Murray Lachlan Young's 'Burlesque' at the Drill Hall. Now called 'The Incomers'!

Update. April 2013: Burlesque has now become 'The Incomers' and is currently touring. Click on the photo (right) for details.

I witnessed something very wonderful tonight.

In a small black lined room beneath the Drill Hall in London a cast of four, directed by Paul Jepson,  performed a read through of Murray Lachlan Young's verse play 'Burlesque'.

'For fuck's sake a read through of a verse play.' I hear you groan. Well my biddies twas a polished piece of Cornish granite slapped onto the London clay.

The plot of course was truly bonkers and all the more real for that; Murray, in order to be a great humourist, is firstly a great and attentive observer of our times... Or perhaps his times. It involved the visit by a London cokehead, Porsche driving wideboy and his hot young squeeze to old friends in rural Cornwall. It was all about power and of course the power of sex and of course that power belonged to the hot young squeeze. It however (like shakespeare) never once looked to farce to save it's bacon. I'm saying no more than that.

A verse play of this ambition could have been an awful thing, could have been bum numbingly Art house, could have been perverse. Murray's play is a delight; Playfully funny stabbed by daggers of reality, relationship truths, lies and insecurities. This was Joe Orton, Dylan Thomas and the Angry young Men on coke. I wish Ken Tynan had been here to witness it.

The players: Rory Wilton, Mary Woodvine, Jerome Wright and Kirsty Osmon were impeccably cast and did their job with skill, enthusiasm and joy.

All in all seriously good.

The development of Burlesque has only been possible through financial support from the National Lottery through Arts Council England. It needs extra funding and support now and if you love good British theatre give it a boost. Check out www.murraylachlanyoung.co.uk to find out how.

Matthew Linley, the producer deserves a namecheck too: www.matthewlinley.wordpress.com

Viv Albertine's Debut Solo Album : Please Donate Now!

The Liar of Kowloon, Green tea, love and poetry.

My old friend So Su Mi, the fragrant oriental 'liar of Kowloon', dropped in today for a cup of green tea and a fish paste sandwich.

So Su Mi was the inspiration years ago for my poem 'Lying to me was the only honest thing she done'  and her habit of wearing plastic gardenias (sprayed with feminine deodorant 'to keep them fragrant') in her hair never ceased to amuse me. Whenever she visits she rifles through my notebooks for words to steal and I always count the silver when she's gone.

So Su Mi once stole my collection of dolls eyes.

So Su Mi is in love! This was the reason for her visit: 'I am in love'. She trilled as she entered the room. 'I am really in love. Really really in love'.

I gave her a chair before she had time to steal anything and poured the tea. 'Tell me about him'. I said.

She went on at length: 'He is amazing. He is not like any other man; he is handsome, he is intelligent, he does not smell, he is rich, he adores me, he is the only man I have ever felt was my equal, did I tell you he is rich....'

I allowed her to waffle on in this manner for a good half hour before interjecting with the question: 'And where did you meet him?'

'Oh we have only talked on facebook. He loves my poetry and is teaching me about the beauty of everything around me. I feel that I am on some special journey into an unknown land and he is handsome, rich, intelligent blah blah blah etc'.

'And what do you want from me So Su Mi'. I asked.

'I need some more poems to blind him with. I cannot fool him with my usual 'cut and pastes' from the Oxford book of Modern Verse. Give me some poetry'.

I handed her my Morocco bound, signed, first edition of the collected works of McGonagal having first 'bookmarked' 'The Tay Bridge Disaster'. Saying: 'Here. This should be perfect'.

She thrust the book into her faux Gucci handbag, smeared me with a sneering kiss and oozed oleogenously from my house.

She telephoned me twenty minutes ago. Telling me that it is all over: 'I hate him. He is a psycho after all. His profile picture  wasn't him and he isn't rich. He is a security guard at Tesco. I have called the police; his credit card was snatched back by the ATM when I tried to use it. He questioned my lies. He tried to make me pay for coffee and he is a liar'.

'What did he think of McGonegal'. I asked.

'Oh. I sold that shitty old book and bought some glitter'.

'Goodbye So Su Mi'. I lisped as I hung up.

The Handsome Family - Weightless Again.mov

The Handsome Family are coming to the Tabernacle in May... Yeeha!

The Wellcome Collection and welcome recollection.

Why do they allow people to walk around galleries touting back-packs? The Wellcome Collection is not the foothills of the Himalayas or the Brecon Beacons even; It is a fucking gallery.

DIRT The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life (Unnecessarily clumsily laid out within their self described 'Versatile Space'. Nothing more than a laboratory maze of an exhibition, quite fitting I suppose in light of Wellcomes origins) is a celebration of dirt.

