Memories

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Paying homage

September 1, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

On Saturday last – for the second time in as many weeks – the Kickass Canada Girl and I found ourselves witness to a gathering of Canadians making an unanticipated act of homage to a musical icon…

Having bid a tearful farewell last week to ‘The Tragically Hip’, this latter occasion featured a fair sized gathering of Victorians over two nights at the Royal Theatre bidding an unlikely ‘hello‘ to Sixto Rodriguez.

Some readers may already be familiar with the frankly bizarre story of Mr. Rodriguez and they may thus choose to skip ahead, but for those – like me – who were previous oblivious to his existence, here is a brief outline.

Sixto – known professionally simply as ‘Rodriguez’ – is a singer/songwriter from Detroit who had a brief and scarcely noticed career in the late 60s/early 70s during which he released two albums – ‘Cold Fact‘ and ‘Coming from Reality‘ in 1970 and 1971 respectively – which were critically well received but sold barely a copy. On being as a result dropped by his record label Rodriguez – phlegmatically and with considerable good grace – retired from the business and returned to his former career in construction.

This might well have been the end of the story were it not that – by dint of a speculative re-release of his albums and through much word of mouth – Rodriguez subsequently became a considerable sensation in South Africa to the tune of some half a million records sold. This rise to the status of a musical icon would have represented a gratifying – if belated – acknowledgement of his talents, were it not that Rodriguez himself was entirely unaware of this turn of events and the South Africans had no idea who he was – having been provided with none of the necessary back-story. Indeed, the rumour rapidly spread that Rodriguez had at some point committed suicide – though even here the details of his supposed demise varied widely from the merely tragic to the quite grotesque.

Eventually – toward the turn of the millennium – a couple of South African fans determined to discover the truth concerning his fate and the man was eventually tracked down to his home in Detroit. On discovering that he was – after all – yet alive he was persuaded to visit South Africa to play a series of concerts, which he duly did in 1998. This again might have been the end of the tale but for a Swedish film director – Malik Bendjelloul – deciding that the story merited turning into a documentary film. The resulting production – ‘Searching for Sugarman’ – has won a plethora of awards, including – in 2013 – the ‘Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature’.

As a result of the subsequent interest Rodriguez – now in his mid seventies – has resurrected his musical career and gone back on the road, whilst at the same time trying to establish what exactly happened to the royalties from all of the albums that he did not know he had sold in South Africa. The two sell-out shows in Victoria – in a 1400 seat theatre – pay testament to the ongoing curiosity concerning his story.

If one were to be critical one might observe that the career in construction has clearly exacted a heavy physical toll on the man and his once remarkable voice is a shadow of what it was. It is also obvious that when Rodriguez stopped making records in the early 70s he simultaneously stopped writing, and though his oeuvre displays considerable poetic talent it is also brief in the extreme. Nice to hear cover versions of other people’s songs from that era, but perhaps not entirely worth the rapt adoration that the man received from the packed house on Saturday. I couldn’t help but speculate that it was the narrative that was being applauded rather than the performance itself.

A fascinating study in philosophical anthropology, nonetheless…

Tags: Celebration, Memories, Music

The Hip

August 22, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

For three hours on Saturday night last Canada was ‘closed’. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) wall to wall coverage of the Rio Olympics was put on hold and there would even have been (had the hockey season yet commenced) a brief hiatus from the nation’s abiding passion.

Much of the country instead settled in (or partied out) to watch the live streaming from Kingston, Ontario of the final ever concert by ‘The Tragically Hip‘.

Canadian readers will require no further explanation and can skip blithely ahead. For many of them ‘The Hip’ have provided an iconic soundtrack to Canadian life for the last three decades and more, capturing the essence of Canadiana to a degree matched by no other. The band is – however – largely unrecognised without these shores and, though they have achieved some recognition in the UK and elsewhere, the Americans don’t seem to get them at all. This naturally endears them all the more to the inhabitants of these fair lands.

Non-Canadians might yet wonder why – in the age of the endless resurrection of their careers by those old enough to know better – quite so much fuss has been made of ‘The Hip’s’ farewell. The answer is tragically simple. Lead singer, lyricist and poet, Gord Downie, has an incurable brain tumour. To suggest that the occasion of the final concert was emotionally charged would be an understatement.

