Weekend sports round-up

Normal service has resumed with our cricket team. We were battered by Australia who simply outplayed us in every area. I guess it was nice while it lasted, but with Flintoff and Pietersen injured, and the rest of the team not up to the necessary standard, the humiliation was complete and it was all over just after lunch on Day 3. There can be no excuses (although the fire alarm being set off at the hotel can’t have helped) – let’s hope we get better and put on a good show in the final test.

From the stranger than strange files; I have been competing in a Fantasy Rugby team with some colleagues from work and an assortment of their relatives. We are playing in the Tri Nations and each week we pick a ‘team’ of seven players to compete against each other – points are awarded for tries, kicks, tackles, assists and turnovers (incidentally, is rugby the only sport where you get more points for trying than for scoring a goal?), and deducted for penalties and missed tackles.

My team is called ‘What do I know?’ Not a lot, evidently, as I am placed eighth (out of 11, and one of those is my friend’s mum who joined after the fourth game. Yes, I am ahead of her before you ask… but only just). I think my lack winning streak may be due to a couple of factors:

1) I keep picking players because I like the sound of their names – a bit like horses
2) I refuse to pick Richie McCaw because when the (real – i.e. football) World Cup was on, he was asked who he wanted to win and he said, ‘I don’t care, as long as it’s not England’. So I thought, ‘Well, don’t expect me to support you in anything, ever.’ And I won’t. Ha, that’ll show him. I bet he’s hurting now…

It’s actually quite interesting as your team can be made up of any combination of players from each competing side, and you start to watch the individuals’ progress rather than a team as a whole. This can lead to a renewed appeal in a game which would otherwise have no significance to you – i.e. if you are an England supporter and watch football.

Speaking of which, it was really weird to see Robbie Scouser playing for the Queensland Fury, not least because they may well have the vilest strip in the history of football. He scored on his (and the team’s) debut with a fairly soft penalty, it must be admitted. But although he is slow, unfit, and lacking in power, his precision passing is still freakishly good. He is still a Messiah in my eyes.

So now, with the Community Shield done and dusted and the Fergie the red-nosed %^$#er already trying to intimidate referees (didn’t take long, did it?), the count down is on until the beautiful game is back in all it’s glory.

The only problem will be having to watch Little Michael in the wrong red. It’s just wrong. Other than that, the one true game will be back as of next weekend and coming to a television near me.

Drowning in swimsuit controversy

What’s with all the fuss about the new swimming costumes? From ‘technical doping’ to suggestions of denying the swimmers their records, the media has been full of spluttering comment about a sport they usually largely ignore.

At these most recent world championships, a fantastic 43 new records have been set. This seems similar to the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal 1976 when the scandal was about the East Germans and doping. But it was also the first year that goggles were introduced. Swimmers could actually see where they were going – shock horror – and they wore Lycra for the first time. Twenty-six old world records tumbled.

Was there a scandal about their new developments? No, because the thing is – they still have to swim. And fast. Technology may help improve your techniques, but you still have to do the work yourself. You still have to get in a pool, and train for six hours a day. That’s not exactly easy, suit or no suit.

I simply don’t understand the anguish. So there’s this material that gives the wearers an unfair advantage. How is that different from those compression tops that footballers wear to help with circulation, or the shorts with extra stitching that rugby players use for ease of lifting in line-outs? How is it different from wearing an aero-dynamic cycling helmet in a time-trial?

We used to row in wooden boats, hit balls with wooden tennis racquets and cycle on bikes made from… actually, what did we ride before carbon fibre was invented? Innovation and advancement happens in sport as much as any other field, perhaps even more so because there are marketing opportunities which lead to revenue.

Ay, there’s the rub; some folk would like to think that sport is still amateur; we all play nicely and for honour and glory rather than filthy lucre. Training is cheating, and natural talent wins out every time. Nice thought, but it probably hasn’t happened since the Greeks competed naked (if then) at a variety of curiosities. Or is that the idea?

Do these people who protest (and probably only ever swim in the kidney-shaped pool on their holidays in Fiji – that always struck me as an odd design for a pool while we’re at it as it makes me think of surgical procedures) think we should still be paddling about in knitted bathers that come below the knee? Where should a line be drawn in the sand when it comes to progress?

Now FINA has bowed to the pressure and the suits will be banned in the future. Sure, we all like an excuse to vent some righteous indignation but I can’t help feeling that swimming is the new cycling – considered boring unless there is a scandal. Is it any coincidence that that Tour de France was hardly covered in the mainstream press this year? One doping scandal does not a news story make.

Hopefully this flood of crocodile tears will soon be water under the bridge and we can get back to concentrating on the beauty of the sport – for those that ever actually cared about it in the first place.

