Doctor Faustus

Take the kids and the visiting Aunty to meet Lucifer, stare into the horrors of Hell, and be carried off by demons.

No, not locking them all in the outside toilet and running away with the key (although I considered it, as a cheap alternative), but taking them on a fantastic day out to The Globe to experience Doctor Faustus.

Yes, I am in love with The Globe, the staging, the actors that play here. They may have all my money and I can be done with the drip feeding.

I cannot help it. Here is a perfect closed O in which the audience and actors meet, eyeball to eyeball. And with a fantastic spectacle like Doctor Faustus, I feel as voyeur and participant: heavy breather without the telephone line, the action close enough on the extended open air stage, that you never know. At any moment, a member of the audience might just decide to climb up and join in.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised. Amongst us winds dumb show sex, seven deadly sins, angels and demons, bony skulls and luxuriant furs, dragons, wings, fire, swords, and the DEVIL. What a story. What an opportunity for close involvement, huge enjoyment, fantastic spectacle. Who wouldn't, at the very least, pay for that?

Faustus would, obviously, and quite a heavy price too, so there is morality and theology. I feel a sudden onrush of adult responsibility, taking three 11-year olds to see The Exorcist of its day, writ by a blasphemer and anarchist, and I come over all obliged to talk these matters through, in case issues Biblical have not made it into the children's repertoire during the last eleven years.

I probably needn't have bothered, but on the train into London I witter on about sin, salvation, damnation, sixteenth century Catholicism, predestination and pneumatology. (Where I store all this lot, I do not know, but sometimes it comes in handy.) I do not bother explaining anything of this to Aunty Dee. She boarded with the Quakers, so I assume she is au fait with all key God-related matters, or at least, if I get the story wrong, she isn't going to fight me over it.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger take it all in their stride. Maybe these themes just aren't that unfamiliar to them. Maybe they play out dramatically loud battles of good and evil everyday down the bottom of the garden, as they dig pits, bury unicorns, fight each other for the cuddly wombat, and finish off in tears hurling barbed obscenities at each other with faces that say hurt pride, injustice, wounds and fresh betrayals.

Well, this is what we can understand about God, the Devil and Faustus. The stories are so human. And Faustus! He has all this potential power, and what does he achieve? Satisfaction of the same nature-driven impulses as would the rest of us, if only we could be unimpeded by conscience and could get the power without the scary soul selling.

Be honest. Would you do any different? Gratification, indulgence, and fooling about while invisible, tweaking the noses of people in power in revenge because they piss us off. I ask the kids what they would do if they had unlimited power over all the earth and they came up pretty much alike. Chocolate cake as big as your bum and stealing your chips with an unseen hand while they laugh at your expression.

So Shark, Squirrel and Tiger understand quite a bit of this play without the need for theological explanation. I give them a slightly tedious lecture about the mystery plays and the history of God and the Devil on stage, which I think is possibly more helpful to their understanding than my vicar routine, but otherwise, it's an accessible play with straightforward story and evident themes, even for children.

At The Globe it is beautifully delivered. Comedy runs through this performance and holds it all together, so don't expect the darkness and horror of a Doctor Slasher. Pissing, puppet breasts, sparkler vagina, and all manner of bottom jokes contrast with hubris, despair, forgiveness, divine mercy.

The visuals are fast and slickly delivered, the puppets are excellent, the costumes, no expense spared. Arthur Darvill as Mephistopheles stole my heart with his louche lounge lizardry. (I might sell my soul to him if he's buying it.) I even momentarily shared his glimpse of all the cruelties of eternity and his perpetual mental torture as he carried his personal hell with him, at all times, in his head and in place of his heart.

So yes, take the family, go and see this spectacle, give The Globe all your money.

I suppose, since this blog is an educational record and not a theatre review blog, I should make one final educational point, and that is, what the learning journey can bring about when you hand over the route finder to the kids.

For me, gratitude. I am deeply grateful to Tiger. I cannot thank her enough for leading us here. In Hong Kong she entered a mad haze locked in her bedroom with a kid set of ten Shakespeare stories, emerging only to declare 'I want to see them all'. I said, 'Alright'. And that's what started us at The Globe.

For Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, where can their natural learning and inquisitiveness not take them? Here, straight to the eternal drama: God, the Devil, and humanity. With an awful lot of bottom jokes thrown in.*

*Of course if she had come from her room saying Mama, I have developed a deep love of football and Millwall in particular, where I would like to sniff the sweat of the crowds, then you are right. I might not have been so keen.

