Dynargh dhe'n Blogofrob

Tuesday 8th February 2005

No, look, I know I've been shit, but I've been very busy you see, what with work and Christmas and going and doing things. Lots of things, which I should have blogged, but didn't. These include:

Xfm's Winter Wonderland;

Xfm's First Friday club night at the Islington Academy;

The Producers;

The Tsunami benefit gig in the Millennium Stadium;

Ian McEwan in conversation and reading from his new novel on the South Bank;

Sunday night improvisation at the Comedy Store; and

Skiing in Champoluc, Italy.

But in between flitting to and from these dazzling events, I've been mostly crouched behind a desk, fingers tapping a yellowing keyboard, back arching into permanent quasimodoism, skin sweating in fear of doing something wrong and brain spasming with horror at the fact I chose this profession: but that's earning a living for you. I only mention it as an excuse for not posting more regularly - that and the fact that I don't own a computer so anything I do post has to be stealthily written and posted during working hours.

Of course, the rolling list of films to the right might suggest that I have had some leisure time: why waste two hours of my life watching 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' when I could be describing Ian McEwan's calm intellect in the face of nonsense questions from an audience desperate to impress, or delineating the beauty of gently carving a path down a piste sprinkled with powder snow? A good question, and one I intend to avoid answering, save to say that if I ever run into Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey or Donald Petrie I'd like to sit them down for 120 minutes and stab them repeatedly in the cerebral cortex with a rusty fork and see how they like it.

In an attempt to stop this becoming a blog just for the sake of it, I did do something noteworthy on Sunday night - Claire and I went to 'Funny Money', a comedy night held in support of Unicef.

Some of the better-known names were Sean Lock, Jeremy Hardy, Adam Buxton, Mackenzie Crook, Jimmy Carr (all brilliantly accomplished) and Arthur Smith (utter dross). These and others motored through 10 minute acts which were interspersed by the compares, Justin Lee Collins and Fearne Cotton. Such a shame. Without these two witless chancers each comedian could have got a few minutes more and I could have avoided squirming with embarrassment at this modern day Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox. They failed to engage with each other or the audience at any level. Justin Lee Collins could have got away with it if he were on his own, despite his limited repertoire of gay 'jokes' and saying 'fuck' a lot. As it was, Fearne Cotton stood at his elbow looking awkward and making redundant comments, her eyes shimmering with the fear of doing something uncool: exactly the same shabby performance she turned in at the tsunami gig - where she actually came off looking semi-professional, next to the full-time cretin Edith Bowman. So it was a bit of luck that the comedy was first class, and made for a fun evening.

70 - posted at 19:16:52
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Monday 29th November 2004

Days roll on, and pass without me noticing. I can imagine myself waking with a start early one morning, shuffling to the bathroom and standing in front of the mirror, examining my withered blotched face in horror. I'm in old age, and the years have quietly passed, politely adding up without complaint. What's provoked this is that it's been over 6 weeks since I got back from East Asia - longer than I was away, but I wouldn't notice this unless I had a calendar in front of me, because days in London just drift past, mainly as a rainy parade of computer screens and concrete, scowls and abuse.

Don't get me wrong - it's hardly the worst place in the world to live - I've seen Pyongyang and the slums of Nairobi. And what would the citizens of Falluja or Baghdad give to be anywhere but there? But I can't help but persist in my view of London - a claustrophobic and oppressive sewer of exhaust fumes, delays and selfishness. For me, the stickers on the tube train windows supporting the farcical bid for the 2012 Olympics sum up the city's shambolic indifference to efficiency, standards of living and social values. It's just a little thing, but the stickers can't be viewed for the most part on the tube. They are see-through, the text on them is in black - so when you're in the darkness of a tunnel (and on the London Underground you normally are, often motionless) they serve no purpose at all. Someone's been paid lots of money to come up with them, the job has been half-heartedly done, no-one's thought it through, and no-one really cares.

But away with the self-indulgent wankery - surely I've been doing some worthwhile things? As seen below, I've spent an evening with Sir Roger Moore - I've also been to see him read Kipling at the British Library. I've enjoyed Bill Bailey's fantastic Part Troll, been pleasantly surprised by The Thrills' set at Brixton Academy and vaguely disappointed by the Gwen and Augustus John exhibition at Tate Britain. And along with its beautiful districts (all too expensive to live in) and its acres of parkland, the diversity and accessibility of art and culture is a seriously redeeming feature of London.

