Friday's post hid a myriad of blues, the goal we have been marching towards finally arrived on Thursday and the news was bad, Leyla despite jumping through numerous academic hoops failed to secure a place at her sisters old school because we lived to far away. She has got into a very good school, but the overwhelming sense of grief that we had all worked so hard for so little was overwhelming. We both cried Leyla and I and of course the minute Emin see female grief he gets ratty and irritable, so we tore chunks out of each other all night.
I did shock horror get an apology the morning after, combined with a flurry of texts which cumulated with the news that he had booked flights to Amsterdam and Berlin in June for a well deserved break. Yeah, I know I have non stop breaks this year, but even I got quite excited at the thought of finally returning to Amsterdam, a city I have not been to for over 20 years! Berlin is a different story, but there are plenty of galleries left to explore. What made me laugh was that having booked to escape the Queens celebration we were going to a city with their very own 'Queens' celebration!! All be it later than we go, maybe they are making a holiday from it.
Walking the dog on a very wet drizzly Sunday evening I remember a similar evening where I caught site of a post Sunday lunch kick back through a window, I lamented that I thought my life would have become convivially languid like that, but instead seems just very overcrowded. Then I got to thinking that I may not have dinner parties, but I do get to travel in some style and sometimes I realise that is way better.
Back to last week though, it will come as no surprise I had a whopping migraine, but my mood was light as Lucy had booked a pre-theatre dinner at Hix, I've never been but quite fancied it for a change and I am happy to report it was great. Lucy of course always reads those Internet sites, I don't because the only time people write on them is when they have had a bad meal, people rarely write anything when they have had a great meal because they are left with such a soporific sense of well being they can't put digit to keyboard. So ignore the review it's great.It was not cheap mind you but my sister has the MOST annoying habit of ordering a cocktail which always bumps up the price.
We had tickets for an Alan Ayckbourn play, and here is the gist of my gripe, why are all theatre critics men? And what is it with men and nostalgia? So this play was set way back in the late 70's and it was so S-L-O-W really very, very, dull. You know you are struggling when you fixate on the set. The play got rave reviews because of course it appealed to the paunchy old hacks who hanker after the days when cigarette ash fell down on their typewriter keys as they slurped their fourth tumbler of whisky. It appealed to their sense of misogynistic nostalgia when men were bread winners and women were unfulfilled, ergo hysterical and dissatisfied. But all this is fine if it moves at a pace, truly this was like watching sandwiches curl.
Part of my research into female artists has led me down that whole feminist route, which is dated but quite interesting. Reading around it makes me realise how far we've come and watching that play made me realise how little I want to look back.
2 comments:
I laughed when I read your description of male critics - I had a similar feeling when I was watching the Grammys on TV: it had to be produced by old men because it started and ended with a parade of old men on guitars, with very flat attempts to get in touch with the current state of pop music. I like Springsteen and Jack White as much as the next rock fan but watching a whole evening of tributes to the "good old days" is a little sad.
I like the TV series "Mad Men" so much because despite a premise that's the perfect setting for misogyny, the writers really get women. Not just women, they do all the characters so well, but they've avoided all the traps I usually despise in depictions on women in films and TV shows.
The opposite seems true with those male critics too -- a film that I think quite good gets dismissed as fluff or whatever, whereas there's much more tolerance for a good action film being just what it is.
Sorry about Leyla and that big disappointment, but it does sound as though you're all regrouping. In fact, I'm impressed at how well you've analysed the whole process and the emotional responses -- and how great that Emil's turning it into an occasion for a compensatory holiday! We're going to Amsterdam at the beginning of May -- first time ever, and I'm pretty excited. If you read/hear/know of any must-sees, do tell!
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