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I'm currently re-reading Homer's Iliad – I sometimes feel that life is too short to read any book twice, but there are exceptions, and Homer is one of them. It's been delightful to delve into his madness and somewhat tongue-in-cheek narrative style, but it's also the translator's sense of humour that comes through too. I can't remember whose version I read thirty years ago, but this one is a revised and updated version of E V Rieu's efforts from 1950 and there is very definitely an ironic influence on the prose peeping through here.
However, I cannot help wondering about the accuracy of the texts. The poem is said to have been written circa 700 BC, but academics have speculated that Homer himself could not write and therefore that he composed the epic 15,000 line poem sometime earlier (circa 950 BC) and passed it down through oral tradition. It is already assumed that Homer owes a great deal to a much older oral tradition of story-telling (the depicted events are supposed to have taken place circa 1200 BC, although it is unlikely they ever really happened), and if this is so, then how much corruption, embellishment and editing of Homer's original words could have taken place before we see the poem that has survived for us today? We all know how Chinese whispers work, when a message saying: 'Send reinforcements, we're going to advance' is given to the beginning of a line of soldiers, only to emerge as: 'Send three-and-fourpence, we're going to a dance' at the very end. Could this have happened to the Iliad as it was passed down through oral tradition over hundreds of years? Most likely.
One wonders then, whether we will ever be victim to such a warping of our own words? On the face of it, you would think perhaps not – everything we say or do these days is recorded electronically for all time, and this would suggest that there is no danger of any oral distortion of that. Or is there? Because it has become so easy to review every action that we take, or every opinion that we expound, do we run the risk of manipulating our own stories before they get irrevocably recorded for posterity? Quite possibly.
But for the meantime, I'm plunging back into the beautiful descriptions and similes of Homer: 'God-like Achilles'; 'the goddess white-armed Hera'; the goddess grey-eyed Athene' etc. etc. All jolly good stuff.
In Buddhism, as you know, it is the intention of our action that we should be aware of, rather than the action itself. Therefore, if I accidentally stand on a slug whilst walking along a darkened path and kill it, that's okay. If, however, I actively seek out said slug with a torch and proceed to pour salt over its writhing body, that's not good. Notwithstanding that, there are occasions when the deliberate killing of a beast is acceptable – most usually when it is brought about through an act of self defence. For example, if you should find yourself in a small clearing in the woods and are confronted by a ferocious and violent grizzly bear, and you are in possession of a gun at the time, you would be excused if you were to shoot the bear, providing that it was demonstrating a clear intention to rip out your throat.
Whereas I make every effort to avoid causing suffering to any sentient being (you would laugh at the number of hours I spend shooing out the numerous flies that gather in my apartment on warm days), such an occasion for self defence once presented itself to me. I was on a camping holiday in the Bandavghar Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, Central India, and I'd been out all day filming wildlife with my travelling companion (my great-aunt Dolores – you will remember that she's the one who was once knocked down by a lorry and survived; the one who later became a xylophone player). We'd enjoyed a delicious dinner of kusli, lavang lata and jalebi, all washed down with perhaps too many Cobra beers. With her ivory cigarette-holder gripped between her teeth (she refused my protestations to exchange it for a plastic one), great-aunt Dolores laughed as she ripped the top off yet another bottle. "These Cobras will be the death of us, boy!" she said. Little did she know that her teasing words were to become almost horribly prophetic.
Staggering back to my tent a little while later, I tore open the canvas door and stepped inside, only to be confronted – to my horror – by a huge cobra that was reared up by my bed, its elongated neck ribs flattened to form its distinctive hood. It stared at me in alarm, hissing angrily and looked ready to strike. In my blind panic, I reached for the machete that I kept by the bed but only succeeded in knocking over the small lamp that stood on the table, and I was suddenly plunged into darkness. Now I could see neither the machete, nor the snake. Convinced that I would feel the hammer of its fangs in my flesh at any moment, I screamed for help and tried to retreat from the tent, tripping on the broken lamp. I fell onto the bed and by some strange providence, my hand came to rest on the handle of the knife. I grabbed it, jumped up and began thrashing wildly in front of me, yelling for help like a lunatic. By the time that my great-aunt and our guide arrived bearing torches, I was on my knees babbling and crying like a child. Writhing and twisting across my bed, only inches from my face, was the blackened, headless body of the snake.
