Just For Lookin' Thru

Four married couples feature in this play which presents their very different relationships over the course of one farcical evening, on into the early hours. Delia and Ernest are celebrating their wedding anniversary while Malcolm and Kate are having a housewarming party. Nick has a bad back so has to stay at home in bed; his wife Jan goes to the party without him, where she bumps into old flame Trevor who is having a row with his depressed and distracted wife Susannah. The stage set cleverly presents three bedrooms; lighting and action moves audience attention from one to another, and there is an intelligent use of space and timing. Moments of intensity from neurotic Trevor and Susannah are relieved by comedy, while Jan and Nick’s bickering and jibes are also offset with some humour. Herford directs a well known cast but it is always apparent that they are acting. Only James Midgley and Natalie Cassidy work with perfect comic timing, which makes an audience forget they are delivering ...

Atkins weaves graphics, documentary and news footage, personal stories and information about legislation to expose the deeply disturbing changes that have come about in the UK over the last ten years. Comments are from human rights organizations, politicians, academics and lawyers, and the film focuses on ordinary people who have had enough. They feel compelled to protest and complain about the loss of civil liberties such as freedom of speech, (which has always been sacrosanct in Britain), being presumed innocent until proven guilty, our rights to privacy, the illegality of torture, and the rest. The Police are used as Government tools to control the unruly population who, when peacefully protesting, are now considered a security risk and a terrorist threat. One busload of women on their way to a peaceful protest were imprisoned in their coach and escorted back to London by a motorcade of police outriders and vans. They were unable to get off the coach for a toilet or dri...

Just spent a happy few days at the Festival of Words and Ideas at Dartington. Hard to know whether the talks are more fascinating than the audience. Am sated with stimulating conversation. Heaven on earth to spend time with other writers and avid readers, people of passion. On Resurgence Day we were treated to talks by Brian Goodwin and Satish Kumar. Goodwin says he is ‘embedded in the evolutionary process’ and his desire is to articulate that ‘culture is embedded in nature’ not something separate, a construct, apart from it. He emphasizes that, at Schumacher College, study is focussed on the ‘meaning’ in the natural world, which is different from studying the natural world in order to control it. In nature, all is death and transformation. His argument that meaning tends to be associated with language and culture rather than the existence and life of things implies a chasm between the two, that thought and the intellect have moved to inhabit a separate sphere from nature. He says ‘we ...

Okay. Another interest rate rise. The market has ground to a halt here. The smart people had put their properties on the market in May, to avoid having to have the HIP. If they accepted offers then, they’re alright now. The market has become saturated with properties. Overpriced, unattractive properties down here. So, it’s a buyer’s market. There’s so much to choose from that no-one’s choosing. However, in an auction I attended last week, a 3.8 acre parcel of pasture land sold for 60K. Buy land, they ain't makin' it anymore. In fifty years you could maybe get planning permission for your grandchildren. I’ve only been in this job for nine months and, in that time, we’ve gone from being rushed off our feet and selling houses before we’ve had a chance to get them advertised in the paper, to being stuck with hundreds of them. My own job, doing all the Saturday viewings, has changed from racing about like a headless chicken to try and fit in all the appointments, missing l...

Set in Australia and based on a short story by Raymond Carver, ‘So Much Water So Close To Home,’ Jindabyne is a slow moving psychological drama. The town of the title is small, enclosed, and stifling. Everyone knows everyone’s business yet there is sense of real unease percolating through every piece of dialogue from the beginning. There is no soundtrack; the film is shot in silence and minimal dialogue, but singing overlaid on the landscape shots is very disturbing. Hostility is everywhere. Stewart and his friends go off on a weekend fishing trip, and, on the Friday, find the dead body of a murdered woman floating in the water. Their decision to leave her there, and not report the crime until they return is a mistake in judgement that has repercussions which reverberate throughout their community on their return. Misunderstanding, failure to tell the truth, and the apportionment of blame are the themes here. Laura Linney is superb as Clare, Stewart’s wife, who has also ma...

