Blood, Love & Rhetoric

verganheitsbewältigung

2009-09-27T03:11:00.002+03:00

I’m not sure when it happened. Sometime during this past decade.

Do you remember when you last went to a wedding or function or any type of show or event and there wasn’t a rabid herd of cameras snapping and flashing every ten seconds? As a friend of mine recently noted, the snap-happy mentality even reigns at funerals these days.

Once upon a time, the past could be lost in the mists of time. You could remember shit the way you wanted to. Every time you told the story of what happened, it would alter slightly: some parts embellished, some downplayed, until you reached a reconstructed version of history that you could live with.

Now there are photos – and even worse, videos – to blow those mists away. No matter how much you rationalise, philosophise and comfort yourself with a few healthy delusions, the truth will always exist on YouTube.

Much as I would like to know who really wrote Shakespeare, who really assassinated Kennedy and who wrote my telephone number in that public toilet in Blackpool, I hope we never invent time travel. History is a dish better served braised.

As you may have guessed, tonight’s gig could have gone better and I’m hoping none of those filming their sets caught the mc by accident.

Ah well, maybe I’ll tell this story of telling stories a few times and see whether it takes me closer to, or farther away from, the truth.

And the New Year blows in, casting away the spent leaves of summer

2009-09-07T20:48:00.003+03:00

Today was summer’s dying breath. One last stand before autumn sets in for good. Goodbye to sun and all that.

The New Year used to start with the spring awakening on March twenty-fifth, and now it begins pedantically on January first, separating two indistinguishable days of midwinter. But for me, it has always been the arrival of autumn that has heralded the New Year. No doubt this is largely a relic of the new school year starting on September first in England, combined with the way Finland seems to revive from its two-month aestivation. Autumn has always been the time to embark on new things.

My birthday also sits on the cusp of autumn. The change of season marks a personal new year, too. This year, I was to throw a joint birthday/leaving party. I've spent the past twelve months counting lasts: this is my last Winter, this is my last Vappu, this is my last Juhannus, because I’ll be gone by October. This New Year was to be the start of a new era.

Yet now I have to face my looming birthday in the knowledge that I am to remain here indefinitely, in the same miserable situation, and that this New Year’s Day will fall between two indistinguishable days of autumn drizzle.

I am trying to make the best of it. I’m taking on projects to stave off the feelings of failure, of treading water, of disappointment in myself; even though I have little hope of them amounting to anything. A friend surprised me the other day by saying that I make a habit of exceeding myself in everything I do. I would say that I've underperformed at everything I’ve attempted. If I’m such an overachiever, how come I’m still ‘here’, both physically and metaphorically?

In fact, that sense of failure is currently so overwhelming that I’m finding good news hard to take. Other people’s, that is. My friends are landing great new jobs abroad, getting married, being offered amazing artistic opportunities, gaining PhDs… the list goes on and they’re all younger than me. And while I’m happy for them, because they’re my friends and they deserve their success, each of their triumphs is another poke in the eye that reminds me of my failure.

One wet and gloomy autumn night years ago, I got on the wrong bus. I was tired, the windows were steamed up, and I didn’t realise until it was too late. Until the bus reached the terminus and I was disgorged into some godforsaken hole in the suburbs of Vantaa. Late night, no way of knowing how or when or if I’d ever get home.

That’s how I feel right now.

kill your babies, pets and mouth bacteria, hoover up your dust bunnies and trample your rose beds, hell grab a bazooka and blast the lot away

2009-07-07T20:57:00.003+03:00

You may already have inferred that this is not going to be a happy post.

When asked if the glass is half-empty or half-full, I often like to call myself a ‘magical realist’ and a ‘laissez-faire optimist’. But today I have been facing my nemesis: capital-r reality sans flippancy. (But still with poncey French loan words.)

Much as I hate to admit defeat, I know that I’m going to have to accept defeat as the right decision. Yes, yet another of my projects is going up in flames. But I hope to find some phoenix eggs hatching from the ashes. Maybe these chicks will grow up to be greater than their parent? Who knows – all I can do is nurture them and find out.

Never give up, but know when to adapt.

(not so) novel ideas

2009-07-01T13:57:00.006+03:00

It was with a mixture of relief and regret that I realised I was writing the wrong book.