"Hmm," muttered Dolores. "Nice work, boy. However, there's one characteristic about the Indian cobra that worries me. They mate for life and they always travel in pairs." We all peered nervously around the room and began to edge quietly from the tent. That night, I smoked several of my great-aunt's cigarettes and slept in the Land Rover. However, the slightly disturbing outcome of my shocking encounter was that I realized that I had actually enjoyed the killing. Oh, Buddha.
I was inspired by an evening of live performance last night at the Arts Organization in Nottingham. The event was called 'Family Vibrations' and consisted of a number of people with a varied mix of talents and abilities getting up on stage and performing their party pieces. Some golden nuggets were there – a man playing a recorder (of all things) accompanied by a couple of percussionists from Blackdrop (I wrote about that particular troupe a few days ago); there was sweet young Sam on the guitar, singing better than I've heard him sing before; another Broadway Bruiser - Black Feather (that's his real name, btw) - performing on the djembe drum with great accomplishment. It was a fun night – a few a capella singers; some (occasionally dire) poets; and the fabulously exotic Daniel Hallam who was at one time the white-painted model who derided me for my gold brocade shirt and orange-striped trousers at the last Unleashed event. In all, it was huge fun.
When I was a boy, I used to hear my parents (and other adults) say that the one consistent fact about all politicians is that they are filthy liars. I never really believed this – after all, I was at one time a small-time politician myself when I won two elections to become an elected Councillor – but yesterday I suddenly saw the undisguised truth of this assertion. Gordon Brown's speech at the Labour Party Conference was the biggest pile of useless hyperbolic rhetoric and hubris that I have ever heard. Endless clichés; meaningless soundbites; macho-driven clenched fists; vacuous repetition of phrases like 'good for Britain', 'the future of our country', 'Labour at its best' etc – these say nothing about policies and solutions. The awful, yawning truth of this appalling flim-flam is that the Labour delegates watching him must have known that he was lying; we knew that he was lying – even Gordon himself knew that he was lying! My parents were right after all - what a sham.
Now, this is my last word on The Machine. Those incompetent crankies at CERN have put a right spanner in the works, so they have. They have now announced that they won't be switching it back on until next Spring. This has scuppered my plans completely as I now have to plan what I'm going to do at Christmas – something I had hoped to avoid. I hate Christmas anyway (for all the obvious reasons) and it nearly always results in 'family vibrations' of an entirely different kind, I can tell you. Doh! This is ridiculous, and not what I expected when I invested - I want my £3.7 billion returned at once!
I’ve just spent an absolutely charming afternoon and evening at the home of a very talented young writer whom I predict will be a name to watch in the future. Stuart William Hosker has the flair and aptitude to write well but what’s more, he has the drive and ambition to get noticed (and that’s often what it’s all about in this business). I was lucky enough to be asked to critique the first episode of a new drama he’s working on for television. It was a privilege and I was more than happy to do it.
It’s a very good script, and the idea is brilliant and original - one which I think will delight both television moguls and audiences alike. I’d like to think that I have played a small part in helping Stuart to hone his already excellent script into something sharp enough to be acceptable. When (in a few years time) people are talking about Stuart William Hosker in the same breath at say, Russell T Davies, I shall be proud to have been in at the start, when we sat around his sitting room, pages from the script strewn around the floor (Abba the kitten mischievously chewing the odd one), laughing our socks off. It's not that the script is a comedy, just that we were having so much fun. And then, for some icing on the cake – Stuart gave me dinner! In business parlance, a win-win situation.
By now, you will all have heard that the machine is broken. This is propitious news indeed, not least because those sneaky, pesky boffins at CERN had been planning to begin the collisions much earlier than previously announced. The cheeky bastards – here I was, expecting to be safe until October 21st, when all the time they were planning our annihilation without even giving us the chance to have a decent party! I’d bought jelly and everything, too. So, the machine is being turned off and hundreds of tons of liquid nitrogen are being poured into the chambers to cool it down, and the inconsistencies that its careering protons were already causing to our natural order are, for the time being, abated.
Just as well, really. It will buy enough time for Stuart to finish his fabulous script, and for me to sell everything I own and spend the proceeds on enough booze and fags to keep me going until the big bang engulfs us all. I wonder if they’ll let me take Bruno, my pet armadillo with me? I’m not planning to sell him – he’s the only one on this godforsaken planet who loves me!
