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Christmas is a Lie...

...Don't tell it to yourself.   I'm in the middle of writing my second book; tiredness, anxiety and vulnerability are making me blurt out 'Why would they...?'   Why would people walk round the Meare, which is looking bleak and frozen and exceptionally pretty under its sky?  Why would people go to works/family/church, etc, parties? Why would anyone go to a pantomime/TheNutcracker/Midnight Mass? Why would anyone make a sleeping dachshund out of marzipan?    And what are they smiling at?   One semi-serious why: why no Christmas advertising campaigns aimed at the single? Single occupancy households are in the majority. Haven't the manufacturers ever heard of capitalism?   No.  The single you see in an advert is always a depressed male, the easy prey of either a visit from the Salvation Army or relatives (surprise!) from an opposite hemisphere.  You will see the disappointment in spite of himself. Now he can't stay in his pyjamas all day, eat sage and onion st

Winter Solstice

  In the Co-Op today, a member of staff was pushing a trolley filled with Ritz Crackers, liver sausage, breadsticks and gin. She explained to a colleague, 'Doing Mrs Truscot's shopping. Only got a couple more things to find.  It's for her usual outing on the 21st to the burial mound to get mashed.'

The Nothing...

  It happened again.  I got the clean up-buzz, but then the slump into anxiety and from there the fall to nothing.   Does this happen to everyone when they tidy their kitchen cupboards and spritz them with Vim? #clean #cleaning #existentialangst #anxiety #tidy

My First Waterstones...like My First Tutu/Tiara/Ballet Slippers...

Follow link for details   Wednesday the 22nd, 7.15, Crouch End Waterstones. 7.15.  £400 to include a glass of wine.  May not be able to wear my bigger, kite-wired, tutu as I might get stuck dancing in that between Crime and Biography.  Someone eagle eyed noticed that I was wearing the smaller-skirted of my two tutus at Leiston Library, whereas I'd worn the flouncier one in Aldeburgh.  Why?   Because I had to walk across country to Leiston and the bigger tutu only fits in a wheelie case, which I couldn't of course drag over the golf course.  And if I'd carried it in plain air, it might have worried the pigs.   Below is George Martin who I must thank for checking all the Marines' training details in the book. There he is listening to the audiobook I've just recorded, in case I'd let what he calls, 'Fluffy ideas creep back in, Iestyn...'   Give him a follow on Instagram, do:  @gfpmartin  

Overheard on my Walk

  There's a sign, where you get off the abandoned railway line path and into the forest. No Right For Horses.   Two people today were puzzling over the sign today.  Looking both ways on the path, one said, 'But surely it depends from which direction the horse is approaching if that's a right turn or left?'  

Thank you, Amazon. You've Always been my Favourite!

Me Sing Pretty?

  The beautiful harp of Louisa Duggan, anyways...

The Parable of the Ugly Cheese - excerpts from my forthcoming book about creating and touring a one-man show

     A one-man show can mean anything from a reading of MR James ghost stories, through a biopic of Mata Hari to the wondrous spectaculars of Derren Brown.   Subjects.   Someone has proved that, from his behaviour in the Old Testament, God is gay, bi-polar and addicted to bric-a-brac. There have been one-man Beowulf 's, Tom Jones's and Under Milk Woods . Monologues on Lully's conducting accident, Beethoven's chamber pot spillage and 'I was Benjamin Britten's First Mr Squirrel'.     Historical re-enactments by one of the Stonehenge masons, of Michelangelo winch-hanging under the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the unmaking of Tracy Emin's bed.   Audiences have been encouraged to play Twenty Questions, Clumps and Analogies to guess the identities of Bathsheba, Moll Flanders and Miss Marple. Mark Anthony, Van Gogh and Liberace. The Mad Hatter, Shivah and Hitler.   So how to decide on yours.   There are, give or take, two ways.   Evolving or pla

