July 12th 2004 - July 19th 2004
Sunday Hate me
Saturday Redless
Friday Tunes
Thursday Eight lame
Wednesday Best possible
Tuesday Good guess
Monday Ataxia
Sunday 18th July 2004
Contemplating (as I have, perforce, of late) my courtship technique (or lack thereof), I've been thrown back down the tunnel of time to a schooldays production of Gilbert and Sulivan's operetta, The Sorcerer, which turns out to have been an early influence.
Not the heart-achingly sentimental moment (as featured in Mike Leigh's marvellous Topsy Turvy) when the villagers, having drunk of the eponymous magician's love potion, awake to find themselves head over heels with their neighbours and sing, in flights of rural joy:
MEN. Why, where be oi, and what be oi a doin',
A sleepin' out, just when the dews du rise?
GIRLS. Why, that's the very way your health to ruin,
And don't seem quite respectable likewise!
MEN. Eh, what a nose,
And eh, what eyes, miss!
Lips like a rose,
And cheeks likewise, miss!
GIRLS. Oi tell you true,
Which I've never done, sir,
Oi loike you
As I never loiked none, sir!
That's not my style at all (though I'd have no real objection should someone wish to sing it to me) (provided they're young and cute) (and don't overdo the straw-chewing accent).
No, the scene that haunts me is when John Wellington Wells finds himself badgered by the matronly Lady Sangazure:
LADY S. What is this fairy form I see before me?
WELLS. Oh horrible! - She's going to adore me!
And then they sing:
WELLS. Hate me! I drop my H's - have through life!
LADY S. Love me! I'll drop them too!
WELLS. Hate me! I always eat peas with a knife!
LADY S. Love me! I'll eat like you!
WELLS. Hate me! I spend the day at Rosherville!
LADY S. Love me! that joy I'll share!
WELLS. Hate me! I often roll down One Tree Hill!
LADY S. Love me! I'll join you there!
Even if you know nothing of Rosherville or One Tree Hill, you get the picture. And I think you can guess with which character I reluctantly identify...
Saturday 17th July 2004
Say what you like about tyrannical dictators, they're always good for a laugh, what with Idi Amin hauling the heads of his decapitated enemies out of the freezer to share his dinner table, Pol Pot deciding to execute everybody who wore glasses, and the other one (I forget his name) who declared himself re-elected with 103% of the vote.
And now: Robert Mugabe bans red
Friday 16th July 2004
Whatever the weather, you know that summer has really arrived when the sound of synchronised screaming floats up to your fifteenth floor office from the live operacast in the square below.This year, to my even greater annoyance, it was one of the handful of operas I really know and love. (Why, I can even hum some of the tunes - inasmuch as Puccini has tunes.)
So whenever I could sneak away for a fag break, I strode for the lifts and hurtled down to stand puffing beside a lawnful of prone persons and their picnics.
Sadly though, I missed the trampoline moment: Tosca had to throw herself off the battlement without me.
Thursday 15th July 2004
I know what it means; I know what it ought to mean
Excoriate: - The eight lame drama serials an actor has to appear in before everybody forgets that he or she used to be in Coronation Street
Wednesday 14th July 2004
Down at the pub the other night (yes, sigh, that pub), I was delighted, mostly, to spot someone who'd hustled me back to his, several weeks ago, for half an hour of frantic sex.
Frantic, but not especially fascinating - so I wasn't in any particular hurry to repeat the experience.
What I did do, I noticed, was to keep a very beady eye on him from across the room: waiting to see what kind of man he fastened his attentions on this time.
In the end, he left with a halfway good-looking guy. Phew: he has quite good taste.
Tuesday 13th July 2004
Oh, and further to events at La Trois on Sunday evening, and in specific reply to subsequent correspondence, no, I don't in fact cottage on Clapham Common listening to Patti Smith. Good guess, though.
Monday 12th July 2004
I know what it means; I know what it ought to mean
Ataxia: - When the cab stops outside your date's front door and he says "Sorry, is there any chance you could get this?" and you know you have precisely 67p in your pocket.
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