Educational I suppose for the young but to me a depressing deviation from the interesting; promulgating the myth that education must always centre on shit. To me just a deviation from the good stuff. I have no interest in poking about in stools.

The cafe was busy.

It was a chilly, rainy afternoon and a curious venue for a meeting with a woman I had not seen for 40 years. An on-line question of identity had lead to this event.

As I waited for her (would I recognise her?) My head screamed: Run, never go back, never revisit the past: That forgotten dusty cupboard on some long lost landing.

But the cafe was busy.

That she is small and blonde is all I had to go on; there will be no school uniform now, no green bowler hat to tip me off. she will have to make herself known to me.

As it was I saw her first.

What fun.

Pear cider, Yuri Gagarin and flouting the law.

To celebrate Yuri Gagarin bursting my birthday balloon all those years ago I am drinking a bottle of Magners pear cider. It is very fizzy.

In my youth this stuff was called Babycham and came in tiny nip sized bottles. I can remember bringing home as 'carry-outs' from my under-age sorties to the village pub a bottle of Babycham for my mother and a bottle of barley-wine for the old man.

It was considered infra dig (for a teenager in those days) not to flout the drinking laws in rural England. It was OK though because the pub landlord was also the village bobby and would monitor proceedings.

It was a good system, as systems go, and as good systems go... It went*. Now kids have to make do with buying bottles of Diamond White to skulkily consume on the street.

* Apologies to 'Saki' H. H. Munro.

First Orbit

Yuri Gagarin stole the limelight.

April 12th 1961 was my 6th birthday. Yuri Gagarin orbited the World for the first time ever that day. I remember it well; he stole the show.

 I also remember seeing this photograph later in the year and thinking he didn't look much like a spaceman.

Yuri Gagarin posing with his wife Valentina and daughter Jelena on the beach in Glasma, June 1960.Photo: AFP/Getty Image

At just after 0700BST, 12 April 1961, Russian, Major Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was fired from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, in the space craft Vostok (East), to become the first man in space.

Major Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes travelling at more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometres per hour) before landing at an undisclosed location.

Gagarin Died in 1968 when his MIG 15 crashed in bad weather... If only he had flown closer to the sun that day.

Magnolias.

She came to visit

after twenty years of not a word

but was passing

was just passing

and as passing stopped

bringing with her the rusty key

to that locked and dusty room

called memory.

filling our heads

with the contents of that room

we then took a walk

in the spring sun

I led her to the April street

lined with magnolias

where for just one week

romance blossoms

alas too late

the blowsy meaty petals blown

smearing the pavement

with disappointment

'we are too late' I said

turning back

'we should have come here earlier'

and she asked when?

'Oh twenty years ago'.

(She came to visit

after all thse years of not a word

but was passing

was just passing

and as passing stopped

for long enough

to bear witness

to a seasonal disappointment).

Jooiijkaa!

The Idler Academy. The school for me.

we appear to be blogging live from the Idler Academy in Westbourne Park road W11. It must be Ok, I had to pass the Cow to get here. I'm meeting a serious fellow blogger and this seemed the place to do it. I am sitting in the garden, armed with wifi, a cup of coffee and a labrador for company. If I run out of ideas there is a wall of books to peruse. Incidentally, for local readers Books can be ordered at the Idler for following day delivery; use this place, it is a refreshing change from the usual vanity bikini shops that occupy this parade of shops.

Murray Lachlan Young is delivering a lecture here next week and they have a whole bunch of other stuff lined up... Check out the website: http://idler.co.uk/academy/about-the-idler-academy/

Will and Kate's Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

‘WILL AND KATE’S BIG FAT WEDDING © Alex and Rory Scarfe 2011, published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd and available in all good book stores.’

Leslie Howard: The Man Who Gave a Damn.

At the Michael Horovitz thing last night I got talking to filmmaker Tom Hamilton about a Leslie Howard documentary he has been working on for some years. he pointed me in the direction of his web-site. It is a fascinating story and well worth reading.

He writes:

When film fans today refer to Leslie Howard, the most common memory is of the ineffectual Southerner Ashley Wilkes, which he played in “Gone with the Wind”

It’s ironic that he’s forever associated with a part he fought against in a movie that he never watched. It’s equally unfortunate that his somewhat colourless and disinterested acting in that film is often assumed to be typical of his career. For Leslie Howard captivated a generation of theatre and film-goers through the 20’s and 30’s with his beautiful voice, poetic appearance and low key acting style, and his performances on film are equally compelling and mysterious today.  READ MORE