Much Ado

I went to see the Bard in the Botanics production of Much Ado About Nothing last night. It's no secret by now, as the play near the end of its run, to say this version contains a big twist. In this adaptation, Beatrice, one half of one of the pair of lovers at the centre of the play, is turned into Bertram.

The play was fantastic - BiTB productions unfailingly are - and I love seeing Shakespeare. I've got a thing for men speaking the lines. I blame seeing Baz Luhrman's R&J at a formative age. By the time I left the park, I'd got a thing for every male player in the cast. Pathetic, but enjoyable.

But what really affected me was seeing the relationship played out between soldier Benedick and reluctant lover Bertram. The script, as far as I could tell, changed only the name Beatrice to Bertram, and all mentions of "niece" to "nephew".

With the character originally written as female, there was no doubt that this relationship was feasible, valid, and encouraged. The play's central device of getting the denying lovers to admit their affections (essentially a big overheard game of "my mate fancies you") was fantastically played, and elderly father and uncle Leonato's line of marriage encouragement and blessings was particularly simple and powerful:

"Well nephew, I hope to one day see you fitted with a husband."

As in all Shakespearean comedies, there's a lot of scampering and witty flirtation. Lots of wordplay - particularly between Bertram and Benedick as the comedic heart of the play. The look of lust, disdain and upset between the actors, as in all good versions of Shakespeare, could make your stomach flip.

What made the biggest impression was the equality. That sounds ridiculous, right? But seeing same sex relationships represented on a properly equal footing - characters were allowed to flirt, were no more tortured or tragic than anyone else, endured no troublesome realisations (other than that they were in love), "woo'd" openly, and with encouragement -  made an impression that I'm still dealing with a day later.


I felt surprised in a way I hadn't expected to. It reminded me how far we still have to go.

Until it's not even remarked upon when people enter into a same-sex relationship, openly, and with the support of family and friends, then maybe we're there. When kids don't get bullied into pieces for showing even the smallest inclination towards folk of their own sex - maybe we're there. When no heads snap round as two people of the same sex walk past them holding hands, maybe.

I know the official word is heteronormative. But it took a tear-jerkingly good adaptation of a bloody Shakespeare play to help me understand what the opposite of that would mean.

It felt all the more important given that yesterday was when the Queen signed into law the equal marriage act into law in England and Wales. I live in Scotland, but most of my friends are in England. I was already feeling pretty happy for a friend and his partner, who had sworn not to get civilly partnered - they would get married when everyone could, or not at all. The state permitting these small personal victories seemed unthinkable even a decade ago.

At my great aunt's funeral, sometime around 2001, there were two older gents, and lifelong friends of my nan. They'd been together since it was illegal. But at the funeral of their great friend, they knew that the sight of them together, upset, perhaps holding hands, would be too much for others there to take. They reassured my cousin that they would stand discreetly at the back. This upset me at the time, and still does now.

In Much Ado, the marriage is the culmination - the ending - as with any Shakespearean comedy. But yesterday, watching the play, I felt that marriage was just a beginning.

Benedick:
My will is, your good will
May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin'd
In the state of honourable marriage

All images taken from the Bard In the Botanics Facebook page

the wobble and the soft

I've been losing weight for a long time. And I hit a bit of a wall and needed some inspiration. Something to stick on the fridge. It's a hackneyed old tactic but it works. (I wouldn't normally consider people on looks alone but for these purposes I sort of have to.)

But I couldn't find a picture of anyone I would ever want to look like.

I don't aspire to have visible ribs, legs that don't meet in the middle or muscle-y Madonna arms.

OK, she's a pretty extreme example

The fashion mags were no good. My legs will never look like that. And the models don't smile.

Then there was Women's Fitness and its ilk. But they weren't right either. They made me feel worse about myself. No softness, all harsh angles and muscles and tendons and more judgement than in Vogue, because of the mags' single-minded focus on THIN.

I couldn't put my finger on it. It was more than the "all models look the same, aren't media representations of women awful?" thing.

I was offered one choice - well - two: visible ribs, or visible muscles. Preferably both, though.

Then I went to see the new Muppets movie. In this movie is an actress named Amy Adams. I don't think I'd ever heard of her before.

Here she is in the film

Image source 

She looked not just relatively normal-sized (still thin of course - this is Hollywood) but also healthy and happy. Glowing, soft. Yeah yeah, make up, the movies, etc. Her character's awesome vintage wardrobe perhaps helped too.

Seeing her made me realise what I wanted to look like and what I was looking for. It's this: some sort of softness. Some sense that you have thighs and that's OK. What do I want? I want to glow and bounce a little.

it made me think of 1980s/early 90s music videos.

Stick with me.

I saw the Spice Girls Wannabe music video the other day. Doesn't Emma Bunton look healthy? Doesn't she look normal? Yes, Ms Bunton's thighs are slightly wobbly. I wonder if she tortured herself daily.

They all look good, really. Victoria Beckham is probably a stone or two heavier than she is now.

