Thinking about 2013

This week I spent a happy evening after work drafting a home-made calendar for next year.

I found when I moved in May that my wall calendar was one of the very few things I could not accommodate in any sensible (i.e. useable) way.  There are no hooks on the walls, or nails in the walls, no picture rail, and nowhere to put up a pin board; so, nowhere to hang my calendar. 

I bluetacked it to the wall, but it was too heavy, and kept dropping off with a crash at odd moments.  Including the inevitable middle-of-the-night crash.  Shriek, thrash about, sit up, bang head on cupboard.  Bah, that's not on.

So I disemboweled it, and have been sticking up individual 1-month sheets.  It works, in a rough and ready way, but when you've removed the staples and separated a calendar into individual sheets, sometimes the picture that comes with a month is rather unsuitable for that month (snowdrops in August and so forth).  They're still lovely pictures, but it looks stupid sometimes.

I was thinking rather crossly that maybe I would have to manage without one next year.  But then it hit me that I could make my own, and print it on light-weight paper that wouldn't crash to the floor.  Ah-ha!

It took about ten minutes to do the grids and fill them in.  And then I had a nice mooch in Google images, and one or two other places online, and made up a selection of pictures.  I'm going to be alternating Greek islands (and beaches I want to swim from) with food, plants and handsome men.  Since they're all loose-leaf pages, I can change the images around every week - even every day if I want. Or put up two or more at a time.  I can mix and match; Renner with cherries, McRae with scarlet buckeye leaves, Stepanek with Antipaxos...  Have Crete with the cherries.  Thassos with daffodils.  Renner with daffodils.  Heavens, the possibilities are endless.  Happy, silly Dent.

Luckily I don't have Photoshop, or the possibilities really would be endless.

If anyone would like to borrow the grids, and then make up their own image selection, let me know and I can copy them to you.  It's easy, cheap and can be custom-made to your personal tastes.  Maybe I should go into business? - the Dent patent loose-leaf customised pick-your-personal-porn calendar.  What do you think?

Writing update; last night I wiped out the Big Evil Bad Guy.  Oof, got there.  Now I only have a couple of scene to do, and I'm done.  Apart from the revisions.  And typing up.

It's been a fun ride, and to my amusement I can see sequel possibilities.  How daft is that?! 

How goes the heavenly music so far?

Pretty well, is the answer.

Cardiff Singer, heat two, produced one terrific English soprano, a lovely Chinese baritone, and three more sopranos, one of whom was good, one okay (though in a truly awful dress) and one of whom had problems. Poor lass, her frock was her best point; she launched herself onto "Bel raggio lusinghier" and was swiftly overwhelmed by it. Apparently she was feeling unwell but had decided to have a go notwithstanding; so full marks for courage, anyway. But it is uncomfortable to watch someone so obviously struggling.

The terrific English lass won.

In heat three, being shown tonight, we are due to hear one Ukrainian, one Welsh, one Australian, one Moldovan and one German. I could go to the BBC website and find out who won, even maybe listen to them all on my computer; but I want to save myself for the the fun of the broadcast, while I relax with some supper and a glass of beer.

Then back to the semi-fairy-tale short story I have started writing (as a displacement activity, basically, because I'm finding doing the "Ramundi's sisters" revision number three so grindingly tough). And then an early night, I think.

It has rained a large chunk of the day here, but has now dried up and cleared in time for me to go home. According to the Met Office, it also rained in Crete and southern Greece today. I know how much the tourists will be grumbling, but I can't begrudge a mediterranean country some rain!

One more memory

...one more picture from Crete before I get back to reality (which has been rather hectic over the last two and a half weeks).

This isn't the best picture I've taken of Mt Psiloritis, from the sea or otherwise, but it's the only one I've got in an electronic form. It's too hazy, and I'm not quite sure the coastline in the foreground is in focus. But it's still so evocative...

Another memory of Crete...

...namely one of my watercolours.

I was sitting on a rock at the seaside - on Varkotopos beach, the little, rather scruffy town beach five minute's walk from my rented room - and the waves were coming in with just enough of a roll to make a breaker with a good crest on it. If you wanted to swim, you had to make the exciting and slightly undignified walk through the breakers first, to get into water deep enough to have only the swell. Then you could swim, in the rolling, warm blue. I had been swimming earlier and now I was drawing and trying to decide where I was going for lunch, and I saw this woman, elegantly dressed and with big sunglasses on, paddling with a studied stylishness at the water's edge. I thought "Sooner or later she's going to get hit by a big breaker" - and next moment she was. She had the good sense to laugh uproariously at herself as she pulled her soaked skirts up round her thighs, and I painted her quickly, to remind me of a happy moment.

Memories of Crete...

This was my lunch on my last day in Crete - Mythos beer, tzatziki, fresh sesame-seed bread and a vegetable frittata... Good, simple, tasty food, delicious, straightforward and honest. Eaten sitting under a vine arbour, a few yards from the sea. Oh, memories...

...And back again...

Crete was beautiful. What more can I say? Tranquil, sunny, and full of wildflowers and migratory birds; a tiny village with a couple of shops and a couple of tavernas and a big shingle beach edged with tamarisk and poplars and big golden-grey rocks... I wish I were still there. There isn't much more to say, truly. It was wonderful. And now I'm back in London.

However, had I stayed on Crete I would not have been able to get back to my garden. I now have five runner beans and three climbing french beans through, as well as clumps of spinach beet, chard and broccoli, two rows of beetroot, my seven lovely bonny tomato plants and a lot of annual flower seedlings. I would not have been able to get back to my beloved cranky old laptop and my writing.

And I would have missed a fantastic performance of "Peter Grimes" at the ENO last Thursday. It was an odd production; almost good but decidedly muddled, ideas-wise. I didn't like the mixture of expressionism and naturalism - the result is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. The big thrills were in the orchestral playing, and in the calibre of the cast, especially the astonishing Stuart Skelton in the lead.

I saw him singing Laca in "Jenufa" a couple of years ago and thought "This is a guy to watch", and was determined to see what he made of Peter Grimes; but my gods, I had no idea how terrific he would be. Quite simply, he blew me away. He has a gorgeous, magnificent voice, lusciously heroic yet capable of the most delicately nuanced subtlety; he is a very capable actor; he even looks the part - he's a big bloke with a mop of red hair [I know, I know, me and my weakness for men with red hair...], more than powerful enough to haul a fishing net or wind a capstan - and he was rivetting, giving an absolutely heartrendingly moving performance. I feel rather as I did when I saw Simon Russell Beale's Hamlet, seeing a fictional figure suddenly become a totally real person, as real and as dear as one of my brothers (though neither of them has red hair or the physique of a rugby prop forward!), instead of being just a familiar character in a familiar stage work.

For me, I think I can safely say, this man will now be the definitive Grimes; I sincerely doubt that I will ever see or hear a finer performance in this role. I gather he does a lot of Wagner, which is a delectable thought; Mr Skelton has the voice, the dramatic ability and the looks to be an utterly stunning Siegmund or Siegfried or Parsifal. I'm longing to hear more of his work, but - guess what - as far as I can find out from the internet, he isn't scheduled to be appearing again in the UK this year. Rats!