A bit clangy and a bit jammy

• I spent the weekend before last reading The Road. I cried when I finished it. It’s a brutal and often shocking book, with a pared-down, monotonous (although hypnotic) voice. It’s also very sad, tender and intimate.
• The weekend before that, I saw Avatar in 3D. I loved the colours and concepts in the Na’Vis’ world; but was disappointed that there was a bog-standard, unoriginal Hollywood storyline slapped over the top of it.
• Last weekend I watched Up. I thought it was great, but after a certain sequence near the beginning, spent the first half of the film in a rather tearful, wobbly state.
• I’m reading A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book, and finding it quite a delectable feast. I just wish I had longer stretches of time available to devote to it.
• I went to see Three Sisters at the Lyric Hammersmith on Saturday. It was a Filter production. I really enjoyed it, especially the first half. Although I like Filter, I was a bit worried that their penchant for using technology would mess with the original version too much. It didn’t, thankfully. Saying that, during the scene changes, they played snippets of various highly contrasting songs; one of which was Madonna’s Like a Virgin. Jarring, and confusing, to say the least.
• I now have every Friday afternoon off work. This has turned out to be even better than it sounds.
• I hope I will rediscover the ability to write about things in more depth soon. I am probably just in a state of semi-hibernation that I will hopefully awake from in March.
• There was a light dusting of snow this morning. I really hope it wasn’t a portent for the rest of the month. The thought of more snow makes me feel weary.

It may seem as if my New Year’s resolution was to run away from this blog and let tumbleweed accumulate over the pages, but it wasn’t (is this a good thing? I’m not sure). Instead, as with every year, the same kinds of resolutions are vaguely floating around in my head. Each year I seem gradually less bothered to actually try working on them.

I do have a reading-related one that I’m going to try my hardest to stick to, though. It is the start of a new decade, after all, so perhaps I should make a special effort. The other day, I counted my unread books. There are 91. I put them in this list. 91 is a far higher number of books than I read in a year, or, if the last two years are anything to go by, in two years. I’ve decided that this means I don’t need to buy any new books this year. I will instead knuckle down and read the ones I already have, even though I’m a bit scared of some of them. This also makes sense as there is simply no more space for books in our little flat.

I have broken this resolution already, though, by buying three new books yesterday (The Little Stranger, Life Class and The Dream Life of Sukhanov). They don’t really count, though, because a gift card (mostly) paid for them, and two of them were on sale. They also don’t count because I am convinced that it is still December. I’ll only realise that it is actually the dark and ominous month of January when I go back to work tomorrow (and start my new second job on Wednesday, but I’m trying not to think about that).

The first book I’ve (almost) finished this year is something slightly different to my usual reading fodder: For Richer for Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker by Victoria Coren. I don’t play poker. I have been taught it a few times, but was drunk both of those times, and so remember nothing about it. I wanted to read the book because of Coren. I loved Balderdash and Piffle, not least because she was presenting it.

I like the book, despite the occasional detailed descriptions of poker games which go right over my head. I like the fact that Coren is mostly drawn to the game because it represents (or represented) an underworld full of strange, damaged, fragile people. Although Coren is down to earth and funny, and passionate about and excited by poker, the book also explores the sadness and nostalgia that it triggers. These have probably been my favourite bits. She describes a glorious fortnight in Vegas as feeling like “we’re six years old and playing hopscotch in the summer”, but then acknowledges that “pure pleasure, pure contentment, always curls around a small sad centre, because you know there is nothing permanent.”

All parts of the book, even those about her childhood and adolescence, are written in the present tense. This choice was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass, in which, Coren says, Carroll is “either looking back into the past, feeling the sunshine and drifting boat as if he were still there … or looking forward from the present, imagining a time when the sky and the boat and the summer will have vanished.” She decides that he actually “feels both at once. The current, the retrospective, the projected, all are written in the present tense because they are all, always, mixed up together. Because, even as something is happening, it is gone.”

I went to see a play called Cock at the Royal Court Theatre on Friday night. It’s annoying that it has such a provocative title. It was such a good, complex play, that I just want to concentrate on writing about it, and pretend it’s called something really bland. Any puns I happen to come up with are unintentional (which is the only way I tend to pun successfully anyway).

The play was about a man, John (Ben Whishaw), who lives with his unnamed boyfriend (M, played by Andrew Scott), and cheats on him with a woman (W, Katherine Parkinson). The first part of the play consists of scenes between John and M, charting the deterioration of their relationship, with the time lapse between each scene marked with a weird quiz-show-type noise. Then we see what he has been describing to M: meeting W, having sex with her, and telling her it’s over with the man. It all comes to a head (oops) at a dinner party, to which M has invited his father (F, Paul Jesson) ‘for backup’, as John had told M that the very feminine W was ‘quite manly’.

It was set in the round, with a green circle as the stage, and the audience in tiered, bare wooden seating. The fluorescent lighting evoked queasiness. The dialogue was fast-paced, ultra witty, and often very funny. There were not only no props, but also not much ‘doing’. Most events, such as passing wine or a coat, or a slap in the face, and even sex scenes, were described or insinuated very skilfully with speech and sounds. It was very effective, proving that having to imagine a scene can be more powerful than seeing it. This minimal approach also helped to emphasise the fact that it was very much a play about John’s psychological state.