Stephen Lowe – theatre director and playwright (he even wrote for Coronation Street at one time) – came to see us last night to talk about the "magic" of theatre. It was as a response to Stephen’s fabulous play ‘Smile’ that I wrote my play for the Lakeside earlier this year, so I was very keen to hear what he had to say. He talked about how writing a play is like giving a gift to the actors & directors and the audience, and then letting it go. He said that his job, as the ‘maker’ of the play, finishes at the dress rehearsal and that the actors then take what he and the director have made and make it their own. I agree with him; it’s all magic. Nobody knows exactly how it is going to work, and although the writer ‘makes’ the play – in the same way that a craftsman might make a table – it’s the way the play (or table) is used that brings it to life. For example, I loved that first moment in rehearsals when my characters (hitherto only 2-dimensional on the page) suddenly emerged as flesh & blood as the actors took hold of my words and gave them soul.
It’s ironic that I should only have discovered this magic at this rather late stage in my life (and I suppose I have Fintan Ó Higgins to thank for that), but it’s doubly ironic that I should get enthused by this enchantment just as the future of new theatre writing is becoming so jeopardised. The message is being written with black paint on a black wall, as live arts become further and further squeezed by the double vices of the current economic down-turn and the voracious need for sports funding in preparation for 2012. Not exactly a good time to become fired up (at last) by the sparkle of the stage. I remember when - as an undergraduate – I produced a play for the university’s Drama Society. It was ‘The Education of Skinny Spew’ by Howard Brenton (from whom, in true ‘Kevin Bacon’ style, I am only two steps away because he is a friend of Stephen Lowe’s). It had only one lunchtime performance in front of a ragged collection of bewildered students, but I remember being enthralled by the whole process. I also remember paying Howard Brenton the huge sum of £4 for the performance rights.
What madness then, caused me immediately to forget that excitement and turn my back on the stage for the next thirty years? Actually, it wasn’t madness – that would almost be excusable – it was nothing more than simple, plain stupidity. If I hadn’t been so stupid, I could have been sitting where Stephen is now. Instead of this wasted and worthless life of mine, I could have filled the last three decades with a gorgeous tapestry of greasepaint and drama. How careless I’ve been. How utterly, utterly careless.
It’s definitely the machine causing all of this. There’s no other possible explanation. Today, I noticed that all of my emails were received before they were sent. This sometimes happens to the odd random message, but all of them? Something is afoot. The machine is cunning - it doesn’t reverse time in every situation - that would be too obvious. No, it just tinkers with our world in a few subtle ways, hoping that we won’t notice. It’s sneaking up on us slowly, with the stealth and stillness of a glossy black cat. Piece by piece, the fabric of our normal lives is being eaten away – banks are collapsing; people are suddenly behaving out of character; one of my bathrooms has stopped working – the list goes on. All these little idiosyncrasies go almost unnoticed as individual occurrences but collectively, they reveal one thing: the machine is evil and its malevolent plan is to overwhelm us.
Take last night for example. I had a determination to go home after a couple of ‘early doors’ drinks in Edin’s. Indeed, I did this – I went home and ate my dinner before settling down to an evening of sober self-instruction. Imagine my surprise therefore, when I found myself walking backwards down the hill towards Edin’s. This was completely against my will, but the machine was pulling me back and I was powerless to resist. I struggled, fought and kicked - all to no avail. Several pints later, and after another sing-song around the (now tuned) chaos piano, the machine finally released its grip and I was able to escape. By this time though, the damage had been done. More and more wildebeest had been similarly drawn into the vortex and what had started as a quiet Tuesday evening, had been transformed into a riot by the machine.
We need to destroy the machine before it destroys us. I aim to set up a Facebook group for that very purpose. You will recall that I wrote here about E M Forster’s story ‘The Machine Stops’. When it does, we will be liberated at last.
Hmm, an interesting few days. I attended a theatre festival for most of it – lots of new plays by emerging writers being performed; a number of writing-craft workshops and of course, plenty of Nottingham’s writing community to chew the fat with. It was organized (and financed) by the Theatre Writing Partnership - an organization whose raison-d’être is to encourage and develop local emerging new stage-writing talent. For the most part, this organization does a very good job (see below left) and is responsible for providing the opportunity to a whole range of aspiring writers to help get their work to a wider audience. Well done, TWP.
