When Rachmaninov met Walt Disney

Here's a great photo I came across the other day, of Sergei Rachmaninov, Walt Disney and Vladimir Horowitz. Shame it's so grainy but you get the idea. It seems that Rachmaninov went on a tour of the Walt Disney studios in 1942 with Horowitz, both pianists being a fan of Disney's films.

I wonder what they were talking about here? Answers on a postcard please.*

Perhaps one of the topics they discussed was Rachmaninov's famous C sharp minor Prelude, the dramatic piano piece of 1892 for which audiences clamoured, and which the composer himself came to detest. Why might they have been talking about this? Well, I came across an anecdote in a book by Ivan Raykoff about the Sergei-Walt-Vladimir encounter: 'In Walt Disney's early animation short The Opry House (1929), Mickey Mouse performs Rachmaninov's famous Prelude. "I have heard my inescapable piece done marvelously by some of the best pianists, and murdered cruelly by amateurs," the composer reportedly told Disney, "but never was I more stirred than by the performance of a the great maestro Mouse."'

Here is that performance. Perhaps Rachmaninov had a twinkle in his eye behind that famous scowl after all...

Festive hillside

Just in case you were wondering, the bus-stop-to-nowhere is looking festive:

A penguin and a bagpiper

Readers of this blog might recall that I have a bit of a soft-spot for penguins (here too). And for Antarctica, and unusual photos in that snowy wilderness. Bagpipes, well... In any case, here's a fantastic picture of a penguin and a bagpiper in Antarctica. Really. I love the way the penguin is standing to attention. This picture was, I believe, taken in 1902 or 1903 during William Speirs Bruce's expedition. As a bit of a sideline, the ship's bagpiper (this story sounds less and less likely as I write it) decided to see how the penguin reacted to different sorts of traditional music. Apparently, he was indifferent. As for the bagpiper, I hope there's some warm underwear under that kilt.

'Neither rousing marches, lively reels, nor melancholy laments seemed to have any effect on these lethargic, phlegmatic birds; there was no excitement, no sign of appreciation or disapproval, only sleepy indifference.'Reports of the penguin's reaction.

Bach from Murray Perahia

There's no one quite like Bach. Every time I hear the Aria from his Goldberg Variations – a keyboard masterpiece written, so the story goes, to soothe an insomniac Russian ambassador – I feel myself pause and forget whatever I've been doing. It's music of the most beautiful serenity. Here it is performed by the superlative Murray Perahia.

The Summit

We start to walk at midnight. It's cold but, for once in my life, I don't feel it. Probably because I am wearing two pairs of thermals, trousers, waterproof trousers, inner socks, outer socks, a thermal vest, a long-sleeved thermal top, a fleece, a fleece gilet, two pairs of gloves, walking boots, a down jacket, a fleece scarf and a hat. And my big rucksack and a head torch. In the bag I have put another large fleece. I'm not taking any chances. My camera battery is in an inside pocket to keep it cosy, and my water bottle and camelbak – a sort of pouch with drinking tube – are wrapped up tight to stop them freezing. We've all been instructed to blow into the camelbak's tube after drinking in order to push all the water back inside, or at your next drink you'll be greeted with ice.

It's the day before the full moon. It's almost as if it's watching over us, choosing to light our way. We almost don't need the torches as we start our long trudge to the top. The aim is to reach Gilman's Point, at the edge of the crater, for sunrise. If you imagine taking one step, counting to three, then taking another, that's about the pace we went at. We were only going gently uphill – the crater sides are offputtingly steep but we're zig-zagging – yet we're all out of breath, huffing and puffing as if we were running a marathon. I can make out another group ahead of us, slowly moving dots of light. There's a small frisson of gloating as we overtake them. But at our first break, it's clear some people are already feeling the strain. I munch a couple of the sugary biscuits I've been given as a snack, while others eat their Dairy Milk chocolate. It gives them energy but seems to make everyone feel ill; for once I'm glad that I have to have the non-dairy option. It's too cold to loiter, so we're soon on the move again.

The guides start to sing. A solo voice sings a line, the rest respond. It's unexpected, magical and completely surreal. Am I really here, climbing up this mountain in the early hours of the morning, with the moon and music?

The combination of painful effort and nausea remind me that, yes, indeed, I am really here. Someone tells us a story about one of his friends who is an ultramarathon runner. When you run a regular marathon, he says, you start to question why you're doing it, why you're pushing yourself through such gruelling pain. In an ideal world, you come through that stage on a new high, full of positive energy ad belief that you are on the right path. When you run an ultramarathon, the questioning is commensurately more profound: you start to question your existence, what you're doing with your life, are you in the right job, the right relationship, doing the right thing? I reckon you can see it as raw honesty with yourself or self-torture. Either way, it's an exposed place to be. And it's not somewhere I really want to go, psychologically speaking, while I'm on this mountain.

As we plod closer to the top, though, it gets harder and harder to convince myself to keep going. I try to stop my thoughts. Huh. Harder than you think. I resort to counting from one to a hundred, over and over. It's dull, but it does the trick. I can see lights above us: are they path-markers, trekkers or stars?

The ground underneath has been dusty most of the way up but towards the upper reaches of the path it becomes stony and rocky. Our guide points towards the top, saying it's not far now, but it's so hard to tell whether there's more rock behind what we can see that I decide not to look or trust him and just keep on trudging. The rocks become bigger and bigger, and we have to scramble and climb. For some reason, it feels less difficult than it should do. Then I realise that I'm being given a helping push by one of the guys in the group. (Thank you!) As we near the top, our guide tells us it's just ten minutes away. None of us believe him and someone decides to have a bet with him. I've gone into a sort of semi-comatose state now. One of the Aussies chooses this moment to reveal he's actually scared of heights... It actually does feel pretty high up when I look - the jagged peaks of Mawenzi which have been towering over us the past days are now below us – and I start to wonder how we'll get back down.

And then we're at Gilman's Point. 5,681 metres up. We came round some rocks to find not, as before, more of a climb, but instead the flat edge of the crater rim and a big green sign congratulating us. We pose in front of it, taking photos. I'm frozen and exhausted. I feel like I should eat for energy but I don' have the appetite. All twelve of us have made it to Gilman's. The sun has risen, nature's great metaphor. We barely have any time before one of the guides is shepherding us on to get round to Uhuru, the highest point of Kilimanjaro. Now or never. At first, I think I can't do it. Sitting here now, writing this, I'm shouting at myself. You were going to go back down? After all that effort! Just keep going!

Four or five people have gone ahead, and I rush after them - deciding to give it a go. But the pace is fast, and after a few minutes I just feel so tired. I sit down and say I'm going to go back. Another woman in the group comes back, asks if I'm sick - I'm not – and says, forcefully: 'I'm not going to be the only woman in this group to make it to the top. You're coming with us'. That was possibly the best thing she could have said. (And thank you too!) One of the brilliant guides runs back to ask what's wrong, and when I say I'm tired, he says that's no excuse, takes my backpack, asks why it's so heavy (the fleece!) and then we're on the move again.