And so it was that I turned up at the Queen Elizabeth Hall the other day to hear some authors reading their work. Laila had a spare ticket, so I said I'd go along, without knowing who I was going to see. Noticing 'Faber & Faber's 75th Anniversary' imprinted on the ticket was intriguing, but I still didn't expect the startlingly impressive line-up. The whole thing was MCed by Andrew O'Hagen, who fumbled through his opening speech before welcoming PD James onto the stage. In a 1930's continuity announcer's voice she read a forgettable scene from a forgettable murder novel, and soon O'Hagen was back, introducing the next reader.

An Asian man, in black jeans and black t-shirt, with floppy centre-parted hair lolloped to the podium and read from his most famous work. Despite appearances, he wasn't a physics student reading from a dissertation, but Kazuo Ishiguro reading from The Remains of the Day. His reading was slightly stilted, but it didn't detract from the excellent material - although the audience seemed a little underwhelmed. Conversely, they opened up to Alan Bennett who was on next, snorting with laughter and love at his cuddly English ways. Amongst other things, Bennett read a compelling passage from The History Boys, which turned from an analysis of Hardy's Drummer Hodge into an easy-going muse on the nature of reading.

After the interval, literature's most famous transsexual took to the stage (assuming Nadia Almada's autobiography, Chop and Change, has yet to be published). Jan Morris was charming and self-deprecating. She read from her poetic and thoughtful books on Trieste and Venice, all the time with her hand against her face, apart from when making witty asides. Next Hanif Kureishi read from the Buddha of Suburbia, before the Nobel prize winner himself, Seamus Heaney, was wheeled out to gruffly mutter through his poems (including the obligatory Digging), which he did excellently. What struck me about all the readers was their lack of arrogance and pride. They are all hugely successful (whether commercially or critically) authors, but they all seemed down-to-earth and personable. I wondered if it would be the same if the evening had presented a handful of famous actors or artists.

Fighting through the scrum for signed books after the event, I realised that evenings like this make London worthwhile, even for a 'miserable, moody old shit' like me (to quote one of my 'friends'). At least the streets can be escaped, and the exhausted city-dweller can find refuge in a cinema or theatre, at a gig venue or in a gallery. Given the buses that arrive with the regularity of a solar eclipse, the elusive 'for hire' taxis and the feckless underground system, the only problem is getting there.

69 - posted at 17:13:16
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Friday 29th October 2004

Fucking hell! I've actually won something

Look!

68 - posted at 18:33:34
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Friday 22nd October 2004

An Evening with Sir Roger Moore

Last Sunday I was absent-mindedly flicking through the pages of the Barbican's cinema program for October - I don't live far from the concrete fortress, and have a made a resolution to make more use of it. I was slightly disappointed that I had missed 'Travels in Greeneland', a season of films based on novels or screenplays by Graham Greene, and turned over the page to find out what seasons were currently running. A Roger Moore season.

My excited fingers fumbled over the keys, but I eventually managed to phone the box office. Unsurprisingly, all tickets for 'An Evening with Roger Moore', in which a film was to be shown followed by an interview with the man himself, were sold out. I despondently booked a couple of tickets for a showing of The Spy Who Loved Me and consoled myself with the thought that there was no way I could have acted earlier to get tickets. When they were freely available, I was probably still cooped up in North Korea, where I imagine they haven't even heard of Lord Rogerson of Mooreshire - although my guide there was aware of the North Korea element in Die Another Day, despite not having seen the film.

I didn't give up. Over the next few days I pestered the box office for returns, and e-mailed the marketing department at work to see if they could get any tickets. Eventually, Leo and I decided to simply head down to Cinema 1 on Thursday evening and hope that there would be some no-shows. But then, yesterday afternoon my phone rang. It was the woman from marketing. She'd come up with the goods - plus they were press tickets, so I didn't even have to pay.

The evening started with a showing of The Man Who Haunted Himself, a psychological thriller from 1970. Roger Moore plays an uptight City gent, who is involved in a car accident, and briefly dies on the operating table before being resuscitated. Once he's up and about again strange things start to happen - he is reminded of events and conversations he's sure he hasn't experienced, he is charged with business deals and negotiations he doesn't recall and a beautiful photographer swears blind that he is having an affair with her - sadly for Roger he can't even remember any details of this. Either he's going mad or there's a doppelganger on the loose. It's an engaging film, shot through with some fascinating footage of London in the early '70s. Roger and a debonair moustache turn in an impressive performance, which should silence those detractors who say he can't act.

A recent article contains his rather touching account of that performance:

When asked about the film nowadays, I always reflect that it was one of the few times I was allowed to act. It's a terrible admission from someone who has made a living from walking in front of cameras. Though, in my defence, I'd previously been cast in roles that required a relatively straightforward approach, either as a romantic lead, heroic lead - or just holding a spear, as I did in my first movie. I'd never been dramatically stretched, as they say.

