What's on the touring talk circuit with me just now? There are readings of MR James ghost stories, a biopic of Mata Hari to a surgeon giving a lecture on STDs. With slides. In the coffee break at his talks, nobody much fancies the garibaldis. Let alone the Jammie Dodgers. Also a talk positing that, from His behaviour in the Old Testament, God is gay, bi-polar and a hoarder of bric-a-brac. There are 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. The imagined spoken record of a Stonehenge mason, of Michelangelo winch-hanging under the Sistine Chapel ceiling and of Tracey Emin unmaking her bed. Audiences are being 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. And how d...
Just a flaneur, flanning away.