Reading back over my blog entries from earlier this year, that seems glaringly obvious; but I guess (almost) everything is obvious with hindsight.

The novel was set in London and had a strongly autobiographical theme all dressed up in a vaguely Gabriel Garcia Marquez worldscape. And it went nowhere. Until one day, I found myself walking the streets of Kruununhaka; streets that I must have walked down numerous times before but had obviously never really seen. My hometown was a surprise to me. I goggled like a tourist.

Push and pull. This isn’t a novel of arrival, it’s a novel of departure. I shouldn’t be examining London, it’s Helsinki that needs to go under the microscope – or the autopsy knife. Which yet remains to be seen.

And so here I am, starting (almost) from square one. A new outline is taking shape. As so many have done before.

‘There are no new ideas,’ said Audre Lorde. ‘Only new ways of making them felt.’

I seem to have been seeking that special something all my life. And now I fear the moment when my outline is complete. In fact, the moment when anything I produce is ‘done’. For it’s always the moment when I, once again, realise that that spark is missing.

And it will be back to (almost) square one. But I am tiring of a life that always requires the insertion of (almost).

Niche Market

2009-06-28T21:59:00.005+03:00

It’s been six months since I mouthed off about grand plans and, what a surprise, all I have is half a page of scribbled lines. Quite literally. That is all there is of the novel that, according to my writing schedule, should have reached sixty eight thousand words today.

Neither my personal life nor my projects have quite gone to plan. My purposefully empty calendar did not result in productivity and relaxation, but lethargy and depression. Somehow I seemed to achieve more in those snatched moments.

Last week I had one of those five a.m. epiphanies re my novel’s abortive start: I realised I was writing the wrong book. More details forthcoming in a subsequent post; for now, I’ll stick to the real-life implications.

This country! It’s the miserable weather, the prejudice I face by being a minority, and the language barrier – that’s the problem. Language, especially in my chosen fields of writing and the performing arts, is what’s holding me back. Whatever I do, because it’s in English, will only ever have a limited audience and restricted success in Finland. I’d have done so much better had I stayed in England.

Or would I? Yes, there’s a limited audience for my work here, but at the same time there’s also a limited artist base. I’ve enjoyed a cosy niche market; let’s even call it a healthy lack of competition. My special minority status may even have opened up opportunities I never would have had ‘at home’, even on the am dram circuit.

Now, as I contemplate my return to London, I find myself faced with a disturbing question: what if my audience there turns out to be just as limited? Am dram panto at the church hall. Will I discover that once I can no longer blame ‘This country!’, I will have to face up to my own mediocrity?

Thought I’d Something More to Say

2009-01-06T17:51:00.003+02:00

Like many people, I discovered Pink Floyd in my teens. Floyd songs featured heavily on the tapes I used to play in my car when driving to uni, and Time was always one of my favourites.

And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you – genius lyrics, I always thought. Until one day you listen to that song and it’s true, and those genius lyrics become acute in all the wrong ways.

This song rolled around on shuffle recently, and those oh-so-familiar lyrics that I had happily sung along to so many times, nodding sagaciously at their profundity, suddenly became a bullet of ice in my chest: I have achieved no more than that half a page of scribbled lines in the oh-my-god-fifteen years since I first heard those lyrics.

I’ve always eschewed five-year plans and the such like, because the randomness of the world has always made them seem irrelevant; but in a Floydian epiphanic moment, I’ve realised that it is the randomness of I that has always made them irrelevant.

I am not one for New Year’s resolutions, and I won’t be dressing up my decisions in such gimcrack threads; but the end-of-year period does often become a time of solitary reflection and realisation, and – whether it roughly coincides with the New Year or not – I will be embarking on a one-year plan. This is goodbye to the English way.

Because I do really think I’ve something more to say.

A Sense of Place

2008-12-26T03:23:00.005+02:00

I’ve always been mildly puzzled when listening to people with a strong sense of belonging to a certain place, as I’ve never really experienced that magnetism; never felt an internal compass spin to any particular point.

The closest I came to feeling that gently quivering needle was during the early years after we left London. I was coming on ten when we moved, and for some reason – difficult age, difficult times or difficult psyche? – I never made the transition properly. I elevated London into a Promised Land: if only I could return, everything would be all right.