We were also treated to a recitation from a local performance group called Blackdrop (if you want more information on this fabulous troupe, click here) aided by slam performance poet Raven (click here) who had made the trip from Dublin especially for this event. Blackdrop is a group of black and mixed race poets who all have Irish blood flowing through their veins and they presented us with a mixture of poetry, song, monologues and percussion in a wild celebration of what it means to be Irish, yet not look it. Some stunning performances from an eclectic bunch of truly talented people.So hey, a good weekend all round and I made some new friends too! In typical Pilgrim fashion, however, I also made some new enemies – but what the hell, I’ve never been one to stare inequitable iniquities in the face and keep quiet. No, sir.
I won’t explain what I mean by that – it’s all too tedious for words really – but I’m the kind of person who is intolerant of unfairness and favouritism when I see it taking place. But this is all small fry compared with what is happening on the financial markets at the moment. We are all doomed, and the world as we know it is about to collapse. The reason for this? My money (if I had any) is on the switching on of ‘the machine’ last week. Yes, the Large Hadron Collider is the main culprit here, and we shouldn’t be too surprised by this at all. The question is – can we hold on for long enough until it all ends for good (roll on 21st October, that’s what I say). Sucked into the black hole, our cries will be: Goodbye, cruel world...
Everyone was very complimentary about my “performance” last night. It was the first time I’ve ever acted in front of the (paying) public and I didn’t think I could do it. I’m very comfortable with reading my work in public, but acting it? That’s a different matter. So I approached the stage with some trepidation, convinced that I was going to make a bloody fool of myself. However, I plunged into my script and it only took a moment or so to get into my stride and I suddenly felt very comfortable and at home. Yes, I made a few mistakes, but only I knew that and the audience didn’t notice at all. To them, it apparently came across as seamless and effortless. I enjoyed it enormously so maybe I should have spent my life as an act-or after all. I wish to thank all the dahlings who came to see me perform, anyway.
To celebrate, I had a couple of drinks later in Edin’s (my antibiotics have finished) but these left me feeling a little queer and I wasn’t sure that my head was going to cope. I began complaining of a strange jarring of the nerves and a slight fragmentation of my vision – it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation, but it felt unnatural. So I went home at around midnight, and left the boozers to it. This morning my head feels as if it’s been squeezed in a vice – quite disproportionate to the amount of alcohol I had last night. Clearly, I abandoned my temperate state too early. I don’t think I’ll bother again – I’ve been having great fun without alcohol for a while and I think that’s how I’ll keep it from now on.
However, it was suggested that my feeling of ill-ease was caused not by the residue of the drug mixing with the alcohol, but by the 'machine'. The machine in question is, of course, the LHC that was finally switched on yesterday. Those millions of protons hurtling around their own private racetrack at 99.99% of the speed of light are – it was being claimed - patently having an effect on us all. Somehow I doubt it, although I am still intrigued about what will actually happen when the collisions begin on October 21st. I’m excited about what German chemist Professor Otto Rossler says – he thinks that the black holes created by the LHC will grow uncontrollably and "eat the planet from the inside". Atrophy isn’t the word!
Far from it leading to the end of the world, the scientists in support of this experiment claim it will result in the identification of what they call “Super-symmetric particles” (or ‘sparticles’ as only these wacky boffins could name them). These particles, apparently like tiny pieces of string that measure one millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimetre long, are thought to be the basic structure (and therefore the origin) of the universe itself. Hmm, does this mean that if I took a really, really sharp pair of tiny scissors to the ball of string sitting in my kitchen drawer, I could become God? Maybe. I’ll let you know tomorrow, my earthlings.
Many people are worrying about the end of the world tomorrow, so let me put your minds at rest. On Wednesday, all that is happening is that the Large Hadron Collider will begin its atom-smashing activities when two parallel beams of particles will be blasted around the 27 kilometre-long underground ring in opposite directions. The collisions – when superconducting magnets will bend the beams so that groups of protons smash into each other - are not expected to begin until October 21st and only then will there be a risk of a black hole forming. So everyone planning a “grand final all-out goodbye” party tonight is going to wake up tomorrow with sore heads and egg on their faces.
