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| Well, it is January, and we're all glad it's over. There's a depressing, infectious bleakness about the month that just makes you wish it could be somehow erased fron the calendar. That said, the last two or three weeks have given me the chance to perfect the animations of my highly-trained troupe of performing snowmen. For once, they are seasonally apt, as London fell victim to a few flakes of snow this week: a gallery of anatomically-correct snowpeople could be found on the way home from Blackhorse Road Tube Station, but unlike my infinitely -reforming friends above, they are no more. I really am rather proud of them, even though snowmen are about the only things that I can draw; I get rather hypnotised watching the "U" and the "Y" bifurcate- I could watch them for hours, but I have to do some work. Islington needs the money. I don't think this month's message is going to amount to very much, though. To be fair, I've been busy creating the on-line photo album, finishing more recent reads, adding the tenth-rate satire of my Hunt the Weapon of Mass Destruction, added the time-saving quick menu, updated my Moldovan Monitor and showed further evidence of my warped personality on my front page. Forgive me for I know not what I do... |
| In October, I achieved one of my little ambitions by standing in Skanderberg Square in Tirana, the capital of Albania: a full account of that time can be found by clicking here. In the Intercontinental Hotel on one corner of the square, I bought the scarf that you can see me tastefully modelling below. It is emblazoned with the Albanian double-headed eagle, and has "ALBANIA" and rather optimistically "CHAMPION" printed on either side of it, and I have worn it rather a lot in these cold days. I have to say that no other garment I have ever worn has quite generated so much interest from complete strangers. One evening, for example, I was poring over a map of the Balkans in Borders when a sour-looking, Slavic-sounding woman on seeing my scarf started asking if I was Albanian, and commenced a diatribe against Western policy against Serbia. For one deluded moment or two I thought that I was being confronted by Mrs Milosevic, but she turned out to be a Bulgarian, and we had a confused conversation about the situation in South-East Europe, but I felt rather as if I was a minor member of the Royal Family who couldn't quite get rid of a slightly barmy person who had turned out to greet me. On another occcasion, the scarf prompted a real Albanian to talk to me in a corner shop, and I discovered that he came from Durres, a town which I also visited on holiday. He seemed rather chuffed that I had taken the trouble to visit his country, and yes, whilst the phrase "I went on holiday to Albania" may not spring lightly and plausibly from everybody's lips, they do from mine, and I am rather proud of that. I discussed this thought with a friend over a warm plate of Albanian liver at Pasha's Turkish restaurant in Islington the other week. "Did you know," I said resignedly "I just looked in the new Rough Guide to Europe and found that there were no chapters on Bosnia, Serbia-Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia", four countries I had rather enjoyed on my recent travels. My companion wasn't surprised and offered the thought that it makes them all the better for those of us who appreciate them. Well, I suppose that that's true, but does it make us selfish? Am I a few paces further down the road to becoming that most dreaded of creatures, a travel bore? I hope not. |
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| "I know why you wanted to come and see this show," Lisa said to me as we found our seats at the Venue, off Leicester Square "it's because you'll feel so much younger than the rest of the audience." Well, was there a germette of truth in that? I don't know. Certainly I am not of the generation that listened to the original radio series Round the Horne, but the homage being paid to it in the form of Round the Horne Revisited was well worth going to see, and everyone else in the intimate setting of a recreated radio studio seemed to agree, chortling with delight as characters made famous by Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick and Betty Marsden made their appearances. I wasn't familiar with the latter two of the above, or indeed with Kenneth Horne and Douglas Smith, but if their portrayals were as close as Robin Sebastian's miraculous rendition of Kenneth Williams was, then I think that the show must have been perfectly cast. At times I felt as bewildered as "Horne" affected to be, but the enjoyment of the comedy lay in the manic circumlocutions that led to the punchlines, which could be of variable quality. Julian and Sandy's mad polari was one of the highlights as was their admission, when Horne visitied them at their solicitors' firm Bona Law, " "we've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time." Sandy's horrified reaction to Horne's admission that he is seeking legal advice on how to contest a parking ticket offers a kind of inverted comment on the legal attitudes of that period. Anyway, it was a great show, even if the half-time ice-cream was a little on the expensive side. |
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| buy tickets here |
| The Guardian's review |
| bbc.co.uk: Round the Horne |
| A guide to polari |
| Links |
| In what will doubtless be a futile effort to attract more surfers, I have submitted Mike's Very Sad Little World to Google and lots of other search engines.E-mail me at [email protected] with any comments should any new visitor feel the need.to do so. |
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