As we make our way round the crater edge, we start to see a few people coming back down from the summit. One young woman is stumbling and being supported by a guide. Up here, there's only half the oxygen you need. It feels like being drunk and hung-over at the same time. We make several stops to look at the fantastic views and rest. The two tallest men in the group seem to be suffering the worst. One curls up by the side of the path and is sick. Another keeps on collapsing on his bag, saying, with no small hint of melodrama, 'go on without me'.

We keep on going. Past Stella Point, until the path to Uhuru Peak is finally in view, clear ahead of us. It's a race to the finish (though who made it to there first is still being disputed). We've made it to the top! It is a fantastic feeling: looking out from the top of Africa, the summit of the highest free-standing mountain in the world. We are at Uhuru, which, in Swahili, means 'freedom'. It's gloriously clear: blue skies, warm sun. Photo-perfect.

We join the queue to take photos in front of the sign. It's quite busy. Three Italians push in front of us, causing one member of our group to tell them in no uncertain terms that we've got 'ill people here' and we have to take our pictures now. The slight exaggeration works. We get our photos, alone, in groups, with the various charity flags and posters people have brought with them.

Ten minutes or so is all you get at the top, and then the long journey back down begins. I start ahead of the group, and, actually, it's just a wonderful feeling walking through this incredible, alien landscape, white snow glistening under the peachy sun. There's a magnificent glacier to one side, the intriguing bowl of the crater to the other.

It takes between an hour and an hour and a half to get back to Gilman's, where the descent begins. If going up the mountain seemed tough, then going down the mountain is tougher still. The dust is nearly a foot deep, and slippy. I start to carefully pick my way down the path, but it's clear I'm going too slowly. One of the guides grabs my arm and we start to 'ski', sliding and skidding in giant steps, throwing up clouds of dust. We chat as we go: he tells me about his wife and children, we compare the price of food in England and Africa, he tells me about how he used to be a teacher but then became a guide. One day, he says, he'd like to be a chief guide. I am sure he will.

Nearly three and a half hours after leaving the summit, I arrive back in camp. I feel elated. I did it!

Time for a rest. Into the tent: my feet hurt, and I feel like I have pins and needles in my brain. No joke. It's not a comfortable sleep. And a little over an hour later, we're up again to eat before we have to start trekking to our next camp. People are returning one by one, at their own pace. When we sit down for lunch (only lunch! It feels like we've packed a week's worth of experience into the past twelve hours) some of us are feeling the sense of achievement (We made it to the top!), others are suffering. One trekker needs oxygen after his asthma starts playing up thanks to the dust. Another refuses to talk about it, saying it's both the best thing she's done and the most miserable day of her life.

After lunch, we pack and are on the move again. There's no drinking water at Kibo, so we need to get to the next camp down for the night. And to make away for any other groups arriving to attempt the summit. It's a fourish-hour walk back across the Lunar Desert, this time peeling to the right down the Marangu route. It's actually good to stretch out tired limbs with a walk over flat ground. And when we reach the next camp down, the air is already a little richer and the mountain top already looks like a distant reality. Food, cards, gossip, sorting out of the tips for the guides and porters, and it's time for sleep. I've been to the summit of Kilimanjaro. And I can't stop smiling.

This is my fifth post about my trip-of-a-lifetime climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and going on safari in Tanzania. I'm raising money for Water Aid so if you would like to sponsor me, please click here. So far I've raised £780. Thank you so much to everyone who was given money. It is going to a great charity.

Notes on Australia

• Verdi at Uluru and Sounds of Australia: my reviews of the two concerts at Uluru for BBC Music Magazine. And here are links to articles by two of my fellow Uluru journalists: Limelight Magazine; Vogue Italia.

• Just discovered this great website today, The Iron Ammonite. It includes amazing aerial photos taken from commercial flights. The photographer is Paul Williams, who works at the BBC's Natural History unit here in Bristol. On my flight from Darwin at the Top End of Australia (the naming is that literal) to Perth, down in the South West corner, I spent most of the time looking out of the window at the incredible red desert landscape, with its dried out river beds etched into the ground in snake-like meanders. Sometimes a brilliant flash would catch my eye, and a small pocket of water would be revealed – like a precious jewel buried in the sand. You can see Wiliams's Flickr set of photographs here, and I've posted his photo of Uluru from the air above.

• And, next weekend, I'm hoping to go to see the Australia exhibition at the Royal Academy, billed as the first major exhibition in the UK on the continent's art for 50 years.

Australia

Someone asked me yesterday what I'd been doing for the past week. Well, I replied, I went to Australia.

No, I'm not quite sure I believe it either, apart from that I've got the aeroplane ticket stubs to prove it. And the jet lag.

I was Down Under thanks to a serendipitous press trip to go and hear the first orchestral concerts at Uluru, which I'll be writing about in BBC Music Magazine for an upcoming issue. I'm reviewing them for the mag's website www.classical-music.com as well; and I'll be putting up some photos and observations here. What a place. What an adventure.

Breakfast with Lucian

The great artist Lucian Freud was famously protective of his privacy. So it seems ironic that one of his friends close enough to have been part of a weekly breakfast club has broken the first rule thereof and written a tell-all, anecdotal account of the late Freud (pictured in a self-portrait, above), based on their friendship. Good for readers like me who are utterly fascinated by Freud – most importantly by his art but also by the personality that made it – less good, perhaps, for upholding the values of friendship and for the privacy Freud so assiduously, near-on neurotically, created. Not that I'm cynical about the author Geordie Greig's motives, really....

Still, having not read the book yet apart from the tantalising section about Freud's seemingly countless number of children, serialised in The Sunday Times, it was interesting to hear Greig in conversation about his book at the recent Henley Literary Festival. The Mail on Sunday editor, fresh from Ed Milliband firefighting, was nothing like I expected. Fascinating his book might be, fascinating his speaking style is not. Funny, as at least one other account of Greig suggests he's a hugely energetic character. Perhaps those Milliband headaches were taking their toll. His painfully halting, flat delivery seemed at odds with the subject matter, but didn't completely destroy it – it'd be hard to when the conversation covered matters as racy as Freud's numerous lovers, his huge gambling debts and how he liked to drink Earl Grey with lots of milk. By the sounds of it, Greig has put his ability to network to good use, winning over and interviewing Freud's acquaintances in order to untangle the tightly woven veil the artist had drawn over his private life. It's had mixed but mainly good reviews, the main criticism seeming to be that this book is more about the man, than the art; when in fact the man was all about the art. Sometimes, though, you do just want to know how a great artist liked to drink his tea.

LS Lowry at Tate Britain

It's not often that I go to an art exhibition and come out liking the artist less than when I went in. But that's what happened when I visited Tate Britain's LS Lowry exhibition a couple of weeks ago.

It was the first exhibition solely devoted to the British artist's works, six rooms of his canvases, ranging from his first paintings of modern life to five large-scale views across industrial landscapes. As many newspaper articles have pointed out, this was a landmark exhibition. For years Lowry has been seen as an artist unworthy of gallery wall-space, for whatever reasons. The only previous show dedicated to him took place at the Royal Academy in 1976 just after his death.