So, panic not – we’ve at least six weeks left. But even though we are told that the risks are negligible (Professor Stephen Hawking, for instance, tells us that the risk is zero), if the world does end on October 21st, who cares? None of us will, that’s for sure. It’s not as if we will be standing around saying: “Bugger, the world has ended – those damned wacky scientists at CERN have a lot to answer for. Can we sue?” No, we won’t even know any longer that there ever was a world to care about. And there’s the paradox about this whole conundrum – we hardly show much concern for our world as it is, so why are we all bleating on about it ending? Maybe the scientists at CERN are doing us a favour by speeding up a process that the rest of us are pretty hell-bent on executing anyway. After all, it’s often said that the world (as we know it) won’t be a very nice place to be in fifty years time (don’t get me started on that – rising water levels, dwindling food supplies, Russian aggression, Chinese economic domination etc.), so does it really matter if we are to be spared further misery sooner, rather than later?
Stay calm everyone, and accept your fate. One rather quirky fact surrounding this whole furore is that Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University – a great enthusiast for this latest experiment – is the ex-keyboardist of the 1990s group D:Ream. Hmm... things can only get better?
I, for one, am greatly encouraged by the fact that the world won’t end tomorrow anyway – after all, I wouldn’t want my last week on earth to be spent as a tee-totalist. At least I'll have time before the 21st October to get in a bottle of cider and a bag of crisps in readiness for the big party. Yay!
What a strange weekend I’ve had. You will recall that I told you about these weird antibiotics I’d been prescribed; the ones that absolutely forbid alcohol. Yeah, rubbish, I thought – tell that to the Marines. However, I’ve checked with two separate pharmacists and I've researched it on the internet and it’s true – this particular antibiotic really does not mix with the booze. I never thought I’d do it. However, so far it’s been refreshingly easy – so much so, that I’m thinking of carrying on when the antibiotics have finished. No groggy mornings; no time-wasting indolence; and no empty wallet! I’m getting a great deal more writing done too, as well as catching up with some reading (my ‘waiting-to-be-read’ pile of books resembles the Tower of Babel sometimes). Further to this, I’m re-learning Spanish and I’m sorting out loads of other domestic and administrative crap as well. Hurrah!
Of course, the secret to this has been to keep out of the pub (or more specifically, Edin’s); a solution which does have its downside, I admit. Apart from a quick cuppa in Lee Rosy’s on Friday, I haven’t seen a soul all weekend. Well, that’s not strictly correct because on Saturday I attended an elegant 8-hour long dinner party at my sister’s house (where it was most amusing to watch the other guests become more and more inebriated), and then yesterday I spent some time at my other house dismantling the fish tank. Whilst at my sister’s, I tried to catch a glimpse of Mr Fishy (and friends) by leaning into the pond and singing Mr Fishy’s favourite song, the chorus of which goes something like: “It’s Fishy Grub Time”, and which usually brings him waving his graceful fan-like tail to the surface, but he didn’t appear. No doubt he’s still stunned by the shock of it all and continues to plot my death from the bottom of the murky waters. Poor Mr Fishy.
I watched television last night. Well, it was only one programme (or two, if you count The BBC News) but it was relatively worthwhile viewing. Joanna Lumley travelled to the Arctic Circle in search of a spectacle that has fascinated her since she was a young girl – the Northern Lights. It was a very personal journey for us both – everyone who knows me will be aware that I’ve held a lifelong love-affair with the country of Norway and so for me, the charm of the programme was not only the spectacular photography, nor the unflagging enthusiasm of the highly articulate Joanna Lumley, but also the unfailing hospitality and generosity of the Norwegian people. I can’t look at images of that country, nor meet its people, without feeling immediately safe and happy. Whenever I see those red-painted houses nestled into the craggy forested hills, and whenever I hear that delightful sing-song accent, I am instantaneously transported back to the realms of my trouble-free and hopeful youth.
It’s difficult to uncover a negative side to watching this programme, but there is one (of course). And it’s this: Whereas it's hard to find a more enjoyable travelling companion than the clever, charming, indefatigable and idiosyncratic Ms Lumley, it’s nevertheless disconcerting to realize that here is a television documentary which – if I’d made the right decisions all those years ago – I should have made, not her. Oh well, some other time, maybe.