There’s a lot of excitement in the Press just now, with two car bomb threats averted in London and another at Glasgow Airport. It strikes me as deeply chilling that the London bomb attempts were targeted near nightclubs where hundreds of young people and, in particular, slags (sic) would have been killed or maimed. This is not a terrorist attack against capitalism or even Christianity, or a general lack of faith in the UK but an attack on our women. In the same newspaper I read an article about a magistrate who is apologizing for his unprofessional conduct when he walked out of the Courtroom because a young Muslim woman appeared before him in a hijab with a mere slit for her eyes to peep through. I have no idea what she had done to require a presence before the beak, but identity must surely be called into question in Court. She is apparently hurt and outraged at being asked to unveil where men are present. However, anyone could have been under that veil, her uncle for instance, sent a...

Fiona and Grant have been married for 44 years. Filmed in Canada, the beautiful snowscapes, sunlight on snow, and red tinted sunsets, make a fitting backdrop to Julie Christie’s cool, elegant beauty. She plays the wife of a retired University lecturer Grant, (Gordon Pinsent), who succumbs to the early onset of Alzheimer’s. At first it troubles her, then it intrigues her and she says she feels as though she is ‘disappearing.’ It is she who decides when it is time for her to go into a home, who instigates the process and, when they arrive, who determinedly checks herself in. She bravely comments that it will be like staying at an hotel. What other line can she take? Grant’s quietly desperate attempts to dissuade her only threaten her fortitude. She has to be strong for them both. It is hard for her to say goodbye too, but it is so much harder for Grant to go home and be without her. It is always hardest to be the one left behind. The unkindest cut of all is that the home...

I am getting to know Ella a little bit. I have been out to the rambling old cottage quite a few times now, showing folks round. She usually keeps out of the way, as though she doesn’t want to be involved in the process. Today, she’s inside with her family, and we pass through the rooms as respectfully as we can, aware of her sensitivity towards the old house. With a cup of tea, her daughter and her grandchildren, she is confined to one small room while we have free range of her home. After the first couple have left I go in and sit down to talk to her. They have made an offer of 500K and want to go for an immediate exchange of contracts, legals permitting, with a completion date set for September. This is a reasonable timescale. She looks worried, unhappy. “I don’t know.” She says. She tells me she wants her original buyers to have the house although they are now unable to proceed because their own sale fell through. She says that she ‘clicked’ with them; that they fell in love w...

This is a remake of a 1934 classic starring Greta Garbo and is based on a novel by Somerset Maugham. Kitty is a bored, rather empty, piano playing socialite with an overbearing mother who wants her to get married because that’s what girls do (it's set in the 1920s). Kitty likes dancing, playing tennis, and has never been in love. Along comes a rather serious but unexciting bacteriologist to woo her; Kitty accepts his proposal, and they leave for Shanghai. Kitty has escaped from her mother only to succumb to a deeper boredom amongst the colonial set. She embarks on a passionate affair with a diplomat, is discovered, and she becomes victim to the intensity of her husband’s feelings of rejection, pain and anger at her infidelity. His punishment is to take her into rural China where there is a severe cholera outbreak. It is a study of repressed emotion and correct behaviour, and it makes horribly uncomfortable viewing with its sense of being trapped in a loveless marriage,...

It’s fascinating to see the BBC setting up for Question Time - two enormous lorries filled with a mass of recording equipment arrive early in the morning and spend all day unloading. They set up six cameras, the set, computers, televisions and enough cabling to go round the world twice. A team of men in black put everything together and a security team frisks all the audience as they come in, while four local policemen contribute their presence. They omit to frisk the stewards which is interesting, as any one of them could have some polonium to spray on Boris Berezovsky. They can't have read any John Le Carre or Claire Francis novels or they'd have realized what a strong possibility this is in the provinces. Berezovsky’s a brave man who says he feels safe in England, yet I don’t see any security men on the stage door side of the building. The whole team is at the other entrance checking people’s bags and scanning them with detectors. Progress into the building is slow. Other pa...

