Another weekend in the Smoke, another birthday surprise, this time from my old dance partner, Ian. We were treated to matinee tickets for Once, a new musical recently imported from across the Pond. I’d never heard of it but since we’re living in the sticks with our fingers off the pulse, this will surprise no-one. When we realised the set was based around a Dublin bar, we were immediately hooked. By the end of the performance, we were on our feet (as was everyone else). I’m a sucker for a love story and Once ladles it on with a trowel. Cue the brooding young busker with a broken heart and the sassy Czech lass with a quick tongue and a dodgy Hoover (don’t ask). Boy meets girl supported by a catholic cast of Celts and Slavs. Everyone sings, everyone dances and everyone fiddles, strums, beats and blows: the ensemble is the chorus and the orchestra, all wrapped up in an emerald green bow and a Bohemian flourish. Funny, touching and tender, we wept in the aisles. ‘Twas a love story to gladden this old cynic’s heart.
Old Posts Never Die
Readers of Perking the Pansies tell me that I’ve laid down some vintage posts in my time. They very kindly don’t mention the dross. Search engines and their secret algorithms have also been generous and thankfully, the blog is up there in the rankings. Still, it was a surprise when I received an out-of-the-blue comment from Rhona who stumbled across a guest post from August 2011 called Turks and Tampons. Rhona was having a periodic Turkish crisis and wrote:
Jack, I thought you might be amused by the fact that I found your blog via this post. I was on my first trip to Turkey (Gulluk) with my daughters when without going into detail we found ourselves in need of tampons…..problem! I googled ‘tampons in Turkey’ and there you were lol. But there also was this: tamponcrafts. Enjoy!
I certainly did enjoy a deep trawl through the wonder that is Tampon Crafts – a thousand and one things to do with Lil-Lets. Who knew that Tampax Pearls was so versatile? As Christmas is coming up, I’ve got Liam knocking up a nativity scene for the mantle piece. The Baby Jesus has never looked so absorbent.
One Equal World
I’m always chuffed when I’m asked to write a few words about the bees in my bonnet. One Equal World publishes thoughtful and thought-provoking articles about equalities issues and they asked me about our experiences of Turkey. This was my two-penneth…
I have often been asked why we chose an Islamic country as a place to step off the treadmill for a while and rest our work-weary bones. It’s not quite that simple; too often, the casual observer will lump all Muslims together. In truth, the Islamic world is no more homogenous than the West. There’s little to distinguish a grandma on a donkey in Christian Greece or Bulgaria from one trotting through a Turkish village. More…
Roy’s Town
At the tail end of summer, we took an afternoon excursion to Wroxham, gateway to the Norfolk Broads. We expected pretty and quaint with teahouses, old pubs and happy holiday-makers splashing about in boats. We were disappointed. Anything worth preserving got bull-dozed in the seventies. The small town is entirely dominated by someone called Roy – Roy’s Supermarket, Roy’s Pharmacy, Roy’s Toys, Roy’s Garden Centre (and, no doubt, Roy’s Baby Care and Roy’s Undertakers – a company town from cradle to the grave). Even Ronald McDonald, that global corporate clown, has thrown in the towel by flogging his sweaty burgers and thin chips inside one of Roy’s gaffs. It’s probably a franchise. Far be it for me to criticise anyone who provides local employment but what’s the special deal if Roy kicks the bargain bucket?
Philomena
The nice people at Virgin Media offered us two preview tickets to see Philomena, Judi Dench’s latest flick. The advanced screening was at our local Odeon Multiplex which isn’t my venue of choice – too Las Vegas lounge for my liking. I prefer Cinema City, a nice bar-restaurant with a picture house attached. But, it would have been rude to refuse a freebie. Based on true events, the film is about an elderly Irish woman trying to find the son she was forced to give up to the nasty nuns following a quickie with handsome young buck at a village fair. Well, it was the buttoned-up no-thrills Fifties and unmarried mothers were the whores of Babylon. The film co-stars Steve Coogan (who also produced it and co-wrote the screenplay) as the real-like Martin Sixthsmith, former BBC journalist and Blairite spin doctor who wrote the book upon which the film is based. The movie went on general release today so I won’t add a spoiler. Suffice it to say it ain’t The Sound of Music but it isn’t Angela’s Ashes either. The subtle, gentle and often funny script allows the harrowing story to unfold and take centre stage without the outrage slapping the audience about the face. Dame Judi is, as always, superb and Steve Googan (who is more famous as Norwich’s very own fictitious DJ, Alan Partridge) is surprisingly good. It’s well worth shelling out a few shillings for.
Beamed Back to Bodrum
The beauty of renting is that we’re not responsible for all those annoying little things that inevitably go wrong around the home. We had a dodgy boiler that refused to heat water (though it was more than happy to heat the radiators, even when not asked). Our friendly landlady despatched a boiler-suited chatty man with cute dimples. He installed a brand new heat exchanger (No idea? Me neither). I provided tea for his labours and listened intently to my boiler man recall his boiler tales. A dull date on a Saturday night, I thought. Despite the cute dimples.
Then we became undone by a temperamental washing machine that only spun when it could be arsed. The reluctant spin went on for weeks. We were seriously in danger of being buried under sopping piles of dripping undies. Our landlady dispatched a smiley man in baggy bottoms and a corporate polo top. I provided tea for his labours as he tried to wring a final spin out of the moody machine. “It’s knackered,” he concluded. His home-spun words were music to my ears. I almost invited him out for dinner.