The credits rolled, the lights came up and Roger entered the auditorium. He walked past my seat, down the stairs and on to the stage where he chatted to his biographer, Gareth Owen, for an hour or so, before the audience were invited to ask questions. Sadly I wasn't given the opportunity to ask any of the array of questions I had for him (What was it like working with the Richards Burton and Harris? Are you still interested in animation and cartooning? What do you think of John Sessions's depiction of you in Stella Street And, (after reciting some specific lines from Octopussy) what do you think of my impression of you?) I also couldn't thank him for escorting me around the Forbidden City last month. Some of the questions that were asked were well presented and interesting. Others, including one asked by the obligatory stalker (not me), were a complete waste of time and were along the lines of 'You once turned on the illuminations in Morecambe in 1974, do you remember a small boy who looked at you a bit funny?' Morons.

So he chatted amiably for another hour or so, about his work for UNICEF, Bond, his on-stage collapse and told and re-told countless anecdotes about his mostly dead actor friends. He came across as a warm and genial man, genuinely self-deprecating and surprisingly down-to-earth. For a 77 year old he has plenty of energy and enthusiasm and took every question, moronic or otherwise, with good humour and charm. It was an excellent evening and I was very lucky to get tickets. All being well I'm off to see him read Kipling at the British Library next week as well.

67 - posted at 13:49:34
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Thursday 30th September 2004

I'm still in Beijing, and it still surprises, infuriates and delights in equal measures. An oddly moving moment last night - Claire and I headed to the Houhai Lake area to find some food, and having satisfied our hunger we slowly made our way back to the hotel. On the way, flanked by the lake on one side, and a busy road thick with trundling electric buses on the other, we found dozens of couples in each other's arms, dancing. A rudimentary speaker system played slow and more upbeat Chinese songs, while the couples delicately twirled or gently stepped back and forth to the music.

Over the weekend we headed north out of the city on a train. Fortunately we had bought our tickets a couple of days previously - the station at first seems impenetrable for a foreigner. There is a special ticket desk for non-Chinese - it just takes a while to learn of its existence a track down. We were headed for Chengde, a medium sized town, four hours away by rail. The journey there was pleasant - the train smoothly took us past more rural scenes, as well as dusty mountains and small towns. For some reason I was harassed for much of the journey by a couple of small Chinese children - their courage grew from simply staring to, nearing the end of the journey, open physical abuse.

Chengde is home to a huge park and palace complex - similar to the Summer Palace in Beijing, it served as a holiday home for the Qing dynasty emperors. The literal name of the park, as translated, is 'Resort for Escaping the Heat', and it took us a day or so in all to explore. As well as heading into the hills in the west of the park, where we shared our walk with various creatures including deer and chipmunk, we went rowing on the large willow lined lake. There are also plenty of temples in Chengde to keep the tourist amused, and we visited a couple, including one called Putuozongcheng Miao, a Lamaist temple, the outside of which is designed to look almost identical to the Potala Palace in Lhasa.

But Chengde also offered a rich variety in the food we ate - or tried to eat. We almost managed to order successfully in a restaurant and a tea-house with no English menus. But on both occasions we miscalculated slightly. In the restaurant, an order for a pork dish turned out to be a large plate of wobbling dark orange pig fat, while in the tea house, on ordering chicken on a stick, we were presented with some things on a stick that looked as though they had been designed by H.R. Giger. They were, I think, silkworm pupae. They tasted OK. We also enjoyed a Mongolian hotpot in Chengde - since the diner chucks his own ingredients into the bubbling soup stock, we were on safer grounds with this.

Back in Beijing, yesterday we stocked up on souvenirs such as kites and a lot of various types of tea. And today, we headed up to a section of the Great Wall of China. We walked 10km along the crumbling structure, from Jinshanling to Simatai. It was exciting to finally get to the wall, and see it snaking over the hills into the distance. The walk wasn't too demanding, although there are some tough uphill stretches and parts where the path has disintegrated to the extent that finding an easy way is challenging. But the real difficulty was presented by the weather. The rain poured down for most of the three hours we were walking, and the wind rushed through us at the highest parts of the wall. At one point mist closed in, and all we could see was the track in front of us, as cloud bubbled up on either side of the wall - it seemed for a second like a pathway to a mythical kingdom. Unfortunately the reality behind such fantastical thoughts was hard to ignore, and arriving at Simatai thoroughly soaking, we had to buy a whole change of clothes from eager stall holders - for our own health and to preserve the upholstery of the car that took us on the long journey back to Beijing.

The day after tomorrow I'm off to a country which prohibits cameras with excessive zooms and mobile phones. Sadly, internet access is definitely out of the question, I should imagine.

66 - posted at 13:34:21
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