It's certainly a superbly curated exhibition: plenty to see, but not too much; informative descriptions, clearly written; and, most importantly, Lowry's art is well contextualised. I'd never drawn a parallel between the portrayals of modern life going on in French art and what Lowry was doing. Paintings by Van Gogh and Pisarro, depicting the creeping sprawl of towns into the countryside, illustrated that new-found impulse to paint the city in all its ugly, smoggy, unforgiving reality, to document it in some way.

The exhibition has received rave reviews and has sold more tickets than any other Tate Britian exhibition. 'Riveting', says The Guardian. 'The most radical and exciting re-evaluation of a British artist I have ever encountered,' says the Financial Times. And I see their point of view. It's clearly a hugely important exhibition and if, like me, you're interested in 20th-century art, then it's one to go to. But did I enjoy it? I can't say I did. I've tried to pinpoint a few reasons why:

• Am I being a snob? One writer says Lowry had been the victim of a prejudice against overexposure, of snobbery. But actually I've always rather liked Lowry – he's a familiar part of British culture. His evocations of Northern industrial and urban landscapes are ingrained. Really, I couldn't care less whether I had seen his pictures on a place mat or postcard. I still like Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I just don't like hearing it while stuck in an infuriating telephone queue, but that's the fault of the medium not the music. But when you see the original art-work, surely it should be better than the postcard? And the so-called derogatory charge of him being a 'local artist' seems a bit irrelevant. Art rooted in a specific place can still be universal. Sibelius is hugely evocative of Finnish landscapes, but his music speaks universally.

• The Gloominess. Lowry's subject was chronicling the life of the working classes. There's a documentary feel to his work – he was capturing for posterity an age and place. It's a unrelentingly gloomy eye though: an empty house, an eviction, a funeral, a fever house. The apparent objectivity convinces the viewer that this must be reality. Without denying the importance of awakening Britain's collective social conscience to the misery of poverty, can I believe that there was no human warmth, no joy, no hope? I'm afraid not. Was Lowry himself limited in his artistic ability to capture a mood or feeling? It's interesting we rarely see faces and expressions in his paintings. And this objectivity only seems to me to be a half-truth. He rarely painted specific places, instead melding together locations and scenes he'd observed in Manchester, Salford and Stockport and elsewhere. That same distance from his subject – varied scenes all depicted in the same palette of colours, with the same distinctive matchstick figures, and using similar compositions – keeps the viewer at a safe arm's length from the gritty reality Lowry's purporting to portray. Would a great artist flinch from portraying a brutal truth?

• The repetitiveness. It's been described as a dogged loyalty to his subject. The same scenes, chimney towers, terrace houses, factories and mills painted over and over. Yes, the grimly repetitive nature of daily life comes across through this tactic. Monet, after all, painted his waterlilies over and over. Yet somehow, there's a searching quality in the French artist's work that is lost in Lowry. I didn't feel like he was a great artist searching to capture or communicate, merely that he was stuck in a rut. I could have picked pretty much any of the pictures on display and been happy to see just that one. Seeing a hundred or so on display felt like having to eat a whole packet of Jacob's cream crackers.

• Was he actually a good artist? I'm not by any means qualified to answer this, apart from that I like art and like to look at art. I'm sure for myself that he wasn't a great artist. I even wonder if he was a very good artist? His paintings seem flat, fixed, incapable of evoking an emotional reaction, un-yeilding to further interpretation. Unlike the recent Lucian Freud exhibition where you felt like you saw and understood more the more you looked; where the artist didn't merely observe but revealed; and where it was difficult to leave; LS Lowry en masse wore me down but didn't tell me much new about human life.

Funnily enough, while adding these pictures to my blog, I feel affection towards his art again. I can forgive its shortcomings when they aren't compounded through repetition. What I would like to see is a wider exhibition exploring the world Lowry was immortalising: a mixture of photography, art and writing, say Bill Brandt, LS Lowry and George Orwell.

The Lunar Desert

Day 4 Friday 21 June 2013

Our tents are encrusted with thick frost. The sunlight is grey, the air chilly. But the porters are optimistic and they have moved the tables out of the mess tent for an open-air breakfast. And by the time we are all up and our bags packed, it is warm and bright. Warm when wearing wooly hats and gloves, that is. There's a fine array of knitted bobbly hats on display. The hair-plaiting salon is also open for business. Our group vet does a fine line in French plaits, a stylish way (we hope) to counteract the lack of hair-washing.

After breakfast, there's time to brush teeth, make a loo stop, and pick up our water bottles. We carry about three litres of water each in our daypacks, and it's boiled and chlorinated each morning ready for us to collect. Tarn Camp is the final water point before the summit. Luckily the water isn't taken from the lake we're camping next to, which is a rather luminous shade of green, but another source slightly higher up. Still, it's double-strength chlorine by the taste of it. The porters will be carrying water for the next camp, enough for meals and to get us up to the summit and back. It seems like a lot of water to have to carry. Let's hope there's enough to go round.

Today's walk is mostly on the flat. The summit crater, Kibo, dominates the view now. Somehow, it's been hard to comprehend we're on a mountain up to this point – it's just so large. But this cone-shaped peak looks just like the classic idea of a mountain. And a steep one at that. As we walk closer to it, a narrow grey seam straight up the side becomes visible. That's our path for later on that evening. It seems best not to think about it too much.

The mood is buoyant, and several of the group members seem to be enjoying a rush of energy as they power across the open expanse. The backdrop of Kibo is perfect photo material, and halfway across we stop for group pictures, full of smiles. The Lunar Desert is exposed and windswept but the weather is obliging us with sun and no clouds. When we stop for a break, we're like lizards basking on the rocks. We share snacks. I've brought crystallised ginger, which, along with ginger tea, is a miracle cure for nausea. Hovering on the edge of sickness the whole time, it's nice to know there's something that will help alleviate it.

By lunchtime, we arrive at Kibo Camp, our base for attempting the summit. It's where the Marangu and Rongai routes meet. There are permanent huts here, rats (although I didn't see them), a lot of dust, and another signing-in point. All the way up the mountain we've had to sign in at each camp, adding our names, ages, nationalities and professions to the others already in the books. The camp is busier than expected, so our tents have been pitched at a lower level near a rocky outcrop below the permanent camp. It's probably barely 100 metres further down but in the thin air this seems like an extra mile. We have a great view of Mawenzi, though. One of my fellow trekkers is particularly happy at this: it's become a bit of an in-joke that although we're climbing Kibo, all she's going to have is photos of Mawenzi, from all angles, all times of day and night...

As well as the standard soup for lunch (to up our fluid intake), we're now on to the tinned food. Afterwards there's time for rest, for repacking of our day packs to minimise the weight for the final climb, and, for three of us, more card games. Dinner is at 5.30pm, and suddenly the summit climb seems scarily real. Our guides give us motivational speeches: that we're a strong group, that we can make it to the top. There's another Exodus group climbing the same route as us – we'd first met them at the airport – but I think we're feeling slightly smug that we've been walking faster than them the whole way. Hopefully pride won't come before a fall. We're already a guide down after one had to leave to get medical help for an unexplained swollen hand. A porter is going to step up to his place instead, in fact the porter who has had the crummy job of looking after the toilet the whole way up the mountain. We're saving a large tip for him.