Wilderness Festival - Sleepless With Stoicism

  I've just done my first festival proper with My Tutu Went AWOL . Wilderness.  I sold a book to Tom 'The Idler' Hodgkinson, who I revere.  As for the festival itself, wandering around I overheard one of the security guards say, 'The only thing posher would be a cheese and wine party...'   Except when you borrow a tent sight unseen from a mate and it turns out to be a mountain tent of tininess.   Luckily, I went to the festival with Grace Barry-Tait, the superb singer and host.  She knows the festival build team.  A buggy arrived at the Yellow Area, driven by Liselle, who toted Grace and me with our stuff to Crew Camping. Liselle peered at my tent from under her vast curls. 'It's very small.  But I'm sure you'll get into it, don't worry.  Let's...' Grab a rubber mallet, ignore the instructions, and get on with it. 'There.  Except...we'll wait for Jack to give his opinion.  He's in the shower.'   Jackson James Purcell em

At Book Shows

#book #books #bookshows #mytutuwentawol #bestseller

Motivation Monster

#motivation #motivational #motivationalquotes #goalsetting #goals #life #lifehacks

My First Gay Experience

#lgbtq #gay #life #lifehacks #gayboy #gays #sexuality

Why I'm Single

My Psychic Mother Drops One...

Tabard Tweaks...

  Afternoon to you all - and apologies for a lack of posts.  I've been recording the audiobook of ​Tutu with Mornington Media - including songs - and writing the next book, ​Found, Found My Tutu Now ​(working title) having been signed to agent Lisa Eveleigh at Richard Beckford Associates.  'We need to know more about your psychic mother, country and western singer father, the strip-a-gram giraffe...'   Thrilled that  ​Tutu  ​is being carried around on concessions trays (I am an ex-Royal Opera House usherette after all) at the Winter Gardens Margate, the Hippodrome Leicester Square and the Royal Albert Hall. And I love seeing it in my local shop. Local Author with Rave Reviews in Non-Local Press   Cynthia has retired from the shop...   First time ever shopping at Cynthia’s I had looked for a basket, not found one, begun taking items off the shelves.  Excusing herself from a customer, Cynthia had politely but firmly relieved me of the items, and replaced them. ‘We’re not

Critics...

  In an otherwise lovely review of My Tutu Went AWOL the critic commented that though my vaudeville act was booked for Iraq and Afghanistan on a bill with stand-up comics, I included relatively little of their thoughts on being out in warzones.   Stand-up comedians being so known for having thoughts on things other than themselves and their material...

Not Coveting, but...

  Declan Forbes worked front of house at  Covent Garden when I did.  He was reading law.  He must have read it very keenly because these days when he travels for work he stays at hotels that have three-page pillow menus. Touring I have often stayed at a 'hotel'  that has three cork boards of mugshots.  Do not let these  characters onto the premises.  Police aware but  running scared. 

Aversion Therapy?

  My singing teacher listened to me reminding her that diets (she is always on one) have a shelf life, though, sadly, her Co-Op bought cakes never seem to.  'But I have to have cake,' she said.  'It reminds me of my mother's little smile of promise when she went out to the back scullery and would sing a bit of Liza Lehmann, and then come back through with cake or scrambled eggs with cream or, spread on a barm, the lovely congealed ooze with chewy bits in from under the previous Sunday's roast. Always a joy when she went to that back scullery.  Well, apart from this one time.  Our neighbour's eldest, Susan, seventeen, had been ill for a few months and kept to their parlour.  We all knew why, of course. Like sopranos of the nineteenth century having a nine month bout of twisted knee. And one Monday morning Susan called in at our back door, shouting through to us that she was just letting us know she was up and about now, not to trouble. So we didn't.  And a b

On PR: Give Yourself a Mythology

  Conductor Nicola Rescigno asked Maria Callas to demonstrate Bel Canto phrasing to the cor anglais soloist for the 1958 recording of  Anna Bolena.  Rescigno then asked her to explain why precisely she had phrased Anna's music that way. She answered, 'It has to be, because Anne Boleyn was the queen of England.'   Easter Sunday I recorded "Tom Bowling" for the audiobook of My Tutu Went AWOL .  James Lloyd, ex-band service player accompanying, commented on how musical my last take had been.  Nodding to that Callas story I said, 'It has to be, because of Tom's terrible death.  Where his solar plexus once was is now, incarnadine, a cannonball.'   James thought that, as with his five-year-old, I shouldn't have had all those e-number riddled Easter eggs.

