Peaseblossom’s Ghost

Tags

fairy, Midsummer Night's Dream, National Theatre, Peaseblossom, Shakespeare, Stratford-on-Avon

Stratford-on-Avon, National Theatre.  Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem

Tags

All the world's a stage, Bankside, bum bags, Don Paterson TS Eliot prize, groundlings, Hercules, Hermione, Isle of Wight, Jeffrey Archer, London Bridge, plague, Reeboks, Shakespeare, Sir Smile, Southwark, Thames, The Globe, The Wooden O, Winchester geese, Winchester Palace

 

Forgot about this poem which appeared in the Spring Issue of

Poetry Life magazine, 1998.  It was printed on the back cover and

the front cover had a picture of Don Paterson who had just won the

TS Eliot Prize.  So, I was in good company!

With the current Shakespeare celebrations taking place, I thought

I’d better give it another airing.

It was written in July, 1997.

 

TOTUS MUNDUS AGIT HISTRIONEM*

 

(The Globe, July 1997)

 

No kite-picked, severed heads on London Bridge;

no barge with poop of beaten gold, or sails

of purple on the River Thames.  No screams

of baited bears at Bankside, nor whipped whores,

nor the crude cackling of Winchester geese**

by Southwark Bridge- perhaps the stink of drains.

No risk from rat flea plague.  No sign of swans.

But there’s that octagon, that wooden O,

with its fantastic gates and bearded thatch.

I cannot see that flag with Hercules

bearing the world upon his able back.

But, no doubt it is there, or it will be.

No Spaniards landing on the Isle of Wight,

and another Elizabeth still reigns.

It is required that we awake our faith,

for, down below, I see the lineaments

of that first audience, now in Reeboks,

sporting bum bags: a modern cod-piece? No?

It is the heretic that burns the fire;

not she that burns in it, Hermione

instructs the crowd who hears the Irish news.

Helicopters whirr and obscure some lines,

while programme sellers interrupt: Two pounds!

where a penny once secured standing room.

Thousands will trample Jeffrey Archer’s name;

his stone his hope of immortality.

The selfsame sun that shines upon his court

shines on our cottage, but now the dampness

releases the strong smell of new hewn oak.

I think I sense Will’s ghost behind my bench

and trace his footsteps in the dried blood sand.

There’s laughter at the antics of Sir Smile:

hundreds have the disease and feel it not.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust ,

but, as ever, mostly on the groundlings,

who hide their peccadilloes under macs;

on the surface, behave impeccably,

while the elevated in the tarrass

miss the jokes and fall asleep in Act 4,

proving that all is as it was before.

 

*All the world’s a stage

** Prostitutes associated with the area around Winchester

Palace, near The Globe

 

 

Sex and the City

Tags

Amanda Barrie, Andrew Marr, Antony and Cleopatra, Carry on Cleo, Chichester Festival Theatre, Dan Snow, Hilary Devey, History of the World, Janet Suzman, Kim Cattrall, Lord of the Rings, Neil Oliver, Shakespeare, Smeagol

Yes, the rain is back with a vengeance.  The average monthly rainfall in the UK was expected over a few hours.  A thirty two year old New Zealand woman was killed by a falling branch at Kew Gardens yesterday – but hey!- all those drivers who cut down the narrow roads through the villages in our part of the country still want to force you into the roadside hedges while they spray you with a mini tsunami.

Last night the first programme in The History of the World by Andrew Marr was broadcast.  It was a choice between that and Dragons’ Den.  Since I didn’t want to induce scary nightmares to my slumbers, I  decided to give Hilary Devey a miss.  I gave Marr the benefit of the doubt.  (His wife has been doing that quite a bit recently.)

I don’t know who provided the graphics, but they were very reminiscent of those in Lord of the Rings.  The crumbling stone arches which homo sapiens had to traverse in order to leave the African continent led the tribe to vaster territories in which to spread their DNA.  I half expected Andrew to materialise as Smeagol, crying:

Come on, Hobbits.  Long ways to go yet.  Smeagol will show the way.

