Fish, Nightwish, Pain and garlic in one day.

I spent an absolutely marvellous day in London yesterday. Funny: I’ve lived close enough to London for years to have done all the touristy bits twice and thrice over, but I never seem to get there.

First time for everything. I started off my day on South Bank – avoiding the usual hordes of tourists who were clustering around the London Eye like ants around a fallen marshmallow – and listening to the sound of steel drum and merry-go-round music. A tip of the hat here to the living statue dressed as a splendid pirate captain, who shook my hand and bowed when I gave him money. Tsk, these pirates. They’ll do anything for money.

I’d taken it into my head to visit the London Aquarium, you see – a somewhat guilty pleasure as I’m sure no-one over the age of twelve is supposed to find these places exciting. Not at all was I motivated by the fact that it was bloody freezing and I like being warm. I really do like aquariums. They have some very large sharks in there, as well as friendly rays you can stroke – ray skin is not soft, as it looks, but rough, like sharkskin.

That done, I wandered off to check into my hotel for the night: as I had a date at the Astoria with some long-haired rockers to keep, and you mustn’t keep them waiting. Called into a little place my gigging partner recommended around the backstreets of the Astoria which is called Garlic & Shots for food. Trust me, it’s all in the name. If you don’t like garlic, don’t even think of going there. Everything is garlic, including the beer, the foamy head of which had lumps of crushed garlic floating in it. Recommended by me: the garlic chocolate truffle and a shot called the Iron Hook (no guesses why I happened to pick that one…)

And so, to the gig. Nightwish are a favourite band of mine, and I think I’m in serious danger of getting to like their warm-up band, Pain, as well. The last time I saw Nightwish live the warm-up band weren’t up to much: kudos this time, guys. My first smoke-free gig (and considering how teeny the Astoria is, good thing – we’d all have run out of air or died of passive smoking, whichever came first) and it was a really, really good one. The crowd warmed up really well, there was no meanness, minimal shoving except during moshing, and I get the distinct impression that if Tuomas ever fell into the audience by mistake during a set his survival chances would only be slightly greater than the chance of him getting out with any clothes on.

Highlights had to be: Pain performing Same Old Song and a version of Eleanor Rigby, Tuomas’ Jack Sparrow doll, Bye Bye Beautiful, Wish I Had An Angel, (noticing a theme – anything that Marco sings in…) some crowd wags holding up alternative lyrics during Wishmaster, and the fact that all the band members seemed to be having as much fun as we were.

Today’s theatre is pirate a la mode.

In the spirit of wanting to indulge in more culture this year, I went right ahead and indulged in the Birmingham Stage Company’s Treasure Island at the Marlowe Theatre yesterday.

I must say, I was quite impressed. The actors were pictures of enthusiasm the whole way through, many of them taking on two or more roles (Ben Gunn doubling up as Mr Arrow and Blind Pew), and the set worked very well – a static build that could become, with some tinkering by the cast themselves, the ship’s deck, a jungle paradise and the Admiral Benbow inn. Not sure the children in the audience were so riveted: one little mite sat near me was terribly bored and said so several times. He might have been a bit young for it – only perked up when the muskets were firing and the cutlasses were drawn. At least I hope he was too young – it’s either that or the Jack Sparrow culture has ruined traditional pirate tales for young ones.

Full points however to the young theatre-goer who came to the show dressed as Captain Hook.

In other news, I’m trying to raise money for Cancer Research this year, the same as I do every year. Sponsor an old villain trying to make good if you’ve a mind to.

Now I have officially crossed over into hyper nerd-dom.

Because I have to see this so badly it almost hurts.

I just love things like this: cross-genre, cross-language, practically cross-dimensional. Last weekend I went to see Tosca at the Royal Albert Hall (which was splendid) - now, I find this absolute treasure concept of theatre spectacular, courtesy of a copy of the Evening Standard I picked up by chance on my daily commuter train.

See you all at the Garrick come April.

Hmm.

I have a job interview on Thursday.

Haven’t had one of those in about 4 years.

I’m a little intimidated by the concept.

Clothing porn!

Let me qualify that title.

I like fashion from the 1600-1900s. No, scratch that. I love it. If it has lace, embroidery, seed pearls, silk, taffetta, more lace, gold braid, brodere anglaise or velvet on it, I like it. And if it’s all of those things together and on a man with long King Charles-type hair, even better.

I went to see the Dutch Masters exhibition at the National Gallery yesterday. Oh, good grief. Amazing. Not only for the clothes themselves, which were wonderful, but the depiction of the clothes. Rembrandt and Frans Hals in particular were studies in patience and attention to light and detail. I was completely in awe and could have stood in front of Hals’ Portrait of William Coymans all day without getting bored.

Frans Hals is probably most famous for his painting of The Laughing Cavalier, but I have to say, the Coymans is going into my lifelong favourite artworks list.

I miss going to galleries. Someday I’m just going to go into London and spend a whole day doing nothing but galleries.

