For weeks now, a flock of starlings has been ebbing and flowing in the skies above Norwich. Every evening, at dusk. I took a few snaps from the loft with the Nokia.
Yes, I know. They don’t really capture the magnificence of the mumurating birds (that’s what they do, apparently). You had to be there. So, here’s something someone made earlier.
A damp and dingy Saturday afternoon saw us at the Maddermarket Theatre for an am-dram matinee courtesy of the Norwich Players. We were Maddermarket virgins and I fancied a peek at the converted Catholic chapel. A striking Sixties’ add-on foyer looked better on the outside and led us to the interior of the church, reconfigured as an Elizabethan playhouse. We took our pews for The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s loud and densely scripted account of the Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts at the end of the Seventeenth Century. I looked around the audience. Many of them could well have sailed on the Mayflower. By now, we’re used to mingling with the grey herd at Norwich’s cultural events, but the care homes of Norfolk must have been deserted that afternoon. When the over-generous use of dry ice to create the misty ambience of a midnight glade threatened to gas the first four rows, I feared some of the punters might not make it back to the coach.
Miller’s now iconic play is a story of rampant fundamentalism, ignorance and the abuse of power. Mass hysteria is whipped up to impose religious orthodoxy and settle old scores. Miller wrote the piece as an allegory of Fifties’ McCarthyism when the U.S. government hounded and blacklisted alleged communists (and socialists and liberals and anyone else who didn’t tow the party line). Sound familiar? Just take a look around the world. The play’s core message is just as relevant today as it was then. The talented thespians did well to deliver the difficult drama with conviction leaving us with the real sense of a menacing world gone completely bonkers. Sadly, the message was all lost on a few. As we queued to leave the auditorium at the end of the performance, an old Norfolk broad turned to her companion and announced:
“Didn’t understand a word of it. Not a word. Marvelous, wasn’t it?’
With the remorseless horror in the Middle East being played out on our screens every day at 6pm, it’s hard to make sense of the senseless. The baffling case of the school girls who have allegedly travelled to Syria to become brides of ISIS only adds to my bewilderment. Sometimes, it takes humour to wade through the treacle – the British funny bone is a cultural characteristic forged by wartime adversity and a healthy disrespect for the respectable. Cue a recent Facebook exchange with a Bodrum Belle of my acquaintance.
“Hello, Jack, now where’s this new book of yours? Got myself a little girlie spa holiday booked to get away from frozen Bodrum. I need something to read so get printing. Bodrum is seriously cold this winter. Roll on spring. Me and a few gals are off to Egypt, and very cheap it is too, all 5 star inclusive tackiness. Why so cheap? Because the British Government says it’s unsafe and advises not to go. Well that doesn’t hold these gals down. If we do get taken as Jihadi brides, at least we can say we’re used to the heat.”
“Hello, love. The book’s with the designer. It’s not just thrown together, you know. Make sure you pack some sheets – just in case you need to wrap yourself in polycotton for the wedding. You’ll forgive me if I turn down the invitation to your nuptials…”
When I first started this blogging lark way back in 2010, I began to attract cyber-friends from across the blogosphere. Yankee repat, Charles Ayres, was one of them. Right from the off, Charles was a great supporter of my literary pretensions (blog and book) and was one of the first to review Perking the Pansies. He’s one of those virtual pals I know I would enjoy getting drunk with in the real world.
Charles published his own expat story, Impossibly Glamorous in 2013 and has now followed this up with a sequel, ‘San Francisco Daddy’ under the name Charles St Anthony (he thinks it sounds like a posh Yves Saint Laurent scent; it reminds me of a cheap hairdresser I once dallied with). Here’s what I made of it…
Charles St Anthony used to be big in Japan. That was until that earthquake in 2011 which proved that Mother Nature was the bigger bitch. So what did Charles do? Kicked off his heels and chucked himself down the evacuation slide. Inexplicably drawn to tectonic faults, he parachuted into San Francisco. While waiting for the Next Big One, he wrote his brilliant autobiography, Impossibly Glamorous, keeping the wolves from the door with a series of less than glamorous dead end jobs. Gay men never grow old they just grow body hair and Charles joined the party by ditching the waxing and growing the whiskers. Transformed into a ‘bear’, he embarked on a series of romantic liaisons as dead end as the dead end jobs. San Francisco Daddy: One Gay Man’s Chronicle of His Adventures in Life and Love, is Charles’ brutally honest account of his tales of the city. Charles has lost none of his well-honed observational skills or self-deprecating caustic wit. The book is a delight to read. Did Charles land the dream job and the dream man in the end? You’ll have to download San Francisco Daddy to find out.
Check out San Francisco Daddy on…
It’s Oscars night and the smart money’s on Eddie Redmayne as Best Actor for his extraordinary portrayal of scientist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Part love story, part biopic, we saw the film last month and were utterly mesmerised; by the performances, by the score and by the story. Hawking, everyone’s favourite cosmologist, was diagnosed with motor neuron disease at the hopeful age of 21 when he was a rising star at Cambridge. He was given two years to live. He’s now 73 and his place in the heavens is assured. As for Redmayne, he is Hawking’s doppelganger and when he smiles, the entire screen lights up. What kind of cinematic trickery is that?
