Month: May 2024

Beethoven

May 26, 2024

We went to the RFH for Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto and Ninth Symphony (the London Philharmonic with Danny Driver on piano). What a programme – a whole evening of the greatest music ever written, with none of those attempts to make you work for your reward by listening to something more avant garde.

I’m always impressed and even moved by the way Beethoven, whose life was not great by then (unwell, personal life in ruins, short of money and cruellest of all for a dedicated musician, stone deaf) did not give us a lament or a dirge as his last symphonic word. Instead he summoned up the same optimism and faith in humanity he had put into the Third, and left us all a last great shout of joy.

Food books

May 21, 2024

Our new kitchen has one cupboard door which merely covers a piece of wall. So I have covered the wall with shelves of fake books, all literary classics except the names have been changed into food puns.

The full list, if you can bear it, is as follows.

The Handmaid’s KaleAtwood, Margaret
Mansfield PorkAusten, Jane
Wuthering BitesBrontë, Emily
Burger on the Orient ExpressChristie, Agatha
Tart of DarknessConrad, Joseph
The Red Batch of PorridgeCrane, Steven
A Christmas CarrotDickens, Charles
Barnaby FudgeDickens, Charles
Grape ExpectationsDickens, Charles
Martin ChorizowitDickens, Charles
Olive TwistDickens, Charles
Leek HouseDickens, Charles
Silas MarinadeEliot, George
The Grated GatsbyFitzgerald, F Scott
Lord of the FriesGolding, William
The Crumpet MajorHardy, Thomas
Cress of the D’UrbervillesHardy, Thomas
Food the ObscureHardy, Thomas
The Bun Also RisesHemingway, Ernest 
The Old Man and the BrieHemingway, Ernest 
To Ham and Ham NotHemingway, Ernest 
Finnegan’s CakeJoyce, James
The TrifleKafka, Franz
Lady Chatterley’s LiverLawrence, DH
To Grill a MockingbirdLee, Harper
Cider with RoastiesLee, Laurie
One Hundred Beers of SolitudeMarquez, Gabriel Garcia
Loaf of PiMartel, Yann
Life of PieMartel, Yann
Scone with the WindMitchell, Margaret
The Cabbage in the RyeSalinger, J.D. 
Beans and NothingnessSartre, Jean-Paul
Midsummer Night’s CreamShakespeare, William
Much Ado about StuffingShakespeare, William
The Taming of the BrewShakespeare, William
The Winter’s AleShakespeare, William
Of Mince and MenSteinbeck, John
Vanity PearThackeray, William
Banana KareninaTolstoy, Leo
War and PeasTolstoy, Leo
Fried Bread revisitedWaugh, Evelyn
Vile ButtiesWaugh, Evelyn
The Island of Doctor MerlotWells, H.G.
The Thyme MachineWells. H.G.
The Pitcher of Durian GravyWilde, Oscar
SalamiWilde, Oscar

(The shelves are not correctly alphabetised, I know. That’s just realism.)

June 2024 Competitions

May 20, 2024

Here again is a look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (including two for older writers like me).

·      The Salamander Prize is for stories up to 7,500 words. Entry is $15, top prize $1,000 and the deadline is 1 June.

·      The Writer’s Digest has a word limit of 4,000. Entry is $35 and the top prize is $1000 – awarded in several categories and lots of lesser prizes are awarded to good entries. An overall winner gets $5,000 The deadline is 3 June.

·      New American Fiction’s competition is also open to non-Americans. They are looking for a full-length work, but it could be a collection of shorts, novellas, or even flash as well as a straight novel. $25 entry, $1,500 prize and the deadline is 15 June.

·      The excellent: Stories Through the Ages, from Living Springs, is for baby boomers plus (people born in 1966 or earlier) They will accept up to 5,000 words, charge $20 and award a prize of $500 as well as publication. The deadline is 15 June.

·      Writefluence    is back. This year they want stories that begin ‘What?’ No prize except publication, but then entry is still only Rs. 199/-  ($2.25 approx). Enter by 15 June.

·      The Uncharted competition is for cinematic stories (ones that are easily imagined in film form), of up to 5,000 words. $20 entry and a prize of $2,000. The deadline is 16 June.

·      Write by the Sea looks for up to 2,500 words, entry is €10 and the winner gets €500 plus an elegant trophy. You’ve got until 16 June.

·      If you’re a Bardsy member, their Spring Anthology competition is $20 with a prize of $500 – the word limit is 2,000, and the deadline 24 June.

·      The Imagine 2200 competition invites you to do just that, presenting a climate-fiction vision of how a greener world might be flourishing by that year. They want 3-5,000 words and the top prize is $3,000, but entry is free! The deadline is 24 June.

All the rest have a deadline of 30 June.

·      WriteTime is another one for the oldies – over 60s, in this case. Only 1,500 words is required, £5 to enter and a £50 prize – not huge value for money.

·      The Wells Festival of Literature looks for up to 2,000 words: entry is £6 and the prize is £750.

·      The regular Henshaw competition,  ow run by Hobeck Books, has word count of up to 2,000, entry £6 and top prize £200.

·      The Moth is back, looking for up to 3,000 words: entry is £15 and first prize £3,000.

Do let me know if you achieve recognition in any of these!

Still Super

May 18, 2024

We went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the the New Theatre, Wimbledon. It’s still a great show some fifty years after it first turned musicals upside down. This is a lively production based on the Regent’s Park version, with a single set remaining in place throughout. There are nice touches – at the Last Supper the apostles strike the poses they have in the famous Leonardo fresco – but giving Christ a guitar (and baseball cap) doesn’t really work.

I’m always slightly surprised by how much many religious people like JCS, because it is a pretty agnostic account. No resurrection, no miracles, and Christ as doubting and kind of burnt-out. There are many references to his teachings, but they don’t get much of a showing. In fact when there’s an argument about principles it’s hard not to feel that Judas wins (‘people who are hungry, people who are starving, matter more than your feet and hair’). But I suppose the title warns us up front that this is about celebrity more than holiness.

It is certainly a great evening, and the audience loved it: some were just a bit too keen to start applauding when the show really required silence. But this is probably the outstanding example of a show where you don’t just leave humming the tunes: you’re doing it on the way in, too.

Spirited Away in the theatre

May 16, 2024

My daughter Elizabeth kindly organised a trip with her sister and me to see the theatrical production of Spirited Away. You probably know the film, Miyazaki’s most famous, which has become a much-loved classic here as well as in Japan. It’s about a girl navigating the dangers of a spirit bath-house, filled with strange but sometimes friendly creatures. Above you can see the Radish Spirit in the cartoon and in his theatrical version.

Being full of magic and weird beings, this is not a story that is straightforward to present on stage, but the designers have done a great job. They usually allow us to see how the tricks are done, but the effects are none the worse for that. The story is delivered pretty faithfully, following the film very closely, and it helps that probably everyone sitting in the Coliseum knows and loves the film.

This is, I think, the original Japanese cast, and the dialogue is in Japanese with the Coliseum deploying the surtitles it is famous for using with opera. It’s a deservedly popular show, and elsewhere in London you can already see a theatrical version of My Neighbour Totoro, another Miyazaki film. Someone must surely be thinking about doing Howl’s Moving Castle, though perhaps that one is a more complex business. Rather than the film being an original work, it is a significantly rewritten version of the story by Diana Wynne Jones, which has itself already been turned into a stage show…

Pond life

May 2, 2024

We’ve had a go at setting up a mini pond in an old Belfast sink. We’ve started with a little water lily, water crowfoot and a pickerelweed. We’ll see how it goes.