Prime Minister Trudeau (apparently a huge fan) was in the audience and Downie took the opportunity to publicly hold his feet to the fire concerning election promises, particularly with regard to the matter of the treatment of the First Nations. It is most likely that the many fans of the band will use this exhortation to endeavour to ensure that there is no backsliding on the part of the Liberal government.

We attended a splendid ‘Hip Party’ hosted by our dearest friends in Saanichton, complete with big screen and sound system in the garden so that no-one would miss the show. We cheered – we sang – we danced – we shed many a tear… The moment – and the occasion – was duly celebrated.

I am, of course, a newcomer – both to this fair land and to ‘The Hip’. The making of a myth – however – is easily recognised by those for whom such rites are an essential part of our existence in this realm.

I am one such.

Tags: Canada, Celebration, Loss, Memories, Music

Pandemonium!

July 21, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

A little under four years ago the United Kingdom was picking its gingerly way through the mongrel days of the final run up to the 2012 London Olympics. It is fair to say that a great mood of cynicism – even pessimism – hung heavy in the air. The world financial crisis was at its height and it seemed somehow perverse to be spending a fortune on a festival of sport in such straightened times.

Perhaps worse, there was a very real fear that the country would wake the morning after the opening of the Olympiad to find itself the object of ridicule and derision for what many people believed was going to be – particularly by comparison with the lavish state-devised extravaganza from Beijing four years earlier – an amateurish and embarrassing debacle. On the night of the opening ceremony at least one UK journalist – submitting copy to catch the early editions before the event had started – penned a devastating critique along just such lines.

It took less than ten minutes for the great majority of those watching to change their minds utterly.

My post to this journal of the following morning included this:

As you may have deduced – I spend Friday evening watching Danny Boyle’s bizarre, amateurish (in the best sense), messy, insanely brilliant opening ceremony. I fell off the sofa laughing. I howled like a baby – at some points so hard that I could scarce catch my breath. In the kaleidoscopic whirl of layered references (oh what delight – an Olympic opening ceremony incorporating subtlety and ambiguity, whilst at the same time displaying complete self-confidence!) I repeatedly heard and saw images and ideas in the magical musical and visual smorgasbord that made me cry out, “Yes – that’s us… and that… and that…”

The gentle reader is most probably by this point scratching his (or her) head and wondering what could have triggered this brief exercise in nostalgia. The answer is – of course – the recent BBC documentary in the ‘Imagine’ strand entitled “One Night in 2012“. I am not ashamed to report that viewing this one hundred minute documentary – for which pretty much the entire creative team for the ceremony had been re-united – rendered me helpless all over again. On this occasion I was moved not only be the heart string-tugging moments from the show itself (though that did indeed happen) but by the stories of its genesis and evolution.

Confirming once again my view of Danny Boyle’s genius, we heard how the very impossibility of competing with the huge sums of money and military organisation that the Chinese had thrown at the Beijing ceremony had led to the decision being taken very early on that this show would not only be about ordinary people, but that it would feature them as the main element of the performance itself. To that end a huge army of volunteer performers was auditioned and cast as actors, dancers, musicians and stagehands.

I was touched deeply to see how the artistic team set about moulding such a vast company of amateurs with widely varying skill sets into well-drilled teams who not only put on the performance of their lives but also clearly loved every precious moment of it. The producers and directors, community choreographers, composers, drum tutors, costumers and technicians who helped to give this gift, not only to those involved in the show but also to the 80,000 in the stadium as well as to the billions watching on TV, were truly inspirational – in every sense of the word – and I doff my toque to them.

One delighted performer described how he had taken part in the show expecting to spend the evening applauding others – the athletes, dignitaries and so forth – but instead found himself part of a team that were themselves being widely and rightly lauded.

After watching the documentary I was moved once again to search out the film of the ceremony on the InterWebNet. I simply cannot get through it without dissolving. The climax of the opening Pandemonium sequence (which is, I think, exquisite in its entirety) as the newly forged Olympic rings come together above the stadium and burst into fire – leaves me gutted and gasping for breath every single time!

Kudos once again to all involved – and it still is not too late for the knighthoods!

Tags: Celebration, England, Memories, Sport

False memory

June 10, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I found myself the other day musing on the subject of false memory. I will explain momentarily why I should have been so doing, but I should first clarify that I am referring to false memories themselves and not to ‘false memory syndrome’ – which is rather different. On the latter Wikipedia offers:

False memory syndrome is a condition in which a person’s identity and interpersonal relationships center on a memory of a traumatic experience that is objectively false but that the person strongly believes. Note that the syndrome is not characterized by false memories as such. We all have inaccurate memories. Rather, the syndrome is diagnosed when the memory is so deeply ingrained that it orients the individual’s entire personality and lifestyle—disrupting other adaptive behavior.

