Glimpsing Asia

In retrospect watching Blade Runner a few days before visiting Hong Kong was probably unwise, given the immersion with which I watch movies. I only had 24 hours there, half of which I slept through, and so only ten more than I spent on the film, but it was enough to get a glimpse.

An inadvertent speciality of mine when travelling is making my way through the rush hours of major cities using public transport. It looked simple on the map. I hadn't allowed for the millions of other people.

Leaving my luggage with the surly operators of Hong Kong airport's Left Luggage facility I trailed my little wheeled cabin bag to the airport express train and thence to the high-pressure circulatory system that is the Hong Kong MTR, or subway system. It was New York all over again; millions of purposeful commuters pouring in arterial streams through a labyrinth of tunnels, platforms and trains. Most of the signage was in Chinese with English subtitles except the ticket machines and some of the overview maps, which were just in Chinese.

I bumbled along, having slept only fitfully in 36 hours, tight-lipped lest the words "does anybody here speak English ?" slip out, finding my way somehow to North Point from which my hotel was - to quote the website - an easy five minute walk. Riding up innumerable escalators I came to a choice of six different street exits, none of which suggested my hotel's address. No matter; it would surely be obvious.

An hour later, in a back-lane street market selling live fish, very recently deceased chickens, interesting dried herbs, long-dead and dessicated cephalopods and packets of steaming rice wrapped in large green leaves I asked a woman street vendor about the road I sought. A shrug and a vague wave down an even narrower alley. I was now in Ankh-Morpork and wishing my luggage had legs. Each little street spilled on to another little market, or occasionally back to one of the thundering main roads clogged with buses, trams, taxis, people, bikes, cars and hand-carts, the floors of skyscraper canyons overhung with electric tram lines, bamboo scaffolding, clothes on drying racks hanging from apartment windows, giant neon advertising signs, and thousands of air-conditioning units. I wasn't in Kansas any more and all the signs were in Chinese.

Wandering in ever-widening circles from the MTR station I had several adventures and did eventually stumble upon the hotel, a fine modern luxurious hotel - thanks to my travel agents for recommending it. There probably is a way to get there from the MTR in five minutes but I - I took the road less travelled by, and that made all the difference.

A shower, a sleep and a change of clothes before setting out again into the city streets.

Nuance

Nuance

With the cathedrals thundering
at him, history proving
him the two-faced god, there were
the few who waited on him
in the small hours, undaunted
by the absence of an echo
to their Amens. Physics’ suggestion
is they were not wrong. Reality
is composed of waves and particles
coming at us as the Janus-faced
chooses. We must not despair.
The invisible is yet susceptible
of being inferred. To pray, perhaps, is
to have a part in an infinitesimal deflection.

R. S. Thomas

Five days to Twelfth Night

I spent the week directing a production of Twelfth Night for a team of homeschooling families in South Auckland. The kids acted and the parents were the production team. A fine week working with fine people, and a superb two nights of performances; sharp, bright, pacy and alternately hilarious and poignant. The cast, many of whom also took part in my drama workshops a few weeks ago, was aged between 5 and 15 but would put the paces on actors twice or thrice their ages.

It was an ambitious project and today I've emerged blinking into the sunshine not quite believing that it's only been six days since we started. The joy of such projects, and the reason for their irresistible gravitational hold on me, is the alchemy of talents and skills they generate. I love directing that traffic, having faith in people's ability to surprise, and even the game of dodging the reflected glory that can so easily make directors think more of themselves than is healthy.

Example: a casual conversation with one of the mums a couple of weeks ago about scenery. I described a three-sided rotatable flat and we sketched something together on paper that might just work. The next day she produced technical drawings from her husband, a few days later he'd made two of them in the garage. We got them to the theatre this week and puzzled over what to paint on them. Another dad, a graphic artist, drew six architectural sketches of Italian streetscapes and gardens. Four mums, two overhead projectors and a can of paint later we had the ideal elements of a stage set that would endure wind and weather throughout the play.

Meanwhile another dad created Shakespeare's father's coat of arms on a banner which decorated an otherwise forlorn corner of the stage, several mums generated exhaustive lists of props, costumes, scene changes, prompts, exits and entrances. Consequently the backstage management rivalled air traffic control over Heathrow. One of the fathers even made REAL SWORDS (we didn't tell OSH) and so on it went. A community of families selflessly blending its skills and talents to produce a golden production which I'm proud to have been part of.