But when, a few years later, I did return for a short visit, London was… just another place. Drinking London tap water did not grant eternal life or happiness. I resigned myself to life in the North, realising that place did not matter: wherever I went, that miserable I was always tagging along.

That epiphany didn’t make me into a global hobo – wherever I lay my suitcase isn’t home – but maybe it made it a lot easier to emigrate. I’ve lived in Finland for nigh on eleven years now, and never in that time have I felt the urge to go back to England. As I celebrated my ten years in Finland earlier this spring, I was firmly convinced that I’d still be here in another ten, twenty, thirty years.

Until last week.

Why now? And why so suddenly – a change like bad weather rolling across sunlit fields? And although Finland must have plenty of cows, in my accompanying mental image, those imaginary clouds just swept over English fields of black and white dairy cows. In the same way that my dreamscape was long based on lost childhood landscapes, have these Friesians been lowing, sotto voce, in the dusty recesses of my mind this past decade?

The pivot on which the mood turned seems so silly, so trivial, so completely incapable of being responsible for such a profound anything. I was trying to arrange a day out with a friend. What would I most like to do, she asked. Go to the theatre, was my initial thought. But everything was in Finnish, and her language skills weren’t up to it. I could have managed, but – goddamnit! – I don’t want to see theatre in Finnish, I thought. And then, remembering the way I was struggling to choose what to do during my trip to England in the spring – not because there wasn’t anything interesting going on, but because there was just so much theatre and stand-up and history and exhibitions and what have you – suddenly I just wanted to go somewhere where I could truly love and appreciate the world around me.

Is this feeling simply a fleeting by-product of the dark days of Finnish kaamos, or because I’d hoped to be in England over Christmas but couldn’t be, or am I just raising my sunken Atlantis, that place I know is just a place, because I am otherwise unhappy? Or is the sly sense of place stronger than I thought?

I have spent this Christmas Day, not playing chess with the cats as threatened (they cheat and try to eat the prawns), but pondering this conundrum; and whilst I’ve not experienced an epiphany as such, I have just realised one very worrying aspect of my life here: of all my good friends, very, very few of them are Finns. Yup - you know where they're mostly from.

Long-dead Roses

2008-08-18T00:40:00.005+03:00

I may be about to lose Zephalonius, one of my favourite ancestors.

Sometimes the tortuous trail of parish register deductions takes a wrong turn and it’s not until you emerge from the trees that you realise you’ve hacked through the wrong forest.

Whatever happens, Zeph will probably remain somewhere in the extended family, but he may no longer be ‘mine’. I’m surprised at quite how disappointed I feel – and how I have become attached to these centuries-dead people.

I’m not equally attached to all the ancestors I have – metaphorically – unearthed. Some I get attached to because I feel that I’m getting to know them. These are usually the ones who’ve left more of a paper trail than simply their baptism, marriage and burial entries.

In the 1841 census, one lady was down as living – presumably ‘in sin’ – with some foreign-sounding chap and was imprisoned for seven days for withholding information. With a strong base in Hempstead and its environs, I’m also collecting members of the infamous Essex Gang. But it’s amazing how much difference it makes simply knowing an ancestor’s occupation.

Zephalonius was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, coiner of those oft-quoted lines: ‘What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ But do I instantly ‘like’ certain ancestors more simply because they have distinctive names?

I have also come across a couple of rather unfortunate names during the course of my research.

I was unable to discover the forename of an ancestor’s sister’s husband. It was unfortunate that I had to note her down as marrying an ‘Unknown Pratt’.

Another gentleman’s wife – unfortunately not in my direct line – was born Fanny Cock. I like to imagine this prim Victorian lady introducing herself as she takes afternoon tea in the drawing room.

In the very next year, a neighbouring village spawned Goliath Cocks. The accompanying census capture is from when he was, ahem, ‘head’ of the household.

I now have a burning desire to write a story in which Goliath Julius Cocks – Victorian gentleman hero – takes the starring role…

Bring back þorn!

2008-08-12T13:10:00.011+03:00

No, not porn – þat is alive and well – I mean the letter þorn.

Þorn was part of þe Old English alphabet and, unlike in Icelandic, could represent eiþer of our modern th sounds. Alþough two ‘special’ characters – eth and wynn – died out relatively quickly, þorn and long s survived: long s until Victorian times and þorn into þe Middle English period; even þough its use was þen largely restricted to short þ words and standard abbreviations.