There were a few moments when it seemed that dialogue was overcompensating for this lack of ‘doing’. For example, it did not seem essential that John needed to spell out the fact that M invited F to the dinner party because he was insecure. There were also times when the script seemed a bit too self-aware, such as John (or M, can’t recall which) pointing out that John’s ‘problems’ were insignificant compared to those of people living in developing countries. The conclusion was that they were lucky to have enough food and water, yes, but that John’s problems did matter after all. I wondered if this was necessary, or if it was just the playwright’s sudden (and understandable, I think) need to justify that what he was writing about was important enough.

This is just nit-picking, anyway. The play made the excellent point that who you love is more important than what you are. Common sense, maybe, but presented in such a lucid and moving way. John’s relationship with W is set up as being loving and tender. She makes him feel ‘his age’. A kiss between them near the end is one of the only actions that is done, rather than described. M, on the other hand, makes him feel stupid; like he is a pet. To break up with M and stay with W seems like the only sensible option.

But the play was also about the fact that John has no idea who he is, as he explains in a brilliant speech about never knowing what to wear and being a different person depending on who he is with; about ‘not having a personality’, unlike most other people. So he ends up staying with M. His sense of identity is clearly so messed up that he would rather stick with the life in which he has an assigned place: as a gay man. He stays, because it’s ‘easier’. The final scenes of John’s almost exasperating drawn-out indecision and crouching on the floor, holding his head, stand for him mourning the rest of his life. He knows what he’s thrown away by going for appearances and superficial belonging over something much more meaningful.

I haven’t seen a huge number of plays this year, and the ones I have seen have all been of a very different style to Cock, but this was the best play I’ve seen this year, by quite a large margin.

On Saturday I saw Kneehigh’s Hansel and Gretel in Bristol. There was much to admire about the production, even while waiting around in the foyer before it started. There were themed props everywhere: a house made of bread; rustic-farmhouse-kitchen-style furniture and books; oranges stuck with cloves; recipes on blackboards. The attention to detail was brilliant. Rather than go the conventional way to find our seats, we were told we could choose one of two side passages: the ‘witch’s’ way or the ‘Hansel and Gretel’ way. We went the witch’s way. Every little dark and dank nook and cranny of the Old Vic had been decked out in fittingly spooky style. During the interval we explored the Hansel and Gretel way too, and found gingerbread men hanging from red ribbons, and a playroom-like scene with a colourful, stuttery film playing on a loop.

The stage set was kept relatively free of props. In resourceful Kneehigh fashion there was a large metal frame and various sorts of contraptions that were used inventively throughout the show. Their customary live music, singing, and quirkiness in use of movement and props were all in abundance. There were some excellently bizarre performances, especially from Giles King as Hansel and Gretel’s mother/Hamlet, the witch’s assistant. The scenes in the witch’s house were great, too: appropriately grotesque, dramatic and disconcerting.

I have to say, though, that I didn’t think it was one of Kneehigh’s best performances. The elements were all there, but it did not seem to come to life in as glorious a way as most of their previous shows have done. I found the first half of the play quite slow. I found it difficult to get into the spirit of it. I knew it was supposed to be a children’s-panto-with-a-twist, like Rapunzel, but it did not hit the right notes at times. The kids in the audience seemed to be enjoying it, though. It could just be, of course, that I am too grumpy, old and cynical for Kneehigh now; but I hope that’s not the case.

I’ve had three jobs before. It was for a short period almost three years ago, when I was doing the course that let me become a librarian. I was working in a library most evenings; working in another library on Fridays and some Saturdays; and doing sporadic data entry for a sociology researcher. Fun. Well, not really, because I didn’t last long trying to juggle them.

Somehow I’ve done it again, though. From January I’ll be working half the week in my current job; the other half of the week in the new job I was offered last week (woo) and other random hours doing my question-answering job. Last week I passed my induction for the question-answering job. I had to read a lot of documentation, and answer an initial batch of questions. It took up a lot of time, and gave me a headache. But I am glad I’ve started doing it, though, mostly because many of the questions that come through are deeply amusing, or baffling. Why? I think. Why on earth do you want to know that? But I’m not allowed to ask questions back, so I have to answer the best I can. Or just skip it.

For the moment, though, I am trying to savour the fact that until January I only have to commute into London and sit in an office for two days a week. Until today I had numerous mixed feelings about this, mostly panicky ones to do with money. I also felt strangely sad when I left work last Tuesday evening. I missed my job and the people, even though I was going back. These wistful, fond feelings were quickly erased when I went back there on Monday and had to endure the daily grind again. I now have lots of time, though, in which to finish my novel for NaNoWriMo. 20,000 words in six days? No problem.

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I am still being slack with my reading. I have been reading another Diana Wynne Jones book, Charmed Life, for quite a while. I like it a lot (but I’m not sure if any of her books can surpass Fire and Hemlock). I’ve also just started Ann Tyler’s Digging to America, which I am enjoying. It seems to be of the contemporary-American-family-saga type of fiction that I tend to enjoy. I have noticed, though, that Tyler really likes describing what people are wearing. I don’t really mind it. I quite like it. Maybe every writer does it and I’m only picking up on it now for some reason. It just seems to be a prominent feature of the book.