There are 1800 folk in tonight for a gig that sold out in just over an hour. The Manics were in Bristol last night, and Truro has drawn in this huge crowd from Devon and all around the west country, the Celtic fringe, all in great spirits, all looking forward to a good night. If people were smart and checked the ticket prices maybe they’d think it worth the drive down to Cornwall for tickets at £25 compared to £59 at Brighton and £65 at Southampton. Hey, good deal. We’re cheap down here. The security guys are a nice bunch of lads, enormous, and very polite. One guy stands next to me and accidentally brushes my face with his arm; he’s so big he can’t see me down here as he scans the floor from his vantage point. I look up to see what it was that bumped me in the dark, and connect my face with his upper arm – my head doesn’t even reach his shoulder. Ridiculous. I’m not small. What on earth did his mother feed him on? He’s got to be 6ft 8ins at least. Good manners though. He’s one of thos...

It’s been 25 degrees in London and I step onto the Penzance train, relieved to be in the cool. I’m in an inside airline seat and a man in his forties sits on the outside seat. I say hello and get on with the serious business of eating my train picnic. His train picnic is a bottle of white wine and a newspaper. I wake from my post-prandial nap to find him chuckling over a news story. He enlightens me. He’s disposed to chat. Uh huh. Only five hours to go. How is this one going to play out? Not always wise to get friendly so early on a long journey, when one of us is trapped in the inside seat. He’s looking forward to a few days in Cornwall, he says. He loves Cornwall. Me: It’s okay - if it wasn’t cloudy all the time. At least you can see the sun in London. He doesn’t know me, and can’t decipher that this means I am feeling grumpy and not very friendly right now and, more importantly, I am protecting my psychological and physical space. If I liked the look of him, I would have been playfu...

En garde I’ve been worrying about our newest member of staff. She’s fresh out of school, an absolute stunner, with a sweet nature, and she’s being sent out on viewings. I don’t like it. It has never occurred to me before to worry about being in an empty house with a stranger but I’m not happy about her being in that position. She may be fine. She may never have to deal with some old creep’s unwanted attentions. I mention my concerns several times but my colleagues, and this little cutie-pie, all look blankly at me as if I’m being neurotic. I let it go. Today, for the first time, I’m sitting in my car and I know I’ve got an odd one. I see a man shuffling about near the house where I’m to meet my next client. I know he’s my man because he is walking strangely; he looks shifty and disturbing, and I wouldn’t go near him if I had a choice. Well, at least it’s me not the youngster who’s out here. I stride up to him and act like I’m taller and wider than I really am. I’m very physical w...

Hot Bodies The heat is intense today. My car is blue with a black interior and the sun on the metal is fierce and punishing. Even with the window open there is no relief. The sunroof has to stay closed because the ferocity of the burning sun is beyond bearing. I’m showing a friendly, chatty elderly couple round a bungalow in suburban bungalow-land where there is no sound but the churning of some piece of workman’s equipment nearby. I stay with the plot all round the house, answering questions, being helpful, making suggestions, until we come to the front bedroom and I turn to admire the view. Across the road are two workmen on the flat roof of a garage. One of them is facing us, wearing a baseball cap and bent slightly forward. All I can see is his perfect flat stomach; so flat that, as he bends, there are neat creases in the brown skin, as neat as pencil lines. He has not an ounce of fat covering his slim, naked upper body and trickles of sweat make tracks through the dirt on th...

I was pondering the unfairness of having to pay a man £340 to tile my bathroom which is the size of a telephone box. This chap is on £150 a day and a friend tells me this is an entirely reasonable wage for a man to expect, even though he left school early and went straight to work on a building site. He has not done my tiling particularly well, and he has left me with a huge amount of cleaning up to do. I was thinking over my long-standing and deeply felt dislike of feminism; deeply felt because I feel that the initial ideals of equality have all gone horribly wrong and turned women into men instead of making us all people of honour, dignity and fairness. However, I was having to question my position on the basis of the equal pay argument because I don't know any women earning £150 a day. Whilst mulling over this, I get a call from my mother. During a period when she was homeless, she took a job as a nanny to a 7 month old baby boy who lived on a small moorland estate, and raised h...