Richard III

What can I possibly say about this production that those well-paid, erudite critics have not already said, better?

I bet they didn't note that the man in the front row wore a vest.

A vest! I mean, I am not one for the formal dress of a theatre audience, but a vest is pushing it. It would have been fine if he bore a passing resemblance to Bruce Willis but reader, he did not.

And there was I. I had put on a frock! I thought an M&S brown jersey thing would dignify myself for the occasion (overlook the knees). I had similarly imposed a dress code on the little grits to create a significance in their minds to this particular theatre outing. Squirrel, no rips in your jeans and no mud on your backside. Shark, please do not wear the trousers that slide down your bum. Tiger, do not wear the leggings with the enormous hole on the knee that make you look like you were attacked by a giant lycra-chewing moth. The straw sticking out the pockets of your fleece I will let pass.

Needless to say, I knew the moment the play started I wouldn't give a damn about the vest, or any clothes, although fortunately I remembered it is not acceptable to throw panties on stage at the Old Vic.

And the costuming of Richard took over in my mind. When you clap eyes on him, in that first fantastic speech, as he gracelessly stands after the pause (perfect!) you see one side of his body so crippled, trussed, and pinned up, it is like looking at a demonstration of a state-of-the-art 1950s NHS calliper set. Squirrel maintains he was strapped to a gigantic tin opener. I let her have that interpretation, on the understanding we could explain how his actions open a can of worms.

The emphasis on the hobble, crooked posture and twisted frame was fantastic. It allowed Spacey to exploit the cartoonish two-dimension character (I am devious/now I am pretending not to be devious), gave opportunities for black comedy, brought the audience into a state of shock and fascination where we can't take our eyes off the crippled man seducing Lady Anne, and made sense of the language of the play.

I don't recall the RSC doing anything so visually uncompromising in the 1990s. I'm sure the last time I saw the play it was all 'dress Richard in black leather with a couple of goth studs, let's create some psychology, and provide your own picture of the hump'.

No pussyfooting around this time. I was hugely glad of the unambiguity and it was made all the better for fearlessly hobbling directly towards the delicacies of disabilities we're trained to have in our twenty-first century mindsets.

So there it is. I chose to blog about Spacey's dressed theatrical leg.

It was a tough choice. I wanted to talk about about the motif of the paper crowns. (Superb!) Buckingham. (Superb!) The presentation of Queen Margaret. (Superb!) The media-show spin doctoring in taking the crown. (Superb!) The difficult job women have in this play (I need to sit down now, and have a glass of beer); the interpretations of Hastings, Richard's henchmen, the murderers (let's compare notes); the parallels inferred between power-mad dictators of any age (they had to include that, really, didn't they?); the set (we had a good talk about the tunnelling on the way home); the pragmatic handling of history that was imperative under the patronage of the winning side (thank you Kelly for helping lead my kids through that); the many moments in the play so deftly handled (young Richard's mocking of his uncle), the noises off (yes! the barking dog!), and the hanging of King Richard, the anti-good, upside down (talk about suffering for one's art).

Well, I'm happy to witter on about all those, but the blog would stretch from here to Inverness and I don't get paid for erudition.

I think, if you want any more, you have to buy me a beer.

See? Grit knows how to show the ladies a good time. The pre-show dinner.

Much Ado About Nothing

Hurrah! Last minute tickets for the Globe. Much Ado about Nothing is on Tiger's list, so that's a good enough excuse for me!



I am developing a serious addiction to this place, not least that it seems to make absolute sense of the plays as staged drama rather than set texts.

You must go, if you have not been already, then we can talk about all of life.

On second thoughts, don't go. I will have to fight you for the last tickets, and I pack a mean punch.

Have all my money, yes take it all

The Grit kingdom is living under austerity measures.

Sadly it is unavoidable, I inform the citizenry, sat round the kitchen table looking distinctly ugly about the pocket money reduction. But it must be done. Let's call it an investment in our education!

No Shark, it is certainly not because I have a crush on Kevin Spacey. I totally deny that. Only a little bit of one. Okay then, quite a big crush. But listen to that voice! That is a beautiful voice and I could listen to those melodic tones for hours.

Anyway, shut up about Kevin Spacey's gentle, soothing voice. That is not the reason I spent the entire monthly household budget on four seats to see him play the lead in Richard III. I am quite sure about that! Possibly.