At that point a horde of marauding Orcs would have eaten him and spat out his bones.

I couldn’t take the commentary seriously as I kept thinking about how the presenter himself has not revealed himself to be highly evolved in any ethical sense.

This tiny genetic mutation- yes, red hair is the result of a recessive gene, and I can say that as I have the same colouring- pointed out that 27,000 years ago, our ancestors left handprints on the walls of caves.  Okay, Andrew, but they did not leave them beneath the waistbands of jeans worn by female colleagues outside bars in Fitzrovia, before rushing off from the family home to interview US presidents.

I can’t imagine what Michelle’s reaction would be if Barack started misbehavin’.  I think she would be more than cross and might leave something larger than a handprint on his backside.

Marr then waxed lyrical about the invention of the needle which enabled mankind to wear clothes that actually fit properly.  Try telling that to weather girls.

Since then the tie has been invented, but quite a few trendy tribes of politicians seem to think that they can wear a suit and omit the aforementioned item of neckwear.  They belong to the type that has to continually apologise and I personally do not trust Neanderthal, retrograde informality- except in Neil Oliver.  Maybe they will be eaten by their successors.

Marr then popped up in Egypt with a dramatic representation of what happened to the hooligan elements who de-stabilised society by sleeping around.  This took place in the first towns and he commented that the behaviour reminded him of Eastenders.  Would that have been plebeian conduct, Andrew?  No, he just put it down to an outbreak of Wild Nile Naughtiness but he explained his own misadventure as being the product of overindulgence in alcohol- a few too many glasses of Cobra, maybe?

Or maybe he has been carried away by the Janet Suzman production of Antony and Cleopatra at Chichester Festival Theatre, with Sex and the City actress, Kim Cattrall trying to outdo Amanda Barrie in carrying on.  Ah, Andrew, well might you exclaim:

Infamy, infamy – they’ve all got it in for me

But you deserve it!

There are no final victories over the darker side of human nature, he said.

So, what could it possibly be that attracts women to very well-paid presenter and interviewer Andrew Marr?

If you are looking for good genes, why not make eyes at Dan Snow?  Now that’s a colossus, or would he just be pleased to meet me?!

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Butt Me No Butts

Tags

Battle of Bosworth Field, coalition, David Cameron, David Dickinson, Leicester, Leicester University, Nick Clegg, Oxbridge, Porsche, Richard, Richard III, Shakespeare

Archaeologists looking for the grave of Richard III have said that there is strong circumstantial evidence that may support the view that the skeleton discovered under a Leicester car park is indeed the crook-backed monarch.

Richard III’s opening words in his eponymous play are applicable to 2012 for he refers to the clouds that loured in our glorious summer being buried and

now.. our brows [are] bound with victorious wreaths.

A succinct précis of the last few weeks.

 Like The Duke – and I don’t mean David Dickinson – I am not shaped for sportive tricks – at least not nowadays, but I have enjoyed the athletic spectacles as you know, dear reader.

The Duke – let’s just call him Cameron – immediately confronts Clarence – let’s just call him Osborne – and asks him why he has an armed guard.  His addressee says he is being taken to the Tower because his name is George.  Cameron tells him that he should blame his godfathers for that nomenclature. (He doesn’t mean the Mafia.)  At this point I just wondered why Osborne didn’t revert to Gideon, his alternative appellation.

If he was a wine he would be Malmsey, but that is by the by.

In this country we don’t need a wizard to tell us that our children will be disinherited by someone whose forename begins with G.  There is no Gordian knot of a riddle to unpick: we have a choice of at least two and the aural hint of the other scapegoat is in the metaphor.  I hope I speak no treason.

Clegg’s Oration to his Army:

What shall I say more than I inferred?

Remember who you are to cope withal,

A sort of vagabonds, bigots – oops, delete –

(I never meant that I should term them so)

A scum of Britains and base lackey peasants…[sic]

Who never trod the primrose Oxbridge path.

And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow?

A milksop – man or mouse?

