Author: Cathy Penman

HMS Pinafore, Brighton – Review

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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  • Wow! How amazing to have found so many men who are young and attractive and physically hunky, who can sing (albeit with light/show and not operatic voices), dance and have the good British English Gilbert & Sullivan needs.
  • Interesting to hear different male voice types, from low voices through light tenor to falsetto/countertenor.
  • The guy doing Buttercup stood out as very confident and with such perfect diction.
  • I found the idea at the end of people shedding their ‘camp’ accessories and rubbing off their make-up – sort of going back to the real world – strangely moving.

Quibble

  • Considering the ticket price, disappointed it was only with piano and not orchestra – a bit amateurish.
  • Not even an attempt to vary the set eg after the interval – pretty basic.
  • Two people holding a rope to portray a ship’s rail is a nice simple production idea and is clever once – but boring repeatedly.
  • The falsetto voices don’t really work in chorus – the mixed ensembles seemed weak.
  • I was expecting a touch of the traditional updating of words to reflect current affairs, especially in the current climate, but it didn’t happen. Maybe it’s only done in The Mikado.

Overall really enjoyed it and would recommend the show.

Sightseeing cow

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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I so loved this cow, standing on a viewing platform high above Interlaken in the Swiss Alps, looking down at the town and the lakes.  And once you know it’s there, you can see it from down below, a tiny speck in the distance.  The sign affixed to it also made me laugh – in English but not quite the right translation.  ‘Do not go up the cow!’

 

View from hotel window

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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I recently re-visited a hotel I worked at in Switzerland many years ago.  Having worked as a waitress back then, I’d always wanted to go back as a paying guest.  This is the view from the window of my room.  It rained quite a lot and I sat there with the window open, listening to and smelling the rain.  There were goats grazing on the hillside, you could hear their bells clanging.  A very special atmosphere and a special place for me.

Dandelions in Switzerland

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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All my life in England I’ve seen dandelions as a weed.  Most people do.  Like they’re not ‘proper’ flowers, just something to be uprooted from a lawn or between the cracks of a patio, and dumped.  Daisies and buttercups enjoy a slightly better status – but only slightly.

Well look what I found growing in the mountain pastures above Interlaken in June.  Masses and masses, swathes and swathes, of flowering dandelions.  Talk about context!  Here, in presumably their rightful place, they look wonderful.  Glorious wild flowers, nothing weed-like about them.

So I have a newfound respect for dandelions.

(Moral: a weed is in the eye of the beholder.)

 

Valentine

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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I thought the world should know about this amazing fish I bought, with markings on its side that look like a heart!

It caught my eye in a big tank of Comets in an aquarium shop.  You should have seen me trying to point out this one (as opposed to all the others) as the one I particularly wanted.  No-one seemed to see the heart, or care that it was anything special.

He is alive and well, and the heart is keeping its shape as he grows.

His name is Valentine.

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Jungle Book

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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Just went to see the new 3D Jungle Book film.

Well I don’t think I’ve ever before seen a film that makes me feel like it should be one of the ‘seven wonders of the modern world’.  The fact that we’re able to create such a thing – imagine what all previous generations would have thought if they’d seen it.  It’s magical, wonderful.

So, Jurassic Park had occasional computer-generated dinosaurs.  Things like the Narnia films had some talking animals – Aslan, etc, and lots of animals in the battle scenes.  The Life of Pi had a very realistic tiger, but it was only in the second part of the film.  The Golden Compass has lifelike talking Polar Bears, but they still share the screen with a mostly human cast of characters.  But this films is pure CGI animals beginning to end.  The only live character is the boy Mowgli (and glimpses of other humans).  Probably the backdrops were all computer-generated as well.  Certainly I don’t think there’s even a glimpse of a real animal in it.  They are pure technology, and yet these days so very cleverly, perfectly done.  The way the panther walks and leaps, the fur of the bear and of the wolves.  Fantastic fight scenes between the animals, and the monkeys in the temple, all different sizes, scurrying about.

There must be some reason that there aren’t films featuring deceased human actors yet.  If they can make such a perfect panther and bear out of bits of computer program, surely they can make a passable Elvis Prestley or Marilyn Monroe?

As soon as I realised it was all computer-generated animals though, I had a dreadful feeling that, that’s it – now we can create whatever creatures we like on the screen, the real animals out there are doomed.  That will be the future.  Real tigers and wolves and bears will be extinct, and there will only be electronic versions.  They will become like dinosaurs – recreations only.  Children won’t know the difference between a real panther and one in a film that talks – they’ll think they were all like that.

Anyway, I thought it was a very impressive film.  Loved the 3D touches, especially when something is ‘pointing’ right out of the screen at you, like a snake’s head or a pangolin’s nose.

It slightly jarred that the boy had such a broad American accent – in old live-action versions of the film he’s always an Indian boy with an Indian accent, but I guess that’s old-fashioned and defunct; and it’s so far removed from reality anyway, that he’s actually conversing with the animals.