Maybe, just maybe, something positive will emerge from this.
I never had the pleasure of meeting you Özgecan. I never had the chance to hear you laugh with your friends or sing along to your favorite tune. No I did not know you at all but I know you now. Your name will forever be etched into my heart and into the hearts of millions of others here in Turkey and around the world who woke on Valentine’s Day, the day of romance, to the sickening news of your death at the hands of a monster. We are shocked beyond words hearing of your suffering and of knowing that the simple task of stepping on a bus is no longer safe here in Mersin.
What happened to you happens to other women every day, all over the world. Whether it is in New Delhi or Melbourne monsters can be found everywhere. But with your death comes the news that tens of thousands…
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Every so often, Liam whips out his abacus for a fiscal review. Nothing gets Liam’s juices flowing quite like a multi-coloured spreadsheet and a rub of his crystal ball. As we edge ever closer to our incontinence years, Liam has decided that this year’s theme should be death and the hereafter, to make sure all our ducks are lined up in a neat row should the unspeakable happen. I’ve parked a reasonable pension courtesy of my long career as a municipal bean counter and I plan to draw it at 60. The beer-bottle budget isn’t quite enough to support our Champagne tastes but it should prevent the need to turn a few tricks for the living dead down the day centre. But what would happen if I dropped off my perch in the meantime? Well, here’s the thing. Through a bureaucratic fluke, Liam would come into a small fortune. When I caught him fingering the chicken wire at B&Q, I knew he wasn’t contemplating Eggs Benedict. I could hear him thinking ‘I wonder how I could string this across the top of the stairs?’
According to the Legal Ombudsman, the average Brit moans about something going awry 71 times per week but less than 1 in 5 of us are prepared to do anything about it. It’s well known that us Brits have raised whinging to an art form. Unlike many of my compatriots, I have a relatively positive demeanour. Apparently, I even whistle when I walk (irritating, I know), a practice I inherited from my mother. But even I want to throw rotten eggs at the screen every time I see that fake man of the people (and former investment banker) Nigel Farage (leader of the far right UK Independence Party) and his nauseating blokey face grinning back at me on TV.
I know from bitter experience that the classic moaning minnie has a colonial cousin, stoking up the home fires overseas. Yes, the Bigot Abroad, someone who hates the country they’ve moved to and hates the country they’ve moved from. There’s no pleasing some twats. I crashed into one or two of ’em propping up the bars of Turkey, I can tell you. Nigel’s swivel-eyed fans are alive and thriving in expatland. If only we could deport Nig to join them.
Feel free to throw a rotten egg at this image.
Grey gays are in the news right now. For a start, Joel Grey, the actor who found fame as the camp Emcee from Cabaret, came out publicly at the grand old age of 82. His revelation prompted a conversation about the point of coming out so late in life, as if sexuality only preoccupies the young. For me, coming out at any age is better than never coming out at all. I guess that’s easy for me to say but I’m saying it anyway. A story I recently heard on the radio illustrates my point. A carer used to visit an elderly man. One day he unburdened his ‘dark secret’ and confessed to her that he was gay – but his shame stopped him from ever acting on his feelings. He died as he had lived. Alone.
And then there’s the Royal Pardon granted to Alan Turing. This was the man who cracked the Enigma codes used by German U-boats in World War Two and who many historians believe shortened the conflict by two years. Alan Turing was gay. Shortly after the war, he was convicted of gross indecency (a crime that only applied to gay men) and was chemically castrated. A fine reward from a grateful nation. He committed suicide soon after.
Following a determined campaign by his family, Alan Turing was pardoned in 2013, nine years after the offence of gross indecency was itself finally repealed. Last year, a film about his life was released, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the mathematical genius. And now, the success of the Imitation Game has encouraged a new campaign, this time to pardon all 49,000 men convicted of gross indecency. Most of these men would have had their lives torn apart by this nasty little law. Some will be still be alive. Benedict Cumberbatch, the lovely lovey with the glorious name, has signed an open letter to the British Government in support of the campaign. There’s a petition. Please sign it if you can. I think it’s the least we can do.
I’ll finish off with my own little story about coming out in old age. Liam and I were having a bottle of red in our local when we overheard a conversation by a couple of old codgers standing next to us at the bar. It went something like this:
You’re never too old for a cuddle. I wonder what the happened in the end?
East Anglia tends to get to best of the weather – it’s often drier and warmer than other parts of these wet little islands. During the bleak winter weeks, when low damp clouds cloak the rest of the nation and drive half the population into Thomas Cook to thumb through the glossy travel brochures, we often enjoy clear skies and bright sunshine. But in the last twenty-four hours, we’ve gone from this:
To this…
…as an Arctic snap blew down from the North Pole closing roads, runways, schools and A&E Departments. Brrr…
So today, I thought better of my routine (a stroll to the gym – like I need an excuse to step off the treadmill – followed by a steaming americano and a trawl through the free papers). Instead, I slipped on my fluffy mules, whacked up the heat and tuned into daytime TV. Let’s hope the weather turns by tomorrow. At my age, a diet of soporific trash on the box could easily become habit forming.
Perking the Pansies 