Month: May 2017

The strangeness of creatures: 1

Turkeys circle a dead cat in ritualistic way…

Strange video footage. As more and more footage of animals performing in apparently ritualistic ways and showing a degree of sophistication appears, it becomes more and more likely that the notion animals are not conscious will be jettisoned, like former concepts of miasma, phlogiston and ether.

The footage below is just one of many shots appearing on youtube that makes our current understanding of animals appear less and less complete.

There are some mysteries in the world.

These turkeys trying to give this cat its 10th life pic.twitter.com/VBM7t4MZYr

14 things Eddie The Eagle taught me

Eddie The Eagle mobbed by autograph-hunting fans.

Eddie the Eagle has an ambivalent reputation in the British psyche. As a boy, I remember the Press sneering at him and implying he was in some way an embarrassment for Britain, or painting him as a kind of likeable buffoon worthy of a comedy mention, but little else – a cringeworthy footnote in the history of the Winter Olympics.

Going to his talk at the King’s Theatre, Southsea, on 27th May 2017, I didn’t know what to expect, but suspected it might easily be the forced story of a wannabe inspirational speaker. That, I guess, was the cynical pressmen at work, even after all these years.

Eddie and me

In fact, Eddie the Eagle’s story of how he got to the Calgary Olympics in 1988 to become Britain’s first Olympic ski-jumper since 1929 is a tale of a young man so in love with his sport and so determined to get there that he was willing to go through extreme hardship to make his dream come true. And all the while he did it, he regarded the setbacks, the knocks, the poverty and the pain as something to shrug off because it was worth every moment of it. Only at the end of the night, when he plays footage of ski-jumpers involved in horrifying accidents does the real danger he exposed himself to in pursuit of his dream came through. His talk, Try Hard, was genuinely uplifting – and I have seen many speakers over the years telling their stories of success.

So, here are fourteen things I learned from Eddie the Eagle Edwards:

  1. Eddie came from a background with no advantages when it came to making it to the Olympics. His dad was a builder with little money, and he was born with a birth defect meaning he had to have his legs straightened in plaster casts – much like the old style pictures you see of kids in calipers.
  2. Eddie fell in love with skiing when he was a kid on a school trip, and his love of the sport took over his life. He did his very first jump across a road on that first trip and began to jump friends, cars and trucks for charity as his skill grew.
  3. As a boy, he beat the members of the All-England squad at races in the UK and was asked to join the team. He lasted for one morning, when the class-ridden prejudices of the squad led to him, a lowly working class kid in secondhand kit, being dropped from the team despite his obvious talent.
  4. He pushed on and ignored the prejudice – opting for the ski-jump option when he realised there was no GB team and hence no competition, and that it might be a way of entering the Olympics more cheaply.
  5. He broke his neck and back in a race with a rival skier after losing control, flying through the air and landing on his rival. The prize for the race was to take a woman out for dinner. The rival skier did so and married her, while Eddie got 6 weeks’ traction for his efforts.
  6. He did his first ski-jump at Lake Placid in the USA, using discarded kit left in a hut by other skiers.
  7. He went from a 5 metre jump to a 40 metre jump in the space of an afternoon under his own steam – a progression that usually takes years of training with a coach.
  8. His first helmet was tied on with string, and later popped off when he did the 90 metre jumps.
  9. His kit early on was provided by donations from teams from across Europe who saw him struggling while training with low quality equipment.
  10. To feed himself while training in Switzerland, he took food from the bins at the Scout house where he was staying and recooked it after the scouts had finished eating. Custard and gravy, he says, is delicious.
  11. In the build-up to Calgary he broke his jaw in a jump. With no insurance, he tied a pillowcase around his head to bind his jaw and carried on jumping – holding his face when he landed to keep his bones in place.
  12. He had to pay for his own flight to the Winter Olympics, working in the hotel where he was training with the US team in Steamboat Springs in order to buy his air fare.
  13. His absolute love of his sport is infectious, and he is really a likeable guy who simply tells his story with no pretentiousness – it simply is a tale of something he had to do.
  14. Eddie lands on his feet with this talk. It’s not the story of someone reaching the pinnacle of success in the eyes of the public, but setting his own standard of what he wanted to achieve, and going for it with every part of his soul. It’s a story of bravery, of joy, resilience and dogged determination. He is well worth hearing.