Nothing disruptive in my case – just ‘inaccurate memories’. In a 2013 article for ‘Time‘ Tara Thean wrote:

The phenomenon of false memories is common to everybody — the party you’re certain you attended in high school, say, when you were actually home with the flu, but so many people have told you about it over the years that it’s made its way into your own memory cache. False memories can sometimes be a mere curiosity, but other times they have real implications. Innocent people have gone to jail when well-intentioned eyewitnesses testify to events that actually unfolded an entirely different way.

I have long been aware that certain memories from my very early childhood are demonstrably false. Having spent the first six years of my life in what is now very definitely a suburb of the London metropolis I am convinced that I can recall the infamous ‘pea-soupers’ – those sometime lethal London smogs. That the ‘Great Smog‘ of 1952 – as a result of which some four thousand people are thought to have died – led in the ‘Clean Air Act of 1956‘ to the banning of the burning of all but smokeless fuels within the capital, suggests that any memories that I have of such events are probably incorrect, particularly as I – born as I was in 1954 – have no other clear memories before the ages of four or five.

Much the same must apply to my ‘memory’ of having seen horse-drawn milk floats ‘when I were a nipper’! As far as I can work out they pretty much all disappeared shortly after the war to be replaced by electric floats. It may have been that there were still horse-drawn rag and bone carts when I was young, but I’m not sure why I would transmute one into the other.

The reason for my recent reverie concerns a slightly later – and in many ways more puzzling – false memory. I was watching – a few days ago – a BBC documentary on the 1966 Football World Cup. (Now – who won that? Gosh – it is so hard to recall!) The reason for the broadcast was – of course – the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of that momentous occasion.

Now – I didn’t watch the 1966 final. It would be yet a good half decade before my parents agreed that we could have a TV, though I could – of course – have watched it elsewhere. I was instead, however, otherwise engaged on the day.

My memory is that I was attending a combined boy scout/girl guide camp at a local campsite that particular weekend. The memory – in which others present were listening to the match on transistor radios – has been quite clear in my mind across the intervening years. I can even vaguely recall the celebrations when the game was won.

Except that – none of that was true! Whilst watching the documentary it quite suddenly – after all this time – occurred to me that I would have been only twelve years old that summer. Those joint scout/guide camps were – understandably in view of the the mores of the time – only for boys and girls at least three or four years older than I then was. I was obviously at some scouting event, but it clearly wasn’t that one…

Odd to think that, whereas as one grows older one expects childhood memories to become less clear, in cases such as this it is the past memory that proves to have been faulty.

Maybe there is hope for us old farts yet…

Tags: ageing, England, Memories, Sport

Fun and games

May 23, 2016 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

I experienced an interesting echo of Britain’s colonial past this recent long holiday weekend. The occasion was my first visit to the excellent and hugely popular Victoria Highland Games.

That this was the one hundred and fifty third such informs us not only as to their date of origin but also as to the continuing popularity of the event. As was our colonial forebears’ wont around the globe the original intent of the festival would have been to recreate a much loved element of UK cultural life to ease the longing for home of the expats upon whom the empire depended.

Here – a century and a half later – I found myself standing on a grassy slope in Topaz Park, looking across a greensward teeming with pipers, drum majors, highland dancers, heavy lifters and hammer throwers (caber tossing was on a different day!) toward the smoky Sooke hills in the background and experiencing suddenly the strongest recollection of sitting on the grass bank at the Pitlochry recreation ground in Perthshire back ‘when I were a lad’, watching the proceedings of a ‘Highland Night’.

It worked a hundred and fifty years ago… it works now!

Some pictures…

In the clan society section I found that my own – Clan Donnachaidh – has made a reappearance after some years missing from the west coast. I signed up – naturally!

Tags: Celebration, Fuji x10, Memories, Photo, Scotland, Victoria

Echoes of the old country

April 14, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Chinstrap: Here’s to the old country, sir!
Bloodnok: What old country?
Chinstrap: Any old country.”

The Goon Show, ‘Shifting Sands’

It is fairly widely acknowledged that – for the expat Brit looking for somewhere not too ‘foreign’ in which to establish his or her habitat – Vancouver Island, and Victoria in particular, pretty much tops the bill.