The best laid plans of mice and coalitions

Gang aft agley.

Still thou art blest compared wi’ me!

An’ forward tho’ I canna see

I guess an’ fear.

Cameron: A Porsche!  A Porsche!  My kingdom for a Porsche!

We will unite both parties – wait and see.

Smile Heaven upon this fair conjunction.

The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood.

All this divided Clegg and Cameron.

May their politic heirs enrich the time to come

With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days.

And let there be an end to strife.  We pardon

All traitors in The Wars of the Rose Garden.

Cry God for Harry in his naked glory,

For George and all who henceforth will vote Tory.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Muzzard Magic

Tags

Alex Salmond, Andy Murray, Angela Tilby, Bacon, Church of the Holy Rude, Dunblane Cathedral, Educating Essex, Flushing Meadows, galaxyzoo, James Bond, Macbeth, Montaigne, Rowan Williams, Sean Connery, Shakespeare, Sir Alex Ferguson, Stephen Drew, Stirling, US Open, Zen

So, a new star in the firmament then?  Let’s look at galaxyzoo.org.  We may be dazzled by the reflected effulgence from a great big rock on Kim Sear’s left hand, or it might not be too many light years before we get its blue shift.  I mean the girl has sat through so many cosmic matches and had to put up with a boyfriend who watches Wedding Crashes rather than wedding planner videos.  She hangs out with the near eponymous Too good to hurry mint.  Muzzard’s mum lit up like Venus when squeezed by Sean Connery, so there could be feeling somewhere out there in the dark matter of their tennis universe.

Or is there?  Andy did express some emotion at misplacing his sponsored watch after the game, but even though this triumph was one giant leap for Murraykind, he limited himself to a fairly Zen-like self-appraisal about being happy on the inside, if not exhibiting it on the outside.  If ever there was a time for a burst of: If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands, then this was it.  Sir Alex nearly choked on his chewing gum, for Goodness sake.   At least he didn’t hug anyone.

Philosophy was topical, with Canon Angela Tilby on Thought for the Day recounting the Zen reaction of a falsely accused monk, who only reacted by reiterating, Is that so?   This was a reaction also much favoured by Stephen Drew, Deputy Headmaster, who failed to respond prematurely to teenage angst in Passmores School, as shown on the programme Educating Essex.   Clearly it is a successful modus operandi.

Rowan Williams appeared to be a Zen master, as well as a bardic Druid, when he neither excused nor justified himself over his past record, but merely made the low key comment : I don’t think I cracked it.

However, understatement is different from dissimulation, which is pretence and projection of a false self.  So, when an interviewer asked Andy to comment on his 2.30 am victory-..if you could dissimulate that..  my ears could not fail to detect this crass lexical choice with all of its Macbeth, or even Malcolm connotations:

False face must hide what the false heart doth know

or the advice not to be

as a book in where man may read strange matters.

Andy roared like a rutting stag when he was taking control, so I do not see that he is guilty of equivocation.  It is more a feature of Lendl to restrain himself.  Maybe the latter has been making a study of Machiavelli, Bacon or Montaigne, in order to advise his young prince.  Malcolm was the character who adopted the strategy of dissimulation to engineer his claim to the Scottish throne.  Now there’s an over-reaching step to set oneself after the Flushing Meadows novelty has worn off.

So, maybe the Church of the Holy Rude at Stirling, a coronation site, could prepare itself for a nuptial celebration, or an elevation to the Salmond hierarchy for the boy who done us proud {sic}

Dunblane butchers are already promoting their Grand Slam sausages and burgers, so the wedding breakfast could be served with a bit of black pudding and some deep fried Mars Bars, to continue our astral theme, and if the Hydro could be considered too windy a venue for an outdoor barbecue, at least it would deter Culicoides impunctatus, Meanbh-chuileag, or the biting midgie.  The males are benign; it is the female who are the deadlier of the species.  However, a little touch of OO7 appeared to cure the Queen’s Evil and Judy seemed a lot less scrofulous after that wee cuddle.  She got the real Bond, whereas Her Majesty only got Daniel Craig.

