oh please [not, I hasten to add, that I’d object to Gary Avis rolling on my floor playing with his giant cigar] – it’s just so childishly obvious as a theatrical metaphor). But on the topic of José’s violence and his neuroses, Carmen’s passionate wilfulness, Micaela’s mixture of possessiveness and idealistic romanticism, it hits the spot. And the cast were top notch. Tamara Rojo just is Carmen, Thomas Whitehead’s José is appropriately scary, and it’s good to see the lovely Bennet Gartside getting to show off his bravura chops as Escamillo – and to wear gold lurex, which probably also doesn’t come his way every day.

In the foyer on the way out I saw Edward Watson talking to Christopher Wheeldon. I’m afraid I did a double-take and grinned at them both like an idiot. Mr Wheeldon noticed (he got that “oh sh*t do I know this woman?” expression for a second), so I hurried off before I embarrassed myself any further.

It reminded me of the thing I’m always touched by about great performing artists. They do their thing, and knock my socks off, and then they shower and put on street clothes, go and get a bite to eat and go home on the tube, and feed the cat, or take the dog to the post box for a late-night pee; and so to bed, just like anyone. Yet up they get in the morning and go to work, and prepare to knock my socks off again. What can it be like, to have that sort of talent, and for that astonishing ability to be just part of one’s normal life, the way working at Kew is part of my normal life these days?

This morning I had to queue for ten minutes to vote. I’ve never queued before, and nor had any of the other people in the line – we were all talking about how unexpected it was (in between cooing over a very sweet dog who was accompanying his mistress and heaving huge theatrical sighs while he waited). Everyone said things like “This time it might matter” and “I want to make a point” and “I think this could be an important election”. I find this pleasing. I realise thirty ordinary Chiswick citizens is hardly a representative section of society, but they all seemed to be quite fired up about people-power. If nothing else, this sort of feeling may mean a slightly better turn-out than in recent years.

The results, of course, are in the hands of god. As is the question of whether I get a Greek holiday this year, what with volcanoes and general strikes and all… We live in interesting times.