Many things about life on the southern tip of Vancouver Island will seem familiar to those from England – from the red double decker buses, the unexpected fondness for cricket, rugby and rowing, the love of messing about in boats, the discovery that hoards of other Brits have already made the journey – right down to the fact that the locals very nearly speak the same language as do we in the old country!

The fact that the standard of living is so high (whilst the cost of petrol (gas) is so low) and the discovery that the climate is way better than that in the south of England make living here a no-brainer. For those who prefer a relaxed, casual we(s)t-coast lifestyle, with perhaps just a slight tendency to left of centre politics… well – check! check! Plus – the familiar comfort of living on an island… Plus – being within sight of the sea and the mountains just about everywhere… Plus – just how beautiful it all is!

Little surprise though that one gets the occasional reminder of the old country herself. Some such – however – come as more of a surprise than others. Herewith a few recent examples.

I have in my meagre wardrobe a rather swish replica Great Britain polo shirt, of which I am inordinately fond. It has on the left sleeve at suitably subtle Union Jack emblem. Wearing this out and about seems not infrequently to inspire those of a certain background to approach and engage me in conversation. For example – just the other day in ‘Thrifty’s‘ – our local supermarket:

He: “Bet you wish you were back there now?”

I: “Oh – well I only got here last summer – and I love it!”

He: “Ah!” – a pause – “What’s it like there now – with all the immigration?”

I: “Um – well, around London it hasn’t really changed that much since I was a youngster. It always was a very multi-cultural city.”

He: “I read about it the Daily Express!”

I suggested as gently as possible that a British tabloid rag – particularly without the sense of balance that might have come with actually living in the place concerned – was possibly not the most reliable source of what might delicately be called ‘the truth!’. I’m not sure he was convinced. He was – he told me proudly – a Welshman! I thought it best not to point out that the main source of immigration in his part of the world was probably the English purchasing holiday cottages in sleepy Welsh villages.

But a short step along the road from ‘Thrifty’s‘ is one of Sidney’s many bookshops – in this case a secondhand and antique bookseller. I paid them a visit following my grocery shop to see if they had a copy of a particular marine atlas for which I have been searching.

They did not!

I did, however, discover – taped in a polythene bag to the outside end of one of their bookcases – this estate agent’s (realtor’s) street plan of the Merton Park area to the south of London. The map is not dated but – from various features contained thereon – I can deduce that it was printed sometime in the early 1930s. At that time Merton Park and Morden (Merton’s close neighbour) were outside London in the English county of Surrey. These days the area is some twenty miles inside the Greater London boundary.

This was certainly an odd item to find some five thousand miles away on the far side of the world – but why did it interest me enough that I felt at once moved to purchase it?

It shows the street on which I was born!

Tags: England, Memories, Victoria

Swing, swing together

March 17, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest breeze,
Blade on the feather,
Shade off the trees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees.

The Eton Boating Song

I have of late been thinking about my mother. This is not unusual for the time of year – she died six years ago at the end of February and her birthday fell within the first couple of weeks of March – but so to do does tend to leave me a little wistful and reflective regarding life’s strange twists and turns.

The regular reader might well at this point already be scratching his (or her) pate and wondering what this could possible have to do with the Eton Boating Song. That is, indeed, a good question – the which I will endeavor straightway to answer.

Before the war my mother was in the Sea Rangers and – I am pretty certain – rather enjoyed rowing, though I don’t know to what level she practiced it. As with many things that one thinks one ‘knows’ from childhood this may turn out to be a ‘false’ memory, but of one thing I am certain – on a number of occasions she expressed regret that I had not taken up rowing whilst at school. She was clearly somewhat enamoured of the notion of having a son who ‘rowed’.

My Alma Mater was a grammar school in north Surrey which was also my father’s school. It was – and remains – a good school, though it is now co-educational which it was not in my day. Whilst certainly not one of the ‘great’ rowing schools it has always been there or thereabouts. The school has its playing fields – complete with boathouse – on the banks of the Thames and it takes the sport seriously. The alumni include at least one Olympic gold medal winner in the shape of James Cracknell, of whom the school is understandably proud.