These children and young adult performers have had a rich immersive experience of theatre which will stay with them; an infinitesimal deflection R S Thomas talks about. Who remembers maths lessons with fondness, or at all ? But most of us remember childhood performances on stage, and the impact they had. My interest in, and respect for the homeschooling phenomenon grows as I see the opportunities for rethinking the fundamental priorities we bring to educating our successors.

Peebles, Southland

Thongor and the Boulders of Doom

Last weekend we drove north from Dunedin, stopping at a fine secondhand shop called The Oddity where I picked up all but two of the Thongor series of chronicles - you know the ones - for a few dollars. The titles tell all:
The Wizard of Lemuria (Thongor the Barbarian faces the vengeance of the Dragon Kings)
Thongor In The City Of Magicians
Thongor At The End Of Time (joyfully, not the last of the series !)
and Thongor Fights The Pirates of Tarakus
Several coffees and junk shops later we meandered through Oamaru.

Somewhere up that coast we stopped to view the Moeraki Boulders, an extraordinary collection of spherical rocks each about the height of a man and lying in the surf on a narrow sandy beach. Other tourists wandered, as we did, in a bemused way along the tight strip as waves broke over these dinosaur egg alien pod gallstones, as if luggage had been washed up from an unseen tragedy. I took photos, sat on one and wondered, as I often do, how to respond to them. Thongor would have known what to do.

In Oamaru two motels diverged on a wide street and we took the one less travelled by. It was, you may say, satisfactory.

Thereafter we headed upstream along the Waitaki river, stopping at Peebles.

That's right. Peebles.

there and back again

Just back from a weekend road trip with Brother Martyn taking in some of the beautiful Otago hinterland. We've been half-way to Mt Cook and over a mountain pass through snow and stunning landscapes where Lord of the Rings was filmed.

Photos when I've got them off the camera, I promise. Meanwhile I've caught a cold and enjoyed a day coughing my way around the steep Dunedin streets.

Ukulele albatross

Dunedin city faces, across its long harbour, a peninsula that doubles back and lies parallel to the shoreline. A drive out on this tongue of land ends at a high point where thousands of albatrosses arrive every year to mate, nest and raise their young.

At this Spring equniox, or at least near the first full moon after it, the birds are arriving and pairing so the colony is off limits to the public. I braved the threatening cold today and drove out there to watch the sea pounding the cliffs and see thousands of gulls also gathering and nesting along the edges of the land.

People also nest here in colonies of baches; small shed-like holiday houses that doubtless teem with families in the summer months, though they are closed and shuttered in the last of the wintry season.

I didn't see an albatross, and I contented myself with photographing swirling water and wheeling gulls. On the way back I stopped to look at the little boathouses that sit out from the shore on clusters of sturdy wooden posts. Some are plain and some painted gaudy colours or decorated with bright murals.

Tonight Marty took me to see the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra at Dunedin's last remaining grand theatre. An unlikely treat; dry humoured and still blinking somewhat in the light of their success, they gave a grand evening's entertainment. They look like a collection of Open University lecturers and students clothed entirely from charity shops. The double-bass player, who suggested that his instrument was in fact a ukulele and that he was just very small, looked like a Tim Burton animation, and I'm sure that was Neil from the Young Ones sitting third from the left. Peculiarly New Zealand, with hints of the Conchords and undoubted musical genius.

This weekend is the mid-point of my current sojourn. It's also the full moon, and snow is forecast. I'm the furthest away from Scotland that I've ever been, and now I begin my return journey.

Entrances and exits

Every exit being an entrance somewhere else, I've now turned my attention to this week's trip to Dunedin. A hauntingly familiar city when I visited for the first time last year, I'm looking forward to spending more time there.

Last Friday I shared some fruits of the past two weeks' work at an exhibition of drama skits and sketches by the 30 children and young people who have taken part. I enjoyed seeing the subtle changes they've undergone, the emergence of new confidence and the excitement of performing for their parents and friends.

The Spring progresses, but through mood swings of torrential downpour and dazzling brightness, an adolescent season of promise.

I'm enjoying tamarilloes, Vogel's bread, seeing Tuis in the bottle brush trees, strong sunlight, the sea.

