Sunday 30th September
St Katherine's Dock, Summer 2007
Saturday 29th September
Family affair
I've always taken a certain grim pride in having a very small family, and knowing next to nothing about what few relations I'm aware of.
My scant knowledge my blood relations is simple enough to recount.
I'm an only child. My mother, known as Betty, maiden name Thatcher, died when I was nine.
She had two sisters: one was called Jo and married Anton Raymond, a gentleman of Sri Lankan extraction, before emigrating to Australia. My other aunt, Jean, was married to Keith Fox and they too emigrated to Australia while I was in my early teens.
My mother also had a brother, Uncle Frank (married to Daphne with a daughter called Susan); the last I heard of them, a long time ago, they were all living in Hemel Hempstead - we're not in touch.
My mother's father died when I was young; I don't remember his name. My maternal grandmother was Norah, maiden name unknown, who died a year or so after the emigration of her daughters. My grandfather's sister, Ethel, (who mentored me following the death of my mother) died a spinster quite a while ago.
My father, James William, died in 1986. He also had the misfortune to lose his mother when he was young (I don't know at what age). His father, name unknown, also died when I was very young.
My father had a brother, Uncle Bob, who had a son called Graham, neither of whom I've heard from since I bumped into Graham on a train sometime in the 80s.
Not what you'd call a tight-knit family, despite its compact size.
Hence, sources of information are pretty thin on the ground: not a problem for somebody as determinedly self-sufficient as I am, and not something I've ever felt especially motivated to redress.
Until this week when, pretty much by accident, I found myself logging on to Genes Reunited...
Friday 28th September
Hermitage Dock, Winter 2007
Thursday 27th September
I managed a bit of a week off this month, and filled it with a pile of nothing much.
There was the occasional highlight however, like the evening I was drawn to Trafalgar Square by the eerie wail of sitars, and found myself watching some Indian-independence-related stage-show, culminating with a stage filled with dusky bag-pipers, complete with kilts. That was...a thing.
And I also managed to get myself, and my camera, to RVT Sports Day - an event I'd always regretted missing in its previous incarnations, and which then went on hiatus for a year or two, just to rub it in.
Although I managed a couple of really nice shots of Janne and Tony, my photos of the event itself weren't all that; the few that were even half-way good (vsports01 thru vsports08) have been added to the top of the appropriate Photobucket.
(Again, there is YouTube video - this one positively brimming over with office-suitable wholesomeness.)
Wednesday 26th September
Wapping, Winter 2007
Tuesday 25th September
And so closes another season of David Hoyle's Magazine at the RVT, in a gala evening distinguished, amongst many other moments, by a brief conversation with Bette Bourne ("I fell into a ditch, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!") and equally brief physical contact with Boy George (the place was absolutely rammed and he had to squeeze past me to reach the open air; my, what a big boy he is).
As I've mentioned, I've had consistent reservations about the intellectual content of Hoyle's latest project, reservations that have been countered by friends who claim that shows such as the one where he filmed himself (briefly and badly) waiting for the results of an HIV test more than justify his otherwise unsubstantiated claim to be subverting current pre-conceptions.
That said, Hoyle certainly has his moments and may even, who knows, actually have some concrete effect on the culture - though not, I suspect, with his most memorable invention: "I call it cranking, a combination of crying and wanking; tears are such an effective lubricant...".
But denigrating his shows for not living up to an agenda that I suspect was forced upon him only by the need to build on a previous succès de scandale is unfair at the end of the day; acid test: would I reorganise my night-time schedule to prove access to a third season of shows?
Yes, of course.
(If you've never seen David Hoyle in action, there's quite a lot of him on YouTube - I wouldn't advise watching it at the office, however.)
Monday 24th September
Wapping, Winter 2007
......previous week
