A tiring week, this week. We were at a theatre that’s been dark for the best part of two years, and I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t really in the “receive position” for us [Insert Own Joke Here]. Monday (get-in day) was l-o-o-o-o-n-g and difficult. Thrillingly, though, the show’s been playing to full houses, which makes it seem as though there’s some point to it all.
We’re also past the halfway stage of the tour, so a game of “Murder” has been instigated. It’s done the trick of giving everyone a different focus and shaking things up a bit, but also means everyone is looking shifty and paranoid. Mind you, I’ve worked on shows where we didn’t need to fabricate that.
I managed to catch Question Time and was disappointed that Griffin wasn’t subjected to a proper interrogation. There was far too much posturing and hysteria, and, while that might be understandable, it didn’t really serve to expose his inadequacies. A missed opportunity.
Next week is a week off, and I must try and resist the urge to sit in my pants in front of the iPlayer for the entire seven days. Maybe five, give me that.
This week’s digs are simply somebody’s spare room. I’ve stayed in worse, but after a few weeks of this now I’m itching for my own – by which I mean an anonymous – space. The bed is a single, very springy mattress, but the get-in at the theatre was so tiring that I haven’t noticed that too much. What’s harder to ignore is the wiry pubic hairs, conspicuous on the bathroom floor. That, and the terrible smell of cat-shit focused around the kitchen, which is the reason, I assume, for the superabundance of Glade plug-ins, pumping out a continuous and sickly fug of poison, making the place seem like something from the set of Se7en*.
She’d seemed a cultured woman. She goes to the theatre, there are lots of respectable books in the flat, she listens to Radio 3. But I had to get out of there quickly this morning. Why? Because this was oozing through the entire property. What was? This:
I’m so sorry, but you had only 30 seconds at worst. I had at least half an hour, before I got to the front door, my torn and bloodied hands scrabbling at the handle.
It’s no way to end the week. And not a dream-catcher in sight.
This week, I’m living with a pensioner. It’s a peculiar state of affairs, as a man in his mid-thirties, to be sharing the home of a woman forty years my senior, who I hadn’t met before this weekend; after all, if I’d wanted to be in a Joe Orton play, I’d have auditioned for one. But that’s the theatre digs list for you.
The whole notion of digs is fraught with competing interests. Speaking as the visitor, you’re looking for the ideal combination of anonymity (the ability to come and go as you please without having to engage in lengthy conversation), private and modern conveniences (a bathroom of your own, say, with working appliances – for me, a shower is purely utilitarian and of limited value as an ornament), and keenly priced (the Equity touring allowance doesn’t stretch to long stays in major hotel chains. Nor short stays in minor ones, come to that).
People put themselves on the digs lists for all sorts of reasons; evidently, the main one is to make some money from a room/flat/outhouse that would otherwise be lying empty. And it’s funny how overriding a concern the filthy lucre can be, as I’ve met plenty of landlords and landladies who like that part of the arrangement but are less keen on the actual ‘having someone else in their property’-bit. Mind you, John Cleese noticed that thirty-five years ago, and made something of it, so it’s hardly a novel observation.
But there are people who do it for other, or, at least, complementary, reasons: I’ve stayed in the granny-flat of a landlady’s late mother, who worked at the local theatre, so being on the digs list was a fitting way of finding a use for a now empty annex; with people who work in other branches of the arts, who use it as a way to meet other interesting, like-minded types; with a hearty Christian, who provided the best breakfast I’ve ever had from guest accommodation, and who saw something of a vocation in putting people up for the night. They all wanted paying, of course, but there wasn’t the usual avaricious glint in their eyes, and they actually exhibited what appeared to be genuine concern about about my comfort.
A typical view from the bed
But it is an odd arrangement. My current landlady has been very good about stating explicitly that I have free reign in the house: that I can use the kitchen to cook whatever I like, that I can sit in the living room or go into the garden, that I can, to all extents and purposes, treat it like my home (this isn’t always a given: once, in digs in Watford, I cooked a meal, washed up and put everything away. The next day, the set of pans I’d used had vanished from the kitchen, replaced by something from Steptoe’s yard). But, it’s not my home, it’s hers, and she’s living in it. Coming in, after the show at night, it would be lovely to make a cup of tea, slouch into the sofa and watch an old, fourth-time-round repeat of Never Mind The Buzzcocks (well, you know what I mean). But as this would mean taking the remote from her hand, switching over from Midsomer Murders and turning the volume down 65 notches, I’m not inclined to.
I bought a loaf at the start of the week to make sandwiches. I put it on the side in the kitchen. Next day, it was in its own plastic box, on a tray, with a knife and plate, all of which was covered by a tea towel. That’s the infuriating thing about digs – you’re never left truly alone. Though I’m sure she thought she was being in some way helpful, it meant that, even in the simple act of taking and replacing the loaf from the box, I no longer had autonomy over the simple act of making a sandwich – she had become part of it. And when you’re already spending the majority of the week in the intense bubble of the company of people you’re touring with, being robbed of your tiny amount of personal time and space – the time in which you make a sandwich and dream your dreams – is exhausting.