All þose ‘Ye Olde Teashoppes’ are in fact using a late form of þorn, which became almost indistinguishable from y, alþough it was still pronounced þ.

Why bring back þorn?

First and foremost, þorn is just plain cool.

Most oþer European languages are livened up by a sprinkling of ticks, hats and swooshes. English has noþing. But we don’t need to be a plain jane – we can have þorn.

Þorn is also environmentally friendly.

Th is a common combination in þe English language, as it is used in so many common words, such as þe, þis, þat, þem and þen . Using t plus h takes up twice þe space of using þ.

A quick analysis of some English texts shows þat an average of 3–4 per cent of þe characters (including white spaces) are taken up by t and h in þe combination th.

Analysis of a random novel shows þat 3.9 per cent of its characters form part of a th combination. Replace þese wiþ þorn and þe total number of characters will be reduced by 2 per cent. In a 340-page novel, þis equates to a saving of about seven whole pages.

Þink of þe number of books published in þe English language every year and you will see þat þorn is the tree messiah.

I þink þat þis discovery now obligates me to run for parliament – or at least appear on Late Night Wiþ Conan O’Brien.

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhn!

2007-10-18T23:23:00.000+03:00

Another shameless self promotion – sorry, viral marketing – post is on the cards; but in order not to make it three in a row, I decided to squeeze a little bit of fluff in between.

In her grand return to blogging, Fionna said she was not going to fill up her blog with meme results. But it’s true: as soon as you see one, you want to do it! I stumbled across one and, yes, I did it. Drat.

And another sad reality is, as soon as you’ve got your meme result, you feel the overwhelming urge to share it. Or should that be ‘spread it like an itchy plague’? Heh, heh, resist if you can, but I expect to see your meme results posted soon!

Oh yes, but down to business: if I were a fantasy or sci-fi character, I’d be … Captain James T. Kirk!

An impassioned commander with more respect for individuals than for authority, you have a no-holds-barred approach to life and its obstacles.

"I don’t believe in the no-win scenario."

Yes, well. If only I could get my 'crew' to stop farting in rehearsals.

I also note that on Facebook’s compare people application, I was once voted a better singer than someone else. I can only imagine that person was my almost alter ego William Shatner.

Chernobyl Iron

2007-10-03T23:57:00.000+03:00

Today was the opening night of Poetry and Jazz. I’m both time and money starved. What did I really need two hours before going on stage? A noxious iron meltdown, obviously.

It’s all symptomatic – and cat related. Time starvation equals multi-tasking. I ironed my outfit for Poetry and Jazz. Unable to leave a hot iron on the board for fear of cats burning themselves, I left it to cool on the stove – the only heat resistant, out-of-the-way place in this broom closet.

I then realised that a) I'd better get going soon, b) I had to rehearse my story, c) I was broke again, and d) I better eat at home rather than at the café like I normally do. So I wapped some rice on the stove and disappeared into the other room to type away frantically at my remaining work.

You can guess most of the rest. Somehow I managed to turn on not only the plate under the rice, but also the one under the iron. I thought the smell of burning rice had come rather soon and was unusually acrid; only to find it was the iron’s plastic case melting.

My tiny flat was soon full of noxious fumes. Flinging open all the windows was impossible in case the cats escaped. I hunted the stupid creatures down, but they were cowering in inaccessible nooks. When I thought I’d finally got them both locked in the bathroom, I opened all the windows I could easily open – dangerously few in Finland!

I then scrubbed the melted plastic off the stove to stop it pouring out even more fumes - tricky with the plate still hot – and melted some nail varnish in the process. I went to check that the cats weren’t suffocating: only His Lordship in the bathroom, ground floor flat, windows wide open…

I searched in vain for Nefer. No trace. I had to be on stage in just over two hours. Should I go outside searching, call the animal shelter, what? I slumped on the bed and it hissed! The fraidy cat had burrowed into the duvet cover.

I continued with my defumigation procedure, trying to open windows while ensuring cat containment. By this time, my throat and lungs were stinging from the noxious fumes that visibly filled all rooms except the bathroom.

The upshot in brief: no money, no work done, no iron, no dinner, no rehearsal and a sore throat.