It's straight to the tents for some kip after dinner. I'm sharing with two other women, and we're feeling a bit hyperactive – laughing away for a good half an hour. Apologies to anyone we kept awake. But I sleep eventually, and when the guides wake us up at 11pm (yes, that's 11pm) ready for breakfast and our attempt on the summit, I feel pretty positive and excited. It's time to head for the heights.

This is my fourth post about my trip-of-a-lifetime climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and going on safari in Tanzania. I'm raising money for Water Aid so if you would like to sponsor me, please click here.

Gromits Unleashed

One of the city's most famous residents, Gromit has been the inspiration for a Bristol-wide art project. There are 80 model Gromits around the city, inside and outside buildings. There's even one as far afield as Paddington station. Presumably the Bristol-born dog is making friends with the famous bear from Peru. The Gromit artists include a host of local and international names, with well-known faces including Quentin Blake, Cath Kidston and Raymond Briggs. The whole project is raising money for Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity. Here are a few of the Gromits I've snapped on camera recently. 

Above the clouds

Day 3 Thursday 20 June 2013

The ravens - those ominous black birds with beaks that look like they could rip flesh from bone - have been wandering near the tents, scavenging for food. There are more flying low to the ground, calling. From inside the tent, they sound uncomfortably close.

Once I open the tent flaps and step outside, I can see it is a beautiful day. The mists of the previous night have passed, and both the peaks of Mawenzi and Kibo are clearly visible. I turn round, and, truly, the view is breathtaking.  We are above the clouds. The white billows roll into the distance. It is the sort of scene I've only seen from a plane window before, a snapshot in a small frame. But here we are, as high as an aeroplane, taking in this panorama. Except we've taken the tough option to this other world: one foot after the other.

With the sun out, the air not too cold, I decide this might be a good time to try to wash my hair. I have washed my fringe on the other days, test runs. After this camp, I think we might be too high, too cold for such luxuries as hair washing. So, I give it a go. Sit down, dip head in bowl and splash water all over. Rub in shampoo, and try not to flick it everywhere. That was the easy bit. Now for the rinsing. Our guide takes pity on me and offers to pour the water over my head. It works a treat. Travel towel turban in place, breakfast time!

Have I described our breakfasts? There is the sloppiest porridge you have ever seen, though it tastes better than it looks. Toast, peanut butter. Fruit, eggs, sometimes bacon. The eggs are different from those back in the UK – the yolks are white. Perhaps the hens are fed differently out here.

After the long walk yesterday, today's is shorter. But steeper. And in the heat it feels like a slog. Every few minutes the cry of 'porters' goes up, sometimes with an indication of direction, although as a group we don't seem that good at grasping whether to 'stay left' or if the porters are 'on the left'. The other left, that is.

At our first stop, a few of us need the loo. By now the landscape has changed enough that this is a bit of problem. No trees, no large bushes. Not even any small shrubs. There is a possible looking rock not too far from the path, and, on closer inspection, the litter of tissues behind it suggests others have been here before. It is a bit disconcerting, being within sight of the resting groups. Particularly when one of them includes the rugby players. But everyone seems to have mastered the art of tactfully looking the other way.

Our second stop is after another climb, at a rocky plateau. I feel overwhelmed by tiredness and lie back on my pack on a rock. The others climb up high on to a big rock with a view. The rugby lads are clearly enjoying themselves, and decide it is time for a kickabout, seeing who can get the ball the furthest. Their official photographer takes much better pictures of this than I do. I haven't seen them, but as you can see, mine are pretty bad so I can safely say his will be better.

We continue. By now I am not feeling great and, disconcertingly, my balance has gone AWOL. As we meander into Tarn Camp (c.4,330m), just below Mawenzi, all I want to do is sit. So, this is my first brush with altitude sickness. There's time to rest before lunch, so I lie down in the tent. It's boiling hot inside and it feels like the sun is burning through the roof. My head hurts. Sitting down for lunch in the mess tent an hour later, I feel dizzy and like I can't breathe properly. I try to eat but my appetite has gone. I feel ready to cry. That's not quite true. I'm afraid I do have a cry. Everyone is supportive and sympathetic, someone brings Nurofen. and it turns out that quite a few of us are starting to suffer from altitude sickness: headaches, nausea, loss of appetite. Reassuring, although obviously it'd be nicer if no one was feeling it.

Our acclimatisation walk that afternoon takes us up the peak behind the tarn lake, a stagnant looking pool with green algaed edges. It's a bit of a scramble up the steep path, but there are good views at the top. And back down at camp, breathing already feels easier. That night most people go to bed early, with several members of the group feeling pretty ill. I stay up – by this I mean something in the region of 8pm – and play Uno with a couple of others. I'm going to blame my staggeringly bad play on the altitude sickness.

That night I feel much better although it's difficult to breathe. We've been told to leave the vents on the tent open and to sleep with our heads higher than our feet to help. Up til this point I've been enjoying the trip, but, now it's difficult to breathe and my chest feels tight. I start to wonder what on earth I am doing up here. Is this just going to get worse? Is it wise to spend time at the top of a mountain where there's only half the oxygen you need? Why am I only considering this now, more than halfway up a stupidly high mountain? I wouldn't say it was a full-blown panic, perhaps a mild midnight existential crisis. The sort that, hopefully, has faded into your dreams by the morning.

This is my third post about my trip-of-a-lifetime climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and going on safari in Tanzania. I'm raising money for Water Aid so if you would like to sponsor me, please click here:

The goal is in sight

(c) Rebecca Franks

Day 2 Wednesday 19 June 2013

Starts are early on the trek. (Well, early for an arts journalist.)  At 6.30am there's a call outside the tent to wake-up. And then a real luxury: we are brought a hot drink. I have tea, with sugar. I've decided sugar is acceptable while hiking. It was also my excuse for eating whatever I wanted the whole week before I came to Africa. Fuelling up.

Outside the tent there's a surprise. The mountain! Above the treeline rises the summit, looking remarkably friendly. Another of the golden rules is to smile at the mountain. It might sound a bit hokum-pokum, but I also feel like it might make sense. When I used to sail, I felt you had to have respect for the sea. But you had to remain positive too, and enjoy it. The same must be true for mountains, potentially dangerous places. Respect, and affection.

Another surprise awaits. One of the two other groups trekking the same route as us includes four rugby players from South Africa, including the legendary Percy Montgomery. I say this like I know who that is, but to be frank I don't have a clue. I have, since getting home, googled them and am pretty impressed. What I did know then, however, was that when we all sauntered into their bit of the campsite to get a better look at the mountain, the four strapping men said hi to all of the women in our group, but none of the men. Definitely charmers.

Today is a long walk, seven or eight hours depending on how we go. It's hot and humid, even when it starts to cloud over later on. Single file is pretty much order of the morning, regularly stepping to one side to let the porters hurry past at least twice the speed we're going. I still can't understand how they can balance those huge bags on their heads. I'm getting used to the view of the feet of the person in front. Even at a slow speed lots of concentration is required not to trip over the pebbles and rocks.

