Holiday weekend report
So, what were the highlights?
The first must have been fitting about twenty people into my front room to watch 'Doctor Who: Dalek' on Saturday. Part of the problem was not knowing who was coming, and not having entertained large numbers before myself I had little idea of consumption rates. Three pizzas were devoured instantly before I could take a bite. Tubes of Pringles were left with only shattered remnants (though I'm surprised there were any left at all), although the most popular potato snacks were the Balsamic Sea Salt and Vinegar Kettle Chips brought by narahttbbs (also known in these pages as Cellis). I'd brought in some alcohol, an unusual purchase for my cupboards, but only one bottle of white wine was drunk, and some bottles of Badger remain in my fridge - still, there will be another occasion.
There was a good SocT turnout, and SSG brought two London-based OUSFG friends of his. OUSFG seem to be a changed bunch these days - the era of their flying picketing of other stalls at Freshers' Fair seems to be a thing of the past, and the people I've met in recent years are far more accepting of SF/fantasy TV than they were in the early 1990s. There's definitely been a generational shift there. Afterwards I went down with most of the others to the SocT May Morning party - which I abandoned at about 2am. I took Cellis back to the Manor, and on the way we saw what we thought were fireworks in the sky. As I left Oxford, I realised this was the most dramatic lightning storm I'd seen for about ten years; the clouds seemed to be communicating among themselves in bursts of light of varying intensity, occasionally breaking into arguments and dramatically waving lightning bolts as if they were swords. I suppose that if I knew Wagner, I'd have been imagining something from the Ring Cycle.
Sunday was a tidying-up day, which proceeded very slowly - and started late, at 10.30 am or so. In between I was able to watch 'Dalek' a couple of times more. The aggressive and grim style of this episode was a shock after the romp that was 'Aliens of London'/'World War Three', but the pace never flagged and the writing, playing and overall presentation of the Dalek were superb. Christopher Eccleston's Doctor is now definitely the soldier-Doctor, weighed down by the genocidal consequences of his actions and seemingly confused between right and wrong; Billie Piper's Rose is as much the moral centre of the show as the Doctor. This is all to the good and we still have seven more episodes left to go before the Tennancy (ancient pun) begins.
Monday I was in London, as my parents are visiting Ellen this week and I thought I would join them for a day. Woodstock to West Kensington was a startling 70 minutes in the car - the roads were deserted even by normal weekend standards. We had lunch at the Shaftesbury Avenue branch of Freud's - this is in the basement, underneath a tableware shop (also Freud's), opposite Forbidden Planet and Christopher Wray Lighting. I'd describe the decor as 'opium den'... The next stop was the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, on part of the site of the Foundling Hospital, demolished in the early 1930s. It opened last year and was probably the best medium-sized museum I've been to. I found myself displaying one of the signs of late eighteenth-century sensibility, as tears filled my eyes as I read of the circumstances and fates of the children who grew up in the hospital. The 'social history gallery' where this story was told is on the ground floor; the upper floors include some of the formal rooms from the old hospital, and a Handel exhibition room, based around the Gerald Coke Handel Collection, which is better than anything at the Handel House Museum itself. Handel was one of the early governors of the Foundling Hospital, performed charity concerts several times in the chapel (also demolished) and left the museum a 'fair copy' of the Messiah so they could continue to perform it after his death. Handel probably encouraged the role of music in the education of the children, which was otherwise entirely focused on manual and domestic labour; many of the boys, so I learned, became musicians in the army.
The evening concluded with a trip to see 'The Producers', now in its second or third week with Fred Applegate and John Gordon Sinclair headlining, replacing Brad Oscar and Lee Evans. I'd been looking forward to this show - I like the film, uneven though it is, and was curious to see how the story - originally a thin framing device for the 'Springtime for Hitler' sketches - was developed. The early part of the storyline was dragged out a little, as Leo Bloom (Sinclair) is tempted to leave his drab accountancy job to join Max Bialystock (Applegate) as producers of 'the biggest Broadway flop' that will be overfinanced and thus make them millionaires when it folds after its first night. One major character from the film has completely disappeared, but in consequence the roles of Roger Debris (Conleth Hill, whom I last saw as Gunter Guillaume in 'Democracy') and Ulla (the stunning Leigh Zimmerman) were expanded considerably, as was Carmen Ghia, played last night by James Dreyfus's understudy Kenneth Avery-Clark, who is a friend of a friend of my sister, and looked after her in Edinburgh when she was visiting said friend a couple of fringes ago.
