Should be writing a review of Translations but too hot. So here are some more diary entries:
29 May
I’ve suddenly hit inertia at home. I’ve done nothing for two days (three if you include today). I seem to go through periods of time when I have so much to do I end up writing lists, to times like this when I have nothing to do. I made a completely failed attempt to start writing a play. That lasted all of ten minutes or less (the attempt, not the play). And yet I can write till the cows come home in this book. This writing is just my unfiltered thinking, and also I have an hour or so to write – or alternatively watch the play, which I do occasionally. Maybe I need a special place to write creatively.
2 June
(Finally that £5.50 Swiss-made Caran d’Ache ballpoint pen, I bought especially for use with this notebook, that has blotched its way through these pages and which I have battled on with because it was £5.50 Swiss-made Caran d’Ache, has finally run out of ink. )
Listened to In Our Time on Henrik Ibsen this morning. I learned that Ibsen continually changed tack, maybe to challenge himself, maybe because people’s minds and behaviour are all complex. They talked about how complex his women are. And I didn’t realise he’s the most performed playwright after Shakespeare. He was happily maried, and in his daily habits very conservative. He lived many years out of Norway. A Doll’s House was seen as shocking but no banned – it became a serious talking point. Even today the thought of a mother leaving her children, let alone leaving them in the hands of a man (her husband) she didn’t think capable of looking after them, has a feeling of taboo about it. Unlike Hedda, Nora doesn’t kill herself.
4 June
I’m going to be spending the performance watching a woman in very bright patterned trousers. She’s spent a long time chatting up a male FOH who brought her something. She’s probably in her seventies. She’s moved herself, coat and bag into the seats opposite me and has made herself at home. She’s been stretched across the Dress Circle ledge but has been gazing back around the auditorium. Then a mobile went off, some way behind her, so she spent some time looking around at them – glaring I should imagine. Now she seems to have settled into watching the play, possibly the reason that most of the audience are here. She’s just taken her top off to reveal a spaghetti strap vest. I’m now wondering if she’s a man. Very thin, short dyed blonde hair. Came in wearing one of those oversize “golfing” hats and large 1970’s sunglasses. I now can’t decide if they are a man or a woman. Whichever, they now seem gripped by Michael’s and Andrew’s acting onstage. Now they are fumbling in a bag. Food? The scream sound effect made them jump to attention. They are starting to fidget and look around again: I’m wrong about the top. It has thin but not spaghetti straps and seems to have a low cut at the side. Middle seems to be ruched horizontally. Large dark watch on right wrist. Definitely a woman as I can now see the front has a very low cut. Polka dot pattern. She’s swaying to the interval’s Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. I like her.
19 June
Heard The Film Programme. There was an interview with Michael Smith, the first autistic director to make a feature film. He said something like, ” I don’t just want to think outside the box, but smash the box and remake it in my image.”