It was because the woman at the other end of the theatre seat telephone line gave me no option. She said these are the only four seats left and stop trying to cut a deal. Then she grew quite cross and hissed, Do you want them or not? Obviously I had to take the seats, although for that price I want to see Kevin Spacey without his trousers on. And that is why we have no money left.

Now, citizens of Gritland, we must all pull together, be in the same handcart, travel the same grinding road to educational nirvana, and let me feast my eyes upon what is sure to be a solid performance of a fine play, even though it is costing me an arm, a leg, and a kidney.

Just don't tell Daddy Dig. Don't make a sound if you see me wave my hand in a casual fashion and murmur, What? Those tickets with all the zeros on them? Oh those! We have had those for AGES.

And now there is one last instruction. If I suddenly go pale or breathless or slump over in my seat, please throw water over my face and slap me. Because of course it is not really the ticketing cost that is worrying me. It is the fact that as the curtain goes up at 5pm, what with this dreadful crush I have on Kevin Spacey's voice, I may just pass out at 5.01 and miss it all. And what if he takes his trousers off?

London interlude

My spanking new Friends of the Globe card is now clutched tightly in my grubby little paws, so it's farewell to the garage clean-up for the day, while we eagerly away to grimy old London in the early sixteenth century for some real-life rumbustious entertainment.

Yes, I am completely won over by the seductions of the Globe.

My only observation is that we, the audience - probably made up of tourists, middle-class theatre goers and Eng. Lit classes on a day out from the private school - are far too well-mannered and tied to our safe and social culture of post-Victorian primness.

We should escape our manners and bring a little frankness to this theatrical exchange. There are plenty of bawdy jokes in All's Well that Ends Well to set the scene for us. An occasional loud ruckus, boiling over from some background disorderly folk engaged in lewd conduct, spiced up with some choice obscenities and a passing of the piss bucket, would serve me well: I could then truly join the pitful of penny stinkers, belly pots and bosom barers for a good afternoon at the theatre proper.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger put their noses in the air and say primly, not likely. They are here for Helena and Bertram, and to see the stage and costumes and maybe titter at the sight of Parolles with a bag on his head.

Shark says she wants the audience to stay nicely in 2011 thank you very much, where everyone says after you; where it is safe and there are clean toilets, and where there is a Pizza Express right next door for the after-show dinner. Here we can puzzle out why Helena likes Bertram in the first place.

Pah. This is not Jane Austen, I say. Let's face it, the love interest in this one is a bit far-fetched and probably not going to sustain the analysis. Let's enjoy the vulgar instead. How many of Shakespeare's audience came for the filth and the fight?

For which I get, mother, stop slapping your thighs, do up your blouse, and stop offering round that thermos flask, because no-one's ever going to accept your offer and wee in it.





Hmm. I shall just have to go into town on a Friday night instead, and take up a street-side seat outside the Slug and Lettuce.

The Royal Albert Hall, free tour

If you start home educating, one of the first radars you grow inside your brain is the type that detects places which offer activities that

a) take the kids off you,
b) you can call educational, and
c) which are FREE.

You will develop this detection system quickly, because after two weeks you have found that home ed is like strapping an electric suction pump to your purse, with a one-way money-outward action.

Very soon, you realise this leads to problems of the soul-destroying giving-up type.

For example, you might accidental meet your not-friend Jelinka Harquottle. She has dropped Moonquiver at the free state childcare house down the road, then hails you in pride and satisfaction en route to her adult-only batik class. She delightfully recounts how yesterday (incidentally at the very same moment you realised you did not know anything about Pythagoras's Theorum) she went shopping, and picked out a snipsnip sale of perfect shoes for a bargainifilous fifty pounds! Look at the diamante sparkles on the red satin kittens! She's wearing them now!

You look down at the grubby third-hand plimsolls stickered to your feet with duct tape (5p, Church jumble bin). Then you recall the fifty pounds you once had in your account, which you used to pay for one French lesson, settle the library fine on 45 overdue poetry books, and send the reluctant Tinkertop to a tennis coach for twenty minutes, allowing you to tick PE and persuade yourself it's all led by your child in an autonomous free-spirited sort of way. Between your fingers in your pocket you feel the 29p in coins and remember you owe the £15 for next week's workshop on sewage.