I've now at last seen the 'Oxford Mail' piece on 'Doctor Who''s return - and was astounded to see that it was headlined 'Doctor Who Loves Doctor Who' - apparently referring to me...! The horror can be shared - requests for a copy here... :)
The first must have been fitting about twenty people into my front room to watch 'Doctor Who: Dalek' on Saturday. Part of the problem was not knowing who was coming, and not having entertained large numbers before myself I had little idea of consumption rates. Three pizzas were devoured instantly before I could take a bite. Tubes of Pringles were left with only shattered remnants (though I'm surprised there were any left at all), although the most popular potato snacks were the Balsamic Sea Salt and Vinegar Kettle Chips brought by narahttbbs (also known in these pages as Cellis). I'd brought in some alcohol, an unusual purchase for my cupboards, but only one bottle of white wine was drunk, and some bottles of Badger remain in my fridge - still, there will be another occasion.
There was a good SocT turnout, and SSG brought two London-based OUSFG friends of his. OUSFG seem to be a changed bunch these days - the era of their flying picketing of other stalls at Freshers' Fair seems to be a thing of the past, and the people I've met in recent years are far more accepting of SF/fantasy TV than they were in the early 1990s. There's definitely been a generational shift there. Afterwards I went down with most of the others to the SocT May Morning party - which I abandoned at about 2am. I took Cellis back to the Manor, and on the way we saw what we thought were fireworks in the sky. As I left Oxford, I realised this was the most dramatic lightning storm I'd seen for about ten years; the clouds seemed to be communicating among themselves in bursts of light of varying intensity, occasionally breaking into arguments and dramatically waving lightning bolts as if they were swords. I suppose that if I knew Wagner, I'd have been imagining something from the Ring Cycle.
Sunday was a tidying-up day, which proceeded very slowly - and started late, at 10.30 am or so. In between I was able to watch 'Dalek' a couple of times more. The aggressive and grim style of this episode was a shock after the romp that was 'Aliens of London'/'World War Three', but the pace never flagged and the writing, playing and overall presentation of the Dalek were superb. Christopher Eccleston's Doctor is now definitely the soldier-Doctor, weighed down by the genocidal consequences of his actions and seemingly confused between right and wrong; Billie Piper's Rose is as much the moral centre of the show as the Doctor. This is all to the good and we still have seven more episodes left to go before the Tennancy (ancient pun) begins.
Monday I was in London, as my parents are visiting Ellen this week and I thought I would join them for a day. Woodstock to West Kensington was a startling 70 minutes in the car - the roads were deserted even by normal weekend standards. We had lunch at the Shaftesbury Avenue branch of Freud's - this is in the basement, underneath a tableware shop (also Freud's), opposite Forbidden Planet and Christopher Wray Lighting. I'd describe the decor as 'opium den'... The next stop was the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, on part of the site of the Foundling Hospital, demolished in the early 1930s. It opened last year and was probably the best medium-sized museum I've been to. I found myself displaying one of the signs of late eighteenth-century sensibility, as tears filled my eyes as I read of the circumstances and fates of the children who grew up in the hospital. The 'social history gallery' where this story was told is on the ground floor; the upper floors include some of the formal rooms from the old hospital, and a Handel exhibition room, based around the Gerald Coke Handel Collection, which is better than anything at the Handel House Museum itself. Handel was one of the early governors of the Foundling Hospital, performed charity concerts several times in the chapel (also demolished) and left the museum a 'fair copy' of the Messiah so they could continue to perform it after his death. Handel probably encouraged the role of music in the education of the children, which was otherwise entirely focused on manual and domestic labour; many of the boys, so I learned, became musicians in the army.
The evening concluded with a trip to see 'The Producers', now in its second or third week with Fred Applegate and John Gordon Sinclair headlining, replacing Brad Oscar and Lee Evans. I'd been looking forward to this show - I like the film, uneven though it is, and was curious to see how the story - originally a thin framing device for the 'Springtime for Hitler' sketches - was developed. The early part of the storyline was dragged out a little, as Leo Bloom (Sinclair) is tempted to leave his drab accountancy job to join Max Bialystock (Applegate) as producers of 'the biggest Broadway flop' that will be overfinanced and thus make them millionaires when it folds after its first night. One major character from the film has completely disappeared, but in consequence the roles of Roger Debris (Conleth Hill, whom I last saw as Gunter Guillaume in 'Democracy') and Ulla (the stunning Leigh Zimmerman) were expanded considerably, as was Carmen Ghia, played last night by James Dreyfus's understudy Kenneth Avery-Clark, who is a friend of a friend of my sister, and looked after her in Edinburgh when she was visiting said friend a couple of fringes ago.
I've now at last seen the 'Oxford Mail' piece on 'Doctor Who''s return - and was astounded to see that it was headlined 'Doctor Who Loves Doctor Who' - apparently referring to me...! The horror can be shared - requests for a copy here... :)