I'm not enjoying the Auckland motorway.

Young promise

The blossom is in full flower here in Auckland. The first dusting of green on the deciduous trees is lime-green, changing by the day, and tonight the new moon lay in the old moon's arms. I started my second week of drama workshops with a younger group; a day spent shifting my expectations away from those set by last week's deep teenagers.

Dramatic tendencies

A week in New Zealand and I'm half-way through the first week-long workshop of drama activities, this one with a group of creative and enthusiastic home-schooled teenagers. They are a pleasure to work with; full of fun, focussed and genuinely interested in learning.

Don't get me started on the countless times this isn't the case.

Home-schooling is sometimes regarded with suspicion, or a cynical air, but this network of families home-schooling their children is a model of good practice, with living evidence of success and difference in groups of kids like the one I have the privilege of working with this week.

Hotel California

The theory was that a night's sleep in a hotel near the airport mid-way between the UK and New Zealand would alleviate the jet-lag effect of a 26-hour journey.

The evidence is positive; it's only taken me a couple of days to adjust to being eleven hours ahead of myself and, yes, the Los Angeles Airport Hilton is very nice thank you.

Well, I say that. The entrance is grandiose, the facade impressive in that smoked glass monolith kind of way, and the corridors are spacious and richly furnished with art and faux-antique couches. The actual rooms seem to have been an after-thought, squeezed around the edges of the magnificent approaches.

I had my fill of American TV, lost my battle with the telephone system, had a fine breakfast and a comfortable day resting in the public spaces and even took a walk. 'Walk ?' asked the concierge when I asked where might be a good place for this activity. 'Well..er.. there's a park about 10 blocks, you could get a taxi.' Was there anywhere I could walk from the Hotel ?

Following his directions I walked alone along tired boulevards lined with old parked cars. I walked for five blocks past hotels, private houses, rest homes, industrial parks and vacant lots in the humid Los Angeles sunshine. Every few minutes a planeload of people passed over me, ruffling my hair and landing moments later at LAX just across the way. I had the sidewalks entirely to myself.

It's worth saying too that travelling through this American port, which I've done several times now, was smooth and relatively stress-free. The staff were relaxed and friendly, a marked contrast to a few years ago when many of the staff were clearly on a hair-trigger.

Bard head

I have Shakespeare on the brain, what with the early stages of Macbeth in preparation (next year's Traquair production, where I am 'Director of Weird') and an upcoming production of Twelfth Night in New Zealand, where I am arriving at the last minute and appearing to direct operations. Icing the cake, in reality. This, combined with various workshop commitments here and black-clothed coffee-enriched meetings about future events, makes for a pleasing combination of activities occasionally darkened by last-minute frenzies and glimpses into the 'what about money ?' chasm.

I co-presented an adult workshop on Sunday about the RSC method of reading Shakespearean texts (I was doing the improvisation, status and physical theatre bits) which I found thought-provoking and inspiring. There are plans for more, based on the positive feedback we got, so more irons in the fire. Meanwhile it is timely new understandings for Twelfth Night.

House plans continue to limp along; we've moved up to roof shapes, square metres of window glass and definitions of 'combustible' now, so that has to be progress, doesn't it ?

Oddity

The sci-fi week was a great success, though I say so myself. Actually the feedback from kids and parents and other audience members said this too. Presented as a live performance of a radio play, with ample sound effects both recorded and live, smoke, light show and some audience participation we had a fun final evening. Audience members commented that it felt like looking in on the backroom of a theatre during a show. Wires trailing around, sound and light desks in constant use and two computers feeding in the recordings, it was a hive of casual-looking activity.

I'm certainly minded to do more of this style, radio being a long-term love of mine and a much underrated medium in my opinion.

Preparing now for an all-day workshop on Shakespearean acting which I'm presenting jointly with two others, and on a production of Twelfth Night in New Zealand in October. An exciting couple of months coming up.

sci-fi week

I'm running another drama school this week, focussed on lighting, sound and video. It's a chance to shamelessly indulge my love of sci-fi, reprising and reworking a script from 7 years ago called The Oddity. The resulting performance will be a light, sound and video version of the play, performed as a radio drama with unexpected audience involvement.

