Spent the weekend fighting with the new spiral binder machine, reprinting mis-cut pages and failing to find a quick way of working out which way round to put the binder combs into the machine. Notwithstanding, the Myriad scripts are now bound, labelled and ready for tonight's read-through and audition.
On Thursday I saw Roger Llewellyn perform Sherlock Holmes; The Death And Life at the Eastgate Theatre. An impressive one-man performance of a clever script.
House plans are ready to go to the planners. We're both feeling reconnected to the build project and excited about getting started. Now the trees are cleared and the snow has mostly melted away the place looks ready for a house to grow on it. Next hurdles are planning, engineering and costing.
Our family movie on Sunday was What's Eating Gilbert Grape ? Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio as you'd forgotten they were.
Simon and I saw Invictus at the weekend, and his DVD of 9 arrived. Screen feast.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Dramatic Intentions
Last night saw the culmination of one of my short drama courses in an evening of improvised sketches and games at the theatre, titled Dramatic Intentions. For some of the kids it was their first time on stage so they did well to make it all up as they went along. A fun evening despite my usual anxiety cramps beforehand.
A week of school half-term now then a new set of courses start up, including the radio performance on Myriad in March. This has attracted much interest and I'm looking forward to doing some off-the-wall geek comedy again.
Meanwhile house plans are thrusting forward again after a period up a side street when we ceased to feel the project was our own. Back on track now we are ready to put the planning application in and enter negotiations with the planners.
Winter draws on, with the pale faces and translucent skin tones that characterise this time of year. The birds and squirrels are ever-optimistic, emptying the feeders every other day and starting to flirt with each other in the bare branches of the trees.
A week of school half-term now then a new set of courses start up, including the radio performance on Myriad in March. This has attracted much interest and I'm looking forward to doing some off-the-wall geek comedy again.
Meanwhile house plans are thrusting forward again after a period up a side street when we ceased to feel the project was our own. Back on track now we are ready to put the planning application in and enter negotiations with the planners.
Winter draws on, with the pale faces and translucent skin tones that characterise this time of year. The birds and squirrels are ever-optimistic, emptying the feeders every other day and starting to flirt with each other in the bare branches of the trees.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Mistaken Identity in a Baghdad Marketplace
I'll spare the details, which are discomforting and nearly always boring, and cut to the denouement. The sinister shadow on last month's scan turned out, upon clearer and more invasive inspection this week, to be nothing more than an aberration on the CT film. In fact a picture - more correctly a full length colour video - emerged of flawless rude health. A golden result; better even than I hoped for.
It isn't quite the appointment in Samarra; more like mistaken identity in a crowded marketplace but still, for me and my ceaselessly inventive imagination, an opportunity to sit down, catch my breath and take stock of what matters.
It isn't quite the appointment in Samarra; more like mistaken identity in a crowded marketplace but still, for me and my ceaselessly inventive imagination, an opportunity to sit down, catch my breath and take stock of what matters.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Something busy this way comes
Today I assume my role as Director of Weird on this year's Traquair Shakespeare production by being on the casting committee at the auditions, which last all afternoon and into the evening.
Next week are the youth auditions for the production and in a few weeks we should have a cast chosen and starting work. I'm looking forward to being involved, and to collaborating with some great people.
Yesterday we moved the giant pile of logs that remained from the clearing of our site. There's firewood for a couple of years, now stacked at the back of the property and hopefully out of the way of the construction process. Several friends and neighbours turned out to help lift, barrow and stack the monster pile, making short work of it.
The site now looks like it could support a house, and I begin to feel that I can build one, or at least put in an appearance in a 'third murderer' kind of role to the real builders.
We're auditioning various building firms and project managers at the moment. I'll let you know once we have a cast list.
Next week are the youth auditions for the production and in a few weeks we should have a cast chosen and starting work. I'm looking forward to being involved, and to collaborating with some great people.
Yesterday we moved the giant pile of logs that remained from the clearing of our site. There's firewood for a couple of years, now stacked at the back of the property and hopefully out of the way of the construction process. Several friends and neighbours turned out to help lift, barrow and stack the monster pile, making short work of it.
