The Odd Shoe Shuffle

The last time I went out with odd shoes on was 17 years ago, and I had plenty of justification.

1. I was pregnant with twins so couldn't see my feet


2. It was dark when I put my shoes on


3. The shoes were the same style, just different colours

I have just got back from Tesco, where I looked down at my feet beyond the trolley to see this:

On the left, my smart-ish Tesco-suitable boots. On the right, my muddy, baggy and quite frankly a bit leaky gardening boots. I am not pregnant, it wasn't dark, and one is a whole inch higher in the heel than the other. I would be glad of any explanation that doesn't include senility.

On the plus side, I did finish my shopping pretty quickly.

Those Lazy, Hazy Days of ...... Autumn

I spent yesterday in the garden and it was glorious. Exactly what summer should be. Blue skies, still air, birds, butterflies and bees wandering about their business and the quietness of a sunny afternoon, occasionally broken by a child playing a few houses away, or a training plane puttering across the sky from nearby Blackbushe airport.

The cats seemed as delighted as I was, and spent the whole afternoon drifting around investigating plants and insects, interspersed with lying on their backs gazing dreamily at the vapour trails in the sky.

We have been waiting for days like this all summer, but somehow when one did arrive yesterday it felt so precious that the months of rain and cloud didn't seem to matter.

Three cheers for Indian summers.

A Surfeit of Shakespeare

Life has been a bit hectic lately, although I have still managed to see three Shakespeare productions in the last few weeks.

The first was the RSC production of The Taming of the Shrew at Stratford, with a surprising and absorbing performance by Michelle Gomez as Katerina. The external play has a modern setting and Christopher Sly is retrieved from a wheelie bin to be treated as a lord and watch the central play which uses seriously over the top elizabethan dress and outrageously hammy acting. He joins in, taking the role of Petruchio after just a few minutes then behaves abominably towards Kate for the rest of the play. Any humour or flirtatiousness is kept well away from the interactions between Kate and Petruchio, all of which are unremittingly grim; although laughter does continue during the first half of the production when I think we aren’t quite sure that he means it… There were a lot of laughs to be had elsewhere throughout, particularly in the first half, and the outrageous accents, and the ever more inventive sexual exploits of Bianca and her beau particularly come to mind.

I was a bit bemused by the change of dress after the interval as the costume gradually became more and more modern, until Bianca’s wedding scene where everyone looked as if they were attending a wedding in 2008. Thinking about it afterwards though, I think it was one of the ways in which the crushing of Kate began to feel so real. The hammy acting gradually diminished through the final acts as well, tightening the pressure, so that by the end, when Lucentio vows that Bianca will obey in just the same way as Kate, it sounds totally believable and not in the least flirtatious or amusing. The reintroduction of the framing plot came as a blessed relief,as the Lady steps in to remove Petruchio from Kate, strip him of his remaining finery and return him to the gutter, whilst Kate picks herself up and leaves with the players

It is the ending though, and the ‘play within a play’ bit which is giving me so much trouble. I have often muttered about the ‘it’s only a play after all’ type of ending, and this is a case in point. The ending makes a lot of sense, establishing the whole misogynistic strand as the fantasy of Christopher Sly. But it also seemed to say is ‘it’s ok, this is just a play and this guy is a creep’. Was this letting us off the hook and making light of Katerina’s subjugation? I still don’t know the answer, but it still has me thinking about it, which is surely the sign of a great piece of theatre.

Whilst I was still mulling this over, I headed over the Globe for a double bill of Timon of Athens, followed by The Merry Wives of Windsor. I hadn’t seen Timon before, and I wonder why this isn’t produced more often. Although it is a bit wordy, this play is right on the button for contemporary issues, as a satire on greed, wealth and what happens when you run out of cash and places to borrow from. I thought of this play a number of times this week as the Lehman Brothers and HBOS debacles unfolded, and I wonder whether the Globe had forseen the extent of the credit crunch when planning their programme for this year. The costume was generally traditional, but with a wonderful twist - all of the company except for Timon and his faithful Steward were wearing capes that looked pretty unremarkable at first, but turned into crow-like wings as soon as an arm was lifted.. A rope mesh had been strung across the heads of the groundlings at roof level, allowing various members of the company to spend time lazily, menacingly, loitering above our heads, watching for an opportunity to swoop and make a killing as weaknesses became apparent.

Simple, but savage and absolutely brilliant. It is playing until 3rd October - See it if you can.

I saw the Merry Wives of Windsor after Timon, and we planned it to be a bit of light relief. It certainly was that, although perhaps the contrast was too great on one day. I found myself groaning a bit at the old jokes before I realised how ridiculous my complaint was. Often described as the first sitcom, it was played with such lightness and a modern sensibility that could easily have fitted into My Family.

Just three plays, but what a range – I reckon this Shakespeare bloke might just have something.

Finally... Elbowed into fashion

I was chuffed to see that the Mercury Music Prize was won by Elbow, accidentally making me on-trend, as this was the only band on the list that I actually actively like or have seen live. As is the usual way with these things, someone will quickly realise their mistake and Elbow will now plummet rapidly from favour to make way for a band that someone like me couldn't possibly have heard of or liked.

Still, I'm enjoying my moment while it lasts, and I hope they are too.