The Royal Marine Himself Reviews My Tutu Went AWOL

Stacks's Review - or Looking Scary on the Poop Deck The man himself has just written me an email - he's been reading the Kindle edition onboard a ship that he's protecting from marauders.   'Mate, good on you!  It's a proper book now after all the trial and error you've had with it.  Made up for you.  And it's great, it really is. But I would say that!  But I think I'd even be enjoying it even if I wasn't sitting here bored off my bollocks.  Even though I know a lot of the stuff that's in it through one, knowing you like I do, and two making sure you didn't write ​Hercules when you meant helicopter ​there's still a lot of stuff that has had me chuckling.  It's weird taking in how you see me. Ray and Rink-Dink said the same.   'Rink's gone back to the hills.  He said he'd seen you in Colchester.  You're so his favourite. Don't try and say I'm yours. I always felt left out from the time you met him in Kabul

Countdown to Hippodrome April 3rd, 7PM: Cynthia's Three Tweaks

  Very moved by something that happened on Friday.  I was in Aldeburgh High Street, having left some author copies of My Tutu Went AWOL for display at the book shop, when Cynthia called after me. Cynthia used to own the grocer's shop.  She said how touched she'd been to read my back page thank you to her mother, Mrs Cooney, as one of the lookers-on and cheerers as I got Madame Galina from church hall to west end, via Blackpool, Iraq and Afghanistan.   'Lovely things you said.  And about Margaret, too. She was a one, that one. People - or is just me - over time are getting more diluted.  Oh, I just wish I still had the shop for you to go smack in the front window!'   As she walked on towards the Old Customs House I smiled, remembering the first time I ever bought anything at Cynthia’s. It was August 1985.  I had looked for a basket, not found one, and begun taking items off the shelves.  Excusing herself from a customer, Cynthia had politely but firmly relieved me of

First Reviews of My Tutu Went AWOL

  First, because my mother speaks below, let's discuss her attitude to mortality. I recently told her that I had reached the death-aware stage of life.    She said, 'Even the great and the good die, Iestyn.  Jane Austen, Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn...to name some favourites of yours.'   I asked who she might list as favourites of hers that are no longer with us.  She answered. 'Oh, very much the usual.  Lena Zavaroni, Elsa the Lioness and Arthur Askey.'   There are two five star reviews for my book so far on Amazon. From strangers, too. My family, merely strange, are adding to the feedback with ansaphone messages.   My stepmother: ‘Iestyn, I’m on page eighty-five…don’t know what chapter that is.’   My mother: ‘You’ve got your Mairs confused. The Mair I bought all the elastic for over however many years was the one who broke her television and had her leg amputated — she’s very much on her way out. The other Mair lived in Pimlico and is completely dead.’  

Sell Your Hair to the Doll Factory

 Because I need your help, you see, nicely.  Namely: reviews to be posted on Amazon now you've, hopefully, enjoyed Tutu . Read on for more...   Have I told you about Rachel, the mezzo-soprano?  The one who thought that her most recent public appearance could be classed as a gala because at the tea between rehearsal and performance the scotch eggs were cut into sixteenths?  Just saw her, the other day in Oxford Street; dressed as usual for that Disney kibbutz.  Then when she she took off her fuchsia chintz headscarf – her hair was vast!   She said something along these lines: ‘I’m growing it to sell to a doll factory in Puerto Rico, proceeds going to the Hacienda Verde.  Year’s growth: they’re offering three thousand five hundred. Just off to the treatment clinic.  They put on it Kamatakan mung-dynasty beans, Tregothnan Manuka honey and Watneys pale, then leave it to do its thing for a fortnight. Then they drain it all off and in a petri dish collect what the beans have

Carol Will Know

  On my walk along the disused railway, I was stopped by a twitcher.  She was in comfortable blues and a khaki pashmina threaded through a plus-sized woggle.  In a rich, beautifully modulated voice she said that I'd been probably wondering about the noise out there - meaning the conservation area.  'It's probably a duck, rather than a goose; except that the call is so low and raspy. Can't actually see what it might be.  I'm puzzled, frankly.'   I said, 'I'll ask Carol from the shop when I walk back.  She always knows.'   The twitcher nodded, clearly accepting one of the wisdoms of Thorpeness.  

My Tutu Goes AWOL in Windrush, hopefully...