As we walk, the group start to get to know each other. Ages: 18 to 50s. Nationalities: mostly UK, also Canadian and Australian. Jobs: we've got a lawyer, banker, vet, insolvency practitioner, student, journalist, accountant, IT consultant, sales person, policy worker, buyer and engineer. A pretty good range. No doctor, but it turns out the vet has enough medication to tend to us all up and down the mountain ten times if needs be. People are here for a variety of reasons: charity fundraising, personal challenge, and – it has to be said – there seem to be a fair number of 'I split up with/was dumped by my girl/boyfriend' comments thrown in there. Nothing like heartbreak to inspire you to do crazy things, right?

We also start to get to know our guides, all Tanzanian. They've all been porters, sometimes for up to five years, beforehand, and all hope to be chief guides. They all speak English, one also speaks French. English and French are the most popular second languages, he explains. German and Italian are much rarer, and although people do want to learn them it's often too expensive to. One guide, who goes by the name of Tony Blair, was on the Comic Relief trek up Kili a few years ago. 'Alesha is my friend, she's fantastic,' (I paraphrase), 'always singing, always smiling.' Chris Moyles was his buddy, as was Gary Barlow, he says. Cheryl Cole, meanwhile, had to bring a bodyguard and three men to make sure no paparazzi were hiding in the bushes, snapping her climbing or taking a loo break. Fame, TB and I agree, must be a horrible thing. At the same time, I'm reminded of my motto: 'If Cheryl Cole can do it, so can I.' Not quite sure how I've made this logic jump, but somehow the thought is helpful.

We stop at a cave before lunch. Porters used to sleep here, we're told, but now they have tents. Throughout the trek, it seems clear that while the guides might be well paid (that's a guess rather than a given), the porters aren't. The park regulations stipulate $10 per day, so about £6.60, but that's not a legal requirement and not all the porters make even that measly amount. And they are often poorly kitted out for the job. In 2002, three guides died of hypothermia after a storm on the mountain and it seems that several still die each year, though figures are hard to come by. We all resolve to leave behind clothes for them and give generous tips. It's not much. It's horrible to realise that, despite all the benefits of tourism to a poor country like Tanzania, there is a long way to go in ensuring the wealth reaches more than a chosen few. And, however much I know that I couldn't carry up all I need to reach the top, it never feels comfortable to see other people doing it for you.

The landscape is different after lunch. We've left behind the gentle greens of the trees and their hanging moss, and seem to have entered an alien, grey, dusty world. As we reach our camp in a valley near Kikelewa Caves, huge black birds lurk on rocks and fly overhead. Their beaks look lethal. And the air is noticeably cooler. We're now at around 3,600m. We hop over a small stream and scramble up into our camp. Two of the three peaks of Kilimanjaro are visible: Mawenzi, all craggy and moody; and Kibo, the highest, which we'll be heading up in a couple of days time. We're all still feeling chirpy.

Our evening ends in the mess tent with games of cards. Rummy has been usurped by Uno (the special deck includes wild cards; the aim is to get rid of all your cards), and unbelievable amounts of cheating. I haven't played Uno for years, and, as I lose game after game, I am starting to remember why. Although I am doing marginally better than the person who has to pick up 18 cards in what must be an Uno record.

I am raising money for Water Aid, and you can still sponsor me here: http://www.justgiving.com/Rebecca-Franks1

Kilimanjaro: pole, pole

(c) Rebecca Franks

Over the next few days I'm going to be blogging about my trip-of-a-lifetime climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and going on safari in Tanzania. I'm raising money for Water Aid so if you would like to sponsor me, please click here:

Terminal 4, Heathrow Airport on a Sunday evening. It's a busy place to be. I'm trying to spot my fellow travellers, but there are too many likely-looking people in the Kenya Airways queue: there are enough daypacks and big kit bags to set up shop. Climbing Kilimanjaro is clearly a popular activity. I've also made my first rookie error: taking my malaria tablet without food. Nausea isn't the best start to the trip.

After eight hours in the skies, I arrive in Nairobi, Kenya, a short plane skip away from Kilimanjaro, and by chance meet up with someone else in my Exodus group. Even in the early morning, Nairobi airport is heaving with travellers from all over the world: two Indian men tell us they are heading to East Africa where they have mining interests. There seems to be a constant flow of Japanese soldiers wandering past our gate. And there's a large group of American teenagers who, it's clear from their loud T-shirts and chatter, are on their first trip to Africa for missionary work.

The sun is bright as we fly into Tanzania, high above the clouds. And then suddenly there it is: Mount Kilimanjaro. The 5,895m peak rises proud out of the whiteness, both beautiful and daunting. The Kenyan businessman I'm sitting next to is baffled. 'So you just woke up one day and decided, right, I'll go and climb Africa's highest mountain?'

Yup. It's strange, but that's pretty much what happened in January this year. With three months off work on sabbatical, I wanted to do something out of my comfort zone and unforgettable.

I'll fast forward through meeting the other 11 members of my group, the bus ride to the hotel, drinking a Kilimanjaro beer, organising the bags ready for the next day and the briefing which I'm ashamed to say in my sleep-deprived state I kept nodding off during, and cut now to the first day of trekking.

Day 1 Tuesday 18 June 2013

The bag weigh-in is first up. We each carry our daypack with water, extra clothes, snacks and so on, but it's a group of porters who carry the bulk of our belongings, all of the camping equipment and food up the mountain. It's hard to believe that to get our group of 12 travellers to the top we'll need a chief guide, five assistant guides, a cook and near on 40 porters. Our bags must weigh in under 15kg and the limit is strictly enforced.  After a bit of rearrangement, we're all ready to go. Another, all-female team that's trekking for charity is proving more troublesome. There are guffaws when a woman pulls a large bottle of perfume and a ridiculously huge bag of tampons out of her 20kg bag. She's dubbed tampon lady for the rest of the trip. (In her defence, perhaps she was carrying them for the whole group, and we have been warned altitude can wreak havoc with periods.)

It's a twoish-hour drive to the bottom of the Rongai Route, one of the six possible ways up the mountain. The Marangu or 'coca-cola' route is the shortest, with huts to stay in the whole way up. The Rongai - or Nalemuru as it's labelled though never called –  is the only route to approach the summit crater from the north. On the Lemosho Route, one of the group gleefully tells us, you travel with an armed guard through the rainforest to ward off the wildlife.

After meeting our guides from the African Walking Company – more of which later – and signing in to the National Park, we start our walk at a glacial pace: 'pole, pole', meaning 'slowly, slowly', is one of the golden rules of the mountain. (Confusingly, pole, pole means slowly, a single pole means sorry.) Along with drinking at least four litres of water a day, ascending slowly is meant to help avoid altitude sickness. The first day is a short four-hour walk through forest, passing a bright array of stalls selling drinks, and with the porters rushing by us, bags often balanced on their heads. At lunchtime we're impatient to get going, eager to take on the mountain. We still haven't seen the summit yet. Frustratingly, it even stays behind the mist and clouds on our short acclimatisation walk – this is when you go above the the height at which you will sleep to stimulate your body to produce more red blood cells so you can carry more oxygen.