Besides, it has been ever thus; the man (or woman) in the best suit gets the best results.

Influential Women

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, (Stagecraft)
Gryphon Theatre, August 5 – 15

I’ve never liked those inspirational teacher stories. Sure, we’ve all had one, but do they have to be so nauseating? Trudy White as the eponymous character in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie doesn’t break the mould so much as shatter it and proves that influential educators are not always a good thing.

Miss Jean Brodie holidays in Italy so that she can revel in “goodness, truth and beauty”. She delights in art, language and architecture and wears flamboyant dresses that look like geology maps. She tells her ‘gels’ sad stories about her beau who fell in Flanders’ fields, and teaches them about Einstein, the benefits to the skin of cleansing cream, the love life of Charlotte Brontë, and God’s near Eastern counterpart, Allah.

Trudy White artfully captures her devious and manipulative character with a mischievous glance, a voluptuous shrug, or a twitch of her finger. Her machinations are intriguing as she plays her lovers against one another. Full of confidence, she commands the attentions of the philandering art teacher, Mr Lloyd (the ever-dependable Tom Rainbird, who handles the intimate moments with credible sensitivity) and the effete music teacher, Mr Lowther (Stephen Fearnley - in a kilt and a fine harried performance).

The seductive schemes are less alluring as she worms her way into her pupils’ affections. She calls them the “crème de la crème” and they are desperate to impress her in whatever way possible. When she is surrounded by the adoring and rapt students she is clearly elevated above them as a group, standing toe-to-toe only when she singles one out, with devastating consequences.

The girls, Sandy (Aisha Pachoud), Jenny (Gabrielle Stewart), Mary (Corinna Bennett) and Monica (Katrina Yelavich) are foils to her rapier wit, and she encourages them to develop their distinctive nature, which they all do very well. While they are typical teenagers, bullying and gossiping in the corridors, they each examine the nuances of their unique personality.

In her belief that humanities are the foundation of real life, she is thwarted by her nemesis, Miss Mackay, whose motto is “safety first” and prefers the children to be playing hockey and taking secretarial courses rather than visiting art galleries and moping about composing romances. She warns Miss Brodie that “We are not a progressive school and do not encourage progressive attitudes.”

With her admiration for Stanley Baldwin and prim suits, Miss Mackay is beautifully portrayed by Deanne Graham who invests her with both lightness and depth rather than creating a harridan caricature as could easily be done. A little more projection would help, especially when she is speaking upstage, but on the whole her flinty demeanour with a hint of humour is ideal.

The contrast between these women is excellent as one exudes passion and vitality too strong to be contained within the walls of Marcia Blaine School for Girls, and the other attempts to steer the pupils with a firm and guiding hand. The struggle for the hearts and minds of the youngsters is compelling and when Miss Brodie asserts, “Give me a girl of an impressionable age and she is mine for life”, there is a frisson of foreboding as we question where does guardianship end and interference begin?

The story is told through a series of flashbacks as Sister Helena (Ingrid Sage) relates to Mr Perry (Graeme Carruthers) how much the teacher has influenced her. Miss Brodie is a puppeteer but when the strings are cut she looses control and visibly diminishes. She views her profession as a calling (“I am a teacher, first, last and always”), and refuses to be crucified by Miss Mackay and “the ignorant gossip of petty provincials”, but her self-sabotage leaves the audience with conflicting emotions.

Alan Burden’s insightful sound design incorporates arias from La Traviata, which swoop and soar above the scene changes. Director Leigh Cain ensures that these are delightful vignettes in themselves – besides being slick, they do not interrupt the action. On opening night a few lines were fluffed which stalled the pace towards the end, but the script stuffed full of witticisms is generally well-delivered.

The inspired set which combines naturalistic desks, blackboards and lockers with abstract spaces and designs indicates the confines of the educational system. Although Miss Brodie encourages the girls to “let your imaginations soar” there is nowhere for them to escape in the stifling morality of the school.

In the 1930s, she lectures, “This is the twentieth century – there are many outlets for women of intelligence.” Fortunately, this production proves there are theatrical roles for them too and it is great to see these powerful women commanding the stage – long may their prime continue!

Serial Theatre

Christie in Love (Rattling Tounges Theatre)
Southern Cross Restaurant & Bar
22 - 31 July

There is a great new theatre space in town – Rattling Tongues are presenting lunch-time theatre in the Southern Cross bar. If you arrive at One Sharp you have time to get a cup of tea or coffee and a bowl of soup and watch a play – food for the soul and for the mind. The plays are about 45 minutes long which means there is no excuse not to head down there in your lunch hour – I can’t imagine a better break from work.