My Tutu Went AWOL Book Launch...event now LIVE...   Henry Bonas Events rang today - the actual Henry himself - to wonder tersely did I expect a bloody book launch now somewhere near him?    'Yes, but only if I can have linen like you provided for that Honourable's wedding, where I could see the pleats in it even when I was dancing twenty five metres away.'   'Do Waterstones have linen on their tables when the new Jonathan Coe's out?  And, more importantly, have you learned to bloody drive yet?  I can't keep picking you up from the station.'   'Henry, you've picked me up once, the other times you've sent Barry in his taxi.  And I can order taxis myself in future...'   'What, you'd know how to get hold of Barry, would you, who I send specially for you because I know how your little heart is gladdened by hearing how he's been driving around Nicholas Parsons, Camilla Parker-Bowles and Jilly Cooper?  Don't be so bloody

Countdown to Madame Galina's Book Launch, Hippodrome, London April 3rd

Asked in an interview what was my  favourite ballet by Sir Kenneth MacMillan:    'Song of the Earth ...no, wait... Concerto: when the Second Movement girl is supported doing  ports de bras.  Actually,  The Judas Tree  totally  stuns me.  Different Drummer.   When you  feel like someone's been at your insides with  the de-icer? When as Mother Goose I was dipped  in the Lake of True Beauty, I would see poor Wozzeck drowning himself in the bath. No wonder my  Dame Transformation Ballet - Own Frock -  went a bit Wayne McGregor...'

My Tutu Went AWOL...out on Amazon...Tell Everyone!

   Some people will always crave a cathedral...   First tell your nearest and dearest, then your family, then your work colleagues; then the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker;  open the door to tell Jehovah's Witnesses.   I've been doing just that.  Though I decided not to disturb the thoughts of a woman this morning, who was gazing out across the marshes from the Aldeburgh Road across to the abandoned railway. But she spoke first:   'Yes, I'm sure it is a borderline spectacular view,' she said.  'But when, as I do, you live in real Fen country, then here you gaze and gaze and quite crave a cathedral.'

Don't Procastinate

I did yesterday...and it wasn't good.   I swirled the dregs of my tea three times, upended the cup into the saucer, then righted it again; but left the actual reading of the tea leaves until after I'd done my February-March tax return.   When I went back to them, the leaves had dried up and the images were fuzzy.   And, yes, all that's ever in my tea leaves is the inevitable half a Mona Lisa, a seahorse and a tutti-frutti cup-and-ball game, but this time might have been different.     So, don't procrastinate: buy your tickets for my one man book festival, Matcham Theatre, Hipppodrome Casino, London.  April 3rd, 7.30pm.

Be Positive!

  You're winning.  Or you're not.  But come on: we'll try.   Let's remember what opera producer Norman Ayrton said to soprano Dame Joan Sutherland:   'You walk eagerly to the window to look out at a magical night.  You do not totter in its vague direction as though you were expecting someone to shoot you through it!'      

Joys of Unexpected Things

   This is - guess - more advice from my passive-aggressive screw-up of a future self.  'What would you never usually react favourably to, Iestyn?  Well - point out the joy in it today with an exclamation of rapt delight!'   'Oh, look, hoorah, lock-off cameras!'   'How glorious, see, window cleaning in progress!'   'Woohoo, its stock-taking day at the book shop!'   'Larks a mercy, it's the Pinney's Oysters Van!'   'My day in the hills, they've painted the wrong colour around that drainpipe!'   'The Wifi is deliciously,   deliciously slow!'   'How divine, darling, Judge Judy episodes are only available on YouTube posted in little onscreen boxes, with leaves falling around, played at the wrong speed!'   'Yippee, I'm still owed nearly three grand after two years and am about to resort to small claims myself!'          

April 3rd...Hippodrome...STD...

  Oops, let's maybe fully write out Save the Date...   Another Animated Brain Tableaux email today from my future self.  'Remember that you must act from a position of full achievement.  So, to take just one example of your self-perpetuated negative self-imaging [crikey], imagine that you are already fully qualified to give expert advice on weight loss. '   Okay...   Raw Till Four...?   Cookie Dough.