This life of deprivation, financial constraint and old shoes, can, over time, eat into your soul. It can cause resentment, bitterness and envy. So we must avoid that route, obviously. We cut out the cursed and cow-faced Jelinka Harquottle from our thrifty lives. We start growing our own courgettes while calling it science, and we exclaim the virtues of making our own flip flops from cardboard. For that, we use all the passion and energy of the evangelical happy clappy, because first you must persuade yourself of the moral benefits of your alternative, educational-inspired, thrift. The louder you clap, the quicker it drowns out your doubts and covers your indignities.

Anyway, none of this thinking is particularly relevant today, except for the fact that the educational tour and workshop we attend at the Royal Albert Hall is FREE. So my advice to you home educators is go, because on that basis, it is a very good bargain indeed.

This is what we were promised. 'A tour of the building, plus a Key Stage 3 Art & Design workshop which takes a closer look at the Royal Albert Hall's beautiful Victorian frieze. Children will be involved in group work and practical activities to create their own modern version in this exciting and hands on art and design session.'

Well all of that is true. I might question the exciting description, and put in interesting. Hands on I'm not sure about, but if it means, can hold a pair of scissors and do some drawing, well that is true too.

This is what you get then, for FREE. (Or, for no outlay whatsoever after the enormous cost of getting there.)

You get a tour of the building, led enthusiastically by one, two or three ladies all aged 82 (but possibly aged 34, 46, and 52). They want you to love this building, they really do, and they walk you about and incant looovellyy building! with many long vowels and determined expressive faces. I do not mind this, but we might have engineering-type genes somewhere lost in our family lines, so next time please a bit more hardcore steel and glass construction news. They also become a little confused over the composition of terracotta, so more accuracy needed on the differences of earth-hewn stone and human-baked clay.

Nevertheless, the ladies tell you interesting factoids. Like the stairs. They are wide enough to allow two Victorian upper classes in full skirts to descend, side by side, without resorting to a brawling fist fight because one of them trampled the other's frill. The hand rails in some places are too short, proving that the Victorians were miniature sized, probably on account of too much vinegar, white bread, and tea. No dancing in the royal box. The best seats were sold in perpetuity, so families today whose granddaddies had a hundred quid to blow on a seat in 1870 today can go sit in the seat for free. The light above the royal box faces outward and lights up just before the royal comes in; this tells the conductor to get the orchestra to stand before the great arrival, and not mess up the ceremony by allowing the violinists to sit there picking noses, scratching armpits and plucking strings.

Then the workshop. That is led by an ex-schoolteacher and is textbook classroom. I can tell this, having experienced hopelessness and loss in a classroom while the textbooks are thrown out of the window in a general atmosphere of chaos because Gripper has got out the hammer again.

But here the Ofsted approved lesson is roughly as follows: teacher organisation of classroom into groups; teacher introduction, information about activity; child involvement in rapid timed activity; table feedback, teacher talk to reinforce feedback loop, introduce 40 minute activity; activity completed; teacher feedback, the point of the lesson revealed by magic.

This is all very good, and I am not complaining at all, because it has been FREE.

And there is something more too, because all the ladies seemed to genuinely welcome us, and that is a very great reaction, and something we usually get only if we pay for it. To a home educator, feeling welcomed is a high priority, and is a perfect antidote to the routine reactions we receive of disgust, contempt, pity, mockery, sorrow, disbelief, and red-alert terrorist level vigilance, because as everyone knows, we are bound to smash up the furniture, encourage anarchy, set the place on fire and allow the children to take drugs.

So what with the tour, the workshop, the welcome, all in all, excellent value.

All this and some desk work too.

(And for your own research before you go, this is very thorough.)

The end of the evening

Out of respect to my hosts, I shall say simply that the event was well organised, the food delightful, and the dining company, enjoyable.

I know it's unlikely that my dining fellows are, right at this moment, creeping round the back of the computer to read pointless mummy blogs, but you never know. Once I thought it unlikely I would buy a secondhand book from the same gentleman I had yesterday rendered into a terrible hamfisted charcoal mess in a life drawing class. I blushed. It taught me that strange coincidences happen.

So here are some late night pictures of London. I have a cameraphone full, because after the event we decided to walk back to the hotel, but couldn't find it and got lost. I needed a record in case I had to prove something to the police.





Anyway, I had to keep stopping to photograph stuff. You try walking for 50 minutes with size 6 feet in size 5 shoes and then you know why.

Grit is a woman in the modern world

To enter the elite world of dining with posh people, clearly Grit must transform herself. From beatenupoldmotherbag to confident independent woman with fantastic personal style and no visible kids.

I have a tenner and 24 hours. Let's see how I do.