Don’t leave before the credits, which are fun.

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Me and Plato

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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I’m always struggling with food issues and a few years ago came up with this idea of two horses in a chariot pulling in different directions – please see my poem The Compromise Chariot.

Like there’s one horse that wants to go on the correct, sensible route, but the other is out of control and pulls off in a different direction.  I am the charioteer who has to control them both and achieve some sort of compromise between their needs.

Now I’ve been sorting out books and by chance the other day came across the following regarding the philosopher Plato (429 – 347 BC), in a book called ‘A Classical Education – The stuff you wish you’d been taught at school’ by Caroline Taggart.

 “Plato … considered humans as … beings in whom reason was always fighting to control desire and emotion (he uses the image of the charioteer – reason – struggling to control two horses, one of whom – emotion – will listen to reason while the other – desire – can be restrained only by force.)”

I was amazed by this.  I absolutely swear I wasn’t aware of it and hadn’t ever come across it before.  So I am now rather stunned and proud of myself – because I have independently come up with the same (or a similar) metaphor to a famous philosopher, writing two and a half thousand years ago!  Okay, perhaps it’s rather an obvious idea for a metaphor and I’m sure lots of other people have thought of it too.

But now I feel like there’s a connection between Plato and me!  (I’ll have to look him up – I’m afraid I didn’t get a classical education.)

Skylark

Posted on by Cathy Penman

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So I find myself in the beautiful English countryside, walking along a path through the fields, and for the first time in years, possibly since childhood, I hear a skylark singing.

I scan the sky to try to spot him, so as to watch him plunge, like I used to years ago when I went on walks through the country with my (late) father.  I don’t see him, but the sound is so clear, and like a shock to my system.  In my brain, a dormant file is accessed.  This is such a familiar sound, though I haven’t heard it for decades.

I had a conversation with one of my hosts about city dwellers who have genuinely never seen a cow before; about children who think a cow is one inch high because they’ve only ever seen pictures in books.  I find myself wondering how many Londoners would recognise and identify the sound of a skylark.

My customary profundity kicks in.  Thirty years living in London and never hearing skylarks – and yet the sound feeling so familiar and so special when heard again.  It’s like a sudden reminder that – wow, the countryside is still here!  It’s been here all long, like a parallel universe.  That I can choose to visit, or return to, whenever I wish.

A skylark singing – a joyful, continuous, trilling song, high up in the air, so unlike any other British bird.

The sound of the countryside.
The sound of England.
The sound of Spring.
The sound of my childhood.
The sound of forgotten memories.
The sound of the past.
The sound of life.

 

Skylark poem

A skylark sings high in the sky
Reminding me of times gone by.
How many men, long years ago,
Have stopped to hear him singing so?
What does he think, as he looks down,
At people heading off to town?
Perhaps he calls on them to stay,
So they can hear him every day.
And as for me, I’ll be back soon
To hear his joyful country tune.

Yellow Chairs

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Have arrived alone at a hotel in the country, on my way to somewhere.

Walked into the room – which is split level and with a balcony outside overlooking a lovely green valley – to be confronted with two beautiful yellow (greeny-yellow) chairs, standing side by side.  The chairs have brought on some weeping.  Impossible not to be thinking how it should be me and him sitting in them, not just me alone.  A dreadful awareness of loneliness and grief – especially because it’s so quiet and rural, with wind in the trees and birds of prey circling overhead.

I must force myself to focus on living in the present, and enjoying the here and now.  There’s nothing I can do about his absence, so I will just take in and enjoy things myself – the yellow chairs, the shiny curtains, the balcony, the view, the wind.  The daffodils, the primroses, the palms.  The swimming pool.

I’m becoming a connoisseur of hotel swimming pools – I’ve been away quite a bit and I keep choosing hotels with indoor pools, as it gives me a chance to get some exercise in a nicer environment.  I’ve been using local public pools also, one of which in particular is modern and nice, but hotel pools are a different experience.  No groups of noisy schoolkids, generally fewer people, and often with nice facilities, like jacuzzi, sauna and steam room.  I do tend to find such places relaxing and escapist, which I suppose is the idea.

The one in this hotel has a spa pool with these sort of metal beds in – you lie on them and it bubbles up strongly under you.  Wonderful!  A new experience for me.  I had four goes!

In the changing rooms, like in most places I’ve been, there’s a spin drier, to remove water from your costume.  The other day when I tried an inner city gym, I asked a woman whether there was a spin drier anywhere, and she gave me such a bemused and incredulous look, like such an idea was quite ridiculous.  I felt embarrassed but incredulous myself that someone had never come across a spin drier in a swimming pool changing room before.  I guess maybe I’ve been spoilt by private pools.

After my swim and a wonderful shower, I return to my room – but have to try not to look at the two yellow chairs, so demanding of two people.