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.

Wendy Cope

I went into Waterstone's at lunch today. Readers of my blog, be not alarmed. I did not break resolution one, I promise. Instead, I spent a few minutes dreaming away in the travel guidebook section, before heading over to poetry. There, I chanced upon a book of poems by Wendy Cope. And was soon chuckling away to myself. Now I know where to go for a lunch-break pick-me-up.

Here are two pithy poems by Cope that got my attention in the shop:

Loss

The day he moved out was terrible – 

That evening she went through hell.

His absence wasn’t a problem

But the corkscrew had gone as well.

Haiku

A perfect white wine


is sharp, sweet and cold as this:


birdsong in winter.

And another couple I found later, digging around on the internet. The simplicity of the analogy in 'Bloody Men' gives it its power, while the simple pleasure described in 'The Orange' made me smile in agreement, its final line an everyday thanksgiving: I love you. I'm glad I exist.

Bloody Men

Bloody men are like bloody buses —

You wait for about a year

And as soon as one approaches your stop

Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators,

Offering you a ride.

You’re trying to read the destinations,

You haven’t much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.

Jump off, and you’ll stand there and gaze

While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by

And the minutes, the hours, the days.

The Orange

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—


The size of it made us all laugh.


I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—


They got quarters and I got a half.



And that orange, it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do


Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.


This is peace and contentment. It's new.



The rest of the day was quite easy.


I did all the jobs on my list


And enjoyed them and had some time over.


I love you. I'm glad I exist.

Paddington Station

There’s a certain slant to the light in Paddington Station. As the sun comes through the glass* roof, between the arches, it softly diffuses. It creates a haziness, a sense of mystery that seems in tune with the excitement of travel, of the anticipation of a journey. It’s my favourite of London’s stations. Growing up in West London, arriving at this station signaled home. Now, as I live in Bristol, it’s the capital city’s front door. 

There's one feature of this cathedral-like Victorian station, in particular, that I love. The delicate ironwork tracery over the end window. Look up – you can’t miss it. I’ve always wondered if the ambitious and visionary engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was himself responsible for it – he was, after all, creating a ‘Station after my own fancy’. Based on the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition of 1851, his iron and glass construction was both the largest station of its era and part of a grander plan. Brunel envisaged it as the starting point of a seamless journey ending in New York: London, Neyland (South Wales), New York. Means of travel: train and Brunel’s boat, the Great Western.

But, as I discovered thanks to Professor Google**, apparently decorative design was where Brunel’s expertise and imagination ran out: ‘for detail of ornamentation I neither have time nor knowledge.’ So the engineer enlisted the services of Matthew Digby Wyatt, a British art historian and architect, who later became surveyor of the East India company and the first Slade professor of art at Cambridge University. His legacy includes the India Room at the Foreign and Commenwealth Office and parts of Temple Meads station. Wyatt’s striking Paddington design has gently curling fleur-de-lys-like scrolls  and interlacing arches, perhaps echoing the Moorish influences he used elsewhere in the station. Made of metal, it looks strong, part of the railway and modernity; on the other hand there's a softness and movement in the curves. That's what just my layman's eye has observed, anyhow. If anyone with more expertise has any observations to make about why this is so striking, I'd love to hear them.

*It’s actually now, so the web tells me, polycarbonate glazing. Accurate but not exactly evocative.

**Some kind of official Network Rail report I stumbled across also rather poetically described the darker platforms at Paddington as having ‘the essence of Birmingham New Street’.

Air and water

Here's a snap taken on New Year’s Day: blue sky, a little white. It makes me think of clarity, serenity and freedom.

It is also, suggested a friend, like the tiles at the Clifton Lido, a restored Victorian outdoor swimming pool in Bristol, tucked away from the hubbub of main-road traffic on a cobbled street. I’ll be writing more about this special place in another post. 

At the time, I wasn't entirely sure I agreed about the tiles, until I bought a pair of goggles last week. Now – call me fanciful – every time I swim I see sky below me: it's a darker, richer colour than the New Year's blue of the photo, mottled with grey, but similarly uplifting.