It begins with Howard Breton’s Christie in Love directed by Adam Macaulay and based on the 1950’s murderer who was hanged for his crimes against women. The use of the set is constantly surprising and effective. A wire pen filled with scrunched up newspaper is like a central boxing ring in which the action takes place.

Paul Harrop is the policeman digging for bodies known to be buried in Christie’s garden. To alleviate the tedium and the tension he makes piercing eye contact with the audience and tells lewd limericks whose misogynistic content hints at the attitude prevalent throughout. When his supervisor, Jed Brophy, barks, “keep your mind on the bones”, the double entendre heightens the objectivism of the women.

One of them comes to ‘life’ as a rag doll dummy, skilfully manipulated by Harrop. His gestures, mannerisms and inflections as he personifies ‘Ruth’ lure the audience into watching the dummy’s featureless cloth head for the slightest nuance of expression, as we superimpose our own thoughts and motives onto others.

Christie himself (Nick Blake) makes his first appearance behind a skull-like mask as he wrestles with a length of hose pipe down his trousers. His grunting, jerking movements foreshadow the orgiastic hanging scene. Christie had respiratory problems and used an inhaler to help him breathe. He also killed his victims by getting them to inhale carbon monoxide through an apparatus of his own devising. There are myriad layers within this play, which the digging through old newspapers helps exhume.

As Christie removes the mask and straightens his tie and cuffs, he reveals a normal looking man beneath. In fact I googled Christie and the resemblance is actually quite striking. In a chilling Yorkshire accent barely above a whisper he confesses to the policemen that it would be easier if murderers had horns so we could better recognise them.

He explodes, “no one plays the fool with me” and we are grateful he is trapped in his enclosure. When he explains that he wears plimsolls so that “I creep up” and threatens to climb over the fence, there is a palpable sense of fear and menace. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one sitting uncomfortably in the black-out (and this was in the middle of the day!)

He blames the women for emasculating and provoking him with “their skirts rustling, heels tapping and between their legs a bacon slicer.” There is a knowing intake of breath from the audience as they can’t help but imagine the fate of Sophie Elliott. Sounds of children’s mocking laughter float through the theatre and his imagination as he recalls how his mother cut his hair, “removed my length” and made him impotent. His need to dominate his victims resulted in necrophilia.

Harrop splutters, “That’s not love” but his own notions of moonlight and the sea are not exactly realistic either. He can no longer go home to his wife because, although he has had three baths, she can smell the dead women on him. Everyone in this story is culpable to some extent. The women were failed, in 1953 as much as now. Their horrific murders made for tabloid titivation – the rustling discarded papers confirm they are yesterday’s news.

The adroit direction, tight scriptwriting and powerful performances make this a fantastic production. The audience is taken through a range of emotions from laughter through shock and embarrassment to fear, which is hard to engineer in a pub at lunch-time. Rattling Tongues claim they want to “introduce new audiences to live theatre, in new places – in a sense, taking it to where those audiences live.” This is a fantastic objective, and one I look forward to seeing develop.

I ran into Twitter

Judging by recent self-congratulatory reports as the media falls over itself trying to prove how hip it is, we are now meant to all hail Twitter. This ‘social networking’ site (more often used for trumpeting what you had for breakfast or which C-list celebrity you just spotted) has apparently proved invaluable because, after accredited journalists were banned from Iran, someone filmed Neda Agha-Soltan dying on the streets of Tehran and the images have gone viral.

Naturally it is very sad when someone dies a violent death. Repressive regimes are generally considered wrong in Western society, unless they have oil and are on our side. Now we can all jump up and down and decry the Iranian government because they are slaughtering innocents. We know this because pictures were smuggled out on a cell phone and people are ‘tweeting’ about it – don’t even get me started on the banality of that language.

There is no considered commentary from a reliable source – on either side. We may never be able to know the full story, but now we know even less than usual. The people who are trained in how to present these facts and occurrences are banned from reporting on them. The crack-down on the media provoked much outrage from those who believe in the freedom of the press, but I’m sure there are more than a few unscrupulous moguls rubbing their hands in glee at this unlooked-for cost-cutting measure.

Why pay for educated journalists and photographers with experience and credibility when you can get any Wayne, Trevor or Shirley with barely a rudimentary grasp of grammar to ‘capture live events’ for free? All they ask for in return is their five minutes of fame (it used to be 15 but attention spans are shorter these days) – it’s easier than eating live cockroaches on Fear Factor to get people to notice them.

