This evening I’m off to a talk on Bleeding Heart Yard, on which more tomorrow, but that led me to a book of poems of that title, by William Scammel, and I think his poem, titled “Retrospective”, has Gwen John rather well, if very much from a male POV:

In part:
“Gwen John’s women only just
make it onto the canvas. Pale blue’s
the colour of the birth they choose
not to announce. They’re fading fast

into a future of unreachable
addresses, high single bed,
cats, letters posted or unposted,
three or four cowslips on the table …”

Bleeding Heart Yard, William Scammel, Peterloo Poets, 1992, p.17.

My earlier posts on John are here and here.

… was the name for an irregular ingot of copper in the Dutch East Indies, and indeed in modern Dutch means “lump”, so I learnt today from one of the numismatic lists to which I belong. (And yes the subject line did get my attention.)

It reminded me of the Thai word for pumpkin, fook, pronounced as though the middle letters were “u” and “c”.

And in Thai, the word for water buffalo differs from the word for penis only in the tone; I once spent a very annoying day in a central Thai village being followed around by the original peasant dirty old man trying to get me to name in animal, in the hope I’d get it wrong.

It’s nice to know I’ve learnt so many useful things in my travels.

On Friday evening, partly as a small gesture of defiance to the terrorists, I went to a subdued West End for an evening of theatre. By pure chance (it was the only show I found starting at 8pm and I was running late – why DO most theatres start their shows so early?) I ended up seeing Elmina’s Kitchen, happily, since I might easily otherwise have missed it.

Set in Hackney, east London, it is entirely played in the eponymous cafe, where a black father, Deli, is trying to deal with his failing business, his son’s fall into the hands of his old friend, a Yardie gangster, his brother’s release from prison, and his own father’s attempt to sponge off him, after decades of absence.

Shakespearean is an adjective that might well be applied to this beautifully structured work: in its effective transition between slapstick comedy and genuine tragedy, in its dramatic but entirely believable ending (which I won’t give away), and its lively, witty language of the street, the comparison with the Bard is warranted.

The playing is uneven: Shaun Parkes as the gangster Digger exudes menace, George Harris as Deli’s sleazy father and Dona Croll as the saucy waitress whose motivations are complex and perhaps nefarious, are all excellent; Croll particularly holds the stage, but Kwame Kwei-Armah, the author of the piece, doesn’t seem to me to live up to being the best-known actor here (perhaps it is significant know for TV). He doesn’t quite force you to look at him the way he should.

Nonetheless, the production is gripping, despite the fact that the language is entirely that of the street, and this viewer certainly missed some details in the dialect. I’m still trying to work out an insult/swear word that sounded something like “blood cloot” that occurred several times – can anyone translate? A black woman in the foyer at interval was amused when I commented that the programme should have a glossary, but really I wasn’t joking.

It is salutary that this is a language of London with which I’m entirely unfamiliar. The play also addresses many issues that I read about only in newspapers: the problems in the black Caribbean community of maintaining relations between fathers and sons, the attractions of crime, and guns, and the general seductiveness of violence, yet it is never preachy or driven by its “issues”: this is a story, not a piece of social work.

But it was great to see the audience was about half Black, and mostly young, which is certainly not what you usually see in the West End. The (all white) ushers in their bow ties looked rather uncomfortable and out of place.

But if the West End is to survive this is an audience it needs to attract, and for the actors it is a wonderful audience – far noisier, more reactive and lively than the average; it must have been rather like that in the Elizabethan Globe.

(The Guardian’s view is here.)

* The play has also, I found, been filmed by the BBC and is available on video.

I just came across a reference to this fascinating sounding article …

“How does she do that?’ Belly Dancing and the Horror of a Flexible Woman”
VIRGINIA KEFT-KENNEDY
University of Wollongong, NSW Australia
Abstract: The role of belly dance and the meanings attached to this dance for both the women who perform it and their spectators have undergone radical change since it was first introduced to the West in the 19th century. This article raises a series of questions about the process of bodily transformation through the practice of belly dance and explores the mechanisms by which women attain empowerment through the moving body. In particular, the complex intersections between ideas of display, spectacle, and the “grotesque” moving body are examined.

It is from Women’s Studies, Volume 34, Number 3-4 / April-June 2005, pp. 279-300.

It don’t have online access, but it sounds like a fascinating article; when you think about it men always seem to look uncomfortable around belly dancers – at least the Western men I’ve seen. It’s quite an aggressive form of movement.

* I’ve been remiss in neglecting to point to the latest Carnivalesque (a collection of posts on early modern history). I particularly liked the early sexual harassment case”, which perhaps unsurprisingly saw the “victim” transported to Australia, but check it out – the range is so broad you’re almost bound to find something in your range of interests.

* Seeking inspiration for a radical career change? Here it is.

* Bloggers and professional journalists co-operating? Surely not. The Washington Post sees a new trend in the role of “citizen journalism” in the London bombings.

* You’ll remember the huge health scare about hormone-replacement therapy. But a high percentage of women, for good reasons, are going back on the treatment, and there were anyway flaws in the study. A sensible report on the issue here

* Item No. 3,254 to add to my two read list, The Wilder Shores of Love, by Lesley Blanch – not some bodice-ripper, but an account of four 19th-century women travellers by the delightfully adventurous writer and journalist Lesley Blanch, who’s still going strong at the age of 101. There was an excellent article in the Guardian review.

* Echidne of the Snakes has an interesting theory on why small numbers of women can appear to assume prominence well beyond their numbers in otherwise male-dominated areas of society.

… is a cycle “computer”, so-called, although that’s a rather grand term for a £7 item that works on the simple principle of a magnet on a front spoke passing a detector fixed to the fork. You tell it the size of your wheel; it works out how far and how fast you’ve gone.

But the “speedo” as I prefer to call it (that means speedometer, for those who need the translation from Australian) has provided me with hours of amusement.

First, it allowed me to calculate the shortest route for my new commute – 6.7 miles home from South Quay, through Shadwell (on nights when I’m feeling brave – I’ve only had a rock thrown at me once), past Bank Tube, then along New Oxford St in the bus lane and straight up Tottenham Court Road.

The longest option is around the Regent’s Canal (daytime only of course), which is 8 miles – I keep meaning to do it, but it does take about 10 minutes longer and I live in a perpetual condition of running late, so I seldom get to it. (In fact I’ve done it once, but the wild birds etc were lovely, and I must do it more often.)

Second, it has allowed me to check my top speed, which until the weekend was 16mph. About that point in London I start getting nervous about stray pedestrians, dogs etc and my stopping distance, but on the weekend adventure I actually got up to 22mph! Yes I know that’s standing still in serious cyclist terms, but it felt pretty fast to me – and the bike felt about as unstable as I fancy, for the moment anyway.

So, my recommendation is: if you’ve got a bike, get one of these! (In fact I regret not lashing out on one of the more expensive ones, which have a tripmeter. Mine is only cumulative, so you have to remember the starting distance on each journey to calculate its length.)