Quick announcement. Dedalus Books is once more applying for funding. They’re going to use their petition from last year as evidence of support, so please sign it now if you didn’t do so last time: http://is.gd/44qPb
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Sat 11th Oct: With Anna Spivack to see the new play of Prick Up Your Ears. It’s based directly on the Orton diaries and John Lahr’s biography rather than the Alan Bennett 80s film. Matt Lucas as Kenneth Halliwell and Gwen Taylor as the landlady and neighbour.
Gwen Taylor for me will always be her characters in The Rutles: manager Leggy Mountbatten’s mother (‘He hated their music. But he liked their trousers’) and Chastity, the nazi-uniform-wearing Yoko Ono figure (‘a simple German girl whose father had invented World War Two’)
Despite allocating over an hour to get into town via the 91 bus, we end up gridlocked in Bloomsbury and have to race through crowded Soho, arriving at the Comedy Theatre in Panton Street just in time for curtain up.
We needn’t have bothered. The ushers and box office staff are standing outside, telling people the performance is cancelled and handing out details of how to get refunds. Matt Lucas is still out of the show due to his ex-husband’s suicide, which we were prepared for, but his understudy is off sick too. The understudy doesn’t have an understudy, so the play’s off.
We have a couple of drinks at 23 Romilly Street (where many of the old Colony Room regulars now go), before repairing for a bottle of wine at Anna’s flat in Archway rather than hit any clubs or further bars. One of the few ways I’m growing up, I suppose. More restaurants and quiet dinner parties, fewer loud clubs and gigs.
So sad about Matt Lucas’s ex-husband killing himself like that. I can understand Mr L pulling out of any play, let alone one about a doomed gay relationship where the non-famous one commits suicide. The tabloids have responded with predictable drool, flagging the word ‘husband’ in the headlines with smug inverted commas. One 21st century twist: the suicide note posted on Facebook.
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Three weeks since varicose vein surgery. The bruises have faded okay, but am concerned about residual patches of numbness above my ankle. According to the literature, these could fade in 2 weeks, or 2 months, or 2 years, or in some cases not at all. I suppose given the choice between recurring pain (which prompted me asking for the optional operation), and permanent numbness, I’ll settle for the latter. But I’d rather the numbness would go. And soon, please. Prodding the space above my ankle, I think of cold rubber. The type lining car doors. And the stuff used to make those thin mats in school gyms.
Other diary wishes: I really want the ability to write a decent amount every day, (as opposed to a habit for Olympic procrastination) but also the ability to just write and read faster. When I finally sit down and do it, I take far too long. I envy those people who speed through 800 page books in single sittings. I want to be one of those. I don’t mind having to do umpteen drafts – as long as they’re fast drafts.
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Current madness: a fixation with the creaking and popping noises made by the casing of my fridge expanding and contracting when the motor is off. A bedsit hazard: I have to sleep and work in the same room. The fridge is only 2 years old. Did it always make those noises? Were the noises always that loud and frequent and distracting? Is it just me?
Other news: am back in therapy. Friday mornings, NHS so no fee, 90 minute sessions for six months. Have mixed feelings about whether I need them. But they were offered (after a year on the waiting list), and I’m clearly in need of something.
Tags: fridge madness, nights out, soho, therapy, varicose tiresomeness