1. Beauty vitality: Complexion
Grit is assured that nothing says upmarket skin better than the application of creamy miracle fluid (£25.99).

In fact, capturing an essential flawless beauty shimmer (£12.99), with glowing translucent skin (£15.99), sparkling with radiance of fresh breeze (£34.50), while scattering and diffusing everlasting light (£18.99) in a single skin solution (£19.99) can all be mine from dawn til dusk (£22), and aren't I worth it? (£18.99).

Grit wanders off down Asda to see what choices her face gets for £1.99.

Not many. I could shove a lightbulb in my mouth to get the full glow effect but carrying a portable generator in my handbag might be difficult. As is filling my porridge chops with free dinner while clutching a light bulb in my teeth.

Lard comes cheap. I hear the Russians swear by it.

Cost: 49p

2. Beauty essential: Make up
Grit has less than an hour for this, so better make a quick choice. After fifteen seconds facing 2,300 make up displays, she realises time is more important to her than anything. Especially time spent agonizing whether or not to buy the rose pink or which of 15,000 shades of brown suits her eyelids.

I should invoice L'Oreal for the hours spent staring at the stuff. Give up.

Cost: zero

3. Looking fantastic: Eyebrow shaping
No way am I paying fifteen quid for a teenager to come at me eye-height armed with a pair of tweezers, reassuring me they are a professional eyebrow specialist, and one NVQ in beauty studies is proof of that. I shall attack my own monobrow thank you very much.

After ten minutes of working left to right I am bored and give in. Anyway, I hear the asymmetric eyebrow look is soooooo vogue.

Cost: zero

4. Glossy, healthy, shining Hair!
Grit is an old hand at this. Provide her with a bottle of Superdrug golden brown and she effects a miracle. So far I have not burned off my scalp, blinded myself, ingested deathjuice, inhaled toxic gases nor ended up in hospital. I mean, how difficult can hair be? Colouring hair at home cannot be any worse an experience than the time down at the hairdressers with the fire alarm when they sent me out into the street with a plastic bag over my head until the fire staff came.

And as for the trim, I have brandy and scissors. What can possibly go wrong? Ditto for the asymmetric cut.

It don't get much better than this

Cost: £2.99

5. Looking stylish! Clothing
Easy. Drag out from back of wardrobe same outfit from last year. Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

6. Every woman's secret: upholstery
(Underwiring, padding, girdling.)

The cost of a pair of plastic bags shoved under my boobs comes in around 5K and is out of my budget. I am also not out of my mind, and prefer my droops as nature has evolved them. Facing reality that my entire body is on the escalator heading south is life. Anyway, I'm mature enough to quite fancy bodies that are a little aged and beat up, although that is not a very fashionable thing to say, so don't expect to read me on the pages of Marie Claire.

And as for the upholstery, I'm sure I can find an assortment of rubber bands, cling film and craft wire.

Cost: zero

7. Every girl's true love: Shoes
Yes! Believe me on this, because I am no different from your average gal. I discover the most fantastic pair of black suede pointy pointless pieces of gorgeous gorgeousness. They are Divine. And a bargain at the charity shop. They are also size 5. My feet are size 6.

One must suffer for art.

Cost: £2.50

8. This season's must have item: the overnight bag
Simple. Get a sturdy plain grey plastic bag, a little like one that might be given to you at a charity shop containing size 5 shoes, and pin an assortment of old brooches to it. There. Mix of trash and flash, old and new, ephemeral and heirloom. Kate Moss will be seen with one like that next week, betcha, then you'll all be wanting one for 500 quid a pop.

Cost: zero

9. A little something from Tiffany's? Accessories
Daughters come in very useful. They buy glitter tat from Claire's Accessories, then you get to nick it.

(Hazard: do not choose the bracelet with a plastic teddy bear and BFF stamped on its head.)

Cost: zero

10. Ahhhhhh... Je t'adore le smell: parfum
Grit is on a budget here and deliberates whether she should spend her remaining coppers on a bottle of piss down the market or £50 for a bottle of ethanol from the swankiest shop in town.

She opts for a dab of pine disinfectant on the grounds that it carries the essential fresh forest scent and surely evokes visuals of sensuous longhaired nymph types running about in the rudeynudey at midnight.

Cost: zero

Voila! Grit now looks the bees knees and dog's biscuits, fully kitted out in style and allure, and smells like a particularly upmarket lavatory. And has change from a tenner. Let's hit town!