Much to my mother’s dismay I declined to join the boat club. I was a fairly stringy kid at that age – fast enough as a sprinter but without much in the way of upper body bulk. I have always considered myself far too much of a lightweight for such a physical sport. Besides – the rowers had to turn out for training at six in the morning – in all seasons! Since I lived a good hour’s journey from the school that meant getting up at an ungodly hour regardless of the weather – or of the fact that it was still the middle of the night! The final straw was that the master in charge of rowing at the time was the sort of petty tyrant fairly prevalent in grammar schools of the era. I had already had several unpleasant run-ins with him and I didn’t fancy making myself a target in yet another area.

Previous posts on this journal do attest – however – to my enjoyment of rowing as a sport. I was fortunate enough to work at two institutions which can truly be considered ‘great’ rowing schools – one of which built its own rowing trench (later used as the venue for the London 2012 Olympics) and the other of which is the current holder of the Princess Elizabeth Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta.

In light of all of this I like to think that my mother would have been looking down from god’s elastic acre on Tuesday last with a smile on her face. Had she done so she would have observed the Kickass Canada Girl and I – in the company of a couple of elderly (but most impressive) expat Englishwomen from the Victoria City Rowing Club – taking our first outing on Elk Lake in a quad scull!

How this came about is of itself something of a saga – featuring a conversation that the Girl had about rowing at a Burn’s Supper with a gentlemen who knew one of these redoubtable octogenarian athletes and who put her in touch with them. The ladies were marvelous… unbelievably fit and most wonderfully patient with the couple of complete novices. I don’t for a moment suppose that sculling in a four looks easy and I can assure you that appearances do not deceive. Balance – co-ordination – the ability to perform a sequence of contradictory actions simultaneously but independently… I was expecting muscular pain and shortage of breath. What I got was mental agony – from trying to stop my conscious brain from impeding the required subconscious rhythm.

Will we try it again? We may well do. For those brief moments when the four of us magically became as one and the boat flew across the water the sensation was magical – so who knows!

I think mother would be pleased!

Tags: Henley, Memories, Rowing, school

Other days

February 18, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“You know we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then I thought, well, there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”

‘Moonlight’ Graham – Field of Dreams

One moment in time…

Back in the late 70s – maybe 1977 – or even 1978…

It is late summer – towards the end of August. The location is Edinburgh – somewhere on the south side of the city… a city that is buzzing because it is festival time and the official festival, the fringe, the book festival, the television festival and the film festival are all in full swing.

More specifically the location is the kitchen of a rented apartment, perhaps somewhere off the Lothian Road. During term time this is student accommodation and the space bears the scars accordingly. For the three weeks of the festival it is rented at a wincingly inflated rate to groups of young hopefuls – performers, actors, musicians, jugglers, acrobats, technicians… wannabees… all itching to make their mark on this most public of stages. They dream of discovery – though the chances of so being are little higher than of winning the yet-to-be created lottery.

This particular group of young thespists and musicians hails from the south east of England and they are all associated with a local authority youth theatre from somewhere not far outside London. Aged variously between 16 and 25 they have made the long trek up to Edinburgh largely at their own expense because… because… well… that really is the question. Why are they here – so full of passion and energy and ambition?

They are doing a show – of course – but why have they gone to all the trouble and expense of bringing it to the Edinburgh fringe where – no matter how hard they work on publicity, pounding the granite cobbles thrusting flyers into reluctant hands – they will be lucky to play to a few hundred souls in a week.

The kitchen is awash with excited chatter – of shows seen – clubs visited – contacts made – exotic beverages imbibed. Summer nights north of the border hold the light longer than they do down south and the evening has only just entered the gloaming. As more youngsters arrive back from their latest adventures mugs of coffee are concocted from a large tin of cheap ‘instant’ and endless rounds of toast and marmalade are churned out by willing volunteers. This – along with the baked tatties from the local ‘Spud-U-Like’ – comprise the essential diet for this week of living wildly.

Why are they here? There are many reasons. Some are just here for the adventure – some to escape home for a while. Some are here because it is a chance to explore the festival – some because they love performing… acting or making music. Some just want to be with their friends.

Some of them are serious in their intentions concerning their art. They are hoping to get into drama school or music college and will then to try to carve a career from these most fickle of occupations. Some of them will succeed – in some cases only until they grow weary of the constant rejection, or perhaps on discovering that this was not after all for them – but others will enjoy long and rewarding careers in music, TV or the theatre.