Aye, Sean, I’d put my kilt in the cleaners pdq and check the pleats for moth damage because I think you’ll be giving it an airing pretty soon.  Let’s hope you are not double booked for October 5^th. (Global Bond Day)

Mind you, Dunblane Cathedral would make a pretty backdrop for such a ceremony, with its plaques to three poisoned sisters who aspired too high for the nobles of the day- a fitting reminder to Kim to keep her nose clean?

If she can bear to keep playing Scrabble without winning and can avoid words like dissimulate, she is probably on to a high word score.

Lo he comes with clouds descending is a brilliant rallying hymn for a conquering hero, so they might choose that as an antiphon or introit.  Mummy could give him away (not really) and the floral wreathed Border terriers could be attendants.

See yez all at Scone!

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

All Things Are Possible

Tags

Alistair Darling, George Osborne, husband, Katherine Jenkins, Shakespeare, spiders, Summer 2012, swimming, The Tempest

Saturday.

Too darn hot.

A new family of spiders has been discovered called Trogloraptor, or Cave Robber.  One of their genus was behind my headboard last night and it definitely had claws.  This is one situation where the husband can make himself useful.

The theme of the summer, i.e. that all things are possible is continued in news items about a limbless Frenchman who is swimming between all the continents and a sixty three year old American woman who is making her 4^th attempt to swim between Havana and Florida, without the protection of a shark cage.  Last time she had to call it off as she was stung by jellyfish.   Mind you, the American probably needn’t worry, as thresher sharks have been seen basking off the coast of Wales, so they may be on vacation and might prefer a nice nibble of Katherine Jenkins instead.  Who wouldn’t?

Nasty weather is spreading from Wales towards the Midlands.  Heavy rain is forecast for Scotland.  Plus ca change.

Alistair Darling has been writing open letters to George, or Gideon Osborne in The People, asking him to change direction.  The problem is that no one knows where the Chancellor is.  He is not called The Submarine for nothing.  He will come up when the coast is clear. At the moment he would be well-advised to stay below the radar.  He certainly should resist any desire to adopt a stovepipe hat and jump on to The Tempest bandwagon, quoting:

If I have too austerely punish’d you…

…all thy vexations

Were but my trials of thy love, and thou

Hast strangely stood the test…

…be more abstemious.. 

If he surfaced with that kind of talk I think a thousand Portuguese Men-of-War would sting him to death.  And they would be of his own party.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Outdoor Pursuits

Tags

Bradshaw's Guide, Caliban, Corfe Castle, Gore-Tex, Kenneth Branagh, Lettuce, Michael Portillo, Minack Theatre, Neil Oliver, Nick Crane, Shakespeare, The Tempest

I thought that I would inspect the lambs’ lettuce I had planted a few weeks ago.  The earthenware pot was overflowing. So much for home grown five-a-day.  Oh well, it wasn’t the weather for salad, I consoled myself. I had to put the central heating on.

There was nothing on telly, but Michael Portillo, clutching his Bradshaw, eating whelks in Whitstable and avoiding salmonella.  Next was Neil Oliver hanging out of a steam train which was chugging its way round Corfe Castle.  The cameraman had chosen a very forgiving angle so that Neil could let his hair stream out of the window.  He then went on to play a lead role in The Tempest at the Minack Theatre, upstaging Kenneth Branagh, as it turned out:

The clouds methought would open, and show riches

Ready to drop upon me…

He should and could have been Caliban.  And there was the great British public, draped in Gore-tex in that curious collective, masochistic death wish to acquire pneumonia, vaccine availability or not.  That Nick Crane has the weather down to a fine art.  You don’t see him setting forth without his brolly being stuffed into his haversack. Bet his Mum is pleased.  She probably checks that he is wearing a vest and has a clean handkerchief.