I am so glad I was impressed! It’s a recommend.

Writing Edward King – the performances, 27th May 2017

Image courtesy of (c) Portsmouth Museum

Some time ago I volunteered to write a short story about local artist Edward King, who for the last 26 years of his life was a patient at St James’s Lunatic Asylum on Locksway Road, Milton.

It was part of a project run by Annie Kirby-Singh that has incorporated workshops, the publication of an Edward King website www.writingedwardking.com containing the contributions by writers and examples of his work.

His story is a fascinating one. Extolled by Van Gogh for his power and virility in his drawing, he was a member of the New English Art Club alongside Sickert, Singer Sergent, Nash and Augustus John. Yet after the death of his wife in 1924 and a prolonged breakdown, he ended the last years of his life at James’s. In his later years, he took to painting again, producing pictures of Milton Locks, and a series of paintings of the city after air raids during the Portsmouth Blitz.

14 writers produced stories inspired by his works, and I was lucky enough to be at one of a series of four performances that took place in the Minghella Studio of the New Theatre Royal on the 27th May 2017.

One of the things that constantly rocks me on my heels is the extraordinary level of writing talent in this relatively small town. The 90 minute show of which I was a part had works by local writers Christine Lawrence, me, Jacqui Pack, Charlotte Comley, Bernie Byers, Zella Compton and William Sutton. By the end of the session, after hearing stories and songs by these extraordinary writers I felt genuinely humbled.

From Christine’s dark tale of madness, through Jacqui’s account of depression, Charlotte’s story of Nora coming to terms with a troubled childhood, Bernie’s analysis of a painting of the laundry, through Zella’s viscerally real account of an air raid to William’s songs, both moving and funny, the session was a complete moment of exploration and discovery.

You may have missed the live session – but the stories are online for you to enjoy at The Writing Edward King website (link above). There is much there to enjoy… so… enjoy!

Moscow State Circus – Southsea, 24th May to 4th June 2017

Over the years I have come to realise that there are only three true art forms. These are Punch and Judy, pantomime and circus. Of these, the greatest is whichever I have most recently seen.

That said, Gostinitsa, the Hotel of Curiosities, currently showing on Southsea Common from the Moscow State Circus, is one of the most accomplished circus offers I have ever seen here – and I have seen many, many circuses over the years.

From the opening tableau, in which the performers arrive at the hotel and intrigue the audience with the promise of what’s to come conveyed with smiles, greasepaint and outlandish costumes, there is something eccentric, self-contained and artistically integral throughout. This is circus and Vaudeville and fantasy rolled into one heady mix.

Let’s start with those costumes. From steampunk kids to 1920s flappers, through comedy bellboys and Cossack bandits, to otherworldly tightrope walkers the colour of living air, there is something so perfect in the visual design that the aesthetic of the show actually at moments took my breath away.

Add to this perfect timing and extraordinary assuredness in the acts and the fact that each act brings with it a genuine surprise and you realise you are watching a show that is truly world class.  From skipping routine to highwire act, the show has an extraordinary energy and something way beyond that…

Many years ago, I realised that if I had my life again, I wouldn’t have wasted it in intellectual pursuits, but would instead make dreams happen, help embody the impossible and cause people to gasp at the potential in human beings. The hard work may not have suited me, I suppose, and may well have wrecked me – but it might also have been something that was an all-consuming passion that made my life whole. That is how it feels when I stand on the outside looking in. I am in love with the circus.

Whether that daydream is true or not, I will never know, of course. But when I watch shows the quality of Gostinitsa, I feel like I have opened a curtain not just on another way of life, but on a whole other world, an Oz, a Narnia, in which the normal rules of physics don’t apply any more.

I have often wept at the beauty of circuses. Tonight, the tightness came to my throat again – and for what? The sheer joy of seeing the absolute cream of acrobatic performers weave a dream before me.

I recommend this show with all my heart, and hope you get the same joyous, anarchic, erotic, crazy hit from it I do. Gostinitsa is a dream come to life.