Ah, the provincial gay club. I went out in Cheltenham last night, which is not a sentence I expect to write very often. The club sat, of course, at the far end of the high street, distinct and separate from the mainstream clubs and bars; this increasingly-lonely walk to the outskirts is always the first marker of a visit to a small-town deviant venue. Opening the front door, we were gazed at in surprise by the two women on the front desk, who both looked and sounded like the kind of figures you normally see scrabbling in the rubble of a post-apocalyptic wasteland in a dystopian SF film. It was a relief when they accepted our money as a means of admittance, rather than our wristwatches, or water, or meat. Their perplexity at the arrival of three people they’d never seen before was palpable, which is, of course, the other marker.
Once inside, what surprised was that the majority of those there were young lesbians, rather than the more-usual, wall-hugging men of a certain age and level of quiet desperation. What then appalled was that none of them could dance, choosing instead to shuffle morosely at, at best, half speed, while filling as much of the surrounding area as possible. This might have been less noticeable if the woman choosing the music on the laptop near the door (not, certainly not, please note, the DJ) hadn’t been careering inexpertly from S Club 7 to House of Pain to Queen to PJ & Duncan, like somebody who had got up late for their GCSE DJ practical exam, despite not having done even the most rudimentary revision, like, oh, I don’t know… actually listening to any music before. Any music. Ever.
Add to that an odd lanky chap dressed like Mark Curry’s younger brother who was grinding himself up against the back of anyone who’d let him, and someone else who’d stepped straight out of one of those X-Factor scene-setting montages of auditionees, who danced like someone pastiching Weird Al Yankovic’s parody of Michael Jackson, and you have the archetypal touring night out.
I hope that doesn’t sound like a cynical metropolitan sneer. I’m neither a city slicker nor a scene queen, but it always comes as a surprise how small-town so much of this country is, and the gay scene in a typical English town is, inevitably, even more so. Touring often takes you to places that you wouldn’t otherwise visit, and certainly places that you wouldn’t think of going out socially. I grew up in a couple of cities – small cities, but cities nonetheless – and they felt pretty confined at the time. To be touring the country twenty years on and coming across places that have that same rarified, claustrophobic feeling… I suppose there is a kind of ‘there but for the grace of God…’. And maybe that says more about me than the place itself. Nonetheless, I’m happy to be moving on. To Guildford.
I’m on tour, for the first time in years. This means the varying pleasures of digs or guest houses, not eating enough fruit or veg, and taking a moment to remember what part of the map you should be looking at when watching the weather forecast in the morning.
Staying in small-scale accommodation in this country is where I learnt about life – not in any sexual coming-of-age way, lying in anticipation in a room across the landing from the proprietors’ toned and wayward son or anything remotely similar. No, rather in meeting the kind of people who are prepared to take money from strangers but can evidently barely tolerate having them under their roof.
I’ve stayed in the house of a giant woman who leant casually against the top of the doorframe and DEMANDED that we drink her home-made lemonade, with a retired colonel whose wife was holding a Young Wives meeting when we arrived and whose breakfast room was furnished liberally with royal memorabilia (plates, tankards, place mats, cutlery, tea-cosy, spoon rest…) and with a couple who demanded I move the van from the front drive, to prevent it sinking into it, and who stipulated that I turn the steering wheel as I reversed to avoid scuffing the tarmac. I’ve slept in rooms that were named, disconcertingly, after the owners’ departed adult children (and also a ‘Rumpus Room’), that contained anything from one to five individual single beds, windows you either can’t open or can’t shut, televisions that always omit at least two terrestrial channels, and sheets that hadn’t been cleaned since Vatican II.
Oh, what a beautiful morning.
I’ve gone from being blissfully asleep to violently conscious at the foot of my bed on three occasions due to fire alarms going off in the middle of the night: twice above a pub in Bury, which was only terminated by the landlord going to the room next to mine, kicking the door and shouting “Malcolm! MALCOLM! WAKE UP!!!” continuously for ten minutes, and once in Huddersfield, where I joined the cast of Where The Heart Is on the pavement, all of us in our pyjamas, waiting for the fire engines, which was, I’m sure you’ll understand, an unusual start to the day.
I’ve seen more wickerwork and cheap porcelain than is good for anyone on a regular basis, and eaten more limp toast and grey scrambled egg than I care to remember. Noticing an individual, foil-wrapped portion of butter can still bring me out in a terrible rash.
Right now, I’m staying in a small guest house that advertised wi-fi in every room, but which I find impossible to access, which proves that, while the surface details may change with the times, the underlying failure and disappointment doesn’t.
IN SUMMARY: Travelling through the country is so thrilling.
I don’t read an awful lot of blogs, but the ones I do tend to be the conversational, diary or commonplace book types: unrelated scraps of news or observation or nonsense. They’ve no greater aim than to share their interests and sense of humour with other likeminded people who spend too much time in front of a computer. People like Boz or Dan or Billy or Jamie can obviously string a sentence together, and have read a book or two, and have interesting things happening in their lives, or can turn the uninteresting bits of their lives into something worth reading about, and that’s what keeps me coming back for more. They don’t claim that their blogs are daily journals or great historical records. They’re simply somewhere for intelligent, funny, interesting people to riff on whatever takes their fancy. And that’s enough, for me. The continual bleat of people who don’t get Teh Internez is that it’s an orgy of solipsistic tedium – but I’m happy to read about somebody making a cup of tea or going to the dentist or whatever it is we all do to fill the time before the grave if they can give it a spin that makes it interesting to read. And if you can get a laugh from it, all the better.