But how can they tell – crowded expectantly into this clammy kitchen with its hot sweet coffee, its toast and conserves – what might be the true significance of this moment in time? Their conversations are full of plans and dreams, of crazy inspirations, of ambitions and desires. They have not yet drunk of the well of cynicism and regret. For them this is but a staging post on the road to the dazzling future.

‘Moonlight’ Graham was right, though. As we look back now on our younger selves from some four decades on, might it be – for some of us at least – that we suddenly see clearly that what we once thought to be just an impatient foothill at the start of our ascent was in fact the summit itself – and that that night would turn out to be the truly significant one?

…that night and a hundred others like it…

Tags: Drama, Loss, Memories, Music, Significance, Youth Theatre

Heroes

January 22, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”

Ernest Hemingway

When an iconic figure – one who regardless of the ceaseless march of the hours and the concomitant diminution of all other childhood heroes, their lustre etiolated with the passage of time – passes from this plane, the event causes a shock to the system no matter how timely that demise might be.

When two such figures succumb within a short space of time it is – with a not entirely disproportionate degree of exaggeration – as though the earth had shifted upon its axis.

I am not going to attempt to pen anything like an appropriate appreciation of the genius of David Bowie. Much has been already been written and can easily be found on the InterWebNet and elsewhere. I will simply state why – in my view – he was one of the most influential and revered of figures in popular music.

Bowie was impossible to characterise or to pin down, whilst at the same time blazing a trail across such a wide range of creative and media forms that a hundred people could admire him and his work and each do so for completely different reasons. In my opinion Bowie’s musical talents and chameleon-like imagination put him on a par with the Beatles – and with no less a luminary than John Lennon. From me there can be no higher praise.

As I say – we each have our own reasons. Being an old-fashioned boy mine are all to do with songwriting; Bowie having composed far more than his fair share of timeless classics. ‘Life on Mars‘, ‘Heroes‘, ‘Fame’, ‘Fashion‘, ‘Ashes to Ashes‘, ‘Loving the Alien‘… I could – quite naturally – go on. This oeuvre was writ large across the soundtrack of my growing years and Bowie was a massive influence on much that I scribbled musically – mayhap sometimes more than was strictly necessary.

David Bowie died at the age of 69 after fighting a battle against cancer…

…as – with fearful symmetry – did a leading light of the current generation of British thespists – Alan Rickman.

Despite the fact that – in the main – I abhor the practice of choosing to see a play, film or television production on the strength of the casting of any particular thespian, I have been known to disregard totally my own rules in the case of certain individuals.

Alan Rickman was one such – for he was an actor who was worth watching even if the vehicle itself were complete rubbish. Who can forget the Kevin Costner vanity project – ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves‘ – from 1991? As Lanre Bakare put it in a Guardian retrospective in 2014:

“Most things about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves are terrible. Kevin Costner’s and Christian Slater’s attempts at English accents: terrible. Bryan Adam’s theme song which refused to go away during the summer of 1991 and can conjure mass feelings of nausea to this very day: terrible. Seeing Costner’s naked arse as he gets washed in a waterfall: terrible…

...Yes, it’s ridiculous and cliched, but it’s entertaining, and there are some – OK, there’s one – genuinely great performance. Alan Rickman managed to polish one of the 90s cinema’s biggest turds when he put in a brilliant turn as the ruthless Sheriff of Nottingham, who attempts to usurp King John while being held back by his workforce of incompetent jokers and a witch.”

It is truly one of the cinema’s greatest pleasures to watch Rickman acting the ‘star’ of the show off the screen at every turn – and one for which I still occasionally endure reruns thereof.

Rickman would probably prefer to be remembered for his work at the Royal Court and with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 80s – or perhaps for playing the male lead – the Vicomte de Valmont – in Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses‘. Younger readers – should any such there be – will know him as Snape from the Harry Potter films.

Whichever role it may be, his presence will be sadly missed. The United Kingdom seems curiously able continually to turn out generations of massively talented actors and actresses – far more than is statistically feasible. That does not mean that we can readily afford to lose the likes of Alan Rickman.

David Bowie – 8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016

Alan Rickman – 21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016

Rest in peace!

Tags: Loss, Memories, Music, Theatre

Rounded with a sleep

January 2, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Shirley D. Bertoli

1932 – 2015

Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded in a sleep.

Prospero – from The Tempest, Act IV Scene 1
William Shakespeare

You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived
You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday
You can remember her and only that she is gone
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she would want:
Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

David Harkins

Tags: Loss, Memories

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