My antique lighting equipment, zero-88 manual desk (it pre-dates the Jester) and monster Studiomaster sound desk will all feature, dragged out of their long-term storage in a village hall attic and dusted down for the occasion. The stuff is built like military hardware and can only add to the retro 1950s look we're going for.

Now, where are those ray guns...

I've been travelling

July is holiday season and we've been travelling about the UK catching up with friends and family, rediscovering the huge variety of urban and rural landscapes in this country.

A couple of days ago we navigated the post-modern wilderness that is Milton Keynes, thankfully with the help of a satnav system. Like Canberra this city is encircled by concentric ring roads punctuated with identical roundabouts. Even the satnav was losing the will to live as she recited "At the roundabout go straight across, second exit" for the ninth time, though she did eventually direct us into a concrete shopping centre the size of a small European country. Yes, I hear your cries of "why ?" and "what were you thinking ?" so let me just say that this was part of a larger story arc concerning new school shoes. Let's not go there.

Beyond MK (going North) is that indistinct area of the country known as The Midlands. Lying somewhere between The North and The South it includes Leicester, where old friends now live and whom we visited overnight and caught up on five years. A fine time.

The drive north cut through Shropshire, the homeland of the speed camera, which seems to be suffering in the recession. Most of the towns and villages we passed through had boarded up pubs, shops or industrial sites with weed-strewn car parks barricaded with concrete blocks. Even wealthy Macclesfield has empty shops, gaps sites and endless sales.

On the upside were two relaxed and pleasant days in London enjoying the Science Museum, a photographic exhibition, The Globe Theatre (we sat in on a rehearsal) and a stroll down the South Bank amidst street performers and living statues. London has an amplified familiarity because of its ubiquity in BBC dramas like Spooks and I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering its vitality and rich sense of history.

Before this trip I completed the first of two planned drama schools at the local theatre. A group of ten children learned and performed Joe of Arabia, which I'd rewritten for the week. It worked out well and there was favourable comment from the audience of parents and friends. While easy to please at one level I always look for the next level of surprise at the accomplishment of the kids after only a week, as well as enjoyment of the dialogue at an adult level. My spies in the audience reported both reactions, so I was pleased with it.

Next week sees the second of these events; a video, sound and lighting course with a sci-fi theme. Could be fun.

Joke

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary & those who don't.

Rites of passage

Another day, another rite of passage. Simon and three friends all left Primary school yesterday, the entire year group surrounded by a crowd of (mostly) mothers taking photos. They had adorned their T-shirts and faces with felt pen signatures and messages, a strange looking crew of almost-adolescents ritually painted for their journey.

The mixed emotions arising from leaving their educational cradles and starting seven long weeks of summer holiday manifested mostly in wild whoops, play-fights, fierce group hugs for the cameras, sudden departures when they'd had enough or glimpsed the edge.

The boy plus his three friends became the Four Chefs for the evening, having spent the past few days gathering at different houses and cooking together. Four families met at the first house for dips and drinks, processed to our house for tacos, fajitas, chilli mince and vegetarian fillings, various sour cream dishes, champagne and other drinks. Carrying our drinks through the twilight and down the hill we enjoyed creme brulee, crusted with a blowtorch, together with more drinks and a dessert wine. At the final destination at the bottom of the hill Simon had set up his chocolate fountain (seriously) and happy kids dipped chopped fruit in hot chocolate while the adults had coffee, chocolates, fruit and ..er.. drinks.

It was a grand evening, a rite of passage for parents watching our children shaking off a few more clouds of glory and taking tentative steps on the damp earth.

The end of term

Simon finishes Primary School for the second time today. He's adopting the high ground position which comes from experience, guiding some of his 'first time' friends through the day, avoiding the tearful mothers and making sure he gets every signature on his t-shirt this time.

It's also our first summer school holiday since January 2008 and very welcome for all that. The weather is warm, the landscape is green, the midges are biting.

I have two theatre projects planned for the summer holiday, both at the Eastgate Theatre. They're dependent on bookings, so time will tell, but I collected a pile of costumes and props the other day in anticipation. Richard and I drove back from Traquair with the Odyssey full of bags of costumes and with two rigged ships masts riding high out of the sunroof. We got some looks driving down the High Street, Richard hanging on white-knuckled to the ends of the masts, though many will have assumed we were just left over from last week's Beltane parades. More on the Beltane festival week once I've processed the photos.