A week later, our landlady despatched a replacement appliance escorted by a thick-set older man with an even thicker-set accent. He was accompanied by a spotty young apprentice. “Where’s it plugged in?” asked the old man. “Absolutely no idea,” I replied. After a lot of huffing and puffing, hauling and heaving, he found the socket behind the fridge. Then I watched him slice the live wire with a Stanley knife. The loud bang almost gave me a seizure. Unlike me, he wasn’t the least bit perturbed by the black flume and strong whiff of electrical burn or the fact that he’d blown all the sockets in the kitchen. The young spotty thing was shocked into silence. For one brief moment, I thought I’d been beamed back to Bodrum where all workers are fully qualified electricians/plumbers/carpenters/roofers/rocket scientists (delete as appropriate).
Laurel and Hardy didn’t get tea for their trouble, I can tell you. Well, the kettle wasn’t working.
This Sceptred Isle
I really like this. Okay, it says nothing about the evils of empire, world plunder, the subjugation of the Celtic Fringe by the perfidious English or the challenges of twenty-first century multiculturalism, and it’s narrated by a fast-talking Yank. But as a five minute history lesson for the modern, short attention-span generation, it ain’t half bad. The message to my overseas friends is that England isn’t Britain.
Cheers to Angela in Turkey for this one, my ever helpful dolly-drop Bodrum Belle.
Thou Shalt Blog
Read the blogging gospel according to St Jack, chapter one, on Displaced Nation.
Those who regularly dip into Jack the Hack will know that I’m a passionate advocate of blogging—for fun and for glory. With a little effort and imagination, you really can make the Web work for you, and blogging is a very good place to start (cue Julie Andrews, the old Dame who tragically lost her fabulous soprano timbre). Still not convinced? Then let’s start at the very beginning…
Downtown
Unlike many of the stately old homos of my generation, I never quite developed a taste for the torch-song trilogy of Garland, Minnelli or Bassey. And I can take or leave the new old girls on the block – the fallen Madonna, nip and tuck Cher or crazy Diana (Ross not Spencer). But, my spot is very soft for a classy dame from Surrey, a woman who first hit the streets in the year war broke out. Then, she was performing with an orchestra in the entrance hall of a Kingston-upon-Thames department store for a tin of toffee and a gold wristwatch. She was seven. Seventy four years on, she is still going strong and is currently on national tour. I am, of course, referring to the iridescent and timeless Petula Clark – child protégé, forces favourite, Hollywood starlet, Sixties pop princess, chanteuse Française and West End superstar.
Autumn was fashionably late this year but made quite an entrance when it did eventually arrive. We were battered by brolly-snapping weather as we wandered the windy streets of Ipswich in search of the Regent Theatre, East Anglia’s largest. We had a stiff double at the bar while we dried off. The drench did nothing to dampen our spirits and as we took our third row seats in the auditorium, the crowd buzzed with anticipation. Miss Clark has been treading the boards for a very long time and this was no better illustrated than by the giddy silver-haired fans who surrounded us. Every care home in Suffolk must have been drained that night. I swear I spotted a St John’s Ambulance crew on standby just in case the excitement got too much; mercifully, we were spared a medical emergency. Still, our Pet raised the blood pressure with a superb performance, giving those X Factor wannabees, a fraction of her age and a fraction of her talent a marathon for their money. From Gershwin to Lennon via Elvis and Gharls Barkley, Miss Clark stepped through her set with style, humour and remarkable agility. Naturally, ‘Downtown’ got the biggest cheer but, for me, it was ‘I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love’ that got me all dewy-eyed. You see, I’d chosen it as the soundtrack to the champagne reception at our Civil Partnership (“Ah,” I hear to cry in unison).
Come the finale of the two-hour gig, the wrinkly congregation got to their feet for the much-deserved standing ovation (though, in truth, it was more of a slow stagger than a youthful leap). Even a wheelchair-bound man in a turban found his legs, Twas a miracle from the lady who famously played Maria Von Trapp’s favourite singing nun. Hallelujah, sister.
Get your hankies ready…
The Faerie Queene
It’s my birthday today and I’d like to share a little poem that my English teacher, David Steddall, wrote in the card he gave me when I reached sweet sixteen.
I know you’re not a fairy queen
I know you’re not a donkey
Perhaps you’re something in between
Like a hairy gnome gone wonky
It reads worse than it was. It’s certainly true that I was relentlessly bullied as soon as I entered the gates of my ancient and prestigious South London grammar school. The other kids knew I was pink-leaning even when I didn’t (well, actually I did but that’s another story). I survived the ordeal by developing a sharp tongue and fast legs. But, by the time I reached my O Level years, the torment had subsided and I’d won the grudging acceptance of my peers, and high praise for my compositions. What Dave was actually telling me was to pull my finger out in the poetry stakes. “It’s not that difficult,” he wrote in my final school report after I miserably failed my English Literature mock. You see, I just didn’t get it. Simile, descriptive prose, analogy, word play? It just flew right over my cute curly head. Do I get now? Well, let’s see:
“I know you’re not a fairy queen”
Because we’re not all camp as a row of tents (ok, I can be a little lary and loose-wristed, particularly when on the sauce).
“I know you’re not a donkey”
I’ve never claimed to be hung like Eeyore.
“Perhaps you’re something in between
Another sexuality reference, perhaps?
Like a hairy gnome gone wonky”
Well, my balls did drop sooner than most of my cohort and I was (and still am) vertically challenged. And the wonky bit? Another allusion to the Friends of Dorothy? I have a feeling in my water that this isn’t about Shakespeare’s sonnets after all.
There you go. Sorted. Now, where did I put my Chaucer?
PS. I’m sure this degree of familiarity wouldn’t be allowed these days. We live in more hysterical times, imagining a pedo lurking round every corner. And, just in case anyone’s wondering, as far as I remember, Dave was a straight as my school ruler. No mucky business going on or intended.
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