The place still has a lung-corroding stink of melted plastic, but Poetry and Jazz rocked! (Although there weren't any Americans in the audience.) Maybe I should not-rehearse like this in future? (If any of my cast are reading - NOOOOOO!)

Two out of three ain’t bad

2007-09-30T23:43:00.000+03:00

And I’m back again with shameless advertising part the second! I was meant to be keeping some kind of writer’s/director’s/nervous wreck’s blog on The Mourning Primrose, but what with one thing and another I’ve had neither the time nor inclination.

I never thought directing this play was going to be easy, but it sure feels like it’s been a lot harder than it ought to have been. At least compared to any of the shows I’ve ever been involved in – though I’m sure my former directors will want to take me to task on that, the Fish in particular!

The Primrose has been beleaguered right from the outset. Firstly, there’s a lot on at the FBS this autumn and I’ve been struggling to find suitably sized rehearsal space at the times we need it.

Then an injury in the second week of rehearsal meant I needed to find a replacement for a character that never shuts up and is in every scene of the play bar one. The replacement was half way up a mountain in Chile for three weeks.

After reshuffling the cast, sod’s law stated that it was the reshuffled people we’d been focusing on thus far, and we needed to redo everything with the new cast. But a variety of stealth business trips, illnesses and general wtfness meant it was an unbelievable five weeks before we had a rehearsal in which everyone called actually showed up. (And as there were only two people called that day, it was a bloody good job too!) At the nadir, I was on stage standing in for three different people, a nightmare for all involved: ‘No, no, no! It’s quite simple: when I’m wearing the antlers, I’m Cuthbert…’

Sorting out all the above and being sick with salmonella for a couple of weeks also means I’m personally way behind with admin, costumes, whatever you care to name.

Yet we’ve just survived a horrendously long weekend containing two of the most laborious rehearsals of any play. A first full walkthrough (with blocking incomplete) on Saturday that went straight into a full off-book walkthrough on Sunday was cruel and unusual, but necessary under the circumstances. So a huge thanks to all cast and crew – it went far better than I’d hoped it ever could!

It’s now six weeks and four days to curtain up. We’re under-rehearsed, but pretty much back on track.

There was a point – after everything that could go wrong seemed to have done – when I wondered why I ever thought I could do this. Someone being hurt so badly in rehearsal they had to pull out of the show – a failure for me, whatever the extenuating circumstances, because I was in charge. Gaping holes in the backstage and technical crew (still true), and hordes of people not showing up to rehearsals – a failure for me, because I couldn't motivate people to do so. Struggling for rehearsal space – my first failure in the management skill department, plus all the things I'm personally behind on. Top that with the seesawing confidence that comes with dealing with your own work and...

The Players had just been asked to do something to commemorate the 250th anniversary of William Blake’s birth, and the director of that was finding it tricky to put together a cast as our rehearsal periods overlap almost perfectly. I asked myself, what if I just say to him, ‘You want a budget, a theatre and a cast? You got one!’

Anyone who read my preoccupations will know I have one for independence, the flip side of that coin being a horror of dependence. I hate to need anything or anyone. If I can’t do something alone, I shouldn’t be doing it.

So I put on my Meatloaf mask, looked in the mirror and asked, do you want it, do you need it, do you love it? I do want love it, I do want it, but yes, I could give it all to Blake. And when I realised I could walk away and survive, I knew I didn’t need to. The show will go on.

Those two out of three aren't the traditional ones, but they still ain’t bad, and are what I aim for in all aspects of life.

Patches of Hidden Icing

2007-09-26T23:22:00.000+03:00

Did I say I was back? I seem to have neglected my blog for almost another month. Not only have I been spreading myself thinner than Becel margarine on a weightwatcher’s rye cracker, but thing after thing has been going wrong and, strangely, I just haven’t felt like publicly whinging about it – damn this year of the pink toilet!

But now it’s time for some shameless advertising, kicking off with this season’s Poetry & Jazz – the food edition. What with the play, the move and all the calamities, I said to myself that I wasn’t going to do Poetry and Jazz this autumn. I spoke to myself sternly in the mirror every morning and said I simply didn’t have the time, no matter how much Joel twisted my arm.

But Joel left my arms alone and unleashed puppy eyes on me; and at the last moment I found myself not only doing Poetry and Jazz, but performing (and therefore memorising) two poems and a 1,600–word story!

