Madame Galina's Doings Diary

The Arts Council Is At It Again.

Those of you that have been missing Rupes will be pleased to hear I dropped in on him last Saturday en route to Chester-Le-Street for the second of my Elements shows.

Rupes in been there, said that interview mode

Rupes is in his second year at Durham now and has moved out of college to a house under the viaduct. He met me off the bus and we were off.

“Like, see, I have these flyers that I’m supposed to be handing out for the fashion show I’ve been just so roped into doing, that I had to say to them quite seriously they should have e-mailed me honestly about the level of commitment and I would have, like, seriously turned it down. They’ve given me, like, the worst Chino to wear ever and they’re like a thirty-two and I’m a thirty so I offered to wear my own that are Ralph Lauren as they’d look almost the same from a distance, but they said the point was that we had to all wear the clothes designed by the girl at college. And like the only person who’s going to look stupider than me is the guy who’s at college doing something like maths that even the tutors know about, who dresses in a cat costume, like with a tail and everything, though you can’t always see the tail as he wears a mackintosh when it rains and it’s hidden. But like everyone accepts him, though, and his tutor told my tutor that he dresses like that because he believes he was a cat in a past life. Actually, not everyone accepts it. There’s these two guys that sit outside the DSU, I think they’re homeless: they’re always smoking weed and playing the guitar and whenever he passes them, they give him some serious cat-banter. Here we are. Sixteen A, but see the fancy extra bit on the one? Everyone thinks we’re seventy-six A, and there isn’t a seventy-six A.”

I got nostalgic about my one up one down that had begun life as Aldeburgh jail when I saw that you got into sixteen A via a garage. Though when I lived in my off-garage des (if you were desperate) res I never had two brace of pheasant hanging up.

“My friend, like, Anthony Von Christianson went, like shooting in Scotland last weekend and brought these back for me. We’re maybe going to eat them tonight. But we’ve been saying that for days, seriously held back by the plucking ordeal that it would entail…”

God knows how I would have explained two brace of pheasant to the Suffolk Coastal County Council Housing Benefit Investigator c June 1998.

“I have been asked to visit you because you seem to be existing on between forty-two and forty-seven pounds a week, and this seems a little out of the ordinary.”

He was called Barry. He had adenoids, a gelled quiff, and a label sticking out of his puffa jacket that read either: Do Not Iron. It’s A Waste Of Time. This Garment Is Beyond Help; or Dry Clean Only. One of the two.

He went round making notes on an A4 clipboard shoddily covered with an FHM centre-spread.

“So this is your kitchenette…emphasis on “ette”, cum dining room, cum office. That’s rather a nice cushion on that step…

“I borrowed it as I had a visitor. It’s the sitting room.”

“Cooking facilities…Baby Belling.”

“Hardly that as the oven’s broken and only the left ring works. More a gleam in its father’s eye Belling…”

“And what’s that opposite the back door?”

“Septic tank.”

“Washing facilities?”

“I prefer to shower.”

The look he gave me would have been shrewd had he not been so bovine.

We went over my profit and loss accounts. He said:

“You are registered for self-employment with your tax office as a classically trained singer. Yet from your profit entries it is clear that you do other, shall we say, more downmarket work?”

“I’m a singer only when I can be. I’m a drag ballerina more often, though that’s still hardly ever. Otherwise it’s the couple of days in an overpriced bric-a-brac shop, teaching wobbly women from the local chamber choir and house-sitting. Freelance Fanny Adams, that’s me.”

“Now about your loss entries”, he said with a ghastly smile. “Why so many hairnets?”

“I wear three as Madame Galina with gaffer tape squidged up into a bun underneath. The one closest to my head keeps getting stuck to the tape and I tear it.”

“Cans of coke?”

“I pour it on the floor at Club Kabaret and tread in it to give me some grip. Proper resin would be much more expensive. And, can I just say, I always make an effort not to incur losses? I walked right round to the back of St. Bart’s to be out of sight when I was going to Club Kabaret for a Sugar Plum but had forgotten my tiara and needs must accessorise from the arrangements of tinsel, berries and holly that nice people had helpfully left on suitable ecclesiastical outcrops. If I’d got caught, there’d have been a fine, and I’d have had to claim for that.”

When all was done, he said, “I’m satisfied that you are indeed living on between forty-two and forty-seven pounds a week.”

The cupboard wall to cupboard wall tins of Value baked beans had clinched it for me.

“Regarding your profit and loss accounts, we cannot by law force you to employ an accountant. And, to be frank, I doubt any accountant would want to get involved. Here is an Inland Revenue pamphlet that will help you to clarify your affairs. It may help avoid the IR having to come and have a closer look into you.”