Portillo doesn’t seem to carry anything, not even a poncho, which is what the partly Spanish would probably prefer.  He probably relies on the rain being mainly on the plain, not the train.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Compassion Fatigue

Tags

4x4, Andrex puppy, Andy Murray, Antiques Roadshow, Barrier Reef, Big issue, cashmere, CERN, charity shop, Chewbacca, Co-Op, compassion fatigue, David Battie, Feeding of Five Thousand, Fiona Bruce, Galilee, Jesus, merino, Nanking wreck, neighbour, Oxford Brookes, Roger Federer, Shakespeare, SIM, Suttonford, tennis, Tesco, texting, tramp, vegetarian, Wimbledon

CANDIA, CANDIA, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOUR LIFE?

I may have had love at thirty and even love at forty, but there didn’t seem to be such a score as love fifty.  I even thought that my name was a cross between a sexually transmitted disease and an artificial sweetener.  Or was it that, as a femme d’un certain age my frankness and candour had become eponymous and self-fulfilling?

I looked out of the window.  The rain it raineth every day.  I wondered if it had been the wettest June and July since Shakespeare’s time, let alone since records began.  (My English degree sometimes surfaces like a rogue shark on the Barrier Reef of my endangered intellect.)  I decided to venture forth to surf the main street of Suttonford.)

The lure of Tesco Express hooked me in.  Yellow stickers on a few packets of prawns helped me to rationalise that what I saved on comestibles would subsidise the purchase of a few designer garments in the sales.

Co-op or Tesco?  Difficult, as I’d have to negotiate the Charybdis of a Romanian Big Issue seller who had taken to making himself very comfortable on a teak garden chair, right outside the entrance to TE, causing the automatic doors to go into overdrive; or I would have to steer clear of Scylla, in the form of Suttonford’s designer tramp who sat cross-legged, texting his currency dealer, or checking his Visa account on his mobile. I was in danger of extreme compassion fatigue.  It was no use asking myself: “What would Jesus do?”

Probably He would have been able to address the Romanian in his own language and could have introduced Himself as the original Big Issue, or He could have given the technological tramp advice on a hotline to heaven that didn’t involve indulgences in the form of top up cards.  Maybe He could have transformed intermittent reception owing to SIM malfunction, rather than to sin.  Anyway, I doubted that the tramp would have appreciated being told to take up his bed and walk.  I thought he’d prefer another can of the lager that the public-spirited locals tended to supply.

The Son of Man once had nowhere to lay His head either, but things might have been improved if Nevisport down sleeping bags had been around two millennia ago.  Mind you, maybe the Apostles hadn’t needed such protection, as climate change hadn’t made camping in Galilee as warm and wet as in the present time.

Furthermore, I wasn’t sure if I should offer the indigent, if not mendicant, anything, since I had witnessed my neighbour’s dismay on proffering him the leftover sausage rolls from the Jubilee Feeding of the Five Thousand street party.  He had politely, but firmly declined: No thank you, madam.  I’m a vegetarian.

My neighbour wasn’t used to a tramp taking the moral high ground.  The cheek of it!

Oh well! Better trundle off with my funky trolley out and head for Help the Ancient, before any of the rapacious so-called pre-empt me and bag all the bargains.

I used to find lots of treasures in charity shops before the prices rose in the time of austerity.  Even the rich are feeling the pinch, so why do charities double the price of clothing, which is then unsold and has to be re-distributed to lowlier branches in less salubrious areas, where it is offered at half the price to the same rich bounty hunters, who simply have the plastic wherewithal to put enough petrol in their 4x4s so that they can travel further afield in their materialistic slash and burn forays?

No, not all the elderly are rapacious.  Some volunteer in such shops, but find multitasking challenging.  You must never distract them at the till and it is essential to check the chip and pin, or you can end up paying £8,000 for a pilled pullover, already pricily tagged at £8.  The manager usually has to be summoned like a genie from some steamy esoteric activity behind a back curtain.  Then, to the accompaniment of impatient dismay from a line of jealous vultures who have just spotted your potential purchase of a Merino, or Cashmere find, but who haven’t noticed the moth holes, a till roll with Cancelled, the absurd length of which would  delight any Andrex puppy, will be issued. I always doubt the assurances that a sum that equals the deficit of Spain will not appear on my next statement as an outgoing.  Still, I can’t keep away from the places of temptation.