Our first camp is small, muddy, surrounded by shrubs and bushes. The blue toilet tent is tucked away. One member of our group decides to give it a go. Unbeknown to him, the porter with the unenviable task of looking after the loo – a portable plastic one – gathers the rest of the group round for a demo of how to flush it. When our unsuspecting toilet-goer emerges, he's taken aback to be greeted by 12 expectant faces.

We're also introduced to the concept of 'washy washy'. Every day, morning and late afternoon, we're given a bowl of hot water to wash in. For me it becomes something to look forward to, washing away the dust and dirt, scrubbing grimy fingernails and bathing weary feet. And our first cooked meal that evening is a revelation: a three-course affair with soup, a main course and fruit for desert, and lots of hot water and tea. The cook, or stomach engineer as he's known, clearly knows what he's doing. We all head to bed at an early hour in good spirits.

Two Florentine characters

Puccini pared down

Puccini is a full-blooded composer of unforgettable passions, big tunes and broken hearts. And even in a pared-down performance of just four singers and one piano, in a large and frankly pretty empty church, the story of the doomed love of Mimi and Rodolfo in La bohème came across powerfully. The cast only offered snapshots of the opera, but they strung the arias and extracts together in a way that captured the essence of the story. I wasn't won over by the voice of the soprano singing Mimi, Valentina Bor. For all her dynamic volume and musical understanding, her tone seemed somehow thin, at moments shrill. Angelo Fiore, singing the part of Rodolfo, however, had a gorgeous tenor voice so warm it could melt stone. Shame there weren't more people at S Stefano al Ponte that Sunday evening to hear him: his voice was one of those unexpected finds that makes it worth going to a concert you know nothing about in advance.

The River Arno

First words in Italian

Hmm. Well, after 20 hours of lessons, I can say a few more words than this time last week. Rita, a feisty, funny Italian woman who is our teacher, has been plying us with plenty of grammar and vocabulary, no mean feat given the high spirits, varied languages and low boredom threshold of the ten students in our beginners’ class. I can’t get much further than telling you my name, where I’m from and what I do, then perhaps going wild and asking you the time, but it’s a start.

And what a beautiful language Italian is. I had worried about being confused between French and Italian, but in fact the two sound so different that there's not so much to muddle up. It's like learning music by two composers: Debussy, Ravel and Berlioz versus Dallapiccola, Respighi and Bellini. French is full of subtle sounds and colours, with hidden letters that are written but not pronounced, and with others that appear when words run together. Italian seems to me to be bold and open, you articulate everything you see, the sounds are definite. Where French is a poetic, murmuring language, Italian is full of music and lyricism. It's wonderful to have the chance to learn them both.

One doesn't come to Italy for niceness...

‘One doesn't come to Italy for niceness … one comes for life.’ Eleanor Lavish in EM Forster’s A Room with a View

A lot of my ideas about this Italian city before I arrived here were, I must admit, drawn from EM Forster’s A Room with a View. Funny, then, to find how little some things seem to have changed from the Edwardian era of Forster's novel, social attitudes aside. Tourists still flood Florence, travelling to Italy is still a rite of passage for countless young men and women in search of art, food, wine and true love. And if Italy was a favourite destination for the English in the past couple of centuries, it has become a mecca for travellers around the world now. Lonely Planet guides replace the ubiquitous Baedeker, the guide Miss Lavish so unhelpfully takes from Lucy Honeychurch, leaving her stranded in Santa Croce; instead of young travellers being chaperoned abroad by older friends or family, they head to coach tours, youth hostels and language courses; everyone still has their opinion about what you should see first, overwhelming the new visitor with ‘perfect torrents of information’; and there is on certain street corners ‘a smell! A true Florentine smell!’

One week in Firenze

It’s the end of my first week in Florence. It’s pouring with rain – it’s torrential, in fact, and thunder is pealing over the city, replacing the church bells of earlier this morning. A Sunday picnic has been postponed by the weather, so instead I’m sitting in my room writing, a cup of tea at my side. It’s actually rather nice to have some enforced peace at the end of the week, and to jot down some impressions of the city. To follow...

Souvenir de Florence

A little Souvenir de Florence, spotted in a shop in the Italian city yesterday. Probably not what inspired Tchaikovsky, I'd guess?

On the train

Two trains, and over 24 hours of travel behind me, and I have made it to Florence. It's Sunday morning, the skies are grey and the streets are silent. It is just after 7am. Too early for anyone sensible to be up. Sitting on the doorstep of a flat waiting for an hour and a half to be let in is not my ideal start to the day, but a chic Italian woman who speaks English with a Helena-Bonham-Carter accent arrives at the set time to let me in. I drag my lead-weight suitcase up the stone stairs inside, winding round and up until we reach a double wooden door and my home for the next month. There are two rooms to choose from: a rectangular garret-like room up the twistiest, tiny staircase you’ve ever seen. With only a skylight and no window, there was no contest. I had to have the downstairs room. Noisier, and overlooking the street, it was, at least, A Room with a View. 

The adventure started at St Pancras. There's a sense of being on the doorstep of the continent, only slightly dampened by the hordes of French schoolchildren packing out the terminal and taking over the train. But glorious sunshine awaited in Paris and the first hour and a half of my afternoon wait for the overnight Thello train to Italy soon passed by, as I sat outdoors, perched on a step outside the Gare de Lyon with a newspaper and tens of other travellers (Gare de Lyon, pictured above).

The Thello train is an experience. No frills or fanciness here, and also no concession to those with vertigo. I was sharing a three-bunk compartment, with two women in the their 50s, neither of whom had packed lightly. Nor had I. For the first two and a half hours we sat perched on the seats in a comical line, hemmed in by oversize suitcases. I read. On my left, woman one, dressed in jeans and a neat blouse, with short brown hair and glasses, listened to jazz on her iPod and ate her Tupperware-packed dinner. She spoke French and Italian. On my right, woman two, filled in crosswords in a brightly-coloured word puzzle magazine, ate a sandwich and then offered round a bag of licorice all-sorts.

At 9.30pm, the train attendant comes round to make the beds. Luckily, I had the bottom bunk – the top bunk is vertiginously high up, held by two rather flimsy looking straps and only accessible by a ladder. Throughout the night, the train hurtles along. The constant changes of pace and passing round corners leaves you feeling upside down one second, and sliding into oblivion the next. It doesn't make for a wholly peaceful sleep, but there's still something rather joyous about waking up in a different country, waking up in Florence. 

Pärt and the Pines

Just the other weekend I saw The Place Beyond the Pines. It's a film about, essentially, fathers and sons, starring Ryan Gosling (Luke Blanton) and Bradley Cooper (Avery Cross) and directed by Derek Cianfrance. He previously directed Gosling in the heartbreaking portrayal of a marriage breaking up, Blue Valentine. I went into The Place Beyond the Pines with no idea about what it was about. When Cianfrance killed off his main character early on, I couldn't imagine where he could take it next. And when a second chapter on a second main character ended, and yet another chapter opened, exploring a second generation of family, my attention lagged. But there was a compelling quality that drew me back in. This film was an incredible, ambitious failure. And I loved it.