Which sounded frighteningly gynaecological.

I nearly didn’t warn him about the fox shit on the way out.

But talking of money. Arts Council Funding. It’s been cut for the two venues that I did last weekend. Councillors feel that the art is not being taken up by local residents. Well, I’m here to tell you that they took up my double bill.

Katy Milne, who runs the Greenfield Community Arts Centre in Newton Aycliffe, needed to intrude on me mid tight hoist to round up extra chairs. “The turn out is amazing. And for a show based around ballet…”

None of the audiences would have been to the theatre, let alone to a ballet.

“They don’t think it’s for them”.

I went into the history of ballet in Russia.

“When Peter The Great stole it from Versailles, he made his boyars back home do it; then their wives, their children. So, we always had in Russia that peasant could become great ballerina not just posh girl from Surrey that has got too fat for current size of gymkhana pony but mummy still wants her out of way on Saturday morning as that’s when she hosts her Lamaze panting Aga Adoration Society, so off to ballet with her. And Peter The Great, he shaved his boyars so that they would have more bounce, do you see…”

Anything for them to latch onto. Though maybe I was going a little too far when I wilfully misheard one Solor auditionée when he said he worked as a shop fitter.

“Shirt-lifter? Are you on peace-work?”

But why is the Arts Council cutting such vital funding? There’s no excuse now for them thinking that the whole of County Durham is rich enough to pay for its own pleasures.

“That isn’t a child seat, Iestyn”, Rob Guest, boss of the Elements Scheme, corrected me. “It’s an Arts Council Inspector seat. I had to get them over the idea that the whole county was wealthy, which they’d got from visiting Durham and seeing the cathedral and the castle. So, I invited one over and drove her over the whole county so show her.”

“And did you have a lot of dribble to clean off the windows?”

“No comment. But a lot of the problem just now is the Olympics, of course.”

Don’t get me started.

Except that the Arts Council should adopt the government’s MO of robbing Peter to pay Paul. No, I’ll go further and say that the Arts Council should take back some money already invested if the end result is shoddy.

I use this conceit in my show Ballet Star Galactica. Arts Council inspectors are waiting in the bar to question audience members after Galina’s Basic Ballet Literacy Masterclass. If when questioned the audience members show that they are not basically ballet literate, any Arts Council and Lotto funding already awarded will be docked.

An Arts Council inspector might have watched the performance of La Bayadère I saw last week and produced the following list of dilapidations.

1. The Front Of House staff were telling irate patrons that they had no right to be pissed off at cast changes, as “You book to see the Royal Ballet, not individual dancers.” Why is the casting made public, then?

2. Quite a lot of Bayadère was missing. Two people do not a procession make. This is the Royal Opera House, not the theatre at the end of Southsea pier. British audiences would love the drum dance and the girl balancing the pot on her head - all that noise and perty- missness.

3. The Rajah is meant to be a despotic savage. Not Christopher Biggins playing Widow Twanky in male disguise.

4. Gamzatti really should have more allure than a Saturday girl at a Stockton Poundstretcher. And a jump would be nice.

5. Alla Sizova’s arabesque leg was higher in 1958 than the Shades’s tonight in 2007. And what is with that ghastly R.A.D. back arm line?

Which reminds me (seeing the word ghastly) of Eileen, who worked front of house at Covent Garden when I did. Eileen went alternate Wednesdays to have her hair done by students at Sassoon’s. Some styles were more successful than others. One very alternate Wednesday, usher Aussie Mark whispered to me, “F**king hell. She must have sat in that chair and asked them to make her look as ghastly as possible.”

The look they had given her was pube-covered swimming hat.

6. Nikya is a role for a Prima Ballerina, not a Preening Balanceina. Missing out details while you’re balancing is beyond the pale. Leave things alone.

Take the new Miss Marples on ITV. One of the pleasures of the Miss Marple books is the moment when the great Jane says, “Oh, I’ve been so terribly, terribly stupid, Dolly, not connecting the fact that the girl bit her nails, that Letty spelt “enquiries” as she did and that everyone remarked on the central heating being on. I must send for Inch…”

Inch being the taxi firm at St. Mary Mead, you know that she’s off to Somerset House to find proof that someone is married to - or the parent/child/sibling of –someone, but was keeping quiet.

“You see, inspector, there was the motive all along.”

In The Body In The Library, new ITV vintage, there is no trip to Somerset House because the secretly married couple has been updated to a ménage of girl on girl tweed frotting plus terriers.

The government must take steps. We can’t have Miss Marple’s denouements prone to lesbification.

Posted by iestyn at November 1, 2007 11:35 AM