Oh, I’m getting so tired of it all. I was in Edin’s on Tuesday night and we had another great sing-song around the piano and okay, it was a fun night (ostensibly, I went there for “just one drink” and ended up staying for hours - again!), but I badly need a change of scenery. Last night I was at the Studio for a committee meeting where we had many weighty matters to discuss (not least the budget, which is my responsibility) and as I walked home, I felt somewhat drained. I thought of popping into Edin’s for a quickie because I knew there were people in there who would welcome me, but I felt that I’d simply run out of steam and so sensibly, I walked on. This might have been a mistake because today, I start a course of mega-strong antibiotics which absolutely forbid any alcohol (it’s apparently the only one that does – it’s Metronidazole and it’s nasty) so perhaps last night I should have gone out on a high and had a final celebratory drink, but there we are....
I’m a bit annoyed about all of this – I take extremely good care of my teeth (I have an electric toothbrush, an electric gum-massager, and I floss twice a day) yet for some reason I still have an infection. It’s not fair. I’m sitting here now with a Perio-Chip inserted inside my gum (a painful process, I can tell you) and I’ve also been issued with a set of strange tiny, tiny, tiny brushes which I must use to scour the pocket in my gum in order to remove any infection. I’ve also bought a high-pressure jet-wash which I can use to blast any residue from said pocket because otherwise, the bone will recede and the tooth (along with its nearest neighbours) will drop out. Oh, it’s so tiresome growing old!
On top of this, I worry constantly about my fish. Are they happy? (unlikely). Are they healthy? (who knows?) What do they think about all this rain we are having? (their brightly-lit tank was always so secure and protected). Those fish loved me and trusted me, and now I feel that I have betrayed them. How can I possibly go to Buddhism feeling like this? Well, last night I didn’t go because of the aforesaid committee meeting, so I didn’t have time or opportunity to worry about my spiritual stability. We are told that it is the intention of our deeds upon which we need to focus – surely, my intention was not to harm Mr Fishy and his cohorts, so surely, I can be exonerated from breaking the first of what Sangharakshita calls the ‘Ten Pillars of Buddhism’? I hope so because if not, there’s no hope for me. No hope at all.
So, for seven whole days I will be forcibly on the wagon. This can only be good for me – I’ve been bleating on (above) about having a change of scenery, and so indeed I shall. The best way to avoid drink is to avoid the pub, and so for the next week I shall be running in the opposite direction from Broad Street, and a whole lot better I’ll feel for that too. Hurrah!
I saw a sign outside a newsagent’s shop recently which read: “Stalker Wanted To Kill Barrister” and I misread it because of the way the words were set out on the sign - I thought it meant: “Stalker Wanted, To Kill Barrister” as if it were an advertisement in the Situations Vacant column. This offered me one of those stupid laughing fits which sometimes take a grip and which cause one to lapse into uncontrollable giggles long after the actual event has ceased to be funny. I was still laughing when I arrived at the Buddhist centre.
Of course, this reminded me that newspaper editors often use a little trompe d’oeil to fool us into thinking an article will be more interesting than it is. I remember reading years ago that “Vicar Raps Parish Councillor” and thought it would be a tale of sexual misdemeanour amongst leafy village life. I think such headlines are deliberately misleading, for whenever does anyone say they have ‘rapped’ someone in a remonstrative situation? It’s more likely that they’d say they had ‘chewed the balls off’ someone, isn’t it? Mind you, "Vicar Chews Balls Off Parish Councillor" might be similarly misleading, so perhaps these editors are right after all. However, I saw a headline yesterday that read: “Inherit £2 million tax-free under the Tories” which made me think, well, there’s a party worth voting for - as it stands, I doubt if I’ll inherit more than tuppence ha’penny from my parents, so this has to be an improvement.
I’m performing a small piece of mine at Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall next week. It was supposed to be just a reading of a short story I’d written (or so I thought) but I’ve been given some coaching by a well-known theatre director and it has now been transformed into a piece of drama. Instead of simply reading in my monotone voice, as I’d planned, I will now have to act. I’m a bit apprehensive about this because I’m not much of an actor really, and this will be in front of a paying audience too. Do you think this will qualify me for an equity card? The rehearsals were really tough work – and now I have to practice like mad to get it right for the night.
Okay: “My fate cries out...”
I'm currently re-reading Homer's Iliad – I sometimes feel that life is too short to read any book twice, but there are exceptions, and Homer is one of them. It's been delightful to delve into his madness and somewhat tongue-in-cheek narrative style, but it's also the translator's sense of humour that comes through too. I can't remember whose version I read thirty years ago, but this one is a revised and updated version of E V Rieu's efforts from 1950 and there is very definitely an ironic influence on the prose peeping through here.