In other news: I’m writing a new Nosgoth fanfic, for the first time in years. And colouring up an anthro panther for a friend of mine who’s been so very patient in waiting for it.

telling this with a sigh

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
-Robert Frost

Started thinking about poems by Robert Service, which got me onto “poets called Robert” and hence to Robert Frost. Funny how poetry seems to come upon me unawares. I sit all unthinkingly,  and then suddenly, there it is, like the curse of the Lady of Shalott – boom – the desire to read poetry again.

You know, there are lots of poets called Robert. It must be a particularly lyrical name.

When I get my new desk, I am going to have to use it wisely.

“how does it live, I hear you ask?”

“How does it live, I hear you ask? How does the poor, pathetic specimen survive in today’s harsh and irrational world? The sad answer is “Not very well.” Faced with the inescapable fact that human existence is mad, random and pointless, one in eight of them crack up and go stark slavering buggo! Who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this, any other response would be crazy!”

- the Joker, in Alan Moore’s “The Killing Joke”

My life has begun to revolve around syringes full of pink antibiotics.

My cat will require twice daily drug doses for six months before he will be well enough to survive without them. I won’t pretend this doesn’t make me a tad frayed around the edges at present. I have to get up extremely early in the morning so I can give him his dose, clean him up as inevitably a large amount of the stuff seems to dribble out all over him and then clean my own resulting wounds (he hates the drugs: he fights back) before I go to work. The same scene is played out again when I get home from work, having spent a day fretting about leaving him alone in the house.

I think I have about an hour and a half a day I can safely call my own between work, cat nursing and going to bed.

Still. No workee, no moneee to pay the veteee. And believe me, it’s a lot of moneee. But he’s alive. He’s worth it.

This aside, I’m now reading the rest of William Horwood’s Duncton books. God bless the local secondhand bookshop. I can’t seem to do anything creative, so I’m spending my free hour and a half reading or watching endless reruns of Up Pompeii. As my father said when I told him of my viewing habits: “Oh dear. Things must be bad.” When I go to bed I listen to my old Sherlock Holmes stories, which have always helped calm me down in times of crisis (I highly recommend them).

As often is the case with life: it’s all about distraction.

Thinking of mindless distractions, I’ve also joined Facebook, having been poked by a friend of a friend. Another day, another social networking site that I don’t have time for. Although anyone who wants social networking with an exhausted woman dressed in an old tracksuit covered in pink antibiotic-laced cat drool must be crazy.

Let no-one ever say again that my cat has no brain.

Because today I have seen X-ray proof, and he does, and it has been in severe jeopardy.

You’ll have to excuse any absence or lack of coherance lately and currently. My little cat suffered a sudden malady last Wednesday which resulted in his requiring speedy brain surgery. He is to date still alive and in hospital, where we visited him today.

This has meant: no writing, no drawing, no ability to concentrate on anything much for the past few days. So nothing much to talk about. Strange how although many artists claim that without pain there can be no art, I find that pain robs me of my ability to create. A shame, seeing as creating things is a very good sort of therapy for me.

Thankyou to everyone who has been there for me, offered their good thoughts and support. Thankyou to every single vet or vet’s assistant who has helped my little cat.

On a side note, I have managed to read three books: Duncton Wood, Skulduggery Pleasant, and Heart-Shaped Box. Reviews will follow when I can think again.

Back to the world of dreams

I get back from holiday and there is deathwatch beetle in my house. Again.

How can something so small be so irritating? It’s like having the world’s smallest set of maraca players living in my walls. It even beats the time the roof gave way in a rainstorm and I ended up shovelling pieces of mummified seagull out of my fireplace. Let’s face it, at least I could find the mummified seagull and hurl it binwards. And at least it was dead. These things? You find yourself at 3 a.m. standing with your ear against the wall, boggling crazily at the beams in the ceiling with rabid foam on your lips and crying in a voice both great and terrible “Where are you, you invertebrate bastard?!”

I am going to kill them once I find out the best way of doing so. I tell them this occasionally, usually late at night after the whole rabid foam thing – I don’t think it intimidates them but it certainly makes me feel better.

Anyway. Holiday. Marvellous. I came out of it with a whole bunch of good memories, minus a bottle of Captain Morgan’s, and a big clutch of sketches and scribblings that I have real hope will turn into something useful. I’ll scan a few when I get some more time early next week. Travelling is good for inspiration, I think. I’ve had more weird and wonderful ideas for stories and sketches while on the train than anywhere else lately.

I also got to go and see 300 again, so I could enjoy grinning inanely in appreciation at the blood, battering and beardy men. It’s a marvellous spectacle, if only for the nerd in you that wants to say things like ”Ooh. They did all that background stuff with CGI, you know. It was all filmed against a blue screen in a big empty railway building in the middle of nowhere.”

1,800 abs!

“…it’s two hours of buff men in pants shouting: “RAGGHHH!” a lot, bleating about dying a glorious death, meeting new, interesting people and killing them in new, interesting ways.”

-a review of “300″ by The London Paper.

They say that like it’s a bad thing.

Personally, I really enjoyed 300.  It’s not going to win any chick flick awards for its sensitivity, but hell, I like it all the better for it. Visually it’s stunning, Gerard Butler is excellent as beardy Leonidas, and there is more bellowing, blood and bravado than you could fit in a football stadium at closing time on World Cup day.

I’m going away for a week or so to write things and unbend my nerves. Be good.