1980s and early 90s music videos. There's another shocking eye-opener. Dancers look like normal people! Normal people with backsides and legs that have muscles and flesh on them.

The only person in modern life that looks anything like suitable is Beyonce. But she only escapes public criticism because she is clearly dancer-fit and could kill a man with a single kick. There is barely an article written that doesn't mention her 'curves' though. SHUT UP.

Whenever I see a magazine with 'before' and after bikini pics, where a normal sized girl is now concave, I always, always prefer the before pics.

I prefer the 'old' Kate Winslet. I prefer the non-thin and angular Sophie Dahl. Even Crystal Renn, the model who was celebrated for being gorgeously fleshy is now a size six. And people celebrate that, even while knowing she has a history of eating disorders.

But I generally feel like I'm in the minority here, to have a problem with the 'single option' of aspirational body shape.

The fact that I'm having to virtually travel back in time to find more than one person that I want to look like is distressing. I admire people's flesh, not their bones.

Soft, feminine, healthy and potentially ever so slightly wobbly people in public life who aren't beating themselves up. That's all.

on getting used to a place

View from Kelvinbridge at dusk

It's harder to get a box of sushi, but there's a higher calibre of scones.

There are endless coffee shops where the fried chicken places should be.


People on the tube aren't always wearing their best shoes. Sorry:  the subway.


Also - you can sit down on the subway. As opposed to being happy when you can merely squeeze yourself through the doors.


The look I find myself going for most often is 'cosy'.


People want you to like it here, rather than commiserating with you about what's so awful.


Conversations with strangers. Rather than one sided chats with strange people at the bus stop, while they talk and you edge away. Nice people wanting to chat.


People enjoying the rain. Honestly, at least two people have claimed this. As long as it's 'proper' rain.

___________________________________________________________________________________

It's a big step for me to say that I actually like it here. I'm having to work out that admitting that doesn't mean precluding liking anywhere else.

By saying I like it, I don't mean that I love it beyond all else. I could like London again, once I'd relearned to ignore my claustrophia. I could like Manchester. (I could really like Manchester, being only 90 mins from my family and the nephews I miss so achingly), Bristol, Bath,, Edinburgh. I could like Berlin or Paris.

But for now, I think I'm starting to like it here too.

why the name?

(photo taken by J, on a beach in the outer Hebrides)

This Glimmering World. Why the name?

Well, it's almost a lyric from one of my favourite songs - The Geese of Beverly Road. It's a song that always makes me feel better, even if I'm not entirely sure that it's happy song. It has some happy lyrics and some thoughtful lyrics. It starts off happier than it ends.

But it has some words in it that I love.

"We'll run like we're awesome"
"Hey love, we'll get away with it"
"We'll go from car to car/And whisper in their sleeping ears/We were here, we were here"
"Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon"

and of course

"We're the heirs to the glimmering world"

It feels like a song that feels ultimately triumphant, though like most National songs, you can't be too sure.

It feels like a song about what makes me happiest. Looking at life, drinking it up, being open to it . And glimmering is a good word. It's not out and out glittering. It might be kind of dim sometimes, but there's something there to see.

I heard it last in the car, as it started to snow, driving back from Loch Lomond into a new city that was shining with Christmas lights. I felt a huge sense of stuff being out there for me to find. A whole country, a street, a block of life. And I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, apart from feeling slightly scared and slightly lucky.

things about me - photos

I was very careful, in my former blogging life, to never reveal too much personal stuff about myself. But that can change a bit now.

One thing I love doing - love, love, love - is taking photos. I've got a stack of old cameras that I'm getting to understand - and in the meantime, snap away with a modern DSLR (Canon 600D) and an old Nikon FM (c. 1969 I believe) that used to belong to my father in law.

Brilliantly forgiving as the new camera is, there's something magic about using the old one that makes even the mistakes, the under and over exposed, the shaky and the slightly shit look sometimes a bit magic.

The camera is currently in for repair (while I frantically save the money to get the light meter sorted) but I like to take photos of people, mostly. Here are some old camera photos from 2011, and a few from 2010 - the birth of a nephew, a trip to France and two weddings...

hello

Some of you might know me from the blog I wrote about my wedding, cakesandbunting. I never expected to love blogging so much that I would begin another.

The wedding blog was a bit like the stabiliser wheels on a bike - a little safety net - written anonymously, so that I could talk about the wedding somewhere supportive, without annoying my (then mostly un-betrothed) real life friends. And I was careful to mostly keep it about the wedding and things related to it. (I'm not done there yet, by the way...)

But there's so much more to life than that. Interesting things to talk about and people to meet. Without blogging, I'd have arrived in a new city, just a few weeks after getting married, without a friend to my name. And there's also the small fact that potential new followers keep mistaking me for a wedding cake baker. Naming fail...

Anyway - this is my new-ish home online (or one of them - there's still C&B, and there's even a work-related blog, if you're dedicated enough to find it).

Enough of the rambling. Nice to meet you.