The site now looks like it could support a house, and I begin to feel that I can build one, or at least put in an appearance in a 'third murderer' kind of role to the real builders.
We're auditioning various building firms and project managers at the moment. I'll let you know once we have a cast list.
Monday, January 18, 2010
The other ten percent
My growing unease and dissociation with our house-building project shifted over the past couple of weeks when I accepted that I actually need to be hands-on in the building process. The cost of using a builder to build what we want is way beyond our funds. Although I currently possess very few of the skills needed to build a house, I have friends who do, I have time and I have a willingness to learn. I've also realised that it's a great project through which I can gain confidence in an area where I lack it; a giant to be slain.
What I've learned in theatre is that a creditable outcome can emerge from the 90% commitment that most of us can find for most projects and undertakings. It's the other ten percent that can make it extraordinary. But the other ten percent is the retention, the reserve, the backup, the plan B, the what if. I'm very good at what if, and anyway isn't that the cultural norm ? Going the extra ten percent - if you can find it - moves into total commitment, an outpouring, an adventure; uncool, somewhat fanatical, steady on there, don't go over the top, everything in moderation, healthy degree of scepticism.
Thinking about building a house - or at least being an active part of a house-build project - takes me way outside my comfort zone map and into a place where the ocean might tip off the edge of the world, but is also wildly exciting. It's an opportunity to go over ninety.
What I've learned in theatre is that a creditable outcome can emerge from the 90% commitment that most of us can find for most projects and undertakings. It's the other ten percent that can make it extraordinary. But the other ten percent is the retention, the reserve, the backup, the plan B, the what if. I'm very good at what if, and anyway isn't that the cultural norm ? Going the extra ten percent - if you can find it - moves into total commitment, an outpouring, an adventure; uncool, somewhat fanatical, steady on there, don't go over the top, everything in moderation, healthy degree of scepticism.
Thinking about building a house - or at least being an active part of a house-build project - takes me way outside my comfort zone map and into a place where the ocean might tip off the edge of the world, but is also wildly exciting. It's an opportunity to go over ninety.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
New Year, new socks
This week saw the launch of my new range of drama offerings for kids and young people. A course on Macbeth, a course in performance drama (leading to a small show in Feb) and weekly drama classes for little ones. It was an exercise in blind faith, with bookings so few that I considered cancelling each in turn when the day arrived, only to be surprised three days running with extra bookings, last-minute new arrivals and - in one case - a recommendation from someone who had attended the night before. Most promising set of bookings is for Myriad, the sequel to Oddity which we performed as a live radio show in the summer.
My sister in law has been staying with us, so lots of chats about theatre and business and self-employment and not losing heart and starting out small and having the courage of your convictions and holding one's nerve. Useful and relevant. I have to keep reminding myself that this theatre stuff is what I love to do and it always comes back to that however many side roads I go down. All roads lead back here. It's T. S. Eliot all over again, dammit.
At present my desk is littered with fabric masks, three empty coffee cups, an Elizabethan-style money pouch (with no money in it), a couple of scripts, a book of Celtic prayers, a pile of unanswered correspondence, an electric stapler, two computer magazines, a pocket watch, stamps, a Windows XP installation disk, a wooden ruler, several house designs (don't ask), a pair of gloves, a letter from the Borders Hospital, a book by John Taylor Gatto about approaches to education, a torch, a pair of socks (new) and two passports. An installation of my life.
My sister in law has been staying with us, so lots of chats about theatre and business and self-employment and not losing heart and starting out small and having the courage of your convictions and holding one's nerve. Useful and relevant. I have to keep reminding myself that this theatre stuff is what I love to do and it always comes back to that however many side roads I go down. All roads lead back here. It's T. S. Eliot all over again, dammit.
At present my desk is littered with fabric masks, three empty coffee cups, an Elizabethan-style money pouch (with no money in it), a couple of scripts, a book of Celtic prayers, a pile of unanswered correspondence, an electric stapler, two computer magazines, a pocket watch, stamps, a Windows XP installation disk, a wooden ruler, several house designs (don't ask), a pair of gloves, a letter from the Borders Hospital, a book by John Taylor Gatto about approaches to education, a torch, a pair of socks (new) and two passports. An installation of my life.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
New Year's Eve
Night, and the blue moon full; half the world in the new year and half of us still in the old. Snow tumbling softly through the street light outside, settling in a coarse white patina. Candles, food and wine, a company of friends gathering here from nearabouts bringing music and sweets.
