BACK TO THE WOMB Going to bed under the new voluminous duvet: like burrowing down into thick snow that is both warm and doesn't melt.
SINGING Now upswing. Will have the chorus of the freed prisoners in LvB's Fidelio arranged for baritone, soprano and piano:
O welche Lust in freier Luft
Den Athem einzuheben!
Nur hier, nur hier ist Leben.
Der Kerker eine Gruft.
Oh, what a pleasure once again
Freely to breathe the fresh air!
In Heaven’s light we live again;
From death we have escaped
To be sung when I can. Click HERE to see why I'm tempted.
WINE Wine worth £35 a bottle: Drouhin's 2011 Gevrey-Chambertin, Les Grandes Rayes. Red burgundy five years from being perfect but in which perfection is imaginable. Tart, suppressed fruit, it blossoms. Bought six, now down to two. Could have waited but for what? Bill Cash as prime minister and Donald Trump in the White House?
PLAYS Have decided WS’s Troilus and Cressida is rarely played for several good reasons: it is wordy, frequently action-free and has been done better by others.
NOVEL That Lindsay (see below) makes far more sense as a right bastard.
Hardline Hope, a novel (15,387 words)
Lindsay hung up her suit in a locker in the women’s loo; put on her jeans and hi-vis jacket. From Pool Green to the high rise estate outside Walsall where she lived was just over three miles. There was no bus service and her assets didn’t run to a car. A bike was the obvious solution even though she knew, pettishly, it set her apart, like being vegetarian or voting Green. Certainly the persona she had created for herself, the sharp active face intensified by the slot-like lenses, looked misplaced, as if, like the present prime minister, she was biking for reasons other than getting from A to B.
Fell in love with Chaucer's Troilus at a young age: real people with complex, fluid motivations, dreams, needs and relationships, a delicate and lovely sex scene, Criseyde's monobrow and sliding courage, all from the 14th century in a setting from 2000 years before (though mediaeval people didn't have quite the same concept of a historic time line), the themes of infidelity, pimping female inconstancy and jostling male egos which supposedly form its matter seemed negligible and unimportant. I wanted to like Shakespeare's version but it is dry stuff, cynical and hard to get a handle on. I did see it at Stratford once, they tried to make something of the war aspect of it, it was quite dull though, I think. It does have that great line about the engendering of toads though.
ReplyDeleteThe duvet looks delicious.
(Should be a comma between 'pimping' and 'female')
ReplyDeleteBack to the Womb:
ReplyDeleteAre the two of you actually under the covers in this photo? If not, what is creating the bulge over the midline of the bed? Should I know this answer from a recent post? Too lazy to look.
Singing:
The chorus is very catchy, the solos sound dreadfully difficult. Freedom is NOT "just another word for nothing left to lose".
Wine:
Buy more?
Plays:
Interesting commentary but I'd rather watch cage fighting.
Novel:
I think I recall other references to "slot like lenses". My idea of such lenses, coupled with a "sharp" face, exemplifies the look of a cyclist, albeit the athletic sort. An "active" face goes against my vision. My ideal cyclist's face will look slack from effort and exhaustion. Until point B is reached of course, when the jersey will be zipped up and the smile put on.
Ahh...LvB...I'm happy to hear you're tempted!
ReplyDeleteNow I'm hearing singing about the Duvet ...
Oh, what a pleasure retiring to bed
Freely to burrow down down down
In this heavenly duvet of snow;
Into dreams we will escape
Lucy: We've had the boxed set for decades. We've rushed through the 20 or so plays you would expect, even played some of them more than once. Now we're into the "burden" of WS. I'm dreading The Merry Wives of Windsor (written to order, I understand) and - even more - Henry VIII; VR has used many stratagems to avoid King John. Troilus seemed a reasonable compromise since I suspected I'd be able to draw on VR's love of the Greek myths. I was but it wasn't enough. Criseyde (love that spelling) betrayed.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'd forgotten the cynicism, manifest in the opening half hour where Charles Grey does his best with an extremely camp version of Pandarus. But apart from anything else the language (a summary of events up til then) is frequently impenetrable. I think the line about the toad must have been cut; else I'd become exhausted.
I'd love there to be something more substantial than a comma between pimping and female.
MikeM: The central hump is my alter ego, another RR, ever resident in any bed I use regularly. It stands for Regret Robinson, my torturer in general, always at his most active at 3 am, the time when we are most likely to give into a force even larger than regret and when even the thickest duvet is no protection.
Fidelio. I would have the arranger cut out the initial 90 seconds. The bit that matters starts unpromisingly with a few bars of bassoon; that old LvB loves a challenge, doesn't he? However the sentiment and the music for the major theme are both timeless and universal; perhaps if I managed to sing it Amnesty International might recognise my heart's in the right place and stop dunning me to increase my already huge monthly contribution to their coffers.
Buy more burgundy? Tis all gone I fear (that vintage from that négociant, not burgundy in general)
Cage fighting. Wait til you see the play; you'd settle for ABC doing barrel-jumping.
Glasses are big with Lindsay, mainly because they were big with her living exemplar seen in a Birmingham pub and posted about at the time. But you're right. Racing cyclists have ratlike faces and I may have to rearrange some words. There, how does it feel to have edited a nascent masterpiece?
RW (zS): I hivered over including the English translation; suspecting it might spoil it for you. It's your last line I pray for most although the duvet - becoming ever more attractive after BBC News At Ten - does promote sleep.
So true. Prime Ministers, in my opinion, always look our of place when cycling. Mind you, they look out of place when they are doing most things!
ReplyDeleteBlonde Two: How hard-hearted you are. And the poor Old Etonian has been scootling round the Continong tirelessly on our behalf. Would you prefer John Redwood - Thark From Outer Space?
ReplyDeleteBarrel jumping was always a favorite watch. I hadn't thought of it in years. Shockingly there is no Wikipedia entry for the sport, but Youtube has at least one short clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JiFgpQybFc I couldn't even recall how the landings were executed until I viewed this reel....obviously there was no requirement to "stick" the landing, but Leo Labelle stuck his and won a (no longer) "traditional buss" along with his trophy. Go Leo!
ReplyDelete