14/12/2012 Meow Meow's Little Match Girl at SouthbankYesterday, we were off to the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre to see Meow Meow's Little Match Girl, a cabaret show inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's tale. I personally loathe musicals (apart from the original movie of My Fair Lady) but I love cabaret (Meow Meow's own strand has been dubbed kamikaze and post-modern cabaret) and hope to be seeing more next year. Meow Meow is incredibly glamorous and charismatic, with a natural grace and edge without equal. The show is clever, poetic, bawdy, seductive, naughty, poignant, hilarious, teasing and ambitious. It is also much richer and complex than first appears: social and gender issues are buried just under the surface, poking their stubborn heads here and there under a shower of glitter. The show is full of references too: Flaming in my head I've had Austrian artist Irene Andessner's works on the Edison light-bulb-covered dancer Milli Stubel, Loie Fuller's experiments with light and shadow, John Donne's A Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day, the women of Bratislava that Andersen encountered screaming through the burnt city looking for their lost children, Joan of Arc and the Catherine Wheel, Annie Besant, the Bryant and May match girls who went on strike in 1888, Moira Shearer and The Red Shoes, Jean Renoir's tin soldier, witches at the stake, global warming, "ice" addiction, exploring planets, fragile and naughty pyromaniac children. ... Meow Meow - real name Melissa Madden Gray, is an incredible individual. Read more about her background and experience in this excellent article HERE. Southbank is spoiling us in 2013 with an amazing festival, The Rest is Noise, "The Soundtrack of the 20th Century" (SATURDAY 19 JANUARY 2013 - SUNDAY 9 JUNE 2013) The programme is packed-full with events - some of them free and a lot rather affordable. We hope to go to some of them!
9/12/2012 Bye bye Sir Patrick MooreA great scientist and English eccentric has left us...
BBC ARTICLE THE GUARDIAN obituary (what an amazing guy really, even the Guardian can't bring themselves to dislike him!) THE QUIETUS: Sir Patrick Moore on Pop 9/12/2012 BrainwaveThis morning, I woke up with a massive brainwave taking over my thoughts... All of a sudden, I had all those ideas for my third book, The Right Place. So I had to get up and scribble like mad until I had put everything on paper.
I have defined some of my characters a little better and added some details about the background story. More of this, please! Holidays are definitively good for brain activity. 8/12/2012 French birdsHere are some pictures of my little companions here in France. Breakfasting in a conservatory has its advantages!
3/12/2012 All on boardTomorrow, I am off to France for my annual one week visit to my parents. I'm not gone and I already miss England - don't ask...
I am a bad traveller and loathe long journeys on public transport. Eurostar is quite stuffy - but National Express' Eurolines are so dreadful that I prefer to put up with the snobs (and it looks like Eurostar have put the ticket prices down from last year!). I beat them (the snobs) by being a dreadful snob myself! Hide the tattoos, put nice dress on - oh well, I wear nice dresses all the time anyway - and they don't look at you weird. I'll be burying my face in The Crimson Petal and the White to make it go quicker! The worst bit is the 20 minute Metro ride I have to do in Paris. It's smelly, people look super miserable and aggressive... Eeeek. Thankfully, I am getting picked up and driven to my destination afterwards, and therefore I do not have to add any frightful 2 hour train journey through France - it's quite something, let me tell you. *shudder* I will have to force myself to read some French language magazines so as not to lose the language entirely, after all, most of my (small) income comes from the fact that I am fluent in both languages! I will be taking my manuscript of The Book of Thoth and hope to add a few words to it... Let's see what a different environment does to my inspiration! November has been a very good writing month. I love Autumn and Winter, so it must be the season that inspires me! I get the opposite of SAD (or rather, I get SAD in Spring/Summer). Since I started writing again on 21st November after a long-ish work stint, I have written 7,600 words, but the whole of November accounts for 12,200 additional words, which is rather good! The story is slowly moving forward towards the climax, then hopefully the conclusion. It would be wonderful to start 2013 with a completed manuscript, then I can start on the second draft right way. An autumn 2013 publication would be marvellous! When I come back, I will be putting my Arcane Publishing hat on to work on getting I Am a Muse published as early as possible in 2013. |
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January 2025
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