A year ago we were newly returned, sitting amongst boxes and rediscovered books.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Snow pix
The white frosting continues today; another six inches of snow fell at tea time and the place looks more Narnian by the hour.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Still chill
Snow continues to fall; snow on snow.
The practical upshot of this is that the first fall of snow settles and packs down, like the flour in the bottom of the sack, under its own weight or trodden down by small boys/Christmas revellers/car scrapers. It melts very slightly in the degree or so of warmth afforded by the midday sun and at night this millimetre of water freezes to a near frictionless surface of ice.
New snow overlays this miracle of physics with an impossibly beautiful covering of crisp yet powdery sugar frosting like a white sahara. "Treacherous" doesn't come near to describing this combination of awesome beauty and lethal potential. Broken bones and smashed cars abound, as do snowmen.
Simon and I spent the afternoon building ours and he's proof that those hours of reading Calvin and Hobbes were not wasted. He is a jolly, seasonal but strangely disturbing presence in the garden with his mushroom dark glasses and sharp sticks hair. A triumph.
The practical upshot of this is that the first fall of snow settles and packs down, like the flour in the bottom of the sack, under its own weight or trodden down by small boys/Christmas revellers/car scrapers. It melts very slightly in the degree or so of warmth afforded by the midday sun and at night this millimetre of water freezes to a near frictionless surface of ice.
New snow overlays this miracle of physics with an impossibly beautiful covering of crisp yet powdery sugar frosting like a white sahara. "Treacherous" doesn't come near to describing this combination of awesome beauty and lethal potential. Broken bones and smashed cars abound, as do snowmen.
Simon and I spent the afternoon building ours and he's proof that those hours of reading Calvin and Hobbes were not wasted. He is a jolly, seasonal but strangely disturbing presence in the garden with his mushroom dark glasses and sharp sticks hair. A triumph.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Chill
Today Simon and I were walking back from town across the bridge when a breath of freezing air descended. The sky turned that colour of grey that heralds snow, and it began to sleet. All this happened in the space of 30 seconds, like it does on those weather maps. Shoulders hunched we hurried on, and half-way up the long hill to the house we stopped and looked as a wall of snowflakes swept down the street and turned all to a whiteout.
There's now several inches of snow lying like sugar on every surface; cars turned to soft white mounds, trees drooping with heaped powder and slender icicles. I watched two squirrels bounding through the deep snow on the lawn across to the bird table, ascend opposite sides of it and chomp into the seed I'd laid there. A moment later one of them went flying off the platform and landed in the snow, kicked superbly by the other. A tussle ensued with first one then the other being booted from the food shelf. A victor emerged and the other went off to tackle the squirrel-proof peanut holder.
It's now nearly midnight and minus 10 outside, according to the car's temperature reading. Could be a white Christmas at this rate.
There's now several inches of snow lying like sugar on every surface; cars turned to soft white mounds, trees drooping with heaped powder and slender icicles. I watched two squirrels bounding through the deep snow on the lawn across to the bird table, ascend opposite sides of it and chomp into the seed I'd laid there. A moment later one of them went flying off the platform and landed in the snow, kicked superbly by the other. A tussle ensued with first one then the other being booted from the food shelf. A victor emerged and the other went off to tackle the squirrel-proof peanut holder.
It's now nearly midnight and minus 10 outside, according to the car's temperature reading. Could be a white Christmas at this rate.
Monday, December 7, 2009
More flooding photos
The River Tweed in spate.You can click on any of these photos to get a full-size view.
Scroll down for more.
Peebles floods
Peebles caught the edge of the recent flooding. These were taken on the day the river broke its banks.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
All is pervaded with the smell of turpentine
The news wires are alive this week with a shocking story of deceit, misinformation and deliberate falsification of data in the ongoing debate about climate change.
