September 2008 - Posts
Kenneth Branagh was excellent in Ivanov although he was not exactly stretched in the part. Anyway it was excellent that I saw the great man perform, having missed most of the best actors of the previous generation through inertia and poverty. The programme had an advertisement for the RSC at Wilton's Music Hall in East London This is apparently the oldest music hall there is and dates from 1850. Champagne Charlie played there. It is semi derelict. Go see it before a benevolent council pulls it down to build affordable homes.
My pain with my new website continues. I managed a link to an affiliate sales advertisement. I was celebrating by linking an article to Clickbank, clicked the wrong button and now have the web hoster's dashboard on my own website. I am scared to click delete in case everything vanishes. It would be nice to have a real person holding my hand on this project. To be positive, I am learning what not to do. In fact that's most of what I have learnt.
It seemed such a good idea at the time to build my own website. The online course only lasted thirty days, with a lesson a day, and at the end of it I would have a website selling affiliate products while I slept. Rags to riches in thirty days; Alexandria here I come I thought. It is not quite that easy. I have now received sixteen lessons, but sadly am stuck on lesson six. To my surprise I was able to download an affiliates advertisement and put it on the website I had just built. Hooray!! But then I found that when I clicked on the words CLICK HERE to go to my affiliates sales page I went in a circle and finished up at my own website minus the text. This, the ultimate in a non sales campaign, is quite an achievement in its way. At present the problem cannot be solved.
As you will know by now the Man Booker shortlist was announced a week or so ago. The six lucky finalists, whom you have of course heard of, are: Aravind Adiga(India), Sebastian Barry(Ireland), Amita Ghosh(India), Linda Grant(UK), Philip Hensher(UK), Steve Toltz(Australia). Which only goes to show how international good writing can be and how, by pure chance, this resulted in a politically correct shortlist.
I was looking forward to seeing David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in Hamlet. Tickets were on sale on 12 September ( I didn't mention this due to diplomatic amnesia). So promptly at 9.30 am - London opening time for almost everything - I checked the theatre's website. Sold out, would you believe. So Plan B, try the agencies. Hooray, tickets were available - singles, minimum price £220 each. I subsequently learned that tickets sold out everywhere in three hours. The following day pairs were changing hands at £1100. Now David Tennant is a fine actor, and Patrick Stewart is as fine, if not finer.This may well be the best Hamlet for some years, but who with any common sense would pay the price of a perfectly good, if rather old, Ford Fiesta for two tickets? To me this was a rip-off fueled by media hype.
On the rebound and muttering about undeserving Russian oligarchs and politicians impressing their secretaries, I carried on surfing theatres and found Kenneth Branagh playing Ivanov. Now he is arguably the best classical actor of his generation (check out Henry V) and worth big bucks. I bought tickets in the stalls for £36 each. Now that is really good value.
I have just bought tickets for a talk by John le Carre in London. It may be an opportunity to ask him why it takes 160 pages of introduction in The Honourable Schoolboy before something happens. The answer may be that, if it is so annoying, why am I still reading the book?
The amazing David Tennant and Patrick Stewart Hamlet opens in London in December. It is remarkable that Dr Who can play Hamlet so well (we are told), but then perhaps he met him once.
My own efforts with Alexandria are getting into a routine and I'm writing a couple of pages a day. I think I have done about 3000 words, only 32,000 to go.