The full-length version of Turkey Wrangling was originally written as a sort of pastiche of Joel’s Turkey Hills series and is therefore set in the fictional town of the same name in Massachusetts. For some reason that now escapes me, I therefore decided I would do all the speech in an American accent…

Joel, who grew up in Massachusetts, gave me a few pointers. He didn’t, however, comment after my first accent rehearsal. I finally plucked up the courage to ask him about it in the pub afterwards. The reply? He hadn’t ‘noticed anything untoward’. Err … hadn’t noticed I was doing it, or hadn’t noticed anything hideous? Hadn’t noticed I was doing it! I attempted to take this as a complement, figuring that if he hadn’t noticed, it can’t have been so diabolical, nor had I gone all cringingly Southern belle on everyone’s ear holes, as is the unfortunate tendency.

However, after tonight’s final rehearsal – still no comments from Joel – I remain convinced that my American accent sucks ear and I have no one to blame but myself.

Oh, and I still don’t have any curtains.

Home Canderel Home

2007-09-05T00:12:00.000+03:00

Has it really been a month since I came back from India? Various sicknesses and ordeals have shadowed the past few weeks to such an extent that I haven’t felt like blogging. I may get around to gradually filling in the gaps, just as I may eventually get around to writing about India!

Where to start? Here I am, sitting at my desk in what’s meant to be my home, but I feel as if I’ve just dragged all my stuff into a hotel room.

The move itself was utterly miserable, took forever and cost me a fortune.

The charity shop came round to look at my (perfectly serviceable) excess furniture and decided they didn’t want it – one hour before the van was due. I was still stuffing clothes into bin liners fifteen minutes before the van was due. I had so much stuff even after my mass junking that I had to pay for two and a half hours of overtime – plus the removal men’s dinner break in Hesburger! The cleaning firm I hired didn’t do a very good job, the new owners complained, and I had to go back and de-cat piss the bathroom.

Autumn with its work and theatre commitments is now in full swing, but my moving house to-do list is still overflowing with little household tweaks that I ought to see to before it’s too late. (In over four years in the old place, I never got around to putting up the bathroom mirror.) I now have three huge windows at ground level, no curtains and – after decades of living high up – a habit of wandering around with little or nothing on.

All out over Afghanistan

2007-08-08T09:32:00.000+03:00

Back safe, if not quite sound. I didn’t drink the water, but I still brought home an unfortunate souvenir. It isn’t cholera, but whatever it is, it hit bad just in time for the journey home. Seven hours of severe stomach cramps in an aeroplane is no joke.

Luckily, it was a night flight and most people slept, meaning there were no queues for the loo and my puking in a bag went largely unnoticed.

Things were at their worst over Afghanistan. It was interesting to note how the pilot’s flight path announcement on the outgoing trip had us jumping right from Uzbekistan to Pakistan, even though – when not showing movies – Finnair displays a map with a plane icon that travels the route in real-time. The pilot on the way back, however, was happy to mention flying past Kabul.

George W will be happy to know I was hurling a few of my own missiles over Afghanistan.

Keep tuned for forthcoming tales – and Flickr photos – from India, when I’m feeling up to it :(

Fickleness, thy name is Feline

2007-07-22T10:09:00.000+03:00

I’ve just spent an odd, feline-free night.

I got to sleep immediately without having to shout ‘will you @%&ing settle down!’ seventy-three times. I woke when the beepy alarm clock went off, not when the purry alarm clock went off two hours too early. The flat was oddly quiet this morning. Their equipment had gone too. There was no trace of them.

I will be off to the airport in under an hour, the beasts are already holidaying in Sörnäinen with Joel. They reacted to their change of scenery as expected: Sir immediately greeted all, investigated every nook and cranny of his new territory and bagsied the best sleeping spots; the Nefer hid under the sofa. I stayed for a few hours until Nefer emerged, lured out by a hunting game – she can’t stand it when others have fun without her.

And then I left, almost unnoticed. Sir was watching traffic. Nefer had gone back under the sofa.

Fickleness, thy name is feline!

Love in the Time of Cholera

2007-07-18T18:05:00.000+03:00

Normally, I would be quite happy to be compared to anything even vaguely connected with South American literature or magical realism. In fact – by a how very extraordinarily amazing coincidence – only a few hours before reading anna mr’s post, I’d picked up just such a volume as my in-flight read to India.