Hello, Candia.

It was my least favourite volunteer.  Rather than thanking people for donating sacks of goodies, she delighted in deterring them from depositing bags after some arbitrary time of day and she could spot an electrical item faster than a Heathrow sniffer dog uncovers a kilo of cocaine.

When a breathless woman whose twins were squabbling in a vehicle on a double yellow line came in, gasping as she heaved a bulging black bag, the do-gooder delighted in delaying the drop-off by asking all sorts of intrusive questions as to whether the  donor was a UK taxpayer or not.  Eventually the woman snapped:

How can I be a taxpayer when I have never worked?

I didn’t know the volunteer’s name and she wasn’t wearing an identification badge.  I launched in, nevertheless:

You know that Ming vase that I was cajoled into buying last week for a fiver?  Well, it had a hairline-no, not an airline- crack.

She turned up her hearing aid. I continued:

That means that it isn’t fit for purpose and David Battie always says that there is a difference between a firing crack , which wouldn’t affect the value of a piece materially, and a hairline. I know you are a charity shop, but the Trades Description laws apply to you as well. Can you give me, at least, an exchange note?

Certainly.  Do you still have the receipt? Fifteen love.

I hesitated. Well, no.. You see, it said £500,000, so I destroyed it in case someone thought I was into money laundering. Thirty love.

Ah, well, I’m sorry. We can’t do anything without it.  As a decorative item, I’m sure that it is worth what you paid.  I stopped scoring.  The ball was in.  Okay, they were not going to get my old Manola Beatnik slingbacks that I’d bought in a Moroccan souk. I will take them to the next Roadshow valuation day.  They might be worth something in the very distant future.  Maybe Fiona Bruce could try them for size.

My next stop was Costamuchamoulah, a trendy “must-seen” coffee shop, where the price of a cappuccino was commensurate with the cost of one of the rare beans from which its beverages were produced.  A single example had excited more fever on the Stock Market than a tulip bulb had raised in Amsterdam at the time of the girl with the pearl ear-ring.  They sell other things too- such as sprouted beans that might be Ming rather than mung and could featured in a barter system where rare porcelain Nanking wreck discoveries could be exchanged for one millionth of a gram.  Still, as the adverts keep reminding me: I am worth it.  Instant gratification here I come!

Darling!

It was a deeply insincere parent of a dreadfully dim girl that I had once taught.

Look at this amazing double egg cup in goose, hen or quail sizes.  It has such cute little sheeps’ heads on it.

Sheep plural, I scoffed silently.

I simply must buy one for Becca’s Biology teacher.  He really helped her to get an A* with all those extra lunchtime sessions he provided.

The ones which she didn’t bother to turn up for with me, I brooded.

(This A/ A* obsession was becoming as annoying as having to observe all those Chinese silver medallists blubbing because they feel they have let down the Motherland.)

Yes, that’s what got her into Biological Sciences at Oxford, the proud progenitor persisted.

Brookes. I silently supplied the post-modifier.

Instead I said, How marvellous!  And how is – I fudged the name– doing now?  As if I cared.

Oh, she’s landed a superb internship for next year at CERN.  She wants to research Botox particles and can’t wait to jog around the collider when it’s not switched on.

I grimaced.

She was at a party in London and met a girl who babysits for Roger Federer- you know, the tennis player..

(Yes, I do know, you patronising… This sotte voce.)

..when he is at Wimbledon.  Now she’s really into all things Alpen.

Muesli for her, I muttered in an embittered tone.  Must dash. Say her old English teacher was asking for her. (Maybe Becca or Chewbacca, or whoever, could get me a discarded sweat-drenched towel from Wimbledon.)

I will, darling, if she remembers who you are/were.  Ciao.

I couldn’t help wondering who babysat for Andy Murray’s mum?  Presumably Kim.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012