I also loved the soundtrack, which was threaded through with Arvo Pärt's Fratres, in the version for strings and percussion. This haunting music returns throughout the film, suggesting a Thomas Hardy-esque helplessness before fate and pointing up connections between characters and stories. There's a suitably timeless quality to Pärt's music, as if it has always existed and always will. It also seems to offer a bridge between humanity and nature, a shimmering portal between the physical and imaginary. A good choice for a film with a poetic, almost metaphorical title. The Place Beyond the Pines is here both an actual physical place – the woods where characters variously live, ride motorbikes and hide; confront, abduct, terrify and forgive each other – and an imaginary realm that represents unfulfilled dreams, unexpressed hopes and mental escape. The title is, roughly, the Mohawk translation of Schenectady, the city where the film is set. Of course this is far from the first time that Pärt's music has been used on film, but it works superbly here.

Flying Blind

For a city packed with film-makers, there seem to be surprisingly few films on commercial release that are set in Bristol. It does well on TV – Casualty, Skins, Mistresses, Being Human and Teachers are just a few of the programmes filmed here. But on the silver screen, Bristol is a rare sight. Especially films that are about the people who live here, that use its varied muddle of urban landscapes – films that engage fully with the city in the way that, say, Woody Allen does with New York or Paris. Of course, Bristol is not a capital, and perhaps none of the UK's other cities feature that often on film either. But Bristol is packed with great locations – from historic cobbled streets and winding hillside steps to striking industrial leftovers on the harbourside, from brightly coloured rows of houses and faded Georgian grandeur to bombed out ruins, from tower-block high pieces of street art to views out of the city to the Mendips.

Perhaps, then, that's why Flying Blind is proving so popular at the local Watershed cinema that they've extended its run. This film is Bristol born and bred, funded by the then Bristol-based iFeatures scheme run by Creative England. It tells the story of 40-something-year-old Frankie, an aerospace engineer who works on military drones at Filton. She begins a passionate affair with a 24-year-old French-Algerian student, Kahil – but suspicions about who he really is and what his motivations are soon creep in. Director Katarzyna Kilmkiewicz juxtaposes Frankie's Clifton Georgian flat, all high ceilings and sash windows, perched up on the edge of the Avon Gorge with Kahil's small room in a shared terrace house in Easton, overshadowed by the motorway flyover.

It's a promising plot. Its characters seemed plausible Bristolians; its setting in the world of engineering apt. Helen McCrory and Najib Oudghiri turn in strong performances, and there's plenty of Bristol scenery at which to raise a smile of recognition. But ultimately this film failed to take off: it lacked daring and depth, the conclusion managing the feat of being both inevitable and unclear.

Suspicion and intimacy are two of the main themes. Frankie and Kahil's fiery relationship soon becomes fraught when he's labelled a 'person of interest' by MI5, with possible terrorist links. Frankie begins to ask questions about his identity and motives: her heart trusts him but every time she lets her head follow, a new doubt arises. Her father and work colleagues start to interfere: these characters are used to represent the contemporary Western fear that terrorists live among us, and to highlight a seam of Islamophobia. What does Kahil really want from Frankie: is this a story of lust and love or of power and politics?

And Frankie may well wonder. She discovers Kahil's not really a student as he claimed, but a taxi driver. That his visa has run out and he's living in Bristol illegally. He looks at extremist websites - to keep up with the news, he claims. There are torture scars on his body. She finds guns in the bathroom of his shared house. Would, Frankie is asked, a 24-year-old really be interested in a woman of her age? In an outburst of anger, Kahil demands how Frankie can justify helping to create drones which will kill innocent civilians. 

Complex questions of morality and social responsibility lurk underneath the twists and turns of this thriller. But somehow the film just isn't up to addressing them. Kahil's behaviour, as we see it, would be enough to make anyone suspicious. His background has nothing to do with that. The audience is constantly and deliberately steered towards the conclusion that Kahil must be a terrorist, but at the same time we are berated for falling back on a stereotype based in fear, ignorance and a sense of guilt. The ending, too, reinforces the stereotype of the career woman who tries to have it all: fly too high, and your wings will be burned.

BBC Proms 2013

The BBC Proms 2013 season was announced today. There's far too much to write about in one blog post but there are a few that have caught my eye. The big headlines are, of course, the Wagner Ring Cycle from Daniel Barenboim (pity the standing Prommers!) and Marin Alsop conducting the Last Night of the Proms. Of course, she's a conductor first and foremost - not a 'female conductor' – but I still think it's worth shouting an 'encore' for the first time that a woman has taken the helm of the Last Night.

So, where to begin? Well, featuring a newly-commissioned fanfare as the season opener seems to be becoming a new Proms tradition, with a BBC Music Magazine commission from Mark-Anthony Turnage starting last year's season, and a Proms commission from Judith Weir getting 2011's concert series underway. This year Julian Anderson does the honours. Mahler from the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and Jonathan Nott should be terrific, if their recordings are anything to go by; there's the inimitable Mitsuko Uchida in Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto; Edward Gardner is conducting an intriguing looking programme intertwining Lutoslawski and Holst; and Jeffrey Skidmore and Ex Cathedra bring Stockhausen's 'Welt-Parlament' from Mittwoch aus 'Licht' to the Proms following the world premiere of the whole unlikely opera last year in Birmingham.

Mark-Anthony Turnage's response to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is paired with the work itself; and the Late-night Prom from the Monteverdi Choir and John Eliot Gardiner features the uplifting Ascension and Easter Oratorios. And my inner child jumps for joy at the thought of The Big Proms Bear Hunt celebrating Michael Rosen's wonderful book.

First balloon of the year

Birdcage Walk, Clifton

Bristol from the Underfall Yard

Bristol, as seen from the Underfall Yard. It's at the opposite end of the harbour from the centre, where the river was years ago damned to create the Floating Harbour. An overfall system, where water spilled over the top of the damn didn't work too well, apparently, so an underfall sluice system was created – hence the name. Today, boats are still built there, and it's an interesting to stroll through, and admire the colourful Cliftonwood hillside.

Tender is the Night

Finally, after months of stop-start reading, I have finished Tender is the Night, F Scott Fitzgerald's final novel. Why, I wonder, has it taken so long for me to complete it when it's such a good book? The tragic stories of Dick and Nicole Diver are hard to forget, the writing is lyrical, intelligent and full of poetic description. Perhaps it's the shifting timeframes that make it hard to grasp, and the amount of imagination the reader has to use to fill in the narrative gaps. I found that reading it in short bursts, sometimes re-reading the pages that I'd ended with before, helped in keeping up the energy needed to get the most out of Fitzgerald's prose. So perhaps in the end it's no bad thing that it's taken such a long time to read, but I can't help feeling that I might have missed out on the general sweep of the novel. Did anyone else have the same problem reading it?