In an interesting coincidence with the upcoming summit in Copenhagen some e-mails between scientists at the University of East Anglia have been 'leaked' and a press story generated around their contents. The e-mails selected out for publication centre around a cover-page graph of mean temperatures derived from data from tree surveys. The depiction of the data from the period 1960 onwards was apparently adjusted to account for an anomaly wherein the mean temperature appears to fall from that year onwards. The fall in temperature didn't actually happen according to other temperature data and is a statistical anomaly related to how the tree data was collected. The adjustment produced a graph depicting a continuing rise, reflecting the actual temperature data more accurately and removing the need for an explanatory paragraph on the front cover.
Climate scientists should know better than to make adjustments to such a politically sensitive set of data, however mediocre its content, well intentioned their actions or passionate their zeal. The subsequent stories about conspiracies and hidden agendas have been predictable.
A series of triumphal press releases by sceptical scientists - most of them not climate scientists - and the Saudi Arabian government, have rewritten the substance of this correspondence as a conspiracy rivalling the Moon landing, Kennedy and Diana all rolled into one. A redrawn graph has become, through careful selection of e-mails from an eleven-year correspondence, a deftly planned and audaciously executed defrauding of the public by climate scientists; a re-framing of a completely natural process of global warming and cooling into a man-made phenomenon.
Shock jocks and newspapers of a particular hue have exulted. Lurid headlines have gushed like light sweet crude and the hills are alive with the sound of baying hounds. Few of the stories I've read have made any mention of the actual contents of the e-mail messages, concentrating instead on gripping headline statements about deceit, conspiracy, fraud, manipulation, secrets and lies. Misinformation abounds. The facts are far less interesting.
Thus far there's been little speculation about the agenda of these evil climate scientists who have apparently been hoodwinking us all these years. What's in it for them ? Who's paying them ? There's not much money in windmills, and research grants hardly justify such a massive collusion and lengthy creative accounting effort.
Watergate taught us to follow the money, but the trail emanating from the global warming conspiracy theory doesn't seem to go anywhere. What about the trail leading from the sceptical camp ? Well, the charge on Copenhagen is being lead by the Saudi Arabian government. Ah....
In an interesting coincidence with the upcoming summit in Copenhagen some e-mails between scientists at the University of East Anglia have been 'leaked' and a press story generated around their contents. The e-mails selected out for publication centre around a cover-page graph of mean temperatures derived from data from tree surveys. The depiction of the data from the period 1960 onwards was apparently adjusted to account for an anomaly wherein the mean temperature appears to fall from that year onwards. The fall in temperature didn't actually happen according to other temperature data and is a statistical anomaly related to how the tree data was collected. The adjustment produced a graph depicting a continuing rise, reflecting the actual temperature data more accurately and removing the need for an explanatory paragraph on the front cover.
Climate scientists should know better than to make adjustments to such a politically sensitive set of data, however mediocre its content, well intentioned their actions or passionate their zeal. The subsequent stories about conspiracies and hidden agendas have been predictable.
A series of triumphal press releases by sceptical scientists - most of them not climate scientists - and the Saudi Arabian government, have rewritten the substance of this correspondence as a conspiracy rivalling the Moon landing, Kennedy and Diana all rolled into one. A redrawn graph has become, through careful selection of e-mails from an eleven-year correspondence, a deftly planned and audaciously executed defrauding of the public by climate scientists; a re-framing of a completely natural process of global warming and cooling into a man-made phenomenon.
Shock jocks and newspapers of a particular hue have exulted. Lurid headlines have gushed like light sweet crude and the hills are alive with the sound of baying hounds. Few of the stories I've read have made any mention of the actual contents of the e-mail messages, concentrating instead on gripping headline statements about deceit, conspiracy, fraud, manipulation, secrets and lies. Misinformation abounds. The facts are far less interesting.
Thus far there's been little speculation about the agenda of these evil climate scientists who have apparently been hoodwinking us all these years. What's in it for them ? Who's paying them ? There's not much money in windmills, and research grants hardly justify such a massive collusion and lengthy creative accounting effort.
Watergate taught us to follow the money, but the trail emanating from the global warming conspiracy theory doesn't seem to go anywhere. What about the trail leading from the sceptical camp ? Well, the charge on Copenhagen is being lead by the Saudi Arabian government. Ah....
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