Overcoming Nature Rose is in bed again. Each time I go out to visit the old cottage lately she has been in bed. Her asthma is so bad this time that she is taking steroids simply to breathe; to stay alive. There is an oxygen cylinder beside her bed. Out in the country, beyond calling distance of any neighbours, she has this for company, and to help her breathe at night until a doctor or an ambulance comes if she manages to phone. She is all smiles, as always. Her eyes are large and direct, and shine her welcome. Her face is as open and fresh as a child’s. She does not look ill at all, but as sunny and as bright as this late spring day. She asks many questions about what I’m doing, and who I’m seeing, and how I’m getting along, but she is stoic and philosophical about herself. She is accustomed to being barely able to breathe and has adapted to the limitation after so many years of labouring for air. My viewing party arrive and we crawl all over the 400 year old cottage, poking int...

Put It To Julian … “You’re a very spiritual person aren’t you?” Clary is astonished: “Me?!” “In your own way I think you are” “Okaaay,” he says warily, “everyone likes to think they’re spiritual” It’s a surreal moment. Known for his wit, and waspishness, Clary looks somewhat fazed during his question and answer session when a woman in the audience commandeers the roving microphone to “give him some advice.” He listens to the animal healer, then pulls a face and grins hugely, “Oh, this is a scream. Are you going to tell me she’s going to get something wrong?” She tells him repeatedly that in two years time he can expect his little dog, Valerie, to have a problem with her back left leg. She further expounds that she never charges a fee; that all genuine healers don’t charge. Clary promises that he’s taking her seriously. At the end of all this she wriggles in her seat and demonstrates that she has only one leg. I wonder if this is some kind of bizarre form of psychological projection ont...

Before the dust has settled There is a boiled egg left on the draining board, amongst a pile of washed dishes that have been left to dry. A bottle of medicine stands by the sink. More medicines are in the bathroom. The mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet is open, exposing a selection of ointments and tablets. These most personal items embarrass me and I slide the door closed before my first client arrives. Waiting outside I feel very subdued. There is something extremely dispiriting about standing amongst the abandoned relics of a woman’s life. The flat has been vacated very suddenly, with signs of her interrupted life everywhere; on every surface, bits and pieces, clutter, normality. Maybe it’s that sense of my presence being a kind of violation of her home, but I feel a bit irritable as the viewing party approach; a young man accompanied by his parents. I can’t tell if it’s me or them that makes the atmosphere uncomfortable. I go through the motions of smiling, hand shaking e...

I don’t think I managed to sell anything at work today but I did manage to get lipstick on my skirt. It’s easy when you know how. I think I’ll just call into this shop I’m passing and see if there is anything pretty that I simply have to buy, as it’s on my way home and all. What am I thinking? I hate shopping. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes. Maybe I’m having one of those moments, when your mind has gone blank after a long day, and is not functioning on any level whatsoever. I wander aimlessly round the store. I even pick up things I would never wear. Somehow, I manage to get a grip and propel myself to the automatic doors. See, it’s all so effortless you don’t even have to push anything; you can just drift around in a browsing haze of inattention, and drift right back out again, like shopping plankton. It’s a huge relief to be back in the car park and I am congratulating myself on my self control when I see a small boy running ahead of me. He isn’t running like little boys usually do...

When I was small I played snap, or pairs, with a favourite pack of cards. The pictures that had to be matched were children in their national costumes and I loved just looking at them and wondering what their lives were like. Nationalism has been a dirty word since the 1940s, with our post fascism and post-colonialism sensibilities, and homogeneity is making so much of the world seem bland but tonight, the wide range of difference is delightful in its variety. On the day the SNP are celebrating in Scotland, the Hall for Cornwall is filled with choirs from all over the world; a celebration of nationalism and diversity. The farthest travelled are the Birralee Blokes from Australia, who open this evening's concert with three perfectly arranged and performed pieces. These guys all look under twenty years old and it’s great to see young men taking to choral singing, and great to hear that choirs are so keen to come to this annual series of concerts that some are having to wait a couple ...