And I suppose it’s because I flatter myself that I have some of the aforementioned attributes, and because I have an online life (trans: twitters and looks at stupid things on YouTube), that I started this blog. But I’ve had cause to ask recently what its value is. I’ve experienced a great sadness over the past month or so, but this blog isn’t and was never meant to be confessional; while I’m happy to share some of my life online, there’s much that I keep to myself.
That means that I haven’t regularly added anything here for a while. Which is OK, of course. The world still seems to be turning. But it’s raised the question for me of how much this is a two-way process. It’s through reading other blogs and, importantly, commenting on them that a conversation develops. That’s the great value of them, it seems to me – that while they are, of course, authored, other voices being able to comment gives them a value, stops them being the very thing that critics accuse them of (unless you take the view that you create a small coterie of navel gazers. But that’s unfair and, I think, untrue).
How, though, do you encourage that dialogue if you keep yourself out of the picture?
Reading it made me reflect on the conservatism often displayed by so many fans of the show. I started watching it in 1979 (nineteen – seventy – nine!), and I loved not knowing where each story was going to take me. I think that that was a good time to discover the programme, because change was in the air: a year later I witnessed regeneration for the first time, as Tom Baker became Peter Davison, and, before his first season, the BBC showed a series of repeats of stories from each Doctor. This meant, in my first three years as a regular viewer of a programme new to me, I saw the lead character played by five separate actors, and watched stories made in three separate decades, with all the attendant differences in approach and house-style that involves, including two of them being in black and white. That’s not bad going for an eight-year-old, is it?
And I swallowed it all whole. The most exciting bit was always the opening moments of episode one, as you looked to see where this story, and therefore the next few weeks, was set. Where were we? And when? Then, an indication that something was amiss, or that something was lurking in the shadows, and, soon after, for the Doctor to get involved – that was what I wanted. But, in that happy, open, time of transition, it didn’t matter who was playing the Doctor, or who his companions were, or when the story had been made… the essential ethos of the programme was enough. No, more than that, watching those old repeats, I was excited by the variations on a theme dictated by the change of production teams (not that I would have known about such things then, of course): not only in terms of the iconography, blatant and not-so-blatant – different title sequences, different police box prop – but also tonally. Even as a seven-year-old, I could discern that there was a murkier morality guiding the characters’ actions in An Unearthly Child to the more straightforward malarky of The Three Doctors, and I knew that something had happened between the first two seasons I’d watched (Tom Baker’s final two, the latter of which was stylistically very different to what had gone before, much more sombre and, superficially, ‘sciency’), though there was no way I could have told you precisely what.
And that, more than anything, I think, is what hooked me; that each week you tuned into a programme that bore the same title, but you never quite knew what you were going to see.
Which is why I’m always disappointed when other fans react against the programme’s continual and inherent idiosyncrasies (I was going to say ‘against the programme taking risks’, or ‘doing something peculiar’, but neither of those is quite right). I loved the casting of Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor, precisely because, for a minute or two, as I read the news, it seemed so wrong. He didn’t seem like a Doctor, and yet, that’s the best reason for casting him; the whole concept of regeneration is rendered meaningless unless you exploit its potential for difference. I love The Happiness Patrol, a barking story from 1988 that brazenly pushes its studio-bound limitations in your face, demanding an explicit reaction, and so getting a positive one from this viewer. I love The Gunfighters: a Western? On a children’s show budget? With real horses? And scenes linked by a specially-written ballad? In 1966? But, of course!
I know the feeling, though. Even if it’s a vivacious eclecticism that draws you in, the longer you watch, the more you invest, and become attached to the invented world. I enjoyed each episode of the 2005 series – but only on the Sunday, after I’d watched for a second time, because I was too nervous, as each was transmitted, THAT THEY’D HAVE GOT IT WRONG!!! 45 minutes is a long time to be holding your breath, believe me. And it’s a small step from affection to making a fetish of the surface details; it’s one thing to have a small smile of recognition at a neat reference to a previous story, quite another to have a Cyberman with a visible paunch because of some boss-eyed idea that it actually matters that he’s played by the same actor that played the part twenty years earlier.
Some years ago, at the last convention I attended (oh, that’s gone and done it now!), I was in a queue and, being a sociable sort, I struck up conversation with the man in front of me. Being a convention, the conversation was about the Big Finish range of Doctor Who audio dramas. I was asked my favourite, and waxed lyrical about Creatures of Beauty: a well-written Peter Davison story, most memorable for having a fragmented, non-linear narrative, which demanded attention from the listener, and repaid the effort with a tense, involving, and satisfying tale. “Oh yes, that was a good one,” agreed my fellow fan, “though I wish they’d re-edited it so it was all in the right order.”