Shakespeare, the puppets... and a dog

Shakespeare has been flavour of the week so far. Two plays, four couples muddled in love; puppets, musicians, actors and even a dog. In Midsummer Night's Dream, put on in a production by Bristol Old Vic director Tom Morris and Handspring Puppet Company – the team behind War Horse – magical creatures, potent love spells and otherworldly forces entwine themselves around two pairs of lovers, Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius.

There were all sorts of puppets used here. Each lover had a miniature puppet version of themselves, in the same clothing. The true nature of these superfluous items was never revealed: were the puppets the souls or companions of the lovers? Who controlled whom? At times it turned the actors into doll-carrying children – surely not what Morris was aiming for? Oberon and Titania, the Fairy King and Queen, were fragmented creatures, represented by statue-like masks held up high. Haughty and commanding, half-disembodied, half-real, half-imagined, this was an effective idea. As was the spirit Puck, assembled from assorted bits of bric-a-brac and a choir of ever-changing voices. And in the mechanicals, it was Bottom that was unforgettable, though not necessarily for a reason you want to remember. There was, well, quite a lot of bottom.

It was over the river to the Tobacco Factory for the Two Gentlemen of Verona, thought to be Shakespeare's first play. In this comedy we meet two best friends, Valentine and Proteus, in Verona on the eve of former's departure to Milan. In love with gentle Julia, Proteus at first remains behind as Valentine heads off on his adventure. But when he too is sent off to Milan his declarations of fidelity to Julia are soon forgotten. Proteus falls for Valentine's new-found love, Silvia, and so betrays his friend in a bid to win her for himself.

The Tobacco Factory's talented troupe of actors, some of whom appear year after year in this Shakespeare series, brought out all the comedy in the text – and added some more. Despite these extra lines sweeping away some of the less palatable moments of female doormat behaviour written by the Bard, the audience is still left in a quandry. We're clearly intended to see it as a happy ending but this is only reached after Proteus has attempted to rape Silvia and, forgiving his friend for all his misdemeanours, Valentine has offered her to him. Blinded by love Proteus might have been, but it's hard to forgive him so quickly.

I can't forget, of course, the dog. Crab, played by Bristol canine Lollio, won over the audience, padding about stage, befriending the front row and displaying superb comic timing. Not bad for someone that came into the profession at the grand old age of nine (ie 63). As the theatre manager in the film Shakespeare in Love pointed out, all audiences want is 'comedy, love and a bit with a dog'.

Bits and bobs

Hello again. There's been a short break in blog service these past few weeks. I've not just been idle, though, honest. Here are a couple of blogs I've written for work, on a gorgeous production of Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen at Welsh National Opera, and a slightly disappointing performance of Bach's John Passion from La Nuova Musica at St George's Bristol.

I've also been busy writing a feature for the May issue of BBC Music Magazine inspired by a film coming out in the UK this week, A Late Quartet:

A beautiful image

A beautiful image, from 1874. Charles Albert Chomley was a passenger on the SS Great Britain, Brunel's iron ship which voyaged around the world 32 times. Variously an ocean liner, carrier of emigrants and cargo ship in its working life, she carried hundred upon hundred of sea-goers; she knew well the Atlantic, Cape Horn, San Francisco, Australia. Passengers spent day after day after day at sea. Perhaps it honed their poetic skills. Chomley wrote of the icebergs at Cape Horn that when the sun shone through them it was like 'a volcano of glass throwing out showers of diamonds'.

Wisdom from John Ruskin

Light Show

On a grey February morning, with summer a pale memory, the Hayward Gallery’s Light Show seemed like, well, a ray of sunshine. It’s an exhibition exploring light as art, in the hands of artists from the 1960s onwards. Sold out for that entire day, the concept clearly has wide appeal, even if, like me, many visitors might be unsure what to expect. It wasn't an exhibition that made me feel or moved me, but it played on a more instinctive, almost childlike reaction to light – 'Ooh, sparkly' was my kneejerk response to the first exhibit. This is a show that dazzles, beguiles and intrigues. And I've never seen so many young children at an art exhibition, flitting from bright light to bright light, drawn like moths to a flame, oblivious to the 'do not touch' signs, their parents running after them in a bid to stop them burning their fingers.

Cylinder II by Leo Villareal, that first exhibit, was a tall column of strands of LED lights flickering in ever-changing, never-repeating patterns. The brightness was mesmerising. Similarly, in the darkened room of Anthony McCal’s You and I, Horizontal, I was gripped by how this ‘solid-light’ creation, a projection through haze, gave the light a physical presence. Adults and children alike were trying to touch, feel, grasp the light, unable to believe it wasn't, in a tangible sense, real. 

A light splodge on the floor, like paint, and a glass spinning on a motorised cake stand were low points for me. But Katie Paterson’s recreation of moonlight with an artificial bulb was wonderfully imaginative, the light strangely soothing. And the tardis-like Reality Show (Silver) in which the gallery-goer steps into a phone booth to see an endlessly reflecting empty vortex below, but not their own reflection, cleverly played on the show's recurring theme of reality – are we even really here?

Perhaps, though, the best moment came at the end: Olafur Eliasson’s Model for a timeless garden. Stepping past a black curtain into a darkened room illuminated by strobe lighting, you could see 27 fountains along one wall. The constant flickering of the strobe seemed to freeze the individual droplets, as if the arches, spouts and curlicues of water were made out of the finest crystal. It was like stepping into some enchanted realm, where nothing is quite what it seems. Magical.

Little Hands Clapping

A few posts back I wrote about a book by the author Dan Rhodes, called This is Life. I've just finished his novel Little Hands Clapping, another first-rate read, and in some ways the yin to This is Life's yang. Stop reading now if you don't want plot spoilers: the way Rhodes deals his hand, revealing one carefully-chosen card at a time, means that it's not until a good way through the book that the nature of the game is revealed. If I don't give away some details, there'll be nothing to say.

Mesmerisingly macabre, the story centres around an unusual museum in a small German city. An old man is the caretaker, his life of silence and solitude punctuated only by clearing up the remains of the successful suicides that take place in the museum. Yes, suicides. For where This if Life was centred around a contemporary art project celebrating what it means to be alive, Little Hands Clapping takes as its theme what it means to die, what it means to choose to die. Of course, the museum isn't intended to encourage suicide, rather its good-hearted but deluded owner hopes it will offer a reason to live to those who have lost hope. It's a strange premise, but strangely not depressing thanks to the wonderfully bizarre characters, including two breathtakingly beautiful young lovers and a lovestruck baker's son, whose euphonium playing is ineffably moving. There's a fable-like quality to the stories that unfold, as if they had taken place in a realm removed from ours, as if they'd been told, repeated over the years until they were written down in Rhodes's simple, clear prose. Sometimes this lends an air of detachment to the gruesome events: as a reader I began to accept even the most unexpected, horrific twists and turns. It's certainly not a book for the squeamish. But, just as Rhodes deftly steers you to a happy ending in This is Life, Little Hands Clapping gathers pace towards a conclusion that seems to tell the truth about and celebrate the joy of being alive.