Afterlife: also featuring acrobats, the Queen, Radiohead and rhyming couplets

The rainclouds have been presiding over something of a theatrical drought for me this summer, with real life constantly getting in the way.

So, when I had a free evening yesterday I decided to go along to whatever was available at the National Theatre. I ended up with a front row seat at Afterlife . Praise be to Travelex and last minute tickets.

Beforehand, I had a wander around the Press Photographers Year exhibition, which I highly recommend if you can get there by Saturday. Some particular images that stood out for me included the Queen standing glumly under a 1970s style clear plastic umbrella which was clearly specifically chosen to match the royal frock; a photo of Radiohead taking their own photo; a surprisingly hairy Daniel Radcliffe without any clothes; a startling image of a car in the summer floods; and Gordon Brown looking stressed on his way to breakfast.

Afterlife is a biography of Max Reinhardt told through the Everyman plays he instigated at the Salzburg Festival before the Nazis arrived. Nicely staged and well acted, I didn't particularly object to the rhyming couplets that the critics hated so much. Roger Allam did a sterling job as usual, and I thoroughly enjoyed David Schofield's performance as Muller/Death. Poor old Selina Griffiths though, typecast again as Gusti Adler, Reinhardt's PA. She played a similar character in The Smoking Room, and reminds me of Joyce Grenfell as Miss Gossage. But maybe that's just me.

Being in the front row has its advantages, but also brings its own problems: squeaky floorboards on the stage; being able to see the fire exit sign below stage as Reinhardt descends after death; and having to guess what the Nazis were doing when they all pulled a very strange face in unison. I guess that there was a lighting effect to produce scary death heads or something, but it was completely lost on me...

The set was well done, with grand marble steps leading right down to our feet in the front row. It illustrated the grandeur of Reinhardt's productions and lifestyle, and his attempts to break through the fourth wall very well. Whether intentionally or not though, the attempts to reach across the void were all a bit awkward. Comments to the audience, such as 'Madam, your wig is crooked' were greeted with embarrassed laughter and a tiny hint of a groan. This could all be taken as a comment on Reinhardt's style and ultimate failures, but I personally think not. The highlight though was Reinhardt's direction of servants and eventually the whole cast in a perfectly choreographed mime of a dinner being served. Wonderful.

Overall, the play didn't add up to as much as it thought it did, but it was still a perfectly enjoyable night out and I don't really think the critical venom was justified. So, it's worth a look if you can get a discounted seat, as I notice top price seats have now gone up to £41 .... Ouch!

Oh, and on the way in to the theatre I stopped to watch a great dance/acrobatic display in the outdoor performance space. I love the South Bank.

Edewkation, eddication, educashun

I have been meaning to write something about the TV programme Can’t Read, Can’t Write, which finished a few weeks ago but I can’t seem to get my thoughts down in less than 3.000 words, so I thought it would probably be better not to put you through that particular ordeal.

However, my sons get their GCSE results tomorrow, so I thought I would have my say about exams before I know how they have done.



There are bound to be the usual comments about exams getting easier, but the questions looked pretty similar, and occasionally harder than mine, even if they were put into slightly more accessible language. Teaching is now focused on the test and there is no pussy-footing around with anything much that doesn’t help with exams; so it seems to me that grades are bound to improve on that basis.

Whether it means our children are getting a better education is a completely different question though. I went to a pretty poor comprehensive, a feeder school for the Ford factory down the road. Although I loved my time there, learnt a lot, and did pass my exams, I certainly didn’t get the shiny grades that are expected nowadays. But then exams weren’t necessarily the point in those dim and distant days. I also didn’t get the breadth of knowledge that I wanted – I couldn’t learn Latin or the classics, for example (although my lifespan in the school grounds would probably have been very limited if I had). What is interesting though, is that one of my sons said last week that even with its problems my education had been much broader than his. Overall, I agree with him. That is a bit of a worry really, if a pretty dodgy comprehensive in London in the 1970s produced a more rounded education than that of a highly rated comprehensive in the leafy and wealthy home counties in the 2000s.

My kids will have better grades, and a better knowledge in the narrow range of areas they have studied than I did, but who got a better education is still a difficult question to answer, and a much more interesting one than whether exams are getting easier.

My Day Out

So, the plan was, head into London by lunchtime, pick up a boat at Westminster pier to take us through and around the Thames Barrier on the water, then on to the Thames Barrier pier, so we could spend an afternoon at the visitor centre learning about a huge great machine that looks like a series of buildings and also have a cup of tea and blueberry muffin in the café. I checked the boat timetable online, and all looked good. After I printed it out I noticed a tiny note at the bottom which said ‘These boats cruise to/from the Thames Barrier, but only stop at Barrier Gardens Pier for pre-booked groups’. Hmmm, surely not? So I rang them, and yes, it is true. If you want to visit the Thames Barrier you cannot visit by boat unless there are 15 of you wanting to do the same thing at the same time. You have to go by car, or have a fiddly and time consuming journey by bus or train. The time involved means that you can’t get up close to the barrier on the water, and visit the visitor centre in the same afternoon (or at least not without scrapping the cup of tea and piece of cake). When I rang the Thames Barrier Visitor Centre they didn’t seem remotely perturbed by this.

We went to the Imperial War Museum instead. Lovely tea and cake.