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November 11, 2006
Death Of A Discarded Solor
Feel free. It's the back wheel, after all...
Lis and I were saying it must be silly season at the moment.
The owner of the T shirt shop in Aldeburgh came upon the town's ex-florist cocking her leg on the back wheel of a car.
"Come into the shop", he tried to talk her out of it, "use my loo. You shouldn't be doing that there."
"You're allowed to by law as long as it's the back wheel", she replied.
The headmaster where Lis teaches decreed that any pupil awarded ten merit points could go to the front of the lunch queue with their chosen best friend and sit at a special table with them. He also set the whole school a work book test. Anyone who filled it in would automatically gain five merit points. Last Wednesday, only a handful out of the thousand plus pupils had less than ten merits points and weren’t kicking off about the places at the front of the lunch queue and on the special table.
On the same Wednesday, I watched an elderly woman (who might easily I thought have been on her way to an Anne Widdecombe look-alike convention) try to reverse park from the summit of a speed bump.
This did cheer me up. And I needed it. Earlier, I’d watched part of a You Tube video e-mailed me by a friend, “Not to scare you, but to remind you why you perform Galina for the troops”. The video contained footage of service people’s funerals in Afghanistan to a sound track of The Last Post. I nearly knocked my pc off the desk during my assault on the little red box with the white cross in it. But too late. I saw “Babe” Luke’s photograph.
I had wondered why he stopped e-mailing but tried to put the worst possible case scenario out of my mind.
I hung out with Luke a lot in Iraq after the night I discarded him from the Solor auditions because he was too pretty. As I explained to him,
“I’ve been sternly reminded by various directors to go for the comic-rather than the lush- potential in my Solors”.
And I’ve made some mistakes over the years. I’ve chosen an Etonian who started hyperventilating when I demonstrated finger turns and had to be helped offstage. There was the dusky beauty in Derby whose comebacks were about as sharp as bread pudding, until I said, “You’re the type always told you’re beautiful,” waited for him to simper, and got him with, “So you’ve never bothered with developing a personality”. And I nearly got decked by a Sports Psychology student in Bath when I moved his hands so that he was miming “love” over his heart rather his appendix.
Yes, with Byron at the Battersea Arts Centre I was vindicated my choice of beauty over repartee. But it was just the once. Epic Aussie Byron insisted on performing shirtless to show off his surfer’s muscles, spent almost a minute killing the tiger with his bare hands, and irrelevantly interrupted me in the middle of the back story to share that Gam-whatever-her-name-is gave crap head.
Byron waxing lyrical. See what I did there?
I decided not to risk it with Luke in Iraq, though, and discarded him. Nicky Ness, aka miss, was surprised.
“But, miss”, I said, “He was such a babe. I thought…”
“He was hilarious. I think you could turn down your comic-over-babe filter a little. But only a little”, she added, seeing my gaze turn to the two 2 Para Captains sitting at the bar.
Sorry, Luke. Again. But we’ll do the Scarf Pas De Deux when I get where you are, I promise.
Let’s just hope it’s up the ramp and not down…
Sorry, I’m forgetting the silly season aspect: why e-mail me a video like the You Tube one? But freakishness runs in the family. The brother of the bod that sent it had my name engraved on a bullet.
"Thought you'd like this before you go to Afghanistan", read the note that came with it. "If there's a bullet out there with your name on as they say and you know where yours is, then surely that means you'll be safe? Hee hee."
And I’ve kept the bullet in my spare make-up bag, for Christ’s sake.
I should have put it straight back into the jiffy bag and round to the post box with it.
Return To Tosser...
And talking of bad taste. Louisa has moved to Silvertown.
Where Louisa lives. Taken during the blitz. Not much better now.
Louisa Duggan. On harp when I’m on on lungs in anything more operatic than The Lonely Goatherd. And Silvertown (with everything else it has not going for it) is too far to go on legs.
See, I do London transport as little as I have to. Morrissons, the library and the fruit 'n' veg-cum-pants stall at Camden Cross run by the supremely ogleable Mark Wahlberg look-alike are all walkable. But on the Wednesday I saw Anne Widdecombe woman getting herself reported to the RSPCEP (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Exhaust Pipes) I was on my way to a rehearsal with Louisa. On...because of her move…I can hardly type it…London Transport.
I enjoyed the art deco escalators at St. John's Wood, but it all went downhill (see what I did there?) after that.
At Canary Wharf I followed the signs from the Jubilee Line to the DLR. They pointed into the river, into a dead end subway, had a second go with the river - and I spent enough time avoiding either drowning or becoming defunct down a hole for the two dogs and the cat to have made The Incredible Journey.
There and back.
Desperate now to get to the station so I could do an Anna Karenina with the train, I had a look at what other people were doing. They were going somewhere. That looked hopeful. Sheep-like, I followed them into a glass house with an Abbey National, stalls like in the background on Sex And The City and...oh look! - the Canary Wharf DLR. (But maybe I should be keeping that a secret. London Transport clearly is).
Canary Wharf. Yes it is. It says so on the building.
I waited on platform three for eight minutes before my train came. And went. On platform six. I checked the line map again. The train really ought to have come and gone via platform three. I went to information to complain.
"Oh, but you see, sir," the nice lady explained, "The train doors open on two consecutive platforms."
"That would be three and four then, not three and six."
"No, sir. It stops at five and six."
"But that's just my point. The line map says the train I want stops at platform three."
"In that case, then, it would open at four as well..."
"No, the line map is wrong."
"Where?"
"At platform three."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Poplar."
"I can only apologise."
By the time I changed onto the Silverlink, it was well into the rehearsal time. And my throat was tightening with frustration.
A voice came over the intercom regretting that the next Silverlink Train was cancelled. Tuts and sighs from the city boys, a string of expletives from me. I sat down with my Patricia Highsmith and Peanut M&M's.
Another voice came over the intercom reminding us that pre-paid Oyster Cards were not valid on this service.
"What f***- cl**- c**k w**king service?!"
And then another telling us to keep the station tidy.
I looked for a bin.
To empty onto the platform.
The rehearsal went well, but I left early to get to Covent Garden for Sleeping Beauty. We were off again with the silly season. There was no change of cast slip, I’m sure of it, and nobody said anything, but Rupert Pennefather didn’t come on as Florestan, Bennet Gartside did. Steven Macrae appeared with Laura Morera as the Bluebirds instead of Yohei Sasaki and Belinda Hatley. By the time we got to the entrance of the recently married couple, I was agog to see who we’d get: Burke and Hare, Renee and Renato, the Crankies…
And that’s where we came in. Lis and I went off about the silly season, taking in all of the above and that Kiri Te Kanawa has recorded a duet with Katherine Jenkins, because of a serious misprint in the Sleeping Beauty programme. It says that the Royal's Ballet Mistress is Ursula Hageli.
Surely that's just too silly?
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