And speaking of not drinking the water, if I were a novel, a little quizlet tells me that I’d be:

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Fine. No probs. Cool book, cool title. Then I read the blurb that goes with it. Everyone else has been saying how strangely apt theirs have been. So... How exactly did those six questions end up here?

‘Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff could get you killed.’

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

the standard half marylin

2007-07-17T20:00:00.000+03:00

You sometimes ask yourself why you pay so much for your hair. And then you’re reminded: to avoid looking like this.

But needs must when the Devil filches from your purse to score salted liquorice: I needed a cheap root job to make my hair manageable in India and I needed it fast.

I knew something was up when the hairdresser said, ‘Gosh, the colour took quickly.’ I was aiming for a golden match, but my roots now encircle my head like a platinum halo. In the sunlight, I look positively beatific!

She offered to darken it, but I thought it was safer not to get any more volatile gunk slapped on my head while it still wasn't green. Goldilocks doesn’t look so bad from the front, but ... I know the multicolour look is currently in, but not when it looks like a result of standing out too long in peroxide rain. Hopefully gentlemen prefer accidental blondes, too.

However, at least I can now provide an answer to Kani’s question – if not the where, then the why: because you always need to find another one.

So Bo-ho

2007-07-13T18:16:00.000+03:00

An exceptionally odd week, even for a Finnish July, with only one appointment in my calendar – and that for the cat! (Although I did initially mix up our vaccination appointments, the worst that happened was that I got up two hours earlier than I needed to: I’m not protected against cat flu.)

With no work either, lousy weather and a disturbingly full refrigerator, I decided to hole up at home doing the writer thing. No hair washing or leg shaving, and only popping out briefly just before midnight – in a long skirt mind you – when I remember I’ve almost forgotten the photo of the day.

I’d been finding the final nicks and tucks to the script prohibitively tricky; but a few days isolation gave me the leisure required to sufficiently re-immerse myself in the Mourning Primrose world. The characters – and one in particular – gave me a good scolding and told me what they’d been trying to say if only I’d bloody well listen.

For days, the only conversation I’ve conducted has been with fictional characters and cats. Yet now the weekend looms and it’s time to break free of this unhealthy clowder.

The concrete terraces of Leppävaara await! Er, I'm just so bo-ho...

Eight Left

2007-07-12T23:31:00.000+03:00

Only eight left. Eight and a half if I manage to fix it. Death hit the floor at 1:14.

The cats are not normally that destructive, but this has been a gloomy week on page two. A quirky piece of furniture, a ten-year-old suede jacket, my glasses, a souvenir from Prague – why can’t they pick on the heaps of cheapo replaceable crap littering my place? No, feline taste is primo.

Or should I say, Nefernefernefer’s taste. Sir contributed to the jacket in his own urethral way, but I’m sure it was She, Sutekh’s young apprentice, that dragged it to the floor in the first place. I should be proud of my architecturally talented moggies. While Monsieur concentrates on waterscaping the bathroom, Mademoiselle is focusing on redevelopment of the domestic environment.

Open plan is all right in theory, but I see that I’m going to have to install some sort of sliding door in my new place ASAP. The Paw of Evil looms over everything. Coming home to find a chewed laptop fizzling with cat piss is not top of my wish list.

Limericks & Prayers

2007-07-10T23:51:00.000+03:00

This week I have mostly been writing limericks and prayers! And insults.

I never ceased to be amazed by the unlikely directions in which my writing projects take me. The limericks are finally done and approved for The Mourning Primrose score by our Mr Music. The prayers – yes, Kani, I hear your panicked squeal at the unexpected plural – are still causing random frustration. Bloody sebum-sucking son of a plucked chicken Act Two is all I can say!

I always find final acts to be a bit of a bastard. Wrapping up plays is worse than wrapping up Christmas presents: there’s always cat hair in the sellotape. After further musings on feedback, I’ve decided that cutting an entire scene, adding a second prayer and rewriting the first – and jazzing up the whole package with some general nips and tucks ribbon – should just maybe possibly hopefully do the trick. (Un)luckily, I’m experiencing a sudden lull in the work department, so I hope to whip act two into shape and finally circulate the script by the end of the week.

