Tuesday 30 September 2014

The other September triumphs

Home ed round up. This is how it is now. Wot I did wiv the kids this month. (Except Steampunk and Hilliard, which I see command separate entries.)

Otherwise: quick flyby to throw stuff from the land of parental responsibility before I go and boil a bird's wing.

I have a question for you skeleton botherers. Like, how do I actually strip back all the bones to leave them clean from all the yukky stuff without damaging the bone connecting bits?

Honestly, I bet learning anatomy by practical experience with a dead bird was once as common as fish gutting in a capable woman's know-how repertoire.

1. Medea at the National, except at the live Cineworld screening instead. Totally loved it. I really sympathise with those unhinged Greek heroines. They exist to demonstrate the depths and lows of a single-minded pursuit. Madness becomes normality. Oh yes, I can do that sort of manic chaos any day of the week. Superb performance from Helen McCrory. When the play ended, the bloke behind me breathed, as if for the first time in two hours, and murmured, That's what I call theatre.

2. Global Citizenship course. Kids are doing this with Dorothy. I love it. Someone teaching them how to write an argumentative essay (not me) and they're not smashing up the house or anything! They just do it! (Probably because it's not me trying to get them to do it.)

3. Latin. Hic, hac, hoc. We all get to chant it. I am the worst in the class, but the teacher is good to me. She never makes me stand in the corner facing the wall.

4. Grand Budapest Hotel. Film night. A lovely, lovely film. I thought it was delicate, tender, funny, and wise. Evocative, beguiling, beautiful, silly, whimsical and true. Everything. A treat.

5. A multi-storey car park in Peckham, for the Theory of Everything's version of Titus Andronicus. Billed as immersion theatre, but not really; a sort of ambulatory site specific theatre, with rival gangs locked in a turf war. I wondered, Am I going a bit far with this Shakespeare fetish? Had it been disappointing, I might have thought so, but the whole was done remarkably well, good pipe crawling and abandoned car jumping by the cast. Brave and energetic, I'd say. It may be rewarding to start exploring these theatrical avenues. So if there's a version set in Tesco delivery bay at midnight, I'll be there.

6. Under-17 car club. Putting the kids back behind the wheel after a summer break. The Fire Services Training College in the Cotswolds. I know it sounds unlikely, but in this rural idyll they keep a crashed plane, a collapsed building, and a train smash alongside various collisions, hazards and disaster sites. And the kids drive round it all, while we passengers count the body dummies. I am not on crack or anything. It's all true, and I'm not allowed to photograph it.

7. Night games. Stuff in woods and fields, creeping about with torches. (Cross reference August / Wide Games / Home Ed and it all should make sense.)

8. Climbing club. For Tiger. I am drawing the line at snowboarding. No way.

9. Launch party of photography by An-My Le at MK Gallery. Beautiful, rare photographs have me thinking and wondering for much, much longer than normal reportage photography. Because these aren't normal war reportages, of course. Part film set, part visual poetry, all thoughtful, beautiful pieces.

10. Comedy of Errors at the Globe. A great physical toot-de-toot is made of a very silly play. Enjoyable, and only a bit provocative for an old Grit, what with woman bemoaning the stupidity of man. Tell it like it is, girl.

11. Squirrel's Astronomy weekend. I have no idea. She got picked up, she got dropped back home. The most I've heard from her about this was that she and Monster got a group of elderly astronomers to join in with a game of Werewolves.

12. Dig is in Australia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taiwan. I thought I would just use the blog as a diary on that one so that when I'm sectioned and the children have to take themselves to a park bench, we can all point a finger of responsibility to someone.
An-My Lê
An-My Lêat MKG. The photography

1 comment:

Michelle said...

Sounds great grit. The under 17 car club sounds great but I believe you have to own a vehicle which we don't so can't. The peugeot is leased through work. Clo would love it. Even if we did own the vehicle I am currently driving, it wouldn't be allowed as doesn't have a handbrake lever - just a button.