Today I have two appointments with computer tuition clients; a growing band of mainly pensioners and older people who responded to my little advert in the local magazine. It's fun helping people get to grips with their computers and I have Jenny in New Zealand to thank for getting me started on the computer training thing.

Tonight we have a progressive supper with friends to mark the end of term and to give Simon and three friends another opportunity to cook a meal for us all. They're catering for 19 of us tonight, with each course at a different house. The highlight might be flaming the 19 creme brulee dishes with Andrew's blowtorch !

Outdoor Shakespeare

For the past two weeks I've been involved behind the scenes at Othello, the latest production from Shakespeare At Traquair. It's an outdoor promenade in one of the most beautiful gardens in the Borders. Tonight's the final performance, with an expected 150+ audience; a logistical challenge. It's also bucketing with rain and thunder and lightning at the moment, but this is Scotland and it could change in a heartbeat.

The long road to Silloth

On Saturday we finished burying my Grandmother.

She died in 2005 and most of her ashes lie in an unremarkable banked field of wild grasses and young trees near those of my Uncle Chris, who died of cancer some ten years before her. But some of her remained in a small enamelled container, travelling about with my Uncle Andy on the back of his motorbike, tucked in his luggage as he packed his other belongings and moved to his new home aboard a boat in Dover.

A few weeks ago she was collected by my Mum and after a scenic tour of Essex, Wiltshire and York they made the trip North here to Peebles, where she rested until this past weekend.

My Grandmother Mary was widowed in 1943 when my Grandfather Bill piloted his warplane over the Solway Firth after a test flight and collided with a young Canadian flyer. They had been married seven years, my Mother was four, my Uncle Chris not yet born. Bill was buried in a tiny churchyard in Causewayhead, near the Victorian seaside town of Silloth, in a plot of what became thirty or so RAF graves amongst the local dead. He had been stationed at the huge RAF base which dominated the area and whose runway and aircraft hangars are still there today, overgrown and reoccupied by farms and local businesses.

Mourning would have been a perfunctory exercise during that war. My Grandmother was moved out of her RAF accommodation in Wiltshire several days later, became a mother of two six months on, filed the telegram and the few letters of condolence in a brown envelope which I found amongst papers and photos in a cake tin after she died.

So last weekend three generations of us undertook to reunite my Grandmother and my Grandfather 66 years after they were unexpectedly parted. Silloth is a little over two hours from Peebles and Carlisle was a pleasant overnight stop, including a walk through deserted streets of ornate Victorian brick houses to a downtown restaurant. The easy 30-minute drive to Silloth next morning lengthened to an hour and a half as we failed several times to achieve the critical velocity needed to escape Carlisle's gravitational pull. Finally on the right B-road west we met a 'Road Closed' notice. An elaborate sequence of detour signs took us through every village and hamlet in Northwest Cumbria before depositing us back on the same B-road half a mile and forty minutes later.

It was my Grandmother's last journey, the long road to Silloth and back to her first love, on the day before the anniversary of his death. She took the scenic route; her habit in life. It was fitting, humourous and poignant that we meandered through the same villages and byways visited by my Grandfather in the last few weeks of his life, searching with increasing exasperation for local accommodation for his wife and little daughter to join him on his extended posting in Cumbria.

In the 1980s my Grandmother finally learned what it was he was doing up there. An official secret for all those years, he was a test pilot on a programme developing a bomb that would bounce across water and explode upon impact with a dam wall. It became known as the Bouncing Bomb, delivered by the Dam Busters squadron, and Bill was one of its unsung casualties.

He is buried in Causewayhead Cemetery in the shadow of two wartime aircraft hangars. Buried next to him is a pilot from New Zealand, on the other side a Canadian. The plot is simple, well-kept, quiet. By his grave is a stand of blues irises, one of my Grandmother's favourite flowers.

We laid the last remnants of her in the bed with the irises, by the headstone. An old photograph of three smiling young people watched over this. In its battered silver frame it had stood on the mantlepiece in my Great-Aunt Elsie's house; her brother Bill, her friend Mary and herself standing in a roadway by a church, arms across each other's shoulders.

We recalled some stories, shed some tears, and I walked away with a sense of having done a good thing, somehow enriching my own soft earth, and of honouring our forebears.