If work continues to be minimal, next up on the scribbling pad will be this fortnight’s writing society exercise. The autumn production is going to require immense amounts of time and energy, so I’ve been umming and ahhing about whether or not to do Poetry and Jazz this season. I (un)fortunately seem to have been inspired by a combination of the next meeting’s word and the Poetry and Jazz theme. If my short series of poems Comestible Form comes to anything, my decision would appear to have been made for me.

And in case anybody's wondering, yes, that is a pig's heart.

Side effect: Amphibrachitis

2007-07-09T11:37:00.000+03:00

After various interferences from my real life, I’m almost ready to send out the script for The Mourning Primrose.

The sailors’ song has been the bottleneck. The original lyrics were too difficult to fit to a shanty tune. Rewrite attempts were only partially successful, so music man Matthew suggested that the best way to solve all our problems was to use the limerick form: an easy beat to set to music and well suited to bawdy lyrics. I was in full agreement and said yarr, bring out the cat o' nine tails, I’d whip them into shape in the next couple of days, no problem.

Limericks are deceptively difficult to write, aren’t they? After various frustrating attempts to morph the existing words into the new form – and an afternoon lost due to an unfortunate incident involving my suede jacket and the cats – I decided to scrap my old ideas and start from scratch.

It was still tough going, but I managed to complete two of the three versus before it was time to take my first malaria tablet. Then I got a bit distracted, but at least I was practising:

A lady who’s practically a Finn
was forced to ingest some mefloquin.
She didn’t go crazy
just felt a bit hazy
and Larium ain’t yet done her in.

Pull out, pull out, you’ve hit an artery!

2007-07-07T17:22:00.001+03:00

So says one Far Side mosquito to the other. Don’t remember the strip? Shame on you! This Gary Larson panel is so famous that in Suwon City, Korea, there’s even a mosquito monument based on it! (Whether officially or unofficially, I am unable to ascertain.)

Tomorrow I begin my preventative medication for malaria. After reading the guidelines, I fully expect to start hearing mosquitoes talk. Sometimes you wonder whether the prevention is worse than the disease.

The side effects section starts out on a reassuring note: if using this medication to treat malaria, its side effects can be difficult to distinguish from the symptoms of the disease. Side effects are common, the standard ones being nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Neuropsychological ones – headaches, both drowsiness and insomnia – are also typical.

There’s a warning against taking this drug if you have a history of depression or other mental disorders. Side effects include: mania, restlessness, anxiety, depression, mood swings, panic attacks, sleep disorders, confusion, hallucinations, hostility, psychosis, paranoia, amnesia. Reports of suicidal tendencies have been rare, and any potential connection to the drug has not been proven!

And those are just the mental side effects. The rest of the (long) page details how this medication can fuck up just about every part of your body, too. I won’t start listing how: you name it, it’s on there.

But if you do happen to notice any side effects they haven’t listed, they ask you to please get in touch…

Whether the Weather

2007-07-06T13:36:00.000+03:00

Whether the weather was rainy or fine didn’t matter a jot to me from Monday to Thursday. Both days and evenings were filled with work or other tasks and chores that kept me largely indoors, excluding the occasional hop from place to place. Apart from the odd ominous rumble and one brief torrential downpour, the days have been hot and sunny.

Today, I was to knock off early and picnic in the park. The weather? What else but overcast skies and a strong, chill wind.

Sometimes weather has a profound effect on mood. Especially when it ruins something relaxing that you've been looking forward to throughout a stressful week. I definitely feel as though I got up on the wrong side of the clouds this morning.

Nefernefernefer

2007-07-05T23:00:00.001+03:00

Both of my cats came with names, neither of which I liked that much.

Lord has naturally become His Lordship, Sir, and various other honoraries. No problem.

Andromeda always ended up as ‘Andro’, which never quite gelled with me. After two months of not really thinking about it, I was suddenly inspired. She’s growing up to have very oriental looks: her profile is the spitting image of an Ancient Egyptian cat statue.

Nefernefernefer is the beautiful but heartless courtesan in Mika Waltari’s most famous novel, The Egyptian. One of her most striking features is the greenness of her eyes.

I’ve always wondered about Waltari’s personnel life, as his books are brimming with treacherous temptress that ruin their male protagonists’ lives in some fashion. Nefernefenefer is one of the worst. I don’t remember her having any redeeming qualities.

Somehow I think this name fits the evil little beast very well.