The best thing in The Independent most weeks is Travey Emin’s “My Life in a Column”. Gloriously irrerevent, utterly unashamed and open, there’s nothing quite like it. Women traditionally don’t write like this:

“It’s like wishing your arse smelt of lemon, imagine what lemons would smell like.”

(And yes that should be a semi-colon, but still …)

Unfortunately she’s on a subscription system, but you can read the first part of this week’s column here.

And if you have somehow managed to avoid her story – it is true she is a media tart of an artist – there’s an outline of her career and lots of links here. (And the best of her art is also brilliant.)

Was chuffed to hear about the group of Paris campaigners against four-wheel-drive vehicles, who call themselves the Deflators (Les Dégonflés). They are going around letting down the tyres of four-wheel-drive vehicles (SUVs), a campaign that has been stepped up since the local authorities wimped out of banning the monsters from the city.

SBS reports: “The group has promised to make a video of its tyre strikes available on the Internet within the next month with the aim of inspiring the same action in other French cities.”

Now I can hear all the complaints now:

1. That must be illegal.
No, according to a report on BBC Radio Five yesterday (not on the web), it isn’t, since no damage is caused. (Legal note: This is the case under French law; it may not be the case elsewhere.)

2 You’re inconveniencing “innocent” people.
Oh no they’re not – these are people behaving in a thoroughly anti-social manner. Society is entitled to extract a penalty from them for that. Teenagers who behave in an anti-social manner are forced to spend their weekends picking up litter; having to pump up your tyres and not being able to get where you wanted to go instantly might provide a good time for a little reflection on your behaviour.

As one blogger puts it: “La guerre du macadam est ouverte.”

In case you still don’t realise how bad they are, from yesterday’s Guardian:

“4x4s are responsible for 43% more greenhouse emissions and 47% more pollution than the average car. You are 27% more likely to die if you are hit by a 4×4 than by an ordinary car. But, bizarrely, you are also 6% more likely to die if you are an occupant of a 4×4, because 4×4 drivers, feeling invulnerable, drive faster.”

More about Paris anti-4×4 campaigns (in French) here. The British campaign, as yet rather more restrained, is here.

Environment

An eBay impulse purchase (very quiet days at work are so expensive), Shakspeare’s [sic] Heroines: Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical & Historical, by Mrs Jameson, author of Sacred and Legendary Art etc, London, George Newnes Ltd, Southampton Street, Strand, 1897.

Surprisingly for what otherwise (paper, typography etc) looks like a cheap edition, it has a stunning embossed leather cover:

And I’m trying to still like Mrs Jameson, despite:

“The intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical organisation; it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or intellectual energy does not contradict the general principle found in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this: in men, the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and self-directed – more independent of the rest of the character, than we ever find them in women, with whom talent, hoever predominant, is in a much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.” (p. 37)

Interesting contrast to yesterday’s early modern version of patriarchy.

Women, History

… and it is a beauty. You might recall mine was a Greek symposium, well this, on Respectful Insolence, is a premium video channel – of a class of something I’ve never seen on the old box.

A play about a 14-year-old from East London who’s just got out of care and back with his dysfunctional family will, you might safely predict, have plenty of shocks, and be staged in a confrontational, in-your-face manner. And that is the case with Afterbirth, which opened tonight at the Arcola Theatre.

The play begins with the graphic description by a group of youths of a video of a fatal rape of a senior citizen on the estate who was being punished for “grassing up” one of its criminal families, then Val, Baz’s shatteringly dysfunctional mother, walks around on stage for several minutes “with her tits out”, as her older son Morris puts it, parading in front of him and a visiting mate. Then there’s full-frontal nudity from the middle-aged paedophile character(at least if you’re sitting in the seats on the left as you enter the theatre – you’ve been warned), as he gets out of bed after a night with Baz, the 14-year-old. (The 16-plus ticket rating is fair enough.)

This first full-length drama by Dave Florez, is, however, considerably cleverer and more thought-out than those “shock-jock” scenes might suggest. They are only softening up the audience for the real earthquakes to come; most of which happen in their minds, rather than graphically on the stage in front of them. Yet the thought, the fear, that they might lingers.

The play begins as Baz (David Judge) returns home, to his glue-sniffing mates and the paedophile Ken (Paul Moriarty), who, it emerges, is the closest thing to a parent-figure or older brother that Baz has ever known. The subtlety of this relationship hints at the complexities to follow, although, for reasons I cannot reveal without giving away too much of the plot, you’re left in no moral doubt about the ultimately thoroughly exploitative and vile nature of the relationship.

Baz then sits down in front of the television with the chain-smoking Val (Clara Salaman), but the closest she can imagine to a motherly gesture is the jerky, uncomfortable offer to take away his drink can. In the background is Baz’s new (half)-brother, Alan, in whom the boy has invested all of his fervent homes for family and stability. (An interesting take on the more usual model of female teen pregnancy.)

We gradually meet more of the thoroughly dysfunctional family: Morris, the football lout, and Madonna, the drug-addicted prostitute sister, who’s trapped in messy sort-of-snout but mostly sexual relationship with a sleazy policeman (Chris Chilton). This is the aspect of the play – with its all-too-Billish cliches, that works least well. But general, Florez is successful in avoiding the obvious council estate plot lines; I was particularly impressed that the social worker who appears at the end is not a figure of fun or loathing, just a man of compassion trapped in a potentially explosive scenario. And we’re not just presented with horrors flat out, some unfold subtly, with the Morris-Val scene, for example, suddenly appearing in a new light after later revelations in the play.

There’s plenty of humour, situational, slapstick and verbal, most of which is built into the plot in a sophisticated matter – there’s little slapstick for the sake of it. (Even the nappy smell jokes, which start to get a little wearing – do in the end have more point to them than might seem possible.)

At the peak is the turning point scene with Karim (Kal Aise), Val’s latest boyfriend and the presumed father of Alan. It starts out roaringly funny, then turns into something deeply dark. As is the play from this point on.

This is a truly fine first play – we can certainly hope to see more of Florez – and a well-staged production by the director Deborah Paige that makes full use of the Arcola’s star-shaped space. David Judge does a fine job of portraying Baz’s real, if desperate, affection for the baby Alan, although is physically less than convincing as a 14-year-old – a tough ask for any adult actor. The production also sees a particularly fine performance from Clara Salaman, who manages to syympathetically play a drunken, drugged-up, hopeless mother without descending into slapstick farce.

It is hard to see this play achieving the “perfect” result for any fringe production in transferring to the West End – the subject matter and a certain rawness militate against it – but it is a production that certainly deserves to be well patronised at the Arcola.

***

For visitors to London, and those who don’t know the area, I should perhaps add that as with most fringe theatre, this isn’t in the best part of town. This doesn’t mean you need to be paranoid, but flashing wads of cash or expensive mobiles on the street would probably not be a good idea. But you can dine well, and astonishingly cheaply by London standards, in the many Turkish restaurants that line Dalston High Street.

Theater,