Essex Book Festival 31/3 and Hippodrome Countdown to April 3rd. Diary 6

  Call me soon, mother dear, for I'm to be Queen of Saturday Live, Radio 4.   9am March 4th, with Lee Mack.   I was on the phone to the producer, Steven, for forty two minutes; he kindly worried for my phone bill and offered to ring me back on the Beeb's dime.  Other than the book coming out in a minute, he never mentioned any other hooks for my being guest on the programme.  Just asked questions and either giggled or sharply intook breath at my answers.   So I thought I must sidestep quoting Hercules Ease, Prettiest Boy of 9th Squadron, Camp Bastion.  When I told Herc in June 2006 that I was going on Woman's Hour to be crowned Forces' Sweetheart, he wanted to know why I was mentioning him on Woman's anything when he was a bloke.   'What is it, exactly, Eddie?'  He called me Eddie, never making it to Iestyn.   'Magazine programme, Radio 4.'   'Eddie, I'm just an honest joe.  My magazines are Men's Health, FHM and Nuts.  And who knew that

Hippodrome April 3rd countdown. Diary 4

  Another Animated Brain Tableaux email from my future self. Would I really want to risk not magically visualising my way to absolutely guaranteed success with a purchase of, let's call it, Rehash Resplendent?    At the bar after my recital recently, drinking with Claud and Gordon, the M and S obsessed couple that my mother has fag-hagged since 1976.     Gordon said we must be wary of false prophets. 'Booze.'     'I always get the right message from my fifth voddie,' said Claud.   'Drugs.'   'Only Night Nurse with a cod liver oil chaser.'   'The rehashed trend for living in the visualised desired outcome of dreams.'      'Is that false, too? But I do my affirmations with tealights, a mini gong tinkled, wearing my mother's wedding veil. Shall I not  get my high tea at the Ritz then, with Doris Day, Marian Keyes and  the Briefs Factory boy with the YoYo?'   'Oh, you fickle queen,' said Gordon.  'What about the

Diary Day 3. Countdown to Hippodrome London, April 3rd

  I sing as chosen by Joanna Lumley about 8 minutes in...   The daffodils I bought opened overnight. They're more flat leaf than trumpet. I knew I should have turned right rather than left on the abandoned railway and bought a bath mat.    An email from Kiki in Walberswick saying that she went online and listened to Joanna Lumley's Desert Island Discs, and hearing my dear, unadorned (what? !) voice was like turning in the lane and seeing the first crocuses, or lambs - or realising that, yes, the days were really lengthening.  She hopes I will sing at the Hippodrome gig as she's planning on being there.    I've been helpfully paraphrasing:  '...turning in the lane and seeing the first muntjac's scavenged carcass, the Thorpeness ladies golf four doing execrable things with high-vis, fuchsia unwashable nylon shorts - the village idiot singing "Oh, God our Help in Ages Past" masturbating with a still bloodily pulsating ear stuck in his arse crack.   

Hippodrome London Book Launch. Countdown to April 3rd Diary Day 1

  Also a tie in with my talk at the Ink Festival: We'll do the Show Here!   Ken Levison, writer, editor, dramaturge of brilliance, rang to say that I of course must perform Dulcamara the quack doctor's aria in my book show at the Hippodrome London.  'How nice of them to lend you the theatre!  Gosh.  Yes, I listened to your CD. And speaking as a layman I think you have a beautiful voice and should be doing the character parts in opera, because you have a sense of humour.  And, let's face it, are no longer - perhaps never were - the ingenue.'   Brera PR agrees with me that acrobat Stefan Alexander in his underwear would be a good selling image in certain quarters.  'But for something like the Woman's Weekly, let's go more with you as Madame Galina off-stage. Perhaps some crocuses at your feet. No, not strewn on the carpet, go out for a walk.'     This reminds me, idly, of my mate Gerard's younger brother, Montgomery, asking not to have any more

A Happy New Year with Grace

  In Coffee Link, Solar, New Year's Eve, Pat wished Gracie a Happy New Year.  She was so over emphatic and insistent you could tell she didn't believe there was a prayer of this coming true.     She went on, 'And you had a good Christmas?' More telling than asking. 'You went up Steven's...'   At this point the barista arrived with their order, putting the tray down so clumsily tea spouted out of the pot.    'I've chucked your Earl Grey over there now!' he said, and went away again.    '...so, Gracie,  you went up Steven's and had a good time!'   'I suppose so.'  Gracie was sitting with her coat half off, Pat with hers fully on.   'Been doing your exercise?' Pat asked.   'I've been walking up and down stairs.'   'Ah, but have you been told that that counts as the exercise you're meant to do?'   'Heard around and about that it could very well be.'   'But it's your dietici