Of course they will have to have an unlimited text programme because if they try to phone it through they will run out of pre-paid air-time before they can say, ‘It was like totally awesome and I was like, oh my god, just so freaking out – I’ve like, never seen anything like it before in my whole entire life.’ Of course you haven’t – you’re 15.

So, in the quest to bring you the news, who are you going to trust – a despotic megalomaniac, or a teenager with a cell phone? And, to be brutally honest here, is there any difference?

Bush Bashing

Thrust through the verdant tunnel to
Plunge into the yawning green.
Ferns and fronds drip and drip,
Raindrops shimmer on glossy shiny leaves,
Spider’s webs quiver glistening in the breeze,
Birds beckon; feathered sirens
Luring you deeper, darker, deeper
Into the heart of dampness.
Breaking through the bush line
Where mist clings like a moist poncho
Swaddling arms and movement
In a straight-jacket sheath

Calm quiet with invisible scrabblings
Hidden in the fecund decomposition
Where who know what grows.
Climbing back into the car and locking the doors,
Cocooned in a metallic pupa.
Driving away from the throbbing green centre
Back to the tarmac,
Fumes, dogs and squabbling kids,
Energised but disturbed
By this brush with nature.
Still unfurling; pulsing; reaching; grasping;
Waiting.

15 Books

My friend Jo sent me a challenge, which I’d like to share with you and see your responses:

15 Books
Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. (In no particular order).

Apparently it’s a facebook thing and you’re meant to ‘tag’ 15 people, but she knows I’m not on facebook and sent it on to me, because “I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose”. Me too – so what are yours? I didn’t read hers first in case I was unduly influenced; it turns out we had one author in common.

Intriguing – the first 15 I think of aren’t necessarily my favourite, but I guess that’s the point. Anyway, here goes:

1. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne; Dad read it to us, with all the voices. I always remember Tigger was a sort of gruff Sergeant Major character

2. The Famous Five­ – Enid Blyton; all 21 of them. We played it at school; everyone wanted to be George and no one wanted to be Anne. I usually ended up as George and my best friend was Timmy the dog

3. Jennie – Paul Gallico; Mr Mowat read this to us in class when we were 12 - a boy is changed into a cat and initiated into the ways of London street by a cat called Jennie. I couldn’t wait for the next installment

4. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë; the ‘mad woman in the attic’ scared the cr@p out of me

5. The Bible – trite but true; great stories; great writing and a creed that has as much influence as anything in my life, whether I believe it or not

6. Watership Down – Richard Adams; I read this as we drove across America – Monument Valley will forever be associated with rabbits in my mind. SPOILER ALERT: When I thought Fiver had died, I cried my eyes out – dad wanted to tell me that he wasn’t really dead; mum wouldn’t let him – ‘she has to find out for herself!’ I realised how my parents work, playing good cop bad cop

7. Animal Farm – George Orwell; so much to answer for – the beginning of my socialist phase

8. 1984 – George Orwell; the continuation of the above

9. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury; more of the same - I read this in 1985 in America, thinking, ‘help, I’m being oppressed!’ I was obnoxious, but the book was brilliant

10. Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos; the first (non-school text) book I ever read in French. Great story, great characters, and the past historic! I was so proud of myself. I was living in Paris at the time and I started writing smug, cryptic letters to everyone. No one wrote back. I was painfully pretentious – I was 19

11. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley; I borrowed this from the library when I was about 13 and the librarian phoned my mum – ‘Do you know what your daughter is reading?’ Who knew books had such power?

12. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway; oh God, does it ever! So you went to the shop and bought bread and eggs and cheese and butter and tomatoes… Is this a book or a shopping list? The first time I realised that I didn’t have to like ‘the greats’

13. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood; the passage where the girl who is being bullied tears strips of skin off the souls of her feet is one of the most memorable ever. I want to write like her

14. The Cage – Audrey Schulman; I was on the panel for the Dillons First Fiction Award and we reviewed about 30 books – this tale of a woman photographer who goes on an all-male exhibition to photograph polar bears in their natural habitat in Churchill, Manitoba was my favourite of the lot. No one else even put it on their long-list. I still remember the scene of how she prepared for the trip by spending hours cramped in her wardrobe

15. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie; the language, the imagery, the curry! Smells and sounds burst out of this book every time I opened the pages – and he was being oppressed, which made it all the more romantic to me

Interestingly, I never would have said I like science fiction, and yet 3 (possibly 4) of these books fall into that category. Conversely I would have said that I like biographies, and yet not a single one sprang to mind in my 15 minutes. I haven’t put in any Shakespeare, because that counts as a play rather than a book, right? Isn’t it interesting how influenced we are by books when we